I've Been Ruining Pu-erh...

If this is also the case for sheng teas… I have easily ruined a handful of teas.

Rinse both, sheng and shou before drinking. I would recommend a gong fu style of brewing instead of “western” style for puerh. Flash rinses and quick steeps.

Yes, you should definitely rinse them and try steeping them for very short periods of time like 10 seconds. That is especially the case for sheng teas, I have steeped shus for 2 or 3 minutes before and some of them are ok that way. Sheng usually turns into a bitter mess. Maybe you will like puerh better after trying it that way. 4 mins is way too long!

I think I do like it :)
I’m on my 4th pot now and have drank about 50-60 ounces of it within an hour (I already know I’m crazy)

Tomorrow will be the first day I don’t steep sheng for 3 minutes… I’m quite excited :)

I do recommend rinsing them.

Firstly to clean them a bit. They’re usually drunk aged, so they’ve spent some time on a shelf somewhere collecting dust.
I do rinse other non aged pu’ers too though, just like I rinse my fruit and vegetables.
Secondly, rinsing gets some moisture in those leaves, and it helps the compressed chunks open up a bit and infuse more evenly.
Sometimes when I have a very highly compressed tea I find myself having trouble with timing he first steeps, as the tea steeps in a rather unpredictable way. (I may do an extra rinse and/or some more manual breaking apart of the tea aforehand)

As for steeping them, you’ve already discovered the horror that is overbrewed pu, but other than that there are thankfully a lot of ways to brew pu’er with different results.

Shu pu’er is more forgiving than sheng. I recommend using gongfu style parameters like Mr Mopar suggested.

Start easy and slow and ease your way up untill you find what works best for you. 3-4 grams per 100ml might be a good start, but you could just as well go up all the way to 10 grams, as much as your pot can hold really, just keep the steeps short! (Water in, water out for the first steep, and increase as you go on.)

For now stick with 3-4 grams, though. :)

Sheng can be a bit more tricky. For one it is a pretty broad class of tea. An aged sheng brews differently than a young sheng, and even aged teas that have been through differing storage may end up being miles apart!

In general sheng is easier to overbrew, and suffers more from it when you do.

For particularly young shengs you could also try slightly lower water temperatures. I personally only do this very rarely, but some young sheng teas do benefit from it.
Another thing such teas would benefit from is age! :þ
If a particular tea just seems too harsh, put it away and come back to it in the future. Drink a lot of different pu’ers in the meantime, and hopefully in your next session you will both have matured a bit, the pu’er as a fermented tea, and you as a drinker of such teas that will now have gained more insight to them.

Don’t fear the pu’er! It’s a vast and wondrous thing. Welcome to pu’er tea! =D

i agree with above statements.
Gongfu style brewing…or just in general…rinse to open up leaves then flash brews….even 30 seconds is too much time for the opening infusions.

When companies recommend a 3 minute steep for puerh they are telling you to treat it like black tea. It is not black tea. While the best results for puerh are to steep it gongfu style it can be brewed western style. I often brew puerh in the morning before work when I have no time for the gongfu method or to get out my teawares and tea table. I then brew it western style, but I brew it for 15 to 30 seconds after giving it a rinse. If the puerh is not too earthy this can also work well when necesary.

I’m a big believer in using cooler water for sheng. I use 190 for young sheng and 200 for older. This is a bit cooler than the 195-203 recommended by White2Tea:
http://www.white2tea.com/2015/01/15/best-water-temperature-brew-puerh-tea/

Personally speaking, there are two loose leaf pu’erh blends from Mandala that steep well for minutes at a time: Noble Mark and Special Dark. Both are shu. They’re the only pu’erh I’ve ever brewed for such a length of time.

…Is what I’m doing akin to a horror story? (crawls into the shadows)

Thanks everyone :)
I look forward to what adventures pu-erh has in store for me!
I received my Wymm tea sampler in time to take it with me to Tokyo. Hopefully I find a few generousness people who will swap with me so I can sample the wild variety of pu-erhs. So far my experience is only with two pu-erhs done correct- both from Verdant Tea. I found that the shou was fantastic and the sheng was enjoyable but not as tasty. This was rather odd because I really dislike black teas. I will keep reading about the techniques involved with pu-erh, tools used for optimization for pu-erh, and the different types of pu-erh.