"Melinda" wrote in message
om...
I just realized today that another reason I may be having a hard time
with the puer I do have is that I may be brewing it way too strong. I
don't have a scale so I have been eyeballing it. I brewed it a little
lighter today and didn't mind it so much.

I also agree you need to be careful with the time and amount until you know
the tea. Some black Puers you can steep seemingly indefinitely, others not,
and I suspect (though I don't know for sure) that green Puers are MUCH more
susceptible to over-steeping. You could probably steep the black Large Leaf
Puer from Shan Shui I mentioned for 12 or 15 minutes (maybe even more), and
it would still be fine. Other Puers I've had would I think be undrinkable
after that long, and might even start eating through the pot.

month I am hoping to get more samples of assams as I am still
searching for one that really knocks my socks off. Need to restock my

If you find that Assam, please let us know. I found one that came close at
SpecialTeas, then of course they ran out, and haven't gotten in this year's
crop yet (which of course may not be as good as last year's - sigh). I
haven't found one as good yet.

keemun. I want to get some honeybush for evenings (I know not tea, no
caffeine though).

I kinda sorta like honeybush for evenings too. But it's a long long way from
tea, unfortunately.

Doug

"Melinda" wrote in message
om...
I just realized today that another reason I may be having a hard time
with the puer I do have is that I may be brewing it way too strong. I
don't have a scale so I have been eyeballing it. I brewed it a little
lighter today and didn't mind it so much.

I also agree you need to be careful with the time and amount until you know
the tea. Some black Puers you can steep seemingly indefinitely, others not,
and I suspect (though I don't know for sure) that green Puers are MUCH more
susceptible to over-steeping. You could probably steep the black Large Leaf
Puer from Shan Shui I mentioned for 12 or 15 minutes (maybe even more), and
it would still be fine. Other Puers I've had would I think be undrinkable
after that long, and might even start eating through the pot.

month I am hoping to get more samples of assams as I am still
searching for one that really knocks my socks off. Need to restock my

If you find that Assam, please let us know. I found one that came close at
SpecialTeas, then of course they ran out, and haven't gotten in this year's
crop yet (which of course may not be as good as last year's - sigh). I
haven't found one as good yet.

keemun. I want to get some honeybush for evenings (I know not tea, no
caffeine though).

I kinda sorta like honeybush for evenings too. But it's a long long way from
tea, unfortunately.

Doug

In article , Michael Plant wrote:
However, my Hong Kong back to China commemorative requires a
hacksaw, a hammer, and super strength to get a workable piece.

Heh, I have one (two, even) for which the best tools for removing
chunks are a wood chisel and a rubber mallet. (Have to be careful not
to scar the counter....)


N.

If the knife shreads and tears, it's not a good instrument to pry at the
Pu-erh, IMO. The idea is to wedge, wriggle, and wiggle from an edge so as
not to harm the leaves.

Mike,

I have a feeling that if a puerh is not a whole leaf variety but rather a
broken leaf (Like Dai bamboo) it is better not to further break the
break-off piece. It actually prolongs the extraction during the coarse of
several steeps and makes them less contrast. To my surprise it stayed intact
(more or less) through 4 steeps and fell apart only later. That made my
first steeps less intense and my late steeps stronger and more consistent
with the earlier. To break it off I carefilly insert a sharp knife couple of
times along the line that I want to break it off and carefully detach the
piece. It comes off the cake pretty solid. I also noticed that this way it
is also less sensitive to hotter steeps probably because the inner part is
not getting skolded right away.
I guess the whole leaf cakes do not require this for obvious reasons. Also
the whole leaf cake won't hold on in one piece for a long time anyway.

Just an observation.

Sasha.

If the knife shreads and tears, it's not a good instrument to pry at the
Pu-erh, IMO. The idea is to wedge, wriggle, and wiggle from an edge so as
not to harm the leaves.

Mike,

I have a feeling that if a puerh is not a whole leaf variety but rather a
broken leaf (Like Dai bamboo) it is better not to further break the
break-off piece. It actually prolongs the extraction during the coarse of
several steeps and makes them less contrast. To my surprise it stayed intact
(more or less) through 4 steeps and fell apart only later. That made my
first steeps less intense and my late steeps stronger and more consistent
with the earlier. To break it off I carefilly insert a sharp knife couple of
times along the line that I want to break it off and carefully detach the
piece. It comes off the cake pretty solid. I also noticed that this way it
is also less sensitive to hotter steeps probably because the inner part is
not getting skolded right away.
I guess the whole leaf cakes do not require this for obvious reasons. Also
the whole leaf cake won't hold on in one piece for a long time anyway.

Just an observation.

Sasha.

"Natarajan Krishnaswami" wrote in message

Heh, I have one (two, even) for which the best tools for removing
chunks are a wood chisel and a rubber mallet. (Have to be careful not
to scar the counter....)

That seems complicated.
I use a cork screw, the simple model in shape of T. It is always possible to
find a little hole to attack the block and then you just turn the tool to
get deeper. When you pull it out, small blocks of tea come with it. No
strength is needed.
I had tried the ice-pick and mallet before, and that didn't work for me.

Kuri

Natarajan 9/23/04


In article , Michael Plant wrote:
However, my Hong Kong back to China commemorative requires a
hacksaw, a hammer, and super strength to get a workable piece.

Heh, I have one (two, even) for which the best tools for removing
chunks are a wood chisel and a rubber mallet. (Have to be careful not
to scar the counter....)


N.

For serious divisioning of this tea, a band saw is recommended. Talk to me
about how you find its taste and style.
M

Alex digy.com9/23/04


If the knife shreads and tears, it's not a good instrument to pry at the
Pu-erh, IMO. The idea is to wedge, wriggle, and wiggle from an edge so as
not to harm the leaves.

Mike,

I have a feeling that if a puerh is not a whole leaf variety but rather a
broken leaf (Like Dai bamboo) it is better not to further break the
break-off piece. It actually prolongs the extraction during the coarse of
several steeps and makes them less contrast. To my surprise it stayed intact
(more or less) through 4 steeps and fell apart only later. That made my
first steeps less intense and my late steeps stronger and more consistent
with the earlier. To break it off I carefilly insert a sharp knife couple of
times along the line that I want to break it off and carefully detach the
piece. It comes off the cake pretty solid. I also noticed that this way it
is also less sensitive to hotter steeps probably because the inner part is
not getting skolded right away.
I guess the whole leaf cakes do not require this for obvious reasons. Also
the whole leaf cake won't hold on in one piece for a long time anyway.

Just an observation.

And a good one, I'd say. I did a similar thing yesterday, noting that the
HKbtC pieces waited until later steeps to come apart completely. Speaking of
which I'm not entirely sure that I'm not harming my teas' potential by using
the particular pot I dedicated to Pu-erh. While the tea tastes good and
smells fine in cup, there is a "funky" smell from the pot itself sometimes
that disturbs me. This pot is about 8 ounces, and is made of what appears to
be rather porous clay, probably at a lower firing, judging from the "clunk"
as opposed to "clink" of the tapped surface. It's a factory production. I
had bought it new and used it for Pu-erhs most of its life. This is a bit
discouraging.

Michael

/23/04


"Natarajan Krishnaswami" wrote in message

Heh, I have one (two, even) for which the best tools for removing
chunks are a wood chisel and a rubber mallet. (Have to be careful not
to scar the counter....)

That seems complicated.
I use a cork screw, the simple model in shape of T. It is always possible to
find a little hole to attack the block and then you just turn the tool to
get deeper. When you pull it out, small blocks of tea come with it. No
strength is needed.
I had tried the ice-pick and mallet before, and that didn't work for me.

Kuri,

I'm going to examine the brick again, but it looks impervious to such
treatment.

Michael

crymad writes:

"Doug Hazen, Jr." wrote:
[...]
First, I personally wouldn't buy Puer selling for less than $10 a
1/4 pound / 100 gms. For a little more money, you'll have a much
better chance of getting a decent tea.

Though I've only had samples packages of each, both Imperial Tea Court's
"Superior Puerh" black loose-leaf
(http://www.imperialtea.com/AB1002000...roduct_ID=91&C
ategory_ID=21) [...] seemed pretty decent.

Would you other Puerh fanciers agree with this assessment?

As a rule of thumb, yes, but sometimes I get lucky in New York's
Chinatown with a penny-a-gram Puerh.

Is Imperial Tea's "Superior Puerh" a decent offering?

Sorry, haven't tried it.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

crymad writes:

"Doug Hazen, Jr." wrote:
[...]
First, I personally wouldn't buy Puer selling for less than $10 a
1/4 pound / 100 gms. For a little more money, you'll have a much
better chance of getting a decent tea.

Though I've only had samples packages of each, both Imperial Tea Court's
"Superior Puerh" black loose-leaf
(http://www.imperialtea.com/AB1002000...roduct_ID=91&C
ategory_ID=21) [...] seemed pretty decent.

Would you other Puerh fanciers agree with this assessment?

As a rule of thumb, yes, but sometimes I get lucky in New York's
Chinatown with a penny-a-gram Puerh.

Is Imperial Tea's "Superior Puerh" a decent offering?

Sorry, haven't tried it.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

While the tea tastes good and
smells fine in cup, there is a "funky" smell from the pot itself sometimes
that disturbs me. This pot is about 8 ounces, and is made of what appears
to
be rather porous clay, probably at a lower firing, judging from the
"clunk"
as opposed to "clink" of the tapped surface. It's a factory production. I
had bought it new and used it for Pu-erhs most of its life. This is a bit
discouraging.

There are so few things in life that one can afford to just get rid of if
one's expectations are not met, that if you have even slightiest dislike of
your chahu - throw the damn thing away and treat yourself to a better one.
Or boil it for couple of hours and see if it helps, if you are frugal, as a
true New Yorker should be (or a tinkerer). My guess you may have mold in
large-pore chahus. NYT is a humid place and mold has a better chance there.
BTW - its not precisely the topic, buy you may be interested to know what I
was told by serious yixing people in China. The true test of yixing zisha
pot short of chemical tests is the fact that yixing pot before it was ever
used has a sort of metallic clank. After it is brought to contact with water
the clank "muffles" a bit. If no such difference can be noted, suspicion
should arise. It is also interesting to know that zisha means not "purple
clay" but "purple sandstone" and raw zisha is a piece of clayey sandstone
that needs to be broken and crushed first. These quartz sand particles that
are very uniform in size are responsible for zisha's special porous
qualities and mecahnical sturdiness. Because of that, a large-pore pot most
probably cannot be made of yixing zisha. Your pot is probably made of other
variaties of red clays of China (there are several).

Sasha.

While the tea tastes good and
smells fine in cup, there is a "funky" smell from the pot itself sometimes
that disturbs me. This pot is about 8 ounces, and is made of what appears
to
be rather porous clay, probably at a lower firing, judging from the
"clunk"
as opposed to "clink" of the tapped surface. It's a factory production. I
had bought it new and used it for Pu-erhs most of its life. This is a bit
discouraging.

There are so few things in life that one can afford to just get rid of if
one's expectations are not met, that if you have even slightiest dislike of
your chahu - throw the damn thing away and treat yourself to a better one.
Or boil it for couple of hours and see if it helps, if you are frugal, as a
true New Yorker should be (or a tinkerer). My guess you may have mold in
large-pore chahus. NYT is a humid place and mold has a better chance there.
BTW - its not precisely the topic, buy you may be interested to know what I
was told by serious yixing people in China. The true test of yixing zisha
pot short of chemical tests is the fact that yixing pot before it was ever
used has a sort of metallic clank. After it is brought to contact with water
the clank "muffles" a bit. If no such difference can be noted, suspicion
should arise. It is also interesting to know that zisha means not "purple
clay" but "purple sandstone" and raw zisha is a piece of clayey sandstone
that needs to be broken and crushed first. These quartz sand particles that
are very uniform in size are responsible for zisha's special porous
qualities and mecahnical sturdiness. Because of that, a large-pore pot most
probably cannot be made of yixing zisha. Your pot is probably made of other
variaties of red clays of China (there are several).

Sasha.

While the tea tastes good and
smells fine in cup, there is a "funky" smell from the pot itself sometimes
that disturbs me. This pot is about 8 ounces, and is made of what appears
to
be rather porous clay, probably at a lower firing, judging from the
"clunk"
as opposed to "clink" of the tapped surface. It's a factory production. I
had bought it new and used it for Pu-erhs most of its life. This is a bit
discouraging.

There are so few things in life that one can afford to just get rid of if
one's expectations are not met, that if you have even slightiest dislike of
your chahu - throw the damn thing away and treat yourself to a better one.
Or boil it for couple of hours and see if it helps, if you are frugal, as a
true New Yorker should be (or a tinkerer). My guess you may have mold in
large-pore chahus. NYT is a humid place and mold has a better chance there.
BTW - its not precisely the topic, buy you may be interested to know what I
was told by serious yixing people in China. The true test of yixing zisha
pot short of chemical tests is the fact that yixing pot before it was ever
used has a sort of metallic clank. After it is brought to contact with water
the clank "muffles" a bit. If no such difference can be noted, suspicion
should arise. It is also interesting to know that zisha means not "purple
clay" but "purple sandstone" and raw zisha is a piece of clayey sandstone
that needs to be broken and crushed first. These quartz sand particles that
are very uniform in size are responsible for zisha's special porous
qualities and mecahnical sturdiness. Because of that, a large-pore pot most
probably cannot be made of yixing zisha. Your pot is probably made of other
variaties of red clays of China (there are several).

Sasha.

Lewis Perin wrote:

crymad writes:

"Doug Hazen, Jr." wrote:
[...]
First, I personally wouldn't buy Puer selling for less than $10 a
1/4 pound / 100 gms. For a little more money, you'll have a much
better chance of getting a decent tea.

Though I've only had samples packages of each, both Imperial Tea Court's
"Superior Puerh" black loose-leaf
(http://www.imperialtea.com/AB1002000...roduct_ID=91&C
ategory_ID=21) [...] seemed pretty decent.

Would you other Puerh fanciers agree with this assessment?

As a rule of thumb, yes, but sometimes I get lucky in New York's
Chinatown with a penny-a-gram Puerh.

Well, the sample you kindly sent me some time back was surely not this
penny-Puerh, was it?


Is Imperial Tea's "Superior Puerh" a decent offering?

Sorry, haven't tried it.

I have. I remember my impressions as if it were just yesterday...

"Foul stuff, all. In fact, had I drunk them without knowing what was
being
offered, I would have been hard-pressed to say they were teas.
Infusions of roots or bark, perhaps scooped from a dark moist pile well
on its way to decomposition, but not tea. Maybe tea isn't the point for
Puerh -- tea leaves are simply the vehicle for carrying that aged,
mummified flavor the Chinese have such an appreciation for. But for
someone like myself who prizes the delicate freshness of Japanese
greens, Puerh is an evil perversion of what tea should be."

I do wish to stop holding forth on my disdain for Puerh. But since this
newsgroup of late feels like a Puerh pep rally, I really have no choice.

--crymad