See what I found in my Pu...

[auhckw]

I was planning to do experiment on expressing the crack of my celadon gaiwan. So I decided to soak it with Ripe Puerh.

This is the Ripe Puerh beeng. I took a big chunk and dump it into a cooking pot...


After boiling it...


While I was playing around with the leaves...


Here is what I found among the leaves...

[TwoPynts]

Quality control at it's best.
At least you'd be getting your iron.

[Alex]

Free gifts!

[rabbit]

It's for picking the leaves out of your yixing, don't you guys know anything?!

[apache]

It's a tuo cha pick to prying off the compressed leaves.

[MarshalN]

Another reason I don't drink shu pu

[rabbit]

^ why would it make any difference what type of pu you were drinking?

[Proinsias]

Marshaln - do you avoid all the Menghai/dayi shu too? I'm rather enjoying my 05 golden needle atm. How far does this go, is say 60's gyg to be avoided in your opinion. Is this a recent change of heart from yourself? whilst I don't recall you mentioning shu all that often it's only recently I recall you being vocal about completely avoiding the stuff.

[MarshalN]

GYG is not cooked.

I'd drink the very occasional Dayi shu. That's about it though.

Sheng doesn't have these problems, not nearly as often anyway -- the reason you have all this kind of crap in shu is because they are piled up in the factory floor for a few weeks to get the process of fermentation going and done. All kind of crap get into the tea in the meantime.

[slurp]

GYG is not cooked.

What has happened to GYG? Especially in the later ones the leaves don't seem like sheng puerh.

[Proinsias]

Cheers Marshal,

I don't drink much shu either but figure the odd bit of dayi or older stuff won't hurt.

I've never drank gyg so I can't really comment, I think it was Phyll's review over here that planted the cooked idea in my head and I never really looked into it any more.

[MarshalN]

GYG is not cooked.

What has happened to GYG? Especially in the later ones the leaves don't seem like sheng puerh.

How late is late?

Something wet stored for 30 years is going to look a lot like cooked if you don't know what to look for.

[gingkoseto]

I have no idea about old tea. But Guang Yun cakes have a tradition of controlled wet storage. That's why Cantonese claim a major credit on modern shu techniques.

[slurp]

GYG is not cooked.

What has happened to GYG? Especially in the later ones the leaves don't seem like sheng puerh.

How late is late?

Something wet stored for 30 years is going to look a lot like cooked if you don't know what to look for.

I was referring to the 80's GYG. The leaves are very different to other big factory cakes - even wet stored ones from the same era.

[MarshalN]

Late 80s? Never tried them, don't know.