A Tea Addict's Journal

Haven’t had proper tea for a few days. It’s been mostly rushed and more of the same — nothing interesting to write about.

But, that is not true today. Along with the oolong form Taiwan, my girlfriend also got me some Puerh. These are some rather funny looking Puerh by normal standards — they are probably broken from a cake, and the leaves are very big.

To give you some scale, the round container is about 2 inches wide, so the leaves are considerably larger than most leaves you tend to see for Puerh (often in small broken pieces). This tea has a slight medicinal smell. There wasn’t enough to brew a full pot using my Puerh pot, so I had to reduce the amount of water I use in the pot in order to make it so that it’s not too watery.

Warmed the pot, washed the leaves, and the brewed the first brew… hmmm interesting. The leaves are fairly brown in colour, but when brewed, they came out rather black, which often means they are “cooked” Puerh. The taste is also closer to a “cooked” Puerh, although unlike usual “cooked” Puerh, it does have some complexity in its taste. Most of the time “cooked” Puerh just taste mildly sweet and generally uninspiring, but this one is a bit different. It has a depth that normal “cooked” Puerh doesn’t have, but I think it is still largely consisted of those leaves since the smell, the looks, and the taste generally conform to “cooked” leaves.

This is not to say it’s bad — it’s probably one of the best “cooked” type Puerh I’ve had. I think one key to learning how to drink tea is to just try all sorts of different things — without that, one never learns.