Recommendations for first Pu-Ehr

[debunix]

A little gentle swirl after the first few minutes, and the tuo will break itself up. No need to do that in advance.

[AdamMY]

A little gentle swirl after the first few minutes, and the tuo will break itself up. No need to do that in advance.

Was going to say similar, plus with a 25 minute steep time if that tuo is still together it might have a diamond in the center it was compressed so tightly.

[Hannah]

They did work quite nicely to brew up a thermos of tea for the road or the office: drop tuo in 1 liter thermos, add boiling water, wait an hour to several hours, drink and enjoy. I did something very similar today with some 2008 Bamboo-aged YiWu puerh from Norbu, a tea that is still available on his site (just checked, and there it is, surprise!). It's a sheng that takes a bit more care than a really simple shu pu, and today's tea was getting too strong by the end of the thermos--I had to dilute it with 1-2 parts hot water towards the end. Still a fairly friendly starter puerh, right down the the ease of breaking up the not-too-tight cylinders of tea--no puerh knife required.

I went to buy some of this just now, looks like it's sold out I hope they get more...

[AllanK]

so far I've been really enjoying my oolong teas, especially my TGY. I've started to be curious about pu ehrs though, and am thinking of picking up a sample packet or two in the next couple days.

anyone have recommendations for someone new to this type of tea?

An excellent US vendor for Puerh is purepuer.com. He does not have a huge variety of teas but everything of his I have bought, mostly Shu, has been excellent. His tea can be expensive but it all quality.

[MEversbergII]

Just don't buy any from Verdant Tea

M.

[miig]

Yeah.. why not seek out the Pu-Vendors section here in the forum, pick one vendor whose homepage you like most and order a couple of samples from teas that seem interesting to you.
Won't cost you a lot of money and will give you a good starting point.

[Ursinos]

Just don't buy any from Verdant Tea

M.

I take it verdant isn't good?

[bonescwa]

Just don't buy any from Verdant Tea

M.

I take it verdant isn't good?

They overcharge to an amazing extent. I remember they were selling some run of the mill shu for like 45 dollars an ounce or something.
Just look at websites that sell tea. You'll develop a sense of who is catering to an audience that doesn't know much about tea. Some red flags, with exceptions of course, would be a very flashy, graphically complex website, and overselling their products with ridiculous tasting notes and stories. Some exceptions would be like Taiwan tea crafts and essence of tea who have nice websites. But essence of tea just tells you where the tea came from and let's that speak for itself and doesn't talk about notes of Lognan fruit and elderberry and other such bs.

[sherubtse]

Just don't buy any from Verdant Tea

M.

I take it verdant isn't good?

I have had a selection of their teas, and IMO opinion they are quite good teas that are reasonably priced - not cheap, but not really expensive either (especially when you take into consideration their relatively low threshold for free shipping). I have not had any of their puers, so I will not comment on those.

My suggestion? Order some samples and try them for yourself.

[bonescwa]

http://teacloset.blogspot.com/2012/06/2 ... ea-is.html

[MEversbergII]

Well, their biggest black eye was a bait-and-switch they pulled with one of their pu's.

But yeah, their product is ok, just their practice is a bit questionable.

Another important thing about pu'er: If a deal is too good to be true, it certainly is.

I bought a $9 cake once. It was the worst shu I'd ever had, but it wasn't too terrible in the grand scheme of things. Even came with a free peanut shell.

M.

[ClarG]

If you do go with some of these Mini tuo cha's which are usually roughly 5 grams of ripe/ shou puerh. An interesting way to attempt to brew them would be sort of incredibly western style. In which steep the tea in a liter of boiling water for an incredibly extended length of time. By that I mean one tuo in one liter for 25 minutes. The result is a great coffee substitute but much milder and *smoother*.

It does get everything out of the leaf though, so don't expect to get much more than that liter out of the tea, and resteeping is pretty much out of the question. But it is a very interesting way to try and brew once or twice.

I did this today with a bird's nest toucha and I made 3 hot cups of pu-erh with a 11 second rinse first, and then the first cup for 2 mins, 2nd cup for 2mins 30 seconds, and the 3rd cup for 3 minutes. They all turned out well.

I will do this tomorrow to make 3 cups of pu-erh for breakfast either with loose young pu-erh or a bird's nest.