TeaChat

I've been sampling the new Pu's I got in the mail and have had a couple episodes of REALLY bad indigestion with only a few cups. I actually thought I was having a gall bladder attack the first time. Switched teas and still had issues... Anyone else have this problem? It seems to happen when drinking tea after eating. I haven't had this problems with Oolongs or greens. It really sucks, I love the Puerh but I'm not going to subject myself to that.

Antacids helped, but not much. Out of desperation I tried a couple of shots of bourbon and that ended the GI distress completely! I'm thinking the microorganisms in the tea are the culprit and my sissy Gaijin stomach can't handle them and the alcohol killed them?? I'm going to try drinking Puerh in the morning before I eat to see if that helps, as I'm not ready to give up on this delicious and healthy tea just yet.

Any comments/suggestions?

what puerh were you drinking exactly?

The latest culprit was a 2010 Rongzhen Reserve shou (which is pretty good BTW). I've also been drinking a lot of "one brew" Pu's, an unnamed "shou tou cha" from my local teahouse, and a 2000 mini brick that is by far the best one I've tried yet. I haven't had any adverse effects from that one yet. Like I said though, the problem seem to come when drinking after eating.

Can I mention other tea vendors or do the mods frown on that?

Good pu promotes good digestion. It'd almost have to be either bad pu or the bad luck to have an idiosyncratic reaction to pu.

funky shu will do interesting things. Try older shu and newer shu and see which works worse...

Yeah, I'm going to try the 2000 after dinner tomorrow and see what happens. I know that stuff is legit. If that gives me problems I'm going to do the before breakfast thing.

Just drank a few infusions of some great Ti Guan Yin with no ill effects. I honestly think it's the live bugs in the tea wreaking havoc.

the live bugs should be killed after boiling water.
I have quite sensitive stomach but puerh is one of the thinks which helps me digest, especially aged ones.

Yeah, I thought about the boiling water thing too. I don't know, maybe I just have a reaction to that particular type of tea. I've read about people that have allergic reactions to green tea, but not more oxidized teas. Or, as previously stated, I just need to drink better puerh.

I bought a $10 bing online that turned out to be crap, so now I have more crappy puerh than I could ever- or would want to- drink. I'm trying to mellow it out by breaking it up and putting it in a paper bag for a while, but man, that stuff is ROUGH. Now that I see how big the cakes are I think it would be worth spending a decent amount of money to get some good aged shen. I suppose I should sample before I buy though.

It is possible to have bad reactions to stuff growing in shu...no name shu can be really nasty and you don´t really know what´s growing in it...but even if there´s nothing especially toxic there it´s possible to have an allergic reaction to the yeasts and molds and whatever else is in there.

Boiling water isn´t a guarentee you won´t get a negative reaction, even assuming it does kill everything (which it might not depending on the exposure time to high temperature and what microbes we´re actually talking about) there are still possible allergens present and if it was a toxic species the toxins it produced while alive will still be there to potentially make you feel bad.

That said...most shu pu-erh is generally safe to drink, just like other fermented food products...but there is more potential for allergic reactions than other types of tea because there are a lot of microbes present which you don´t see in other teas.

Yeah, that about sums it up. Thanks for the input and info! We'll see what happens...

Was the puer authentic? Did you get the puer from a reputable tea vendor? My tea friend had a customer who was drinking fake puer and had diarrhea.

Yeah, it was authentic shou puerh. The worst of it was a bing I bought from an importer in the original wrapper.

Shus are not expensive, no reason to suffer for saving money

I might give it another go tomorrow with the good stuff. I've got the day off, and being St. Patty's day I'll have an excuse to drink a few Jameson's if my stomach goes south . Apparently that's the only thing that helps.

I ofter a little bit of my own weird tea advise for tummy problems with Pu'erh, because I too had some "de-tox" type reactions at first...
Turns out I was over brewing/steeping the tea. I was making it whole pots, English tea-house style. The second still over-steeped, giant pot didn't have any ill-effects and needed less sugar.
Since I've learned to brew 1-2 little cups at a time, and just keep hot water at-hand, I no longer have any tummy problems. Plus I don't need the sugar.