Thinking of trying Puerh

[a_bit_crafty]

Since I got "serious" about my tea drinking, I've had and loved several varieties of teas and tisanes, but I've yet to try puerh.

Of course I'll be doing research on the subject, but for those who have tried it, what tips and advice would you give to someone who's never tried it?

 

[bradyarz]

*subscribing*

 

[shah8]

First thing.

Get stuff that is well known by the community at first, so you can read as you taste, over and over and over again. Do NOT get a bunch of samples. When the expensive teahouses are the cheapest places for samples, that oughta tell you everything. Instead, get bings and tuos and drink them up first. Say, a Dayi 8582 and Xiaguan FT #4, so forth and so on. When you really *know* how to taste pus and you know what flavors and attributes are a hgh priority to you, then go crazy on samples. Samples are expensive per grams and a complete waste of your time if you don't know the genre.

 

[Proinsias]

I'll say the complete opposite and say get samples. Yes they are a little more expensive but there's a lot of pu out there.

Pick up some samples of new sheng, new shu, aged sheng and aged shu. A few from each category. Most samples are around 25g, more than enough to give you an idea of what you like. A beeng is 357g of tea, that's a lot of tea. You could drink your way through a few bings and tou's of fairly recent sheng or shu only to find out that like most people you don't really like new pu'erh.

Drinking my way through a full cake of something regarded as fairly safe like a 7542 from the past few years is not my idea of fun. I always had a taste for the old stuff and drink the new stuff on occasion as a curiosity.

 

[a_bit_crafty]

First thing.

Get stuff that is well known by the community at first, so you can read as you taste, over and over and over again. Do NOT get a bunch of samples. When the expensive teahouses are the cheapest places for samples, that oughta tell you everything. Instead, get bings and tuos and drink them up first. Say, a Dayi 8582 and Xiaguan FT #4, so forth and so on. When you really *know* how to taste pus and you know what flavors and attributes are a hgh priority to you, then go crazy on samples. Samples are expensive per grams and a complete waste of your time if you don't know the genre.

Oh, my. I posted this question on a tea forum that I haunt and was told that I SHOULD buy samples, stay away from bings and tuos, and get shus and shengs first.

Now I'm lost.

 

[Proinsias]

Samples are expensive per grams and a complete waste of your time if you don't know the genre.

Getting to know the genre is going to be pretty expensive if you don't purchase samples. A bing of decent, well aged, dry stored sheng pu is going to set you back a few hundred quid and without tasting it you've kinda missed the point of the genre imo, no requirement to drink your way through kilo's of modern sheng which might not have much relation to the old stuff anyways. I got hooked via sheng samples from the 80's and early 90's from Hou de.

 

[bradyarz]

...Do NOT get a bunch of samples....

I'll say the complete opposite and say get samples....

hooray! i've never even tried puerh and i feel like i already knew everything i need!

 

[ouch]

Start reading the sheng of the day thread, ask questions, and start with easy to find, famous blends.

Steve (netsurfr) has a very nice shop and can hook you up with a nice starter kit.

careful, though- it's addicting.

 

[a_bit_crafty]

Start reading the sheng of the day thread, ask questions, and start with easy to find, famous blends.

Steve (netsurfr) has a very nice shop and can hook you up with a nice starter kit.

careful, though- it's addicting.

Oh, I've been looking at his pretty, pretty things. He'll be my go-to guy when the time comes for purchase.

So, shu, sheng, bing, tuo... are these sizes or types or both?

 

[ouch]

So: a needle pulling thread.

Shu: a "cooked" pu'er, employing a process to speed up the aging process by turning the product into swill.

Sheng: the real thing.

Bing: a cake of pu'er. Looks like a frisbee.

Tuo: Literally a bird's nest. A small, squashed ball of pu'er.

 

[shah8]

I think technique is what matters. Good tea is good tea, and if a 7542 is too terrifying, go up in quality and get a Douji Yiwu or Nannuo. The thing is, you brew tea according to how you want tea. If you're still learning to brew tea while you're buying a bunch of 25-30g samples, that easily runs up into hundreds of dollars of nothing as your tastes evolves. When I got the peacock sampler from Jas-eteas, it was something $22-25 for 100g of fairly cheap pu. I would have been vastly better off by buying a Menghai or Mengsong peacock and exploring that one, and then having the rest of the bing as a daily brewer. Would have cost $5 for 300 more grams, and I would have learned more than I did with the peacock sampler as that was just too early for me to know much beyond that I don't like cheap plantation green tea. A bing forces you to ignore high points and low points and explore how you enjoy that tea.

By all means, get samples, but I strongly suggest that you get one or two highly recommended cheaper bings $40 or less for sheng, and you just can't go wrong with 2007 White Needle Golden Lotus as an introduction to shu. I can also thoroughly recommend the Secret Aroma shu of that year for something a bit heavier fermented. Aged tea is trickier, in my mind. I'd have to say that the best deal for aged tea I've tasted would have been the Shin Ya from Hou De once upon a time, and that was a shu. True aged tea is a fairly individual experience, and samples are mandatory in this case and not particularly expensive relative to the bings.

 

[thanks]

I highly recommend samples. Get a cheap 100ml white gaiwan, check out this thread http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?t=144602&highlight=gaiwans, try a bunch of teas for yourself, then try to read up notes on them. Have fun! Try not to take anything too seriously, and remember that only a fool cannot change his mind.

 

[a_bit_crafty]

Oh, I didn't even think of gaiwans, although I should have.

Thanks for all the input so far, gentlemen!

 

[apache]

My 2 cents worth of advice is to try as many different "samples" as possible, "sample" can be 25g or a whole cake, I let you decide on this. Don't buy too much tea in one go, even some seem taste good, as a pureh sample taste good for a beginner may not be a "good" tea after all, you would be surprise to know. Take thing slowly and don't rush. A well known puerh author and blogger, "Cloud" said in a forum, it is very normal to take 2 to 3 years for a beginner to learn the basic about puerh tea! (I think what he means is about how to taste and appreciate puerh tea and judging whether a young sheng tea have aging potential, which is the most difficult thing to learn.)

 

[a_bit_crafty]

My 2 cents worth of advice is to try as many different "samples" as possible, "sample" can be 25g or a whole cake, I let you decide on this. Don't buy too much tea in one go, even some seem taste good, as a pureh sample taste good for a beginner may not be a "good" tea after all, you would be surprise to know. Take thing slowly and don't rush. A well known puerh author and blogger, "Cloud" said in a forum, it is very normal to take 2 to 3 years for a beginner to learn the basic about puerh tea! (I think what he means is about how to taste and appreciate puerh tea and judging whether a young sheng tea have aging potential, which is the most difficult thing to learn.)

I have to agree, from my experience. I started drinking tea (not puerh, obviously) some time ago, and what seemed incredibly good to me when I just started out I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole now.

 

[Obiwan]

Steve (netsurfr) has a very nice shop and can hook you up with a nice starter kit.

To echo this, I'm a tea newbie myself and emailed Steve for some suggestions. He was very helpful in putting together some things I should try. I was quite pleased with my order from him.

 

[tieguanyin]

My 2 cents worth of advice is to try as many different "samples" as possible, "sample" can be 25g or a whole cake, I let you decide on this.

If one follows Sir Ouch's approaches to "sampling", 1 sample = 1 cake (bing). So if the sample is good, one must buy a tong (7 cakes) ! Watch out, or your home might look like this or that (looks for the posts by Phuarobert) before too long !

 

[ouch]

Exactly. A bing is a sample. A tong is a bing.

 

[Shogun89]

exactly. A bing is a sample. A tong is a bing.

+1

 

[Born2bwire]

I'll say the complete opposite and say get samples. Yes they are a little more expensive but there's a lot of pu out there.

Pick up some samples of new sheng, new shu, aged sheng and aged shu. A few from each category. Most samples are around 25g, more than enough to give you an idea of what you like. A beeng is 357g of tea, that's a lot of tea. You could drink your way through a few bings and tou's of fairly recent sheng or shu only to find out that like most people you don't really like new pu'erh.

Drinking my way through a full cake of something regarded as fairly safe like a 7542 from the past few years is not my idea of fun. I always had a taste for the old stuff and drink the new stuff on occasion as a curiosity.

Yeah, I would go with samples because it would be very annoying to get a bing that you didn't like or one that you later no longer liked. I use around 5-7 grams of tea for my pots (~100 ml) and that lasts me an afternoon. So a bing of 357 grams lasts me 51 days of continual drinking.... Yeah...

I think the above is pretty good advice. Try a small sample of one or two brand new shengs. You probably won't like them but they give you an idea how the tea starts out and they'll be cheap. Then try a sample or two of a five year old and then ten year old sheng. I would wait until after you have been drinking for a while to try the ten year old to appreciate how the older teas have changed. There are some very good five year old shengs. My daily drinking tea is a five year old sheng but the tastes can vary greatly among the shengs.

Shus are probably a very good beginner tea as they are pretty bulletproof in terms of taste and technique and they are much cheaper. Even a dirt cheap shu has its good qualities. I would not bother getting anything older than 10 years as the returns are much much smaller than with sheng. Again, try a few samples of varying age. Say new, 2-3 years, 5 year and a 10 year. And a gain work your way towards the older teas so that you can better appreciate the aging process.

But above all, get a cheap 100 ml Gaiwan. That should be more than enough for personal consumption as you can probably get 5-10 infusions out of a tea. Also, use filtered water. Nothing really fancy. You can use a Pur or Brita filter but you should definitely filter your water if you are going to be spending any amount of money on a tea.

I would start drinking shus to help work on your technique and because I think that you can get a pretty good daily shu for a modest price without too much effort. I have found that all shus are pretty drinkable in their own way.