Experimental Pu'ers

As far as I am aware oolong-ized puerh do not age well. Good for drink it now, bad for future consumption if you want to keep it. It lacks a few things that a normal puerh would, among which is the long-lasting brewing that you can subject a puerh to.

Funny you mentioned Fuchaju. I just literally came back from visiting their store in Beijing. Clueless salespersons aside, I tried their Wuliangshan puerh (sheng). I found it rather fruity, a bit odd, definitely sundried though. I believe the baking you're talking about is actually what would normally be called roasting for teas -- as in roasting an oolong to make it more oxidized. The owner of Fuchaju is well know for his skills in roasting everything from tea to tobacco. He claims roasting puerh does something to the tea that makes it more drinkable and better for you. I don't know. The sheng cake I tried was so so.

Lewis snipped-for-privacy@panix1.panix.com10/23/06 17: snipped-for-privacy@panix.com

Might I add without revealing sources that that tea tasted almost more "red" than "oolong," but delightfully light in touch. As you say, aroma was pronounced and pleasant.

Lew, is this one that we drank together a year ago and that another mutual friend of ours described as "disgusting"? If it is, I'm fond of it. I like teas that think outside the box. (Was that the right phrase?)

How did methods become "traditional"? Probably by being successful experiments along the way. I have no doubt that over its thousands of years of history, tea, like climate, changed more radically and more quickly than we like to think. Opinions mine.

Michael

Marshal wrote

Michael wrote That makes sense and probably can go without saying because the tea is essentially oolong in its making. We can expect it to age as an oolong, which is not so well unless we reroast it periodically.

Lew wrote

Marshal wrote

Michael wrote Roasting/baking/firing/frying are all the same, right?

Interesting that Wuliangshan raw, like the cooked WLS tea I mentioned, has a strong fruity character.

Can you explain how you identify a Pu'er as sun-dried?

So roasting increases the oxidation level of a tea?

I've long been confused by the way many people, when talking about oolongs, conflate the amount of roasting with the level of oxidation. You seem to be saying that this is no accident, right?

In my limited understanding of tea chemistry, the oxidation we're talking about is accomplished by the polyphenol oxidase enzymes in the leaves. And the PPOs function only when there's a certain amount of moisture remaining in the leaves. Plus, the PPOs get destroyed by heat beyond a certain level. So, put this all together, and you would have *very* slow baking, at a temperature of approximately what?

/Lew

No, but thanks for reminding me, because that tea, Jipin loose leaf from Yunnan Tea Import Export, is dead-center on topic. It looks like a very tippy Dian Hong, but it smells and tastes like no other tea I know. The only thing I can compare it to is dried porcini (Steinpilz, Karsten!) mushrooms. I'd love to know how it was made.

No, we say "teas that seep through the tray."

Of course I agree with you.

/Lew

[Marshal] [Lew] [Michael] Since Marshal hasn't checked in yet -- his knowledge superceding my speculations -- I want to suggest that with Oolongs, sun (or other) drying is alternated with baking. Thus, we'd get a bit of roasting, followed by a bit of oxidizing. I've read that this process might be repeated up to seven times. As you say, once the leaf is dry, the oxidation process is over (until the leaf is remoisturized through normal and/or bad storage and takes up more [unwanted] oxidation). Now, let's here from people who actually know what they are talking about.

ever 100% dry. There is always some moisture in there. Otherwise, I suppose no tea will go bad?

For example, people re-roast oolongs before putting it away for storage, because it dries the tea out further so that its quality will be kept better over time. Oolong for long term storage before drinking is often taken out to re-roast again after a few years before putting back in the bottle/jar/whatever so that the moisture gets burned off a bit more to keep it from going stale/bad.

So, some degree of oxidation must be happening in this period. Also, the heat that is applied, I'd think, has something to do with it as well. Since roasting is not exactly a high heat method, from what I understand (versus, say, frying a thin layer of tea on a very hot pan a la Longjing) there is plenty of time for the tea to further oxidize while being roasted.

That's what I think anyway, because the taste of highly roasted oolongs, when done well, is not from the charcoal. Sometimes you get a charcoal taste, but that's actually poorly done roasting... good roasting shouldn't have that, and also, a lot of times now they use electric roasters, which entirely circumvents the problem of charcoal taste. The heat does something to the tea, and other than enhancing oxidation, I can't imagine what else.

I don't know what to say, other than that there's a certain "sun" taste in the tea. Supposedly, you can find out what it's like by sundrying say, a Chinese cabbage. This is from folks on Sanzui. I've never tested it out, so I don't know.

Uneven colour in the leaves also helps -- if it's uniformly green, it's probably been baked in the oven rather than sundried. Of course, that is not a guaranteed thing.

I think sundrying gives raw puerh its unique taste profile.

You're talking about unevenness within a single leaf, right?

/Lew