Another musing about Puerh

(one of my older stock photo's, I would love for the grass to be that green right now, and the trees to be full of leaves)

So I recently sent a package to someone who is getting into puerh, in part to thank him for a piece of teaware that he sent. It was while sending him a bunch of different puerh samples, that I realized a rather nice part about puerh.

I guess part of this should be taken with a bit of reservation, as I am also at the same time trying to thin out my puerh collection. The fact that most of the puerh I had puerh comes in 350-400 gram cakes, and as I have documented my young puerh drinking habits here in the past, but for a refresher it seems for one to two weeks a year I go on a bender and drink young puerh at least every other day sometimes every day, but hardly touch it the rest of the year. It struck me that I have no problem not sticking to the typical customs that people seem to have when sending samples, which is enough tea to manage to have 2 or 3 sessions with the tea.

In all honesty I am not sure I have ever had 70 sessions of the same tea, and certainly not 70 sessions in a single year. But that would be roughly what is needed to finish off a single cake of puerh in a timely fashion (assuming a 5 grams of tea per session). For those of you that just want a reference we have 52 weeks in a year, so we would have to have over one session or bump up the amount of leaf you use to a little under grams. While depending on your brewing habits and which teas you tend to drink and in what quantities it may be feasible for some of the "puerh" addicts to polish off a few cakes in a year.

Though in my position, I am looking at a box full of puerh most of it looks like something has been nibbling on the edges where I have chipped off enough for a few different brewings. But as my puerh was not disappearing fast enough, especially since I am no longer that interested in puerh. I still think it is a good tea, just the flavor profile does not match what I would prefer. I realized when sending these samples I could be overly generous and still leave myself quite an excess of puerh.

But I will say should I ever by another puerh cake again, stone pressed will certainly be a prerequisite. Breaking up Dayi recipe cakes are by far some of the most annoying things I have ever had to do with tea, right up there with breaking up some Compressed Wuyi Yancha.