![]() BREWING
TEA - FLAKING TEA LEAVES
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FLAKING TEA LEAVES
Most Puerh teas come in the form
of a compressed teacake. The tea leaves must be carefully flaked from
the teacake for each brewing session. Below are 2 important points to
keep in mind when breaking up your teacake:
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• Avoid overly large and
thick pieces of tea |
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• Try to keep the leaves whole and
intact |
Large chunky pieces of tea are
difficult to brew and the flavors will take time to be extracted. While
it is impossible not to break some tea leaves during flaking, efforts
should be made to keep this to a minimum. Finely broken pieces of tea
can bring about bitterness and harsh flavors. Additionally such leaves
will quickly lose their strength and fade quickly, consequently preventing
a natural release of flavors and hampering the tea's potential.
The above picture shows tea leaves carefully
flaked from a teacake and ready for brewing. Each piece is no more than
3 layers in thickness and most of the leaves are whole and intact.
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