climbing the pu-ehr path

Hello fellows tea-lovers

I'd like to go into the pu-ehr and need advices and opinions from you, to take the short cut. What could I try first? second? third? Where can I get it from?

Reply to
philj
Loading thread data ...

I have been told, by many knowledgeable puerh experts from the far east, that you always want to rinse your puerh, particularly black/cooked/shu puerh or SAFETY reasons. It removes the unsafe levels of bacteria, fungi, and other beasties (microbes) that "may" reside in the puerh cakes.

With black puerh in particular, high and unsafe levels of various microbes may still remain in the tea that are left over from the production process. Production of black puerh is akin to composting where the leaf is piled high, kept moist, and will generate considerable heat. These conditions promote the rapid and progressive growth of potentially harmful bacteria. The skill level with which the factory controls the various variables is a crap shoot. Some, less knowledgeable, factories have made batches of puerh that have extremely high levels of residual microbes. The rinse not only washes away some of these beasties but also serves too kill the ones that remain in the tea. A major puerh dealer, who sells literally tons of puerh every month, even went as far as to instruct me to rinse black puerhs twice because of the high microbe levels. Some of these black puerhs, especially today as they rush the process much more than they used to and use less skilled labor to do so, contain levels of microbes high enough to actually make you sick. Another extremely knowledgeable tea friend from Singapore even goes as far as to NOT use the same pitcher that the rinse water went in until that pitcher has been washed.

With green puerh, particularly well aged green puerh, you have no idea what storage conditions the puerh may have been subjected to over the last 20-40 years. Each different type of microbe has it's own sweet spot in which it will multiply at a rapid and progressive rate. That nice 1960s puerh cake may have been subjected to conditions that allowed unsafe levels to accumulate.

ALWAYS rinse your puerh, it is the safe thing to do! That being said I sometimes cant resist tasting the rinse on the really old dudes, its a weakness of mine.

With the exception of this rinsing question, every other question you have asked so far is addressed on my site, I strongly recommend you read through the site for solid background information on the subject of puerh. While opinions on what tastes good and what doesn't may vary, the other information on my site is concise, has been thoroughly researched, and is not influenced by any commercial entities. I also provide links to every major puerh resource, blog, and store that I know of (in English). I sincerely doubt you will find that much information about puerh, written in English, in any other single location.

-- Mike Petro

formatting link

Reply to
Mike Petro

I'd like to know at what temperature held steadily for how long actually could kill the microbes in pu'er. I doubt one 10-20 second rinse could really raise the internal temperature to boiling long enough to get rid of all the nasties festering in pu'er.

Did we ever hear anything else about aflatoxins(sp?) in pu?

~j

Mike Petro wrote:

Reply to
Jason F in Los Angeles

I'm sorry I didn't say this first. Mike isn't just bragging; every word in the above paragraph is true.

/Lew

Reply to
Lewis Perin

I don't know that anyone ever told me that rinsing got rid of "all" the beasties, in fact the "rinse the blacks twice" scenario implies that the first time doesn't get them all. I suspect the actual result is a reduction, presumably to safe levels, of the beasties in there.

From Wikepedia: "Pasteurization is the process of heating food for the purpose of killing harmful organisms such as bacteria, viruses, protozoa, molds, and yeasts." I have found several other pieces of literature

formatting link
is a good example) which state that enough pasteurization occurs at ~162F for ~15 seconds to kill most harmful organisms. Judging from various pasteurization tables, which show that the higher the temp the shorter the time needed, a 10-15 second rinse at a boil (lets say ~200F after allowing compensation for the thermal absorption of the presumably preheated pot) should be more than adequate to kill *most* of the beasties in puerh.

A few examples of beasties in puerh that I do know about include:

*Saccharomyces: (a yeast) prefers lukewarm temperatures, below 90f. While I think it takes about 250F to totally kill it. a large majority of Saccharomyces cells will be killed by simple temperature shock of as little as 104F, the greater the temp, the greater the shock, the more cells killed. *Aspergillus: There are high temp fungi exceptions but Aspergillus and most other strains of fungi which reside in puerh, are dramatically reduced by temps above 95F. Aspergillus Penicilliu, for example, is killed at 130F in water.

It appears that if you wanted a 100% kill rate of all microbes you would need sterilization temps of 250F or so.

Again, I think the goal is a significant reduction, not necessarily total irradication. You will need to consult a more scientific mind than mine though, if you want a more comprehensive answer than this, as you are getting into heavy duty microbiology here. I am a mere electrical engineer......

-- Mike Petro

formatting link

Reply to
Mike Petro

Just as an aside to this issue, it should actually be fine to drink the rinse if the water was hot enough. If anything this is perfectly sterilized at this point, now any heavy metals or non-bacteria stuff that came off in this rinse would still be present though.. and this is where the rinse would help most.

See, it is how you look at things. I tend to be very logical by nature, so in my mind I try to think things through an extra couple steps. If the Pu-Erh contains so many harmful bacteria then the quick rinse at fairly high temps will kill some of them, true, but then the bits that didn;t receive the full temperature rise have more likely been raised to perfect breeding temps. Now if one uses very hot water as they should this is a non-issue because the next steep will then kill even more. But if someone uses less than optimally hot water they are stimulating more division and more bacteria, and through multiple steeps and time of rest in between it would be a bacteria soup. Pu-Erh is a unique creature like this, and I still believe that the only real important thing is to use extremely hot water each and ever steep. Other than that, it makes little difference to me.

A lot of things are like this, teas or medicines that claim to lower body temperature when you have a fever... if they really worked they would be making things *worse* as the fever is your body doing its job. If anything you would want something that raised your temperature for you to take the strain off your body, which is more what they actually do.

And as for the rice, there are many many times where rinsing rice is NOT a culinary preference. I would implore you to check up on this, actually learn where some rice is grown and the conditions and processing... some of this would make Pu-Erh bacteria seem like candy. I have very close friends who live in Korea and grow rice, they will be the first to tell you. We're not talking about Uncle Ben's or even packaged "authentic" rice, but real rice imported and not inspected at normal levels or thoroughly like much of what can be bought in asian markets and Chinatowns. The same thing applies as I stated above with rice too, even a rinse in very hot water will still not eliminate the contaminants that are *in* the rice naturally from the soil and environment... and that is the real harmful part, much moreso than what is on the outside.

- Dominic

Reply to
Dominic T.

DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.