On Sunday, May 17, 2015 at 5:50:15 PM UTC-4, notbob wrote:
> I bought some pu erh tea balls from Adagio. A weird flavor, to be
> sure, but it grew on me. So, I'd been drinking this stuff on/off fer
> about a yr. My buddy, who is a bigger tea drinker than me, come over
> and I offer him his first pu erh tea.
>
> "I feel like I'm in an Army/Navy surplus store."
>
> ????
>
> I take mine with one lump suger, he none. I tried my own pu erh w/o
> sugar. Damned if it didn't smell jes like a stack of new military
> fatigues.
>
> Hadda flash back! Not to Vietnam, but to the seriously authentic
> 1950s surplus store in our own town with nothing but piles and piles
> of surplus WWII and Korean War items.
>
> nb

I really like experimenting with pu-ehrs even though I have no idea how to pick from all the varieties. You never quite know what you're getting and I gather that there's a lot of counterfeiting and fakes around.

In tinkering, I have settled on brewing them at 200 degrees for four minutes for the fist infusion and then at 200 and 5 minutes for the second infusion. Any expertise out there on better brewing guides?

Menghai seems the best know factory -- but is it living on is reputation when pu-ehrs were wuch a fashion in the 1990s? Any other names to look for? I have focused on bing cakes in the $25-40 range.I've been disappointed in tuo-chas. They look so great int heir pretty bags and are convenient and cheap but I've found they lack those weird laundry-room flavors and all the ones you describe so nicely.