TeaChat

I am quite new to this.

Can somebody please explain the difference. I am relatively sure that I understand what mao cha is/its production.

How do their production methods differ, and what are the taste differences, both in unaged and aged puerh varieties?

Thanks!

Maocha is just uncompressed (loose leaf) puerh tea whereas bingcha is puerh compressed into disk-like shape.
There are other shapes like Tuocha witch is popular as well. Then the tea is compressed into a bowl like shape.

Some prefer buying maocha since you get better overview of the quality of the leaves. You will find that sometimes bingcha has large beautiful leaves on the outside, but smaller inferior leaves on the inside.

For aging, I think, most prefer the compressed type. It's easier to handle without damaging the leaves and takes far less space. Heavily compressed tea ages slower and more uneven because the inside of the compressed form doesn't get as much oxygen as the outside leaves.
Compressed tea usually needs to be broken up and aired out for a while after long storage. I think this is not the case with maocha.

I'm no expert on this so there are probably people here with more/better information on this topic.

--Sverrir

I believe that maocha is still green and fresh, whereas beeng can be either cooked or fresh. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

This one is not green at all: http://www.essenceoftea.co.uk/tea/puerh ... puerh.html

As Sverrir said, mao cha usually refers to uncompressed tea, at least for pu'erh. It's been processed, but not pressed.

Babelcarp has a good definition to consult, linked here.

Sorry for digging up a slightly older topic.
If you took a pile of new mao cha, pressed only half of it into beengs, and then stored those beengs alongside the remaining mao cha (i.e. in the same conditions), would you expect it all to both taste the same 10 years later?
Thanks.

yanom wrote:Sorry for digging up a slightly older topic.
If you took a pile of new mao cha, pressed only half of it into beengs, and then stored those beengs alongside the remaining mao cha (i.e. in the same conditions), would you expect it all to both taste the same 10 years later?
Thanks.

In my experience, the process of pressing maocha alone makes a huge difference in taste. It can add a smokey/roasted flavour, as well as making the overall flavour more complex.

JakubT wrote:This one is not green at all: http://www.essenceoftea.co.uk/tea/puerh ... puerh.html

It's listed as raw ... unless by green you meant something else?

One of the largest differences in the aging is the amount of exposure to air, particularly in tightly packed bings. You can try it yourself, break off and manually separate 25g of a cake you own. Then age the cake and the now loose tea side by side. The pieces broken apart from the cake have much more exposed surface area, which is exposed to more air.

So, would the maocha simply age faster? Or would they taste (staggered, to account for different speeds of ageing) different too?

I forgot where I read this but someone suggested that the steam used when compressing cases actually facilitates the aging. Take it for what its worth.

Compressed tea inside a beeng ought to have slower/different gas exchange with the atmosphere vs loose leaves, and that might affect not only the speed of aging, but how the tea ages--different chemical reactions in a more or less oxygen-rich environment. I can't help but suspect it's more than the speed of aging that would vary in the two situations.

debunix wrote:Compressed tea inside a beeng ought to have slower/different gas exchange with the atmosphere vs loose leaves, and that might affect not only the speed of aging, but how the tea ages--different chemical reactions in a more or less oxygen-rich environment. I can't help but suspect it's more than the speed of aging that would vary in the two situations.

That is a good point that I hadn't considered. I wonder if anyone has done any extensive research on that kind of thing - which chemical reactions occur at which speed, and how they differ in varying 'air'. Interesting ideas that I am not enough of a scientist to dissect

TwoDog2 wrote:I wonder if anyone has done any extensive research on that kind of thing - which chemical reactions occur at which speed, and how they differ in varying 'air'. Interesting ideas that I am not enough of a scientist to dissect

I'm just enough of a scientist to wonder about them, but not enough of a chemist to know how dramatically different the environment is inside a beeng, as all but the most severely compressed bricks don't seem 'airtight'.

debunix wrote:Compressed tea inside a beeng ought to have slower/different gas exchange with the atmosphere vs loose leaves, and that might affect not only the speed of aging, but how the tea ages--different chemical reactions in a more or less oxygen-rich environment. I can't help but suspect it's more than the speed of aging that would vary in the two situations.

Interesting! Over the years, it always occurred to me that mao cha and compressed puerh had different notes. Yet, was never comfortable enough to state this as fact. I would merely explain the difference as a 'mind' issue rather than something that could be explained scientifically.