Firstly, I wish you all my wishes all for this new year! I'm not "resolutions" etc., but if I had to take one, it would surely ... continue to discover tea and Japanese ceramics at the bottom!
For the second part of this little series, I'll just keep talking in generalities and also criteria for choosing a good puerh. I start with a question I was asked.
What is the difference between a raw puerh stored in high humidity and a puerh cooked?
Not being a specialist puerh stored so wet, I will nevertheless venture to answer, especially in rereading what I wrote before, I realize that the distinction is not obvious.
For puerh cooked, the leaves are treated before being compressed. In general, they are stored on the floor in large warehouses, sprinkled with water and covered with a tarp until the desired degree of fermentation is achieved. Then the leaves are dried and then optionally compressed.
can thus imagine that this treatment is much more "violent" than the mere storage in a humid atmosphere, especially a piece of tea already compressed.
To get an idea of manufacturing methods puerh, I suggest you go see the photo reports Philippe Coste .
is often seen puerh compressed in bizarre shapes ...
puerh The effect comes in different forms. It's almost the only tea to be so. The dried leaf base (maocha) are too bulky to transport. They were therefore traditionally compressed. Tea in some form in standard weight used to pay the same taxes.
There are basically:
- la Galette (bing, cake): the most common form. Ancestrally, the leaves were placed in a bag pressed under stones. They are often grouped together and surrounded by seven of bamboo leaves. The result is called a thong.
There are several sizes of cakes. The most common are those of 357 g, 400g and 500g. As your pie now sold individually wrapped in small portions to significantly increase the price, there are now slabs of 200g, 100g or a price often resemble their larger counterparts. Market puerh is juicy, and all means are good to take profit.
- Brick : often 250g or 500g.
- le Carré: 100g or 200g.
- the Tuocha : most frequently encountered by 100g or 250g.
There is also the form bowler and fungus.
Finally, the Maocha base: dried leaves.
How not to get ripped off for buying puerh?
Try not to buy blindly and find at least initially.
There are two kinds of shops to buy quality tea: those who genuinely based store somewhere and those that sell only online. Ones you will look good feedback for their products findable on the net General. Go on an adventure from a retailer that nobody has ever heard can be a gamble for someone who starts.
A store of information will bring confidence to accompany his tea, and ensure good traceability of its products: year, cultivar, tree age, possibly photos. If you go for example to Earth of China, we will show you pictures of trees that were used to collect and videos of the tea factory. Then we will show you a map with the location of these trees. This is what I call service.
Conversely, a vendor who will not tell you anything about his tea, except reading the label out loud, will not immediately very convincing from my point of view.
What good advice to give someone who wants to start?
Diversify your sources and get you the maximum possible samples.
Several shops can buy small quantities of tea, the same wafer. Head to the occasion as soon as possible. It is more interesting for a beginner to try 10 samples of 20g a 200g slab. After spending time with the same tea is also a good idea to assess the impact of different preparation methods on the record. The preparation itself will be the third part of this article.
Tell yourself that the selection of a store reflects the tastes and requirements of its owner. Equal quality, shop less famous than another can offer products that will please you more.
What are the qualities of a good puerh?
The same as for any good tea or wine or alcohol. There are essentially three qualities to find:
- the smell, the nose, while the air side;
- texture: the "grain" taste in the mouth, the way the liquid interacts with the taste buds;
- the long finish: once swallowed tea, the flavors continue to feel and develop.
A very good puerh will keep very long in the mouth and breathe long after having swallowed, sometimes several hours later. Note that this will be true for many other kinds of teas.
Other than that, my personal choice goes in puerh whose leaves are from a single harvest in the blends. Like whiskey, I prefer a single-malt (ou sinlge-cask) à un blend. Mais étant en phase de découverte, ce moyen me permet aussi d'essayer d'apprendre à reconnaitre les différents terroirs existants.
Comment dois-je conserver mon puerh à la maison ?
Nul ne sait comment vont vieillir nos belles galettes et notre puerh en général sous nos latitudes. Pareil qu'en Chine ou à Taïwan ? Différemment, que ce soit en bien ou non ? Mystery and gumdrop. A few years ago, these questions do not even asking the price of old puerh being quite affordable. Now we must think about Plan B.
The most important are the conditions of where you store it. Here are the things commonly accepted: the dark and household odors, at room temperature without variation. The less fluctuation of humidity (hygrométrie.)
The tissue paper is useful to surround your puerh compressed form. He will breathe tea. The whole may be stored in a box, not closed to allow breathing again. In China
patties are packed and surrounded by seven of bamboo leaves. There are now bamboo baskets of various sizes for storing tea.
patties are packed and surrounded by seven of bamboo leaves. There are now bamboo baskets of various sizes for storing tea.
puerh The bulk will be kept in the bag in which it was sold, expelling the air and closing it with a paperclip or a pice of paper (or zip). It may also be stored in a clay jar, odorless course. It may also put his puerh compressed. If they do not fit, we can for instance remove pieces of a cake.
The important thing is not to bother with conservation in my opinion, just respect the rules base mentioned above.
much for this time. See you soon!
PS: you may have seen in the blogroll, La Galette de Thé opens its archives to all, without comments. For people like me who have discovered and learned the gong fu cha through this blog, it's a great Christmas gift. Thank you Philip!
cup white: Tetsuaki Nakao, enamel galaxy winter.
PS: you may have seen in the blogroll, La Galette de Thé opens its archives to all, without comments. For people like me who have discovered and learned the gong fu cha through this blog, it's a great Christmas gift. Thank you Philip!
cup white: Tetsuaki Nakao, enamel galaxy winter.
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