My first batch of pu-erh
Pu-erh tea at home

Pu-erh tea at home

My best friend, Dani, brought this home from Singapore:

100g of pu-erh tea from Yixing Xuan Teahouse
100 grams of pu-erh tea from Yixing Xuan Teahouse!
I had been working with her and our other friend on her wedding cards design (more about that soon) and she gave me tea as a gift. It really wasn’t necessary, but you just never turn down the gift of tea!

My first post was about discovering pu-erh tea at Yixing Xuan Teahouse during one of my visits to Singapore. This counts as my favorite of all the teas I’ve tried.

I have no idea what I’m doing

Unwrapping pu-erh tea
Hardened pu-erh tea from Yixing Xuan Teahouse
The only form of tea I’ve encountered were loose tea and teabags, so unwrapping the pu-erh and finding out that it came in hardened form was a delightful surprise. As you can see above, Yixing Xuan Teahouse’s pu-erh comes shaped like a chocolate doughnut wrapped in paper. It looks soft and chewy, but it really is this rock-hard, dried, and compressed leaves. I couldn’t break it with my hands. I tried slicing it with a knife and an ice pick, both to no avail. Running out of options from my tiny, under-equipped kitchen, I picked my cheese grater. Okay, this could work.

I started rubbing the block of pu-erh against the grater. It worked! I was seeing a mixture of powder-like to small shreds of pu-erh, something I was sure I could put in a strainer. So that was good enough for me.

Pu-erh tea at Yixing Xuan Teahouse
Shreds of pu-erh tea, thanks to my cheese grater

Tea time!

My first batch of pu-erh
My first batch of pu-erh
I’m currently researching and asking around for the correct way to make this, because I’m sure as hell it isn’t with a cheese grater 😛 Tips?

♥ K

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5 Replies to “Pu-erh tea at home”

  1. you use a puerh pick, dear. or..you can try zaping it in the microwave for 10 quick seconds. it should taste better if the leaves arent broken into bits. i also have a Golden Puerh you might want to try. wanna swap? hehehe

      1. yikes totally missed this post until now. how did the ice pick experiment go? you can try a letter opener, it is like a blunk knife no?

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