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The other dark tea, the fermented tea they mention in this article aka hei cha or commonly referred to as pu’er, scares me because there are bad quality version
by hbarka 5y ago
The other dark tea, the fermented tea they mention in this article aka hei cha or commonly referred to as pu’er, scares me because there are bad quality versions of it containing mold due to their fermentation process. Hard to detect since it’s also a kind of black tea.
- feanaro 5y agoIt's not a black tea, at least in the western sense. Our black tea is actually called hong cha in Chinese, which means red tea. They're simply different types of tea. There are also two different style pf pu'ers which have little to do with each other. The style you're talking about is shu pu'er, which is deliberately piled and made wet in order to trigger a sped up fermentation process. This is opposed to sheng pu'er, which is processed into bricks from very young, raw leaves called maocha, and is then aged for a number of years before it is drank. This results in a much slower and subtler fermentation process. The taste of shu and sheng are quite different. I've never personally had an encounter with a bad batch of either shu or sheng pu'er, but the shu variant is more prone to this due to the process. It's notable that pu'er is steeped at a (close to) 100 degrees celsius and the first one or two short steepings are discarded. This is to kill and wash off any microorganisms or dirt that may be present.
- hbarka 5y agoThank you, that’s informative.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoPuerh is not heicha. Puerh comes in two varieties, only one of which commonly counts as heicha. Heicha is a variety of tea preparation styles that involves post-processing fermentation. This also includes Eg. Fu bricks or liubao. https://www.teaformeplease.com/tea-nerd-dictionary-heicha/ https://www.teaformeplease.com/tea-nerd-dictionary-heicha/
- HumanReadable 5y agoIt's pretty easy to spot mold in your pu'er whether it's shu or sheng. I wouldn't worry about it.