Sister Ai’s Everyday Shou Pu’er (2017)

Sister Ai’s Everyday Shou Pu’er (2017)

What is Shou (Cooked) Pu'er?

Pu'er is the wine of teas, meticulously picked and aged with each tea mountain having its own personality. True Pu'er is only grown in Yunnan, China, right on the border of Myanmar in the heart of Southeast Asia. It is drunk throughout Asia for its fantastic flavor and health properties.

Shou, or "cooked" pu'er has been put through a process that involves piling the leaves and turning the pile repeatedly to rapidly increase oxidation and fermentation. The resulting tea is dark, complex, and known to calm the stomach and aid digestion.

(Duidui’s Shou Pu’er video: https://youtu.be/BQF61LmyxU8)

THE TEA

Each box contains:

1 50g tea cake (7-10 sessions’ worth of tea, ~2 oz) 

Sister Ai’s cooked pu’ers are excellently balanced, with clean, earthy, dark flavors, and unmolested by fishy smells which can be a result of poor post-fermentation.

This shou is a good middle-of-the-road shou - a true “everyday” cooked pu’er. It’s not as rich as Duidui’s 2010 Reserve, and not as funky as Yunqing’s 2013 Chen Xiang. It is crisp, clean, and while it comes out very dark in color, it retains an easy-drinking quality that can sometimes be hard to find from a tea type with so much post-fermented flavor.

These leaves come from wild trees between 100-300 years old, with extensive root systems that reach far for nutrients and surrounded by native plants that contribute to a special terroir, making Yunnan ancient tree tea some of the best in the world.

Jesse Explains:

Sister Ai’s Qi Zi Bing “Seven Cakes” Series

Sister Ai is a 4th gen tea farmer who we collaborate with to make this “seven cakes” series.

In the ancient days of the Tea Horse Road trading route, loose leaf tea was pressed into discs and then wrapped in bamboo leaves in stacks of seven 357g tea cakes.

These wrapped packages, known as “Tongs”, were the basic unit of tea trade in Yunnan for hundreds of years. Tongs are still available in China today, if you work directly with the farmers.

I’ve always wanted to sell tongs, but most people don’t need 2 kilos of one type of tea. So while we’re sticking to tradition by putting seven cakes in each traditional hand-wrapped tong, I’ve put seven different teas in each tong, all from Sister Ai and her family’s mountains.

I’ve also made the sizes a bit more consumer-friendly, with 7 x 7g mini-tongs and 7 x 50g full tongs. Try a mini-tong to get the whole range of flavors, or the full tong as a mega-sampler for both value and variety.

All seven of the Qi Zi Bing “Seven Cakes” series are available as individual 50g cakes as well, so you can always come back for your favorites.

VALUE AND QUALITY

Jesse's Teahouse started because Jesse realized the quality and value of the tea directly from China was so much higher than what could be easily found in the States -- and around the world.

Jesse contacted his tea friends, they shipped their best teas to him, and he sends them to you. That's it!

These teas are high quality and can be re-steeped multiple times! Each session makes between 4-8 cups of tea, so at around $.50 a cup, you get top quality Chinese teas at a price that you can enjoy every day.

 

NOT JUST TEA, TEA CULTURE

Jesse believes the key to making good tea is to help his Chinese tea friends share not just their best teas, but the best ways to make the teas.

That's why each box comes also comes with an info card that tells you:

• Tea Origin

• Steep Temperature

• Steep Time

• Directions for both teapot steeping and gaiwan steeping

All Jesse’s Teahouse Tea Friends (that’s you now!) also get access to private YouTube videos where Jesse and his Chinese tea friends show you how to make the teas and explain the tea-making process. 

The links are on QR codes on the back of the info card included in the tea box.

Don't Forget Your Tea Pets!

In Chinese Gongfu Tea Tradition, Tea Pets accompany you at teatime and you "raise" them by feeding them tea! Check out the tea pets at the bottom of this page.