Puerh Tea: My Basis for Comparison

Most people in America have never had good tea, or even decent tea, by my estimation.  I know this because I can't seem to find good tea in any café or restaurant ANYWHERE.  I can count on one hand the number of specialty tea shops I've been able to find around the SF Bay Area that offer the sort of tea I make at home, and while I'm still exploring the tea shops in Seattle, results so far have not been promising.

There are many varieties of tea—and by "tea" I strictly mean "the beverage made from the leaves of the camellia sinensis plant", perhaps even more than there are varieties of wine grape and coffee beans.  The basic categories of "white, green, oolong, black, puerh" are in fact quite broad; each one is really a world unto itself, and one could easily fill a book describing the flavors and varieties found in each category.  I am not by any means an expert (though I might seem like it relative to most Americans), but I've definitely sampled hundreds of different varieties of tea.  And my favorite by far are the puerhs.


Puerh tea strictly-speaking refers to a large-life variety of tea plant that has been grown for generations in certain parts of China, but it is most often used to refer to dark aged and/or fermented tea, often sold in pressed cakes of varying sizes.  Like wine, puer cakes are frequently aged, with certain rare vintages commanding astronomical prices.  This unique aging and fermentation process has the effect of completely removing the tannins from the tea leaves, and also turning them quite dark.  Finished puerh cakes typically smell very earthy, like rich moist topsoil.  When brewed, puerh tea completely lacks the bitter astringency of black tea, and can be steeped in very hot water for as long as you like.

Good puerh brewed correctly has an inky color and a slightly syrupy body, with a sweet mellow earthiness and sometimes even a round malty sweetness reminiscent of dates, which is very pleasant even to the untutored palate.  Poorer quality puerh can take on a fishy or compost-like flavor or a "wet newspaper" taste, as well as musty or mushroomy flavors.  Generally-speaking, you get what you pay for, and I prefer to drink at the very least the mid-grade stuff.  I drink it so much that spending $150 on a top-quality cake for all my brews would be rather absurd.

What really makes puerh my favorite, though, is that is the best source of caffeine of all forms of tea.  Not because it is naturally higher in caffeine—it's not—but because the lack of tannins mean you can brew it as strong as you like.  While most teas should be brewed with at most 3 grams of tea per 8 ounces of water (and at the correct temperature for the type of tea!), you can use up to 12 grams of puer (or even more if you don't mind drinking your wallet empty).  So while the most caffeinated green tea has around 29 mg of caffeine per gram of dry leaf and puerh maxes out around 22 mg/g, an 8-oz cup of puerh brewed at maximum strength could theoretically have 264 mg of caffeine if you get a full extraction, compared to a max of 87 mg from the green.  Even if you only get around a 75% extraction, that's still 200 mg, which is on par with coffee.  Add to that the fact that tea contains higher levels of other xanthine alkaloids such as theophylline and theobromine, which help to counterbalance the stimulation by promoting a sense of relaxation and well-being, and, well, maybe you can understand how I made it to the ripe old age 30 without feeling a burning need to try coffee.  Puerh as I make it gives a helluva kick!

Full-strength puerh tea, as it should be; served in glass to show its color.

No, that's not coffee in a rocks glass.  Yes, tea can be that dark.