I would like to try puerh tea, first I wanted to try sheng puerhs. I was thinkong about dedicating a Ben Shan green clay yixing to shengs, is that a good choice?
http://cgi.ebay.com/Ben-Shan-Green-Clay ... 634.c0.m14 ,
And what pu should I try first? Wild tea, aged tea?
I've learned great advice about yixing pots on this forum, and the biggest part of wisdom is simple: To know if a certain pot/clay/etc. will be good for a certain tea, you just have to try it and see. Of course theres threads floting around that give good reasons to use certains types of pots for certain teas, but I would go with a pot that you really like and from there figure out what brews well in it, rather than buying a pot based on what type of tea you want to brew in it.
As for what to try out, If you have the patience I might suggest waiting or the new 2009 stuff to start coming out. It would be a good idea to probably try some tea from the current year, some a few years older, and a sample or two of some quality aged stuff to see what your into as far as pu is concerned.
As for what to try out, If you have the patience I might suggest waiting or the new 2009 stuff to start coming out. It would be a good idea to probably try some tea from the current year, some a few years older, and a sample or two of some quality aged stuff to see what your into as far as pu is concerned.
Feb 18th, '09, 16:10
Posts: 1633
Joined: Feb 15th, '08, 10:15
Location: Pennsylvania
I am personally not very educated on the pots so no answer from me.
As far as a tea, most people will tell you to try aged first, I do not agree with this, its expensive and hard to get a good one and usually its a small sample thus not enabling you to experiment. I would suggest this cake, its a good tea at a great price, liked it so much I bought a tong of it. Buying aged you wont be able to get but 10 grams for the price of this cake.
http://www.puerhshop.com/index.php?main ... cts_id=695
As far as a tea, most people will tell you to try aged first, I do not agree with this, its expensive and hard to get a good one and usually its a small sample thus not enabling you to experiment. I would suggest this cake, its a good tea at a great price, liked it so much I bought a tong of it. Buying aged you wont be able to get but 10 grams for the price of this cake.
http://www.puerhshop.com/index.php?main ... cts_id=695
I drink young sheng only to figure out which ones I wish to buy for future storage, not because I am a big fan of young sheng in general. I vastly prefer aged sheng, and good older shu to young sheng. Anyways since I'm testing out a lot of teas I want them to taste as honest as possible, which means brewing young pu'er in nothing but a porcelain gaiwan. To me brewing young pu'er in a yixing would mask unsavory flavors, or flaws of the tea in general which would make most teas seem like I should purchase them for further storage only to be disappointed years later.
My advice is to save getting a yixing pot for aged sheng and shu. Even before that get really familiar with a few examples in a gaiwan so you can see what type of pot performs best for what.
My advice is to save getting a yixing pot for aged sheng and shu. Even before that get really familiar with a few examples in a gaiwan so you can see what type of pot performs best for what.