Loosening of toucha

You probably know the situation. You buy a toucha so well pressed, that to get a few leaves from it, in anyhow elegant way, is almost impossible. Even when one knows what is doing with his/her pu-needle, leaves of such toucha are broken at least. With few grams of broken tea leaves you can get few grams of tea dust. Is there a solution?

Few years back, I was going through Houde's eshop and found a few interesting information at his blog as well as in the "f.a.q" section. One of those was this:

   There are two ways to loosen a compressed Pu-erh (cake, brick, mushroom, or toucha):
1. Brutal-force way! Use hammer, knife, chisel or whatever your landscaping tools (kidding, of coz) to chip or knock down enough amount for brewing.
2. Steaming method: This is a much more civilized version. Several advantages from this method:

a. The loosened leaves will retain more complete and original shape than the brutal force way.
b. If you are like me, it is fun to get your hands "tea-y"!
c. It becomes more convenient to have all the loose tea than having to find your hammer everytime you try ot enjoy.

We use the following pictures to illustrate how we do the steaming to loosen two 2004 Jia Ji XiaGuan Toucha.
Step 1: Find a wok and a bamboo steamer (or whatever have similar functions). Put a bowl of water into the wok. Then put the two toucha onto the steamer.


Step 2: Turn on the heat and cover the steamer. Your pu-erh is now enjoying some steamy Sauna! Steam for around 3 mins. The time is only experimental; different cakes or bricks may requires different steaming time.


Step 3: See... after 3 mins Sauna, the toucha are looking very "relaxed"!


Step 4: Now is the most FUN part! Use your mighty hands to gently loosen the toucha and try NOT to cook your fingers! They can be very hot. The toucha now is soft and flexible, as you can see how I "bend" one of them.


Final: Now, you have a pile of good loose Pu-erh for easy enjoyment : ) However, newly steamed pu-erh need to be dried for about 2 hours (more is better) before you put them into containers. Just let them dry in an open and dry place without direct sunlight. Otherwise, those nutritious leaves will invite some fungus to grow on them very quickly.


You can make a brew of the loose Pu-erh tea just like ... yea, a loose tea. Try this! I am sure you will love the extra connection you build between your pu-erhs and you.

Do you know someone who do it this way or who, at least, tried it? I did not heard about it before and I was sure: I have to try it one day. And that time come last February. It was weekend with many tea friends around, we were testing teas and having great time when this "loosening technique" pop up. Lets do it! I was a bit sceptical/afraid about the result. So I pick one not very special toucha from Dayi, found clean stainless pot, stainless sieve for cooking dumplings and turn of a cooker....

 In two minutes we got very furry chunk of tea. Leaves were quite easy to seperate, a bit wet from outside and still a bit hard in the middle of the nest. To dry out, I put that  toucha  loose leave tea on our heating and later on even to oven. Not to cook, just to warm and dry it out.

Next day I could put it in this jar...I was quite curious to see if it will get any worst. And it is not. Now after several months, it is still that mediocre tea as I remember it. :) I would not do it or recommend it to do it with tea which we would like to age. The heat from steam is not going to make any good to living nature of the tea and it may slow or even stop the aging. But if you have a tea you would like to drink soon then you can give it a try. You can get very nice loose tea instead of broken, dusty mixture. For sure, you might want to try it first on something less expensive than 80' Xiaguan products, as I did. Who can find this helpful are those who serve toucha (or other strongly pressed teas) on daily basic. One just open a jar and scoop up few grams of leaves- I can imagine that for a tearoom or a teashop,  it can be pretty convenient.

 For my daily tea live, I still prefer gentle work of puehr needle to this sauna style. On other hand an experiment and experience is always more valuable than reading and thinking about it. I am glad we have tried it.

Thank you for reading!

Moving...

In one of my older posts I have already writen here about tea samples from ChawangShop. One of the samples I have enjoyed was 06 LiuAn basket tea. And 250g bamboo basket of this tea was also in the package which arrived to our place a couple of weeks ago. The fact that I have ordered whole basket bespeak about my impressions from the sample. But sometime it is very difficult for me to judge a tea from 5-10g sample. So I was really curious what is inside those bamboo leaves...I am going to share my finding about this tea in one of my later posts. For now, I just would like to show you the new "home" of the tea. And its moving there...

 When I was about to break in to the basket I have found out one "complication". The leaves of bamboo are fragile and after few "openings" they are going to be too broken. Tea leaves are going to crumble around and I will have to put it in to a paper back anyway. So it will be probably much more practical to keep it in the stoneware jar which I hold for myself from the last firing.

The jar is unglazed inside. I hope it will have a good impact on the tea stored there. At least I think that the porous material can create affable microclimate for aging of the LiuAn.

Leaves of the LiuAn are not so pressed as pu- ehr cakes but still- I find the Pu-needle helpful also in this case.

I am not sure if in this case (the Anhui HeiCha- not Pu ehr tea) is the Nei Fei the proper name. But this piece of paper pressed inside of the tea was very nice finding indeed.

Traditionally the LiuAn is prepared with small piece of bamboo leave in the teapot. So I have putted several leaves from the original basket to the storage jar. It will be not only my supply of bamboo for entirety of my LiuAn teas. It will be also the right environment for those tea leaves themselves. I mean for aging-storing of the tea.

The jar itself has a decoration created by white slip (clay) on the rough body. During the top stage of the firing it was partly covered by charcoal- I like those marks and footprints, colors and irregularity which this process creates.

Thank you for reading

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Is it good for my cakes?

This question probably goes thru heads of all of us - certainly time to time. I mean all of us who like puer. I have to admit I am still not sure about my care. I am still learning -Learning by listening to more experienced, by reading different opinions, by smelling to my tea. Learning from listening to intuition. But I am not looking for the one and only answer how to age my tea. I see it more like adventure road with questions and experiences. 

From the last firing of our wood kiln I have new arrival in to my tea cupboard. It was born in the right time - my older jars and wooden boxes filled to their tops and new cakes arrived.

I fill my first stoneware jar with fresh sheng almost two years ago.  During those months the teas stored there have moved very nicely. It is hard to compare this tea with tea carried in wooded box (my second option) or with cakes stored only in paper wrapper (my third option) but I find several benefits. The most important merit for me is protection. One tea teacher told me that the protection is too tight. He told me that as we have rather drier climate here it is better to let tea take some moisture from the air. But I find out that in unglazed clay the tea creates kind of microclimate and moisture is more stable -it is not going up and down because of wetter or heating so quickly. 

Here are my first jars for puer-cha. Clay is maybe to vetrify...

As many potters I also keep for myself pieces which have some imperfection but are too good for hammer. And it was also in the case of the new jar. You can see on the picture below how the rim of the piece is deformed.

The lid was fired on the jar so I can close and open it but only in one position. It has moved because it was fired lying on the side and the rim was too thin.

 

The clay is porous. We buy this rough clay from factory which produces chimney flue blocks. As this clay has very low shrinkage - Mirka usually use it for bigger or irregular shaped bonsai pots -this clay survive more then rest we use.

 

 

 When pieces are unloaded from the kiln we clean piece after piece by water and fine brush paper. So before I put cakes in to the jar I have let it dry for a two days. None the less day after I putted cakes there I measured out 88% of relative humidity. (In side of the jar) There was still too many water in it! After another two days it went down to agreeable 55-65%.

We moved to our new place during the last autumn and moisture has been in borders which I feel are good for the storage. For sure it is better then in too dry house were we lived before. Only temperature during winter was to low -but I am going to buy more wood for our heating this time. And hopefully next winter the temperature will be more comfortable for us as well as for tea.    

I look forward to see changes on my hygroscope during seasons as well as changes in teas inside my jars.

On the end one picture which I like- few small teapots from the last firing.  All three teapots are made from the same clay-only fired in different places of the kiln. You can still see them also on darjeeling.cz


Thank you for reading. Enjoy your teaday.