Holy smokes this was helpful! I've been opening up less compressed round cakes for over two years now but recently came into possession of a frighteningly tight brick. Commence the near stabbing! This has given me a better idea of how to get this apart before I resort to a hammer... .
Really useful- I just got my first tuo today and used the technique you suggested to break into it- thanks to the video I'm now drinking a very pleasant tea!
Some great tips. From what I've been able to glean from different sources, the high compression cakes and tuos (aka "iron" cakes) are meant to have better aging performance in the high humidity (faster) environments such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Taiwan. That doesn't mean one can't find plenty of iron cakes that ended up in relatively dry Kunming warehouses. An interesting taste test would be "identical" 10 year old Xiaguan Jia Ji tuos; one from Kunming, and one from, say, Hong Kong.
You're right! That seems to be the consensus. It's also just cool to say "iron cake". We've actually done some side by side dry vs humid stored stuff. It's easiest with Xiaguan just because they press so much material. I tend gravitate more towards the humid stored examples. I can see why people like dry stored though. The smart merchants do a mix of both. They'll start with real humid storage for a decade and then bring it to Kunming to mellow.
Crimson Lotus Tea that's why I like the little tea trays you show ant the puehr knives for prying apart that precious cargo, especially for those really hard compressed small square cakes!
I'm guessing by how often he used the phrase "You WILL slip and you WILL stab yourself" that he has slipped and stabbed himself a great many times, lol!
Yeah, you can do that. It depends on the compression level. Some heavily compressed cakes will need to be broken up further. It also depends on personal preference. If you leave it compressed you'll get more sessions out of it since it needs more time to open up.
I got a bunch of samples and that brick. I've been mostly drinking other teas, and the samples. Haven't really gotten around to the brick yet. Mostly, I just lack the tools to do anything with it.
1. Puerh community to beginners : brew in a traditional way, it's not hard 2. Beginner stabs himself with a knife, before burning his fingers with hot water while trying a gaiwan 3. Puer community : oh, hurting yourself is normal 4. Puer community : how can we convince more people to drink 'real' tea, how can we do that ? 5. Me : first, don't assume they're ok to hurt themselves to prepare a drink... They're not junkies (yet) !
