Eating puer :O
Sometimes, if I’m drinking a tea that makes me feel really good, I will eat the leaves after steeping it out. It is usually a ripe. I won’t ask if I’m strange because I probably don’t want to know the answer to that haha. But could I be getting any benefit from this ? Or is there nothing left in the tea after steeping it out (to the point that the water is barely dark after steeping for 30 min) ?
I’ll say that ripe puer does not taste good, usually I just swallow with a little water :)
Thanks !
I have heard of people eating the leaves of green tea that is after all less processed. I personally wouldn’t try what you do. It sounds more than a little disgusting.
Yeah, you’re probably right. Eating green tea is less gross. Between the wet piling with ripe and the fact that this tea isn’t tested for pesticides…it’s probably a bad idea. Plus there’s probably not any caffeine or theanine left.
If you really want to eat the whole leaf I suggest Matcha. Get the good stuff from Japan generally called ceremonial grade.
There is another problem I can see with eating the leaves of ripe puerh. Ripe Puerh is created by letting it sit for forty five days on a fermentation pile. There is a lot of bacteria that gets into the tea in fact much of it is considered probiotic. However you have the possibility of a puerh that was poorly fermented and a lot of bad bacteria got in there. Drinking the tea boiling water should kill it. I don’t know if there would be any bacteria left on the leaves good or bad. This could be a problem.
Thanks Allan, sounds like just another reason to not risk it. I hadn’t thought of that. Sometimes if I can’t finish a particularly good puer, I’ll let it dry out and then drink it again a few days later. Never had a problem with any raws I did this with but I remember I went to do it on a ripe that I had and ended up throwing it out because it smelled off/ripe (in a bad way).
I’ve seen a recipe for puerh pancakes recently that uses brewed puerh as part of the batter, but not straight up leaf eating!
Eating brewed sencha over rice is a pretty common japanese snack, but I havent heard much else about eating tea leaves.
I’ve had a Burmese tea leaf salad from a restaurant, that had pickled green tea, you might enjoy something like that, instead.
https://www.arborteas.com/burmese-tea-leaf-salad-or-lahpet-thoke-recipe/
This recipe looks similar to what I had.
Good suggestion! I had some in Myanmar and brought back lots of the pickled tea leaf, that I eventually had to toss because I was concerned about chemical additives used in the pickled tea in Myanmar. I still ate it (slowly) but eventually it had been sitting around too long and I decided it had to go
I’ve eaten the leaves before too and most of the times the leaves have a more prominent flavors, but not all the time only when I get higher quality teas because those would have greater care when it comes to the process of making it.
Can’t imagine eating the leaves will do you any harm. If they’ve been infused multiple times then you’re not going to catch anything bacterial and you’ll have had any toxins in there in the liquor anyway. Whether it’s good is another matter but if you like it, I wouldn’t worry
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