I bought some pu erh tea balls from Adagio. A weird flavor, to be
sure, but it grew on me. So, I'd been drinking this stuff on/off fer
about a yr. My buddy, who is a bigger tea drinker than me, come over
and I offer him his first pu erh tea.

"I feel like I'm in an Army/Navy surplus store."

????

I take mine with one lump suger, he none. I tried my own pu erh w/o
sugar. Damned if it didn't smell jes like a stack of new military
fatigues.

Hadda flash back! Not to Vietnam, but to the seriously authentic
1950s surplus store in our own town with nothing but piles and piles
of surplus WWII and Korean War items.

nb

On Sunday, May 17, 2015 at 5:50:15 PM UTC-4, notbob wrote:
> I bought some pu erh tea balls from Adagio. A weird flavor, to be
> sure, but it grew on me. So, I'd been drinking this stuff on/off fer
> about a yr. My buddy, who is a bigger tea drinker than me, come over
> and I offer him his first pu erh tea.
>
> "I feel like I'm in an Army/Navy surplus store."
>
> ????
>
> I take mine with one lump suger, he none. I tried my own pu erh w/o
> sugar. Damned if it didn't smell jes like a stack of new military
> fatigues.
>
> Hadda flash back! Not to Vietnam, but to the seriously authentic
> 1950s surplus store in our own town with nothing but piles and piles
> of surplus WWII and Korean War items.
>
> nb

I really like experimenting with pu-ehrs even though I have no idea how to pick from all the varieties. You never quite know what you're getting and I gather that there's a lot of counterfeiting and fakes around.

In tinkering, I have settled on brewing them at 200 degrees for four minutes for the fist infusion and then at 200 and 5 minutes for the second infusion. Any expertise out there on better brewing guides?

Menghai seems the best know factory -- but is it living on is reputation when pu-ehrs were wuch a fashion in the 1990s? Any other names to look for? I have focused on bing cakes in the $25-40 range.I've been disappointed in tuo-chas. They look so great int heir pretty bags and are convenient and cheap but I've found they lack those weird laundry-room flavors and all the ones you describe so nicely.