Pu’er Tea Brewing Techniques
Because of diversity of raw materials, place of origin, year of production, technology and other elements, Pu’er tea goes in many types and categories, and that has created a situation where Pu’er tea lovers find it hard to tell their differences and make choices. How then should we decide what type of Pu’er tea to choose for ourselves for daily consumption?
1. Which tea to choose
Pu’er tea, which can be kept for a long time, is very capable of absorbing humidity and smell. For this reason, special heed must be taken to properly stock the tea during processing and warehousing, otherwise, the quality of the tea could be so compromised that it may even lose its consumption and collection value. Foreign smells and tastes that Pu’er tea could take on include sourness, burning, mold and other absorbed smells and tastes. Therefore, Pu’er tea buyers should first check if the packing of the product is damaged, and if possible, they must also smell the dry tea to see if they carry any foreign or bad smells or any absorbed smells. Second, they must check to see if the product looks moldy or contains any foreign substances. Usually, well-kept Pu’er tea would have a pure aroma, with new tea carrying uplifting aroma and aged tea carrying aged or wood aromas. Fermented Pu’er tea would have a pure and mellow, aged or sugary aroma while new tea would have a slight mushroom aroma. Foreign substances in tea comprise the following three categories: tea flowers and fruits, old stems and yellowed tea leaves; bird feathers, hairs, shattered pieces of packaging etc.; and shingles, metals, grease etc. The second and third group of foreign substances are not to be brewed for drinking and need to be recognized and picked out of the dry tea. The first group in dry tea is hard to recognize with naked eyes but may be found during the brewing and in the brewed tea leaves. Therefore, when shopping for Pu’er tea, one must, whenever possible, evaluate the brewed tea and discover any potential defects in it apart from checking the packaging and the smell of the dry tea. Besides, because most of the foreign substances in the tea leaves came about during processing and production, the author suggests that Pu’er tea products be chosen from famous brands made by large enterprises that maintain great quality control through standardized management.
2. Breaking up compressed tea
Compressed tea must be broken up to be ready for brewing, and the tools used for that are either tea needles (relatively sharp-pointed) or tea knives (relatively flat and blunt). Pu’er tea mainly goes in bricks, cakes, cones and melon-shapes. For tea drinkers, breaking the compressed tea up is a skill that can be easily neglected. Many think they’d be fine once they got the leaves off the tea cakes. They typically don’t know that the tea-breaking process can potentially impact or damage the tea leaves, especially when it comes to tightly compressed tea. Compressed tea that gets too shattered or powdered can look bad and taste bad. First, compressed Pu’er tea is usually pressed into form by pressing it up and down, so the tea leaves go in layers. Therefore, when breaking up the tea to brew, the consumer should peel off the tea leaves layer by layer according to the set patterns of the leaves in order to effortlessly prevent the leaves from breaking. Second, the consumer must understand the blending and composition of the tea. Based on the formula of composition, Pu’er tea produced by TAETEA usually goes in three categories: tripartite tea consisting of a top layer, a middle layer and a bottom layer, two-part tea consisting of an upper layer and a lower layer and one-part tea in one piece. Therefore, when taking tea off a tea cake, care must be taken to remove all ingredients of the tea so that the tea brewed and served will represent the true flavor of the tea. It will not serve that purpose if only one or two parts of the tea are taken.
3. Waking up dormant or sealed tea
After long-term preservation, Pu’er tea needs to be awakened and let stay for some time so that the tea leaves can slowly wake up and discard its unpleasant smells and rough mouthfeel. Tea can be awakened either in air or water. To awaken the tea in water is to awaken it before brewing. Generally, aged Pu’er tea needs to be aired for some time in a cool, dry, open and ventilated environment after being loosened and before being brewed. The purpose is to let out smells bottled up in the tea cakes during storage and expose the tea leaves to air so that the surface of the tea leaves would partially oxidize and have softer mouthfeel. To awaken the tea in water (or wash the tea) is to brew the tea in boiled or warm water and discard the preliminarily brewed soup. The first purpose of tea awakening is to dispel miscellaneous unpleasant smells built up during long-term storage so that the aroma of the tea soup would be pure. The second purpose is to better coordinate the mouthfeel of the tea leaves through synthesis of different flavors of the tea. Because the exterior and interior of the tea products, especially those of compressed tea products, have been exposed to different air and humidity environments, different tea products can manifest a whole lot of variations.
4. Storage
Storage of Pu’er tea is of vital importance for the formation of its quality and flavor. Good storage conditions are not only beneficial for long-term storage, it also helps improve the quality of Pu’er tea. Proper storage of Pu’er tea mainly involves the following two considerations:
One is air environment. Compared with Tieguanyin and flower teas, Pu’er tea has a lower aroma level than other teas, but it has strong flavor and moisture absorption capacity. So it must be stored in a cool environment away from other flavor or fragrance associated products. Moreover, during its aging process, Pu’er tea needs to be ventilated for oxidization. So it should not be stored in a sealed environment. The other is humidity environment.The aging of Pu’er tea is mainly the result of reactions between substances in the tea and oxygen under the action of water, namely, the higher the tea’s water concentration, the faster its aging rate. However, excessive water concentration can cause molding and deterioration of tea leaves. That’s why it’s necessary to maintain proper water concentration of tea during storage. Since moisture content in tea leaves is hard to detect, we can indirectly monitor water content in it by adjusting air humidity in the storage area.Water concentration of Pu’er tea leaves is required to fluctuate around 10%. When air humidity is higher than 80% for a protracted period, compressed tea cakes can easily absorb water from the air, so that water concentration of the tea gets increased, and with that, the risk of mildew gets increased. On the other hand, when air humidity falls below 60% for long, the tea cakes can easily dehydrate and slow down the aging speed of the tea. Therefore, Pu’er tea cannot be kept in a high-humidity environment for long. The recommended air humidity of Pu’er tea for storage is between 60% and 80%.
用户评论