This is a tea like no other. When I evaluate a new batch, I'm not just looking at flavor and caffeine content like with most teas. There is so much more going on!
Though you might think that tea isn't food, that's not actually true. This particular type of tea was once an important part of the diet of Tibetans and people in some parts of China. In fact, it is thought it was accidentally "invented" when it fermented during transportation on the long journey to Tibet. The Tibetans would then add yak butter to make a dish that provided important nutrients in the cold, harsh terrain where no vegetables were available.
My set-up for final filtering and keeping the pitcher warm while the tea is consumed (plus the yixing storage container)
I'm not going to try to provide an exhaustive treatment of the subject of pu-erh tea, since an excellent one can be found here. Instead I'm going to share with you my experience of this tea over the years.
My First Puerh Experience
The first time I had pu-erh (pronounced "poo-air" and often spelled without the hyphen) it was brought to my little cottage by a musician from a pretty famous band (whose name I won't mention). He'd traveled widely on tour and after being introduced to the tea in Hong Kong decided to never go anywhere without a complete gong fu set up. Once you have the tea yourself, you will understand that devotion.
Note that "gong fu" is a way of drinking tea, not a reference to the tea itself. A fine tea like puerh is best drank gong fu style, where you get the full fragrance, flavor and experience of the tea.
The photo above is of the serving pitcher that you pour the tea into after steeping for just seconds. You use a lot of tea leaf with this method, but steep only about 10 seconds instead of 2-3 minutes like most teas. (This results in less caffeine and avoidance of any bitterness.)
Here is what the tea looks like in one of my gong fu serving cup sets.
The tall cup is the aroma cup and the one you see tea in is the drinking cup. You pour tea from the pitcher into the aroma cup, then top it with the drinking cup, flip it so that the tea flows into the drinking cup, then smell the aroma cup. This is your first introduction to the tea, the sense of smell.
The tea started out in this semi-porous yixing storage container, where the tea will continue to improve with age like a fine wine.
Notice that it is caked. There are actually 3 types of puerh stored in this container, some caked, some loose. All of it is sheng, meaning naturally aged, not "cooked" where they use artificial means to speed up the fermentation time. These are between 20-45 years old. A cooked puerh is ready to drink after just 1 year. Though the flavor can be just as good, it doesn't have the same chi as the naturally aged tea and also generally has no aroma.
The first time you put water in the teapot, you pour it off after just a few seconds. That's to rinse the tea and expand the leaves some. After several steeps, this is what the leaves look like inside the teapot.
Sharing Puerh with Others
I only have 2 gong fu serving sets, so usually I invite one person at a time to experience puerh gong fu style with me, just as I was once introduced to it myself. It is an expensive tea when at a high enough quality to drink gong fu style, so I generally don't drink it gong fu style by myself.
I'm talking $20-300 per ounce for anything aged. I mostly get the ones that are around $40 per ounce, which is about 5 brewing sessions, so at least $8 each. I'm not going to be doing that every day by myself!
(I have cheaper puerh that I do drink daily (shou/cooked style) that I drink in a tea cup just like any tea, adding a half teaspoon of sugar per cup to bring out the flavor of the tea and reduce the bitterness found in shou/cooked styles.)
Despite the price for gong fu level sheng style puerh, the experience of the tea is so magical that a few times a year I'm happy to invite someone over to experience it with me.
I've noticed that I get to know a person better than ever when serving them this tea. You see the tea has a very different effect depending on how much the person can settle into it and open to its spiritual qualities.
With some people the conversation turns spiritual, even philosophical, only a very embodied engagement of the subject. It's as if you're transported to the forest where the leaves grew. The tea speaks to you, and the Earth speaks through the tea. It is truly a transcendent experience.
With other people, their mind goes to all the bad things happening in the world. They seem stressed, and actually make me feel as if there is caffeine in the tea far more than there actually is within an aged tea. The caffeine breaks down over time and the steeping time is so short that it would be low in caffeine anyway. It's that their energy speeds up and I'm really empathic, so I speed up with them. It's an effort to keep myself grounded while sharing puerh with a negatively focused person.
Mostly I find it a great tea for inviting uplifting conversations about the nature of life and where we're each going on our journeys.
Special Benefits of This Tea
Again, the other article I linked has much more detail on this, including some of the chemical composition of what's going on. I know that if I drink it after a very fatty meal, within 10 minutes I stop feeling that sort of heavy, sluggish feeling that digesting a lot of fats can cause. It actually interferes with the absorption of fat, passing it through your system quickly, while aiding the absorption of proteins.
I also find the high antioxidant content in the absence of much caffeine a very soothing combination for my nervous system. It really blisses me out and soothes me. I can even drink it after dinner, when I normally wouldn't touch caffeine. Note that I'm only talking about the older puerhs when I say this. A younger puerh will still have higher caffeine content, so I'll still stop drinking it by mid-afternoon so as not to interfere with sleep that night. If you're caffeine sensitive, you probably want to stick with the aged teas.
Here is a complete gong fu serving set for one, along with a few of the teas I haven't put inside the storage container, since they aren't high enough quality to really require it and I'll drink them fast enough for it not to matter anyway.
Where to Get Puerh
There are a lot of online shops that sell puerh, so if you don't live in a city with a Chinatown, you're still covered. To start you may not want to invest in a gong fu set, though the set is also good for drinking other high quality teas, like oolong. But anything where you can let large tea leaves expand and then strain the tea will work. A smaller pot is good so that you can use more tea and less water but not break the bank on using a huge amount of tea just to cover it with water in a large pot. That's why yixing teapots are always so tiny. They are meant for steeping just 6-10 sips of tea at a time.
If you're going for the relaxing, after dinner digestion tea, you'll want a fine, aged sheng. For that I recommend shopping at Generation Tea. If you just want an everyday tasty digestive you'll put in a teacup with a little sugar, try this tea on Amazon.com. It's only $14 and has about 40 first steeps worth of tea. (Break each of the 20 teacakes in half for a cup. May get a second steep out of it, but will be higher in caffeine, since you'll need to steep it a fairly long time.)
I wouldn't recommend any of the teas sold on Amazon for gong fu serving, nor any of their sheng style teas period. I actually threw a $36 sheng from them in the trash. It was just intolerably full of camphor odor and taste. That's a problem with cheap shengs that haven't properly been aged.
Well I hope you've enjoyed this little journey into the world of puerh tea and that you'll give some a try sometime.