Recycled Flavor

29Apr2014
Pu-erh Tea, China

100-deg, 4 minutes, 2nd Brewing

The first brewing was a late afternoon treat that was as rich and dark and mysterious as you would anticipate a proper Pu-erh would offer. On the advise of a colleague with a Chinese father that claimed that the Pu-erh was much better on the fourth or fifth brewing of the same leaves, this brewing was with yesterday's tea leaves. Normally one would expect that the leaves themselves would dry completely over the course of a 16 hour sleep in the tea sieve. But in fact this morning, the tea leaves still held a semblance of moisture, albiet an oily moisture. When mixed again with boiling water the color of the water immediately went to the deep mohagony color that you would expect after a few minutes on a first brew. The result was a cup that was in fact delightfully smooth. Any bitterness that may have been in the first brewing was not evident in the second cup. Much milder in all aspects but with similar characteristics of raw earth. The only variation I notice on the typical theme is a slight nose of the freshest raw fish. In fact a second brew of Pu-erh might pair quite well with hamachi.