Pu-erh Tea

Raw, ripe, and why it ages

Pu-erh is post-fermented tea from Yunnan, and it is the only type in this library that is deliberately alive after it leaves the factory. Raw pu-erh — sheng — is processed much like a green tea, then pressed into cakes and left to change slowly over years or decades, moving from bracing and bitter into something soft, woody and sweet. Ripe pu-erh — shou — was invented in the 1970s to compress that arc: piled damp under controlled heat for weeks, it emerges dark, earthy and smooth from the start.

The two taste so unlike each other that plenty of drinkers love one and avoid the other. Shou is the safer introduction; sheng is where the obsession usually starts.

How to brew pu-erh

Rinse first. Five to ten seconds of hot water over the leaf, poured away, wakes the compressed cake and rinses off storage dust — and it is why the schedules on these pages open with a discarded infusion rather than a drinkable one.

Then brew short and often. The median Western steep across these 16 teas is just 43 seconds at 2.5 g per 250 ml and 90 °C (195 °F) — pu-erh extracts fast, and the four-minute habit that suits a breakfast blend turns it into something like inky soup. Gong Fu is the natural home: 5 g per 100 ml, a ten-second first infusion, and a median of twelve steeps, with each pour a few seconds longer than the last. Water can go to boiling for ripe pu-erh and aged cakes; keep young sheng nearer 90 °C to spare its edges.

Caffeine and when to drink it

The median here is 35 mg per cup, but a full Gong Fu session across a dozen infusions delivers considerably more than a single mug — worth knowing before an evening tasting. Pu-erh is traditionally drunk after heavy meals, and ripe pu-erh in particular is the classic Chinese digestif tea, which is exactly how it appears in the best-time field on the pages below.

One of these teas is free in the app. Each entry links to its full ladder, rinse instructions, storage notes and origin.