Lewis Perin wrote:
"Space Cowboy" writes:

Patrick Heinze wrote:
Ater I read so much about Pu Erh in this NG I decided to give it
a
2nd
try. I just stumbled over it, not in a teashop though, but in a
local

imported goods shop. I got a kind of pressed 'teaball', about 1,5
cm in diameter...well...not really a ball, but pressed and small,
though ^-^ Anyone knows what this is? Is that one of the 'cakes'
read aout?

It's called Xiao Tuo Cha, small(mini) bowl tea. Puerh can come
loose,
or compressed as Tuo ('birdsnest') or beeng('pancakes'). The mini
tuocha is about 10g, tuocha 100g, and beeng 300g+. The Xiao is
good
for a pot. The other two you have to crumble.

Tuochas are bowl-shaped, not ball-shaped. Can the original poster
clarify this?

The Puerh that I tried at Teavana was loose, and very black looking.
They said that it was aged for 15 years.

Cathy Weeks

Cheap Pu Erh tastes like horse ****. Or, in deference to accuracy and
proper English (I think), it tastes like horse **** smells.
Or is it "as"? Will any of you non-native English speakers, who seem to
be the only ones who know the rules of grammar these days, correct me if
necessary?

I will drink cheap tea of almost any variety as long as it is fresh, made
properly, and is real tea. But not pu erh. Right now I'm drinking "Fu
Fang Cha" sent me by a friend. It is pu erh and I think translates to
"lucky square tea". It's cuboid, more precisely.

Best,

Rick.

Derek wrote:
Every cup tasted the way my mouth did after spending a day mucking out
horse stables. Perhaps if I didn't have that memory, I could learn to
like it. As it is, the taste of stall dust is NOT a pleasing memory.

On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:06:32 +0000 (UTC), Rick Chappell wrote:

Cheap Pu Erh tastes like horse ****. Or, in deference to accuracy and
proper English (I think), it tastes like horse **** smells.

In my experience, the value of the Pu Erh has little to do with how it
prompts my memory. It's all varying degrees of the same thing.

--
Derek

Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.

The Puerh that I tried at Teavana was loose, and very black looking.
They said that it was aged for 15 years.

Cathy Weeks

I'm not being critical of your merchant's honesty, but it's nearly
impossible to judge how old the tea is just by the looks. It could
possibly have been aged for 15 years, but that would make the price
decently high. The merchant was probably told it was 15 years old,
but how to verify?

There is also a process in which pu'er can be aged quicker by
moistening it and then letting it dry out over and over again to try
and make it appear older than it is. This usually damages the tea
quality and can make it taste horrible. This is why I am so ardently
against purchasing pu'er online; maybe that's a strong statement,
perhaps extremely cautious.

The only way I will buy a tea is if I can try it first or am advised
by someone that knows the particular tea well. I live in the middle
of no where without any access to any teashops, so I have bought
nothing new in a while. heh. Poor me.


Mydnight

--------------------
thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 13:20:26 -0600, Derek wrote:

On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:06:32 +0000 (UTC), Rick Chappell wrote:

Cheap Pu Erh tastes like horse ****. Or, in deference to accuracy and
proper English (I think), it tastes like horse **** smells.

In my experience, the value of the Pu Erh has little to do with how it
prompts my memory. It's all varying degrees of the same thing.

I think he meant cheap quality and not cheap price. I do support his
assertion; the lower quality stuff for the most part tastes horrid.



Mydnight

--------------------
thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

Rich, dear friend -

1. I never drunk any horse ****, so can't help you here. Now, about horse
**** smell. Having been around horses quite a lot during my Siberian geology
years I can tell you one thing - there are probably few substances in the
world that smell that diversified. And mainly dependant on the animal's
diet. None of which (the smells), I dare to say, are disgusting.
For your virtual collection of smells I will testify that a Cossack horse
that grazed upon fresh mountain grass on alpine meadows around Hangar
volcano on my beloved Kamchatka Peninsula leave a smell of its urine that is
unmistakably strong smell of a freshly cut just baked rye bread. So much so,
that the gentlemen who accompany these horses on their hard journeys across
the mountains for months, as I did, would stop their monotonous and
exhausting walk, lift their heads and inhale that smell with joy and hope of
reaching a hamlet someday where they can actually enjoy a normal hot meal
under a non-leaky roof.

2. Your passage about non-native English speakers is a bit alarming. Have we
been that annoying in our misuse of the language of Shakespeare and Chaucer
so that you felt compelled to hint us of our shortcomings?

Sasha.


"Rick Chappell" wrote in message
...
Cheap Pu Erh tastes like horse ****. Or, in deference to accuracy and
proper English (I think), it tastes like horse **** smells.
Or is it "as"? Will any of you non-native English speakers, who seem to
be the only ones who know the rules of grammar these days, correct me if
necessary?

I will drink cheap tea of almost any variety as long as it is fresh, made
properly, and is real tea. But not pu erh. Right now I'm drinking "Fu
Fang Cha" sent me by a friend. It is pu erh and I think translates to
"lucky square tea". It's cuboid, more precisely.

Best,

Rick.

Derek wrote:
Every cup tasted the way my mouth did after spending a day mucking out
horse stables. Perhaps if I didn't have that memory, I could learn to
like it. As it is, the taste of stall dust is NOT a pleasing memory.

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 19:46:20 GMT, Mydnight wrote:

On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 13:20:26 -0600, Derek wrote:

On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:06:32 +0000 (UTC), Rick Chappell wrote:

Cheap Pu Erh tastes like horse ****. Or, in deference to accuracy and
proper English (I think), it tastes like horse **** smells.

In my experience, the value of the Pu Erh has little to do with how it
prompts my memory. It's all varying degrees of the same thing.

I think he meant cheap quality and not cheap price. I do support his
assertion; the lower quality stuff for the most part tastes horrid.

Oh, I fully support that assertion. But, in my opinion, higher quality
stuff just tastes less horrid. This was, after all a thread started by
someone who wondered if she was alone in *not* linking pu erh. She's
not.

I also can't stand the taste of eggplant. But that doesn't mean that
my wife stops trying to feed it to me because she likes it.

--
Derek

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 21:43:15 GMT, Alex Chaihorsky wrote:

Rich, dear friend -

1. I never drunk any horse ****, so can't help you here. Now, about horse
**** smell. Having been around horses quite a lot during my Siberian geology
years I can tell you one thing - there are probably few substances in the
world that smell that diversified. And mainly dependant on the animal's
diet. None of which (the smells), I dare to say, are disgusting.

Now I know your senses are screwy.

For your virtual collection of smells I will testify that a Cossack horse
that grazed upon fresh mountain grass on alpine meadows around Hangar
volcano on my beloved Kamchatka Peninsula leave a smell of its urine that is
unmistakably strong smell of a freshly cut just baked rye bread. So much so,
that the gentlemen who accompany these horses on their hard journeys across
the mountains for months, as I did, would stop their monotonous and
exhausting walk, lift their heads and inhale that smell with joy and hope of
reaching a hamlet someday where they can actually enjoy a normal hot meal
under a non-leaky roof.

Lucky you. The smell of stables where thoroughbred breeding mares have
been housed is quite the opposite. Especially when you're still
tasting it 3 hours AFTER getting home from work.

2. Your passage about non-native English speakers is a bit alarming. Have we
been that annoying in our misuse of the language of Shakespeare and Chaucer
so that you felt compelled to hint us of our shortcomings?

I think you've got your interpretation polarizers in backwards, Sasha.

Rick's comment, to me, reads like he's unsure of the grammar himself
and trusts non-native English speakers to know it better than those of
us who grew up "in" the language and take it for granted.

After all, we is the peoples who screws up the languages.

--
Derek

"If I couldn't laugh, I couldn't stand this job for 15 minutes." --
President Abraham Lincoln

Derek writes:

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 19:46:20 GMT, Mydnight wrote:

[...bad Puerh is bad...]

Oh, I fully support that assertion. But, in my opinion, higher quality
stuff just tastes less horrid. This was, after all a thread started by
someone who wondered if she was alone in *not* linking pu erh. She's
not.

I also can't stand the taste of eggplant. But that doesn't mean that
my wife stops trying to feed it to me because she likes it.

You know there's more than one kind of eggplant, too, right? By the
way, in my opinion, eggplant, unlike most vegetables, is nearly
inedible unless cooked until it's mushy. I hope your wife's got that
covered.

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

Derek wrote in :

After all, we is the peoples who screws up the languages.

Didn't the USan Founding Fathers write that down somewhere?

--
fD
"God's not on our side 'cause he hates idiots also."
-- Clint Eastwood as Blondie (_The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly_)

Lewis Perin wrote:

imported goods shop. I got a kind of pressed 'teaball', about 1,5
cm in diameter...well...not really a ball, but pressed and small,
though ^-^ Anyone knows what this is? Is that one of the 'cakes'
read aout?

It's called Xiao Tuo Cha, small(mini) bowl tea. Puerh can come loose,
or compressed as Tuo ('birdsnest') or beeng('pancakes'). The mini
tuocha is about 10g, tuocha 100g, and beeng 300g+. The Xiao is good
for a pot. The other two you have to crumble.

Tuochas are bowl-shaped, not ball-shaped. Can the original poster
clarify this?

You call it a bowl? I wasn't sure how to describe it. It is sort of
hollow, with a hole on one side. Maybe best approximation is 'bell'
shaped, but that isn't to satisfactory, too ^-^

http://store1.yimg.com/I/teastores_1790_8100307
looks about the same...

I think we're talking about the same thing. Thanks everybody!

ciao
Patricl
--
"But please remember: this is only a work of Fiction.
The truth, as always, will be far stranger"

Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 - A Space Odyssey

On 07 Dec 2004 18:29:47 -0500, Lewis Perin wrote:

Derek writes:

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 19:46:20 GMT, Mydnight wrote:

[...bad Puerh is bad...]

"bad Puerh" is redundant.

Oh, I fully support that assertion. But, in my opinion, higher quality
stuff just tastes less horrid. This was, after all a thread started by
someone who wondered if she was alone in *not* linking pu erh. She's
not.

I also can't stand the taste of eggplant. But that doesn't mean that
my wife stops trying to feed it to me because she likes it.

You know there's more than one kind of eggplant, too, right? By the
way, in my opinion, eggplant, unlike most vegetables, is nearly
inedible unless cooked until it's mushy. I hope your wife's got that
covered.

Yes, I'm aware that there's more than one kind. I've tried many, liked
none.

The point being, not everybody is going to like the same things.

--
Derek

Scintillate, scintillate globule vivific
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific
Loftily perched in the ether capacious
Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous.

On 7 Dec 2004 23:35:56 GMT, fLameDogg wrote:

Derek wrote in :

After all, we is the peoples who screws up the languages.

Didn't the USan Founding Fathers write that down somewhere?

I think it's in one of the amendments.

--
Derek

"Meddle not in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle, and will p!$$
on your cyberdeck." - Jeff Wilder

Alex Chaihorsky wrote:
....snip
1. I never drunk any horse ****, so can't help you here. Now, about horse
....snip
volcano on my beloved Kamchatka Peninsula leave a smell of its urine that is
unmistakably strong smell of a freshly cut just baked rye bread. So much so,
that the gentlemen who accompany these horses on their hard journeys across
the mountains for months, as I did, would stop their monotonous and
exhausting walk, lift their heads and inhale that smell with joy and hope of

The disclaimer at the beginning almost ruins the suspenseful element of
this story...

might I add this thread must be entirely confusing the the original
poster...

Perhaps an executive summary of the points is in order: i.e.

1) Puerhs have a wide variety of flavors. Disliking one does not imply
disliking them all.
2) Some people hate Puerh.
3) Some people love Puerh.
4) Tasting multiple Puerhs can be expensive, especially since the good
ones are sold in relatively large quantities. But if one is interested,
seeking out samples of some good Puerhs is possible.



Steve Hay wrote:
Alex Chaihorsky wrote:
...snip

1. I never drunk any horse ****, so can't help you here. Now, about horse

...snip

volcano on my beloved Kamchatka Peninsula leave a smell of its urine
that is unmistakably strong smell of a freshly cut just baked rye
bread. So much so, that the gentlemen who accompany these horses on
their hard journeys across the mountains for months, as I did, would
stop their monotonous and exhausting walk, lift their heads and inhale
that smell with joy and hope of


The disclaimer at the beginning almost ruins the suspenseful element of
this story...