Pu'erh: Am I doing it wrong?

i may collect but bonnie has a waaaaaayyyy better palate than mine.

One thing about brewing pu-erh is that you get much better first steeps if you split it with pu-erh knife(or anything) rather than try to wait until it accumulates enough moisture inside to expand by itself in the cup.

(That is unless you are bewing loose-leaf pu-erh or nuggets obviuosly)

Thank you for the replies,

The tea I was using was a loose leaf shu from Zenjala, who didn’t give a maker or year for it (so I assume it wasn’t great quality, but I can’t really judge as it was the first I’ve had pu’erh)

Next time I buy I put some more research into it and order from a vendor with a better pu’erh selection :)

Mr. Mopar, thanks very much for the offer, I’ll PM you

Hey, I found this really great video!
Check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4el9ybEcCII&feature=related

Enjoy!

This sounds like a ripe pu’er. You can get some pretty decent ripe pu’er for not a lot of money, but the advice a lot of people have given me is to stick with the big factory stuff (for ripe only — for raw pu’er, many of the small producers produce much higher quality stuff).

I would definitely do at least one flash rinse with raw pu’er, and use boiling water vs. water that’s a minute or two off-boil.

The taste is an acquired taste for some. In ripe, or good aged raw pu’er (past a certain age, with humid enough storage), there should be earthy flavors, but generally speaking, you want to avoid teas with “pondy” or “fishy” flavors. Sometimes these will recede with time. Also, mini cakes and mini tuo (single serving compressed tea) is usually of bad quality.