Puerh Tea

Welcome to Puerh Tea. This site is dedicated to providing interesting and relevant information on this unusual tea.  Puerh Tea, Puer, Pu’er, Pu’er tea, Puer or Bolay tea is a broad leaf tea traditionally harvested from wild tea trees.   While white, green, oolong, black, and puerh teas all are harvested from the [...]

Today’s post is on the preparation of Puerh tea.  Puerh is traditionally prepared in the context of a Gongfu tea ceremony, a set of practices dating back to the 8th century.  Compressed leaves are separated from the puerh cake using a special puerh knife and one must be careful not to crush the leaves.   The [...]

We Love DC has an article on afternoon teas in fancy hotels in Washington DC.  Puerh tea gets a mention as the Park Hyatt Washington’s Tea Cellar contains the biggest collection of aged puerh teas in the United States, with teas dating back to 1949.  While the cellar has over 50 teas, vintage and reserve [...]

As discussed previously pu-erh tea is brewed from the leaves of Camellia sinensis var. assamica. Once the raw leaves are harvested, the leaves are predominantly processed in one of two ways: direct compression into cakes of raw pu-erh or ripening/aging prior to [...]

This video is a little controversial.  While there is some disagreement on the technique used to prepare Pu-rh tea, this is definitely an interesting video on proper preparation.

swfobject.embedSWF(“http://www.youtube.com/v/SLcGch6koh4&rel=0&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=0″, “vvq-43-youtube-1″, “425″, “344″, “10″, vvqexpressinstall, vvqflashvars, vvqparams, vvqattributes);

The pressing of Puerh tea into cakes and the aging of the tea perhaps originated in the need to transport the tea conveniently from Yunnan to Tibet and northern China and in the natural aging process that happened in tea storerooms and during transport.

While Puerh Tea is predominantly pressed into cakes, an interesting variety of [...]

Puerh tea is traditionally prepared in YiXing (pronounced ee-shing) teaware.  This teaware is made from Zisha clay that is mined from deep underground sources in Huanglongshan and Zhaozhuangshan.  YiXing teapots are left unglazed.  Without the glassy coating found on glazed pottery, the porous clay absorbs the flavor, odor, and color of the Puerh Tea that [...]

A video showing how to break/flake Puerh tea.  The complete breaking is unusual, as one will often simply break off what is needed to make a single serving of Pu-erh tea at a time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CsEVtCgkNU

swfobject.embedSWF(“http://www.youtube.com/v/4CsEVtCgkNU&rel=0&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=0″, “vvq-85-youtube-1″, “425″, “344″, “10″, vvqexpressinstall, vvqflashvars, vvqparams, vvqattributes);

In an article titled, Comparative Safety Evaluation of Chinese Puerh Green Tea Extract and Pu-erh Black Tea Extract in Wistar Rats, Di Wang et al found that very high doses of aged Pu-erh tea extract were safe for laboratory animals.

Pu-erh teas are believed to be beneficial beverages for health since they possess several pharmacological properties such [...]

In an article titled, A study on chemical estimation of Puerh tea quality, Yuerong Liang et al found that the chemical composition of infused Puerh Tea and the sensory quality of the tea are correlated.

Chemical compositions and infusion colour differences of seven puerh tea samples and their correlation to sensory quality were investigated. The results [...]