Have you tried steaming your pu-erh, like showed in
(http://www.houdeasianart.com/index.p...4e868d83e833)?

I'm wondering if reassembling it with other herbs or even inside a
citrus fruit, like it is done with tangerines, yields good results.

--k

I have steamed a few hard tuocha apart so that I could get larger
pieces instead of fragments. This was to see if the infusion varied
much by size.