Experimenting with cooked Pu-erh

[alexo]

I had a fantastic success with cooked Pu-erh mini-cake (2008 grade A Xia Guan Xiao Tuo Cha, from Wuzhou factory) after an experiment I did with one of the cakes. When I tried to follow the instructions on the bag, several sites and this forum, the tea was at best drinkable and mostly tasted like mud.

So, I took a mini-cake, broke it apart and left it in a ventilated area for about two weeks. Instead of the muddy taste, I got a complex tea that is very tasty.
It makes sense that to accelerate the aging of a pressed cake, you'd want to separate it and ventilate it in room temperature. I'll try it on a small raw puerh cake that I have and see how it goes.

 

[thanks]

How did you brew it?

 

[alexo]

I brewed it in yixing teapot. First infusion for several seconds and 20 seconds for the second infusion.

 

[ouch]

Did you rinse it? I sure as heck hope you rinsed it (twice!).

 

[alexo]

I rinsed it once after the first infusion. I swirlled the teapot before rinsing it. It surely passed the test of taste. The third infusion took one minute and tasted a bit different but still great: major tea note with additional fruity, nutty and little earthy notes. Other than the many small broken leave parts that get flushed from the teapot, I'm very happy with it.

 

[ouch]

Ah, perhaps you're discovering one of the great mysteries of shu, one that may take a lifetime to learn-

Spoiler

It's not that good. Stick to sheng.

 

[alexo]

It's unbelievable how the taste can evolve from mud into a complex and tastey tea. I'm truely amazed.

 

[ambrose]

That true fellas I now am drinking lots of sheng over the shu. You guys were right

 

[_JP_]

So, I took a mini-cake, broke it apart and left it in a ventilated area for about two weeks. Instead of the muddy taste, I got a complex tea that is very tasty.
It makes sense that to accelerate the aging of a pressed cake, you'd want to separate it and ventilate it in room temperature. I'll try it on a small raw puerh cake that I have and see how it goes.

I have a 100 gram toucha that I'm going to try that with. I'll split it, leave half compressed while I work from the broken apart half. This isn't the first time where I've heard of letting a pu ventilate before drinking.

 

[netsurfr]

Ambrose -
I was wondering how long it would take you to become more interested in the sheng. I guess the answer is not to long considering you started out with the samples just recently.

Congratulations on reaching another dimension of pu-erh tea appreciation!

 

[ambrose]

Thank you, Ive finally graduated !!!