A Reader from China

[hop_goblin]

Hey Guys, as most of you know, I am the author of Ancient Tea Horse Road. I just recieved an email from a reader in China which I felt would be nice to share with you all.

-Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Gongfu Brewing Method": -

"i'm drink quite a lot of puerh, buying a lot of my teas in the guangdong region. with each vendor that i now purchase my teas from, they warn me to "rinse" my teas a minimum of 3 times before drinking. it's mainly because of the cleanliness of the processing techniques. just thought people would want to know. "


This is very interesting. However, I wonder if it is due to processing as the reader suggests or is it more to do with toxicity of pesticides. Just was wondering you thing.

Hop

[bearsbearsbears]

Nearly every tea in China is produced in pretty gross conditions. One rinse is usually enough. The most I heard vendors in China recommend is two.

Some people break up compressed tea before brewing so they can rinse as much of it as possible. I don't. *shrug*

[MarshalN]

I think a lot of people, especially those in the north, view wet stored puerh (which in their opinion is everything from Guangdong) as dirty. So they rinse it a lot.

[hop_goblin]

Thanks Bears and Marsh, I he or she just didn't really suggest why they would rinse more than 2 times. I generally only rinse sheng once and shu twice.. This is sufficient.

[Chinese tea]

Hi Hop,

I totally agree to your method of rinsing the Sheng and Shu Puer tea. In GZ, I used to prepare tea for my friends in my friend's tea house, normally i rinsed Sheng once, sometimes twice, depending on the Sheng cake, and Shu cake twice or three times, depending on the level of aged process. great to see so many people are insterested to discuss the puer tea infusion.

[TaiPing Hou Kui]

My thought would be, especially with Pu-erh, that one rinse with boiling H2O is enough. As long as you break the Pu up enough, I would think that the hot water would be enough to kill off bacteria.......Just my 2 cents!

-Nick (TaiPing)

[Chinese tea]

well, of course, hot water can not kill the bacteria. twice or three times of rinsing is to wash away some dirty things attaching to Puer when it is stored. If hot water kills the bacteria, the Puer is not good at all. Bacteria is the most important and valuable stuff in Puer cake. Without them, Puer can not age at all.

[Proinsias]

How much more is it likely to age if it is sitting in a gaiwan with a pot of boiling water above it?

[scruffmcgruff]

The hot water should kill the bacteria, actually. Not many microorganisms, besides mold spores, can take boiling water.

[Salsero]

... besides mold spores ...

...and not much chance of that in a bunch of rotten leaves that have been sitting around for a few years!

[GeoffK]

I'd think that 3x rinse would kill that magic second steep. I'm with the rinse 1x crowd.

[hop_goblin]

I'd think that 3x rinse would kill that magic second steep. I'm with the rinse 1x crowd.

I hope you only mean for sheng!

[TaiPing Hou Kui]

I think that "Chinese Tea" thought that we meant to rinse the whole cake/brick/etc. all at once when he was referring to boiling water not killing bacteria.