Fun and FlirTea

There is something of an ongoing debate in the tea world over Loose Tea vs. Bagged Tea (see what I did there with the title?). While a good portion of tea aficionados will rage against the concept of the tea bag (I’ve even seen tea bags burned in a video on “how to make tea”), I think it’s important to note that not all tea bags are bad!

Before I proceed, I’ll state something that I will probably repeat frequently on this blog – the only way to tell if a tea is “good” or not is to taste it. If you like it, then it must be good!

This holds true for any tea you may drink! Needless to say, just because a tea tastes good doesn’t necessarily mean it’s of high quality. I find the same to be true of beer and wine. For example, I know people who legitimately enjoy the taste of Coors Light (eugh!). Just because they like the taste of it does not suddenly make it a quality craft beer. Also, I have a penchant for cheap wines from Trader Joe’s. While their cheap wine is better than other cheap wine, well… it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a cheap wine! So keep that in mind when you are enjoying that cup of tea brewed from a teabag. (more…)

Pu-erh (pronounced poo-arrrrrrrrrrrrr) tea is probably the least known type of tea to the everyday person. Not all that long ago (just a couple years now), my brother living in China sent me an email asking about the kinds of tea I liked and what he had available to him. He mentioned pu-erh tea in this email and I had no idea whatsoever what he was talking about.

My first stop, naturally, was Wikipedia. They do have a pretty decent page on this tea type, but it didn’t really answer most of my questions. For one thing, I still mentally pronounced it more like the word “pure” than “poo” and “arrrrrrrrrrr”. It mentioned that pu-erh tea is pretty frequently pressed, but I didn’t really understand what that meant without ever having seen a pressed tea before. The only thing I really retained from the Wikipedia page was that it was fermented in some way, shape, or form.

I guess that since I wasn’t familiar with how tea was made up to this point, this didn’t make much impact on me. In fact, at the time I still sort of assumed that each tea type came from a different plant. Now that I know more, I just enjoy understanding what these differences really mean for the tea.

To begin with, instead of the oxidation that the other tea types undergo, pu-erh tea really is actually fermented. The real difference is that oxidation is a chemical process and fermentation involves microbes (like you’ll find in cheese or yogurt). I remember one day at work, I was preparing some pu-erh tea from a compressed brick. A coworker asked what it was and I explained that it’s a type of tea, but it’s fermented. His immediate response was, “Oh. So how much alcohol is in it?”

(more…)