Making Pu Erh

One of my targets for Saturday's shopping was to visit a tea shop in Chinatown that I hadn't been to before. It's called Treasure-Green Tea co and it's a small shop on East Georgia and Main. I wanted to buy some Pu Erh tea cakes, those small ones, and I knew from their web site that they had some. I originally wanted just some - but when I asked for five, I got five dollars worth which is about 25 cakes... not that I'm complaining. Moira asked earlier how the tea cakes are used, so I wanted to do a little pictorial about it.

Cakes are individually wrapped into soft paper, and are just condensed tea leaves.

You want to put the cake into a tea pot, or some kind of other container, not in your tea cup as you need to strain the leaves.

Pour boiling water on the cake. As Chinese do with most of their teas, the first brew is not used, it's thrown away - it's like washing the leaves before use. So steep for a minute or so, and discard water.

After the first steeping, the cake is not fully dissolved yet.

Pour in more boiling water, and steep for about five minutes. It's a long time, but this is a very special tea.

Strain the tea into a cup.

The resulting tea is really black. It's got an earthy, slightly smoky taste - some sources say that this is the perfect tea for people who want to switch from coffee. Don't let this disturb though, it's a great tea.

Now the cake has fully dissolved. The leaves can - and should - be used multiple times, for this particular tea the lady said should do at least five brews. For each following brew, increase the steeping time for couple of minutes.

So I've got loads of these cakes - in case any of my tea loving readers want to taste some, drop me an email and I'll mail you couple of cakes.

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