“Old tea heads” are fermentation's happy accident — dense, sweet nuggets. Pressed into bricks, they brew thicker and sweeter than ordinary shou.
Tea Profile
At a glance: 2012 · Ripe (shou/shu) puerh · 250g brick · fermented tea heads · DaYi (Menghai Tea Factory)
- Compression & dry leaf: The tea comes as a 250g brick. In the dry leaf you can see an even, dark fermentation.
- Liquor: The infusion pours deep red.
- Taste: The middle steeps bring out notes of caramel, with a sweet and rich taste. Each round shows a slightly different side of it.
- Mouthfeel & body: On the palate it is thick, full-bodied and smooth.
- Aftertaste: The finish is calm and rounded rather than sharp.
- Best for: improving your tea experience; it rewards slower brewing and is a good next step after your first few ripe puerh teas.
Brewing Guide
- Water: bring it to a full boil — 100°C (212°F).
- Steps:
- Use about 5g of tea per 100ml of water.
- Rinse the leaves twice with boiling water, about 5 seconds each time, then pour it away. Cover and let the leaves rest for around 10 minutes.
- Steep 10–15 seconds for the first infusions, adding roughly 5 seconds each round.
- Decant into a sharing pitcher.
- Serve. Ripe puerh stands up well to many resteeps.
- These are starting points, not fixed rules. Play with high or low pours, fast or slow streams, and adjust across seasons until you find your method. Getting the best out of the same tea in any year, season, weather or place takes practice — and that skill is the real goal.
Storage
Store the cake somewhere ventilated, cool and dry, out of direct sunlight and away from strong smells such as kitchen spices or smoke. For aging over years, paper or clay containers allow better airflow than sealed plastic.
A Note on Appearance
You won't find these on every cake — they tend to turn up more often in teas that have been stored longer.
- Small dark specks: on naturally stored puerh, tiny dark specks can show up on the wrapper or around the cake edges. Harmless — just brush them off before brewing.
- Tea oil spots: yellowish spots sometimes appear; they come from the tea's natural oils and are not a defect.
- Torn wrapper: the cotton paper may pick up small tears or holes during storage and handling. The tea inside is fine.
