Surely you have tried it and the taste did not seem pleasant to you, you wanted to throw it away. But don’t worry here we will give you 5 easy ways to make Pu-erh tea taste better.
In general, when a person tries this type of tea, they blame the raw material with which it was made or that it was poorly stored. So they decide not to buy it anymore, until they find a way to make it nice. Pu-erh tea appears to be a nasty tea, but there are ways to prepare it and make it a real treasure.
1. To reduce its strange smell
One of the ways to know how to make Pu-erh tea taste good is by identifying its strange smell that dates back a long time (more than 10 years) or because it has not been stored properly (there is a lot of humidity or the place of production is very hot). storage). To eliminate that unpleasant smell, proceed as follows:
- If you notice that the tea it’s compact, what you have to do is take it and break it down into smaller parts.
- Then, store it in a Yixing clay container that is usually very useful to protect the tea from humidity, temperature changes and light. With this type of jar it will allow you to ventilate your tea properly.
- Once ventilated you should rinse it twice quickly before you soak it. To do this, add hot water where you will serve the tea and after about 10 seconds, discard it. With two rinses it will be enough to remove its bad smell and thus prepare a good infusion of this tea.
2. How to make Pu-erh tea taste good. Take away the dirty taste
When you drink for the first time Pu-erh tea flavor feels strong, something like a “dirty” taste. In this sense, you should know that there are two types of Pu-erh tea: raw and mature. The dirty taste is detected by most people with the mature type. To remove that flavor do the following:
- Before preparing your first infusion as such, rinse your matured Pu-erh tea about twice. That’s how that bad dirty smell you have will go away.
- It is known that mature tea has to be prepared at high temperatures, rather try to reduce it to around 90° to soften the flavor.
- Do not let it infuse for a long time. Westerners often infuse these drinks for several minutes. However, in the case of mature Pu-erh tea, the brew will look dark and taste unpleasant. So the most appropriate thing is to reduce the soaking time to one minute if you do it in a large teapot or between 20 to 30 minutes if it is in a container like a gaiwan. In the next snacks, this infusion time can be increased slowly.
- On the other hand, you can flavor your ripe Pu-erh tea with other herbs or flowers.
In the event that none of these steps still works for you, it is best to switch to the raw type.
3. The unpleasant smell of fish
We already know how to make Pu-erh tea taste good when ripe because of its dirty smell, but when raw it most often tastes fishy. That particular fishy taste is due to the fact that it tastes like algae. If so, don’t worry, the tea isn’t bad, but you probably won’t like the taste of it. Perhaps its bad smell is due to poor storage, so the advice given for ripe tea will also do the trick.
What you should do is chop it up to air it out, rinse it and alternate the temperature and soaking time. But if you still don’t like the taste of pu-erh tea raw, then read the next tip.
4. How to make Pu-erh tea taste good. It has a bitter taste
The bitter taste of your Pu-erh tea is softened in a warm, humid room where proper post-fermentation can take place. Some have not gone through this process but rather a slow natural fermentation that usually takes a long time. This is how raw tea acquires its bitter taste. However, to remove it you have to do the following:
- Sometimes Pu-Erh tea is not ready to be consumed, this happens, for example, when the tea is very young. What you should do is store it so that it matures slowly. Over time that bitterness will disappear and its color will be darker and sweeter.
- Of course, visit it every year so you can see how it is evolving.
- The advantage of this type of raw tea is that you can feel the temperature and steeping time, unlike mature tea. Try temperatures from 80° to 100°C to find out which one is most appropriate for your tea.
- If you soak it at the highest temperature, the flavor it will acquire is bitter. If you do it at a lower range you will notice that the flavor is different.
5. Mix it with herbs and flowers
The last resort for how to make Pu-erh tea taste good is to flavor your Pu-erh tea with other herbs!