How I Drink My Puerh: A Kind of Review

I know I said I wouldn't really do this, but the purpose of this isn't to tell you all to go out and buy this tea, it's to show newcomers to puerh one of the ways to brew it and how lovers of this tea (or at least just me) experience it. 

Today I'm drinking the 2009 Xinghai Red Label Phoenix Ripe Puerh. I think this is the 3rd cake of it I've bought since I started drinking it in 2011. Its a pretty well recommended one too for newcomers, so its the one I also use to introduce my friends to ripe puerh.


First I'd like to note that I do not drink my tea like this every time I drink tea. Usually I'm doing homework, talking with friends, reading, or messing around online. One time, because I wasn't paying attention to my tea, I accidentally put my strainer on top of my pot. It sounded funny to me so I looked over and saw the ridiculous scene. I try to always pay a little more attention than that now.

I've been seeing a lot of people trying puerh before for the first time on their own, and although that's how I got introduced to it too, I really learned to love it when I went and tasted it with a bunch of other people who showed me what to look for when drinking good tea. Some of these people had been drinking tea for longer than I've been alive, so I really watched what they did. They didn't just make and drink the tea, they really went and experienced it. They noted the flavors, the smell, the look of the broth, and for puerh in particular, paid attention to the Qi of the tea. Qi is a hard thing to explain. I won't even try. Just read on.

First Drinkable Infusion:
Look at that beautiful deep red. This infusion has a warm earthy scent. It sits heavy on my tongue, slowly dragging its sweet and smooth chocolate notes through my mouth and sliding down my throat. I pause between cups to enjoy the almost suede-like feeling that it leaves behind. I know we're going to have a good tasting because the familiar and blissful feel of a headache I didn't know I had going away spreads warmly from the front of my head to the rest of my body. 

Second Infusion:Once you go black you can never go back. (Puerh is in the "hei cha" category of Chinese teas, which translates to "black tea". What we think of as "black tea" in English is actually written as "hong cha" or "red tea" in Chinese.) This time the smell is heavier and inviting. The previous infusion is like me knocking on the door. Now my friend has opened their door and is standing in the doorway with a big smile on their face. And as good friends often do, we accidentally talked too long in the doorway instead of going inside. The tastes that I love so much are, earthy, chocolatey, savory, sweet, woody, and having their own little party in my mouth. And like every good party, the guests are still lingering long after the music has ended and the tea is gone. By now I have a very large smile. 

Third Infusion:The kind of comfort I derive from this puerh is equivalent to the feeling of being wrapped up in a big blanket and sitting in front of a campfire outdoors in late summer just as the sun is setting. My friend and I are now in their house, our talk having moved past all the frivolities and getting into our pleasant shared rantings about politics, some social construct, economic theories, and science fiction. The warmth that started in my head has moved to my chest. These moments of intimacy with the tea is what I love about puerh. I think the most interesting about the flavor as it really reaches this stage is how extraordinarily smooth the feel of it is on my tongue. Its almost like a food instead of a drink. And this is far from the thickest I've ever drank my puerh before.

Intermission:

Unfortunately I just realized that I need to leave or else I'll miss dinner at the last dining hall open before Spring Break. So this next infusion will be after I come back in 30-40 minutes. I'll leave the water in and we'll just have to see what comes out when I get back. This is an okay thing to do in this case because shu puerh will never oversteep to the point of being dry and bitter, but rather just get darker and darker (to an extent), unlike pretty much every other tea. I think though, considering how long I left the last two in and how little leaf I used this time, that we're down to the last 2-3 steepings now. I think I've gotten 9 out of this one before, but with a higher leaf to water ratio (my gaiwan has half the capacity of my yixing pot) and quicker times between steepings (because I don't usually blog about the tea I'm drinking while I'm drinking it). Anyways, we'll see how it goes. I'd like to have a bit longer with my old friend before we part ways.

Fourth Infusion:
I realized as I was walking back and forth between my room and the dining hall that the taste of shu puerh is like a bass guitar. Either that or like the voice of Chris Martin, lead singer for Coldplay. That humming smooth sound. That's the taste of puerh to me. As I suspected, we're on the decrescendo with this infusion. But while the thick mouthfeel is leaving, a new taste moves to the front. This time the tea is very sweet. I've walked out of the forest and into an autumn field.

Fifth Infusion and Finale:
My time with my friend has come to an end. The clock is ringing midnight and we give each other one final hug before I head to the door. Sweetness lightly persists and the smooth heavy mouthfeel waves at me from a distance, almost only a memory now. This has been a good run, leaving me very happy and serene. Considering all the midterms and homework assignments I've had this week, I was in much need of this feeling of relaxation. 

So there is one session with a puerh for me. Normally it doesn't take nearly as long because as I said before, I'm not normally blogging about it as I'm drinking, but it can definitely take me up to two hours to finish a pot.  If I'm with someone and we're focused on the tea (and talking) then it could take as short as 30 minutes to get through all the infusions. Drinking tea is a form of awareness meditation for me. 

Each cup is my first, my only, and my last.

Review: Decaffeination of fresh green tea leaf (Camellia sinensis) by hot water treatment (Liang et al., 2007)

There are many things about college I love, but almost none more than free access to an unlimited amount of academic research journals. Since the start of this blog, I have promised all of you that I one of the things I would do would be to read and review and summarize tea research articles for you. The post before last I gave you some very small tidbits, but this post I will go much more in depth and I hope you will join the discussion by commenting.

This article, Decaffeination of fresh green tea leaf (Camellia sinensis) by hot water treatment (see bottom for citation and reference link), is not the most interesting one I've ever read. What it ends up saying is that if you boil the fresh tea leaves for 3-5 minutes in the step before rolling and drying (basically replacing the pan frying or steaming part of making Chinese green tea), you can remove around 90% of the caffeine without removing the catechins (what we love about tea).

As many of you know, there is a very large and old witch tale flying around that says that if you boil tea for 30 seconds and then discard that, your tea will be decaffeinated. This study just goes to show again that this does not happen. At 1 minute at boiling of fresh tea leaves (not even what would qualify as green tea) only about 50% of the caffeine was removed while you need to reach at least 80% to be able to consider it decaffeinated. Greater than 80% caffeine removal only happened when the time reached at least 3 minutes at boiling water. (Don't forget that what happens to fresh leaves is different from what happens to any type of later processed tea leaves that we drink from too.) When they tried 3 minutes boiling on processed leaves (what could actually be counted as green tea), they found that the leaves were essentially decaffeinated. Unfortunately by then the cell walls were so broken that 90% of the catechins were also removed, therefore making your leaves useless and likely disgusting tasting. Did I really need to tell many of you that, though? Hahaha. I'm pretty sure that when you read "3 minutes boiling on (green tea)" many of you cringed and/or may have nearly cried at the thought like me. Hahahahaha.

So why does processing the fresh leaves into green tea change the amount of catechins removed? Catechin removal requires breaking the cell walls, which happens when leaves are broken by stirring during pan frying and definitely when rolled and dried. I wonder if this then means that there would be a significant difference between the amount of catechins released into the tea from something like Longjing vs. Gunpowder green teas though? Since one is very obviously rolled more than the other.

Another one of the points it makes in discussing how to decaffeinate the fresh leaves is that the water should be at boiling for decaffeination to happen. Somewhere below the boiling point (between 100C and 75C) the caffeine is no longer removed from the fresh leaf. In their table of results from this part (see Table 2), it's interesting to see that while that basically no caffeine is removed from the fresh leaves at 50C (the lowest of the tested temperatures), a significant amount of catechins are (~10% after 5 minutes). Because their study was about decaffeination as opposed to catechin extraction though, they did not test what happened in processed green tea leaves at these lower temperatures. It seems counter-intuitive to me that while normally catechin removal would require breaking the cell walls, brewing at lower temperatures before those steps also released them.

Even after processing the fresh leaves into actual tea, does do lower temperatures affect how much caffeine and catechins go into the water? Or are the cells so broken by then that there is no difference based on brewing temperature? Based on personal experience, I do believe that lower temperatures change the ratio of what goes into the tea since the taste is different. I just wish I had scientific evidence backing me up and explaining exactly what that taste difference was caused by. Maybe I'll find that in another article.

Reference:
Huiling Liang, Yuerong Liang, Junjie Dong, Jianliang Lu, Hairong Xu, Hui Wang, Decaffeination of fresh green tea leaf (Camellia sinensis) by hot water treatment, Food Chemistry, Volume 101, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 1451-1456, ISSN 0308-8146, 10.1016/j.foodchem.2006.03.054. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814606002998) Keywords: Decaffeinated tea; Green tea; Black tea; Caffeine; Catechins; EGCg; HPLC; Polyphenol oxidase