Climbing the pu-ehr path

Lewis Perin wrote:
>
> I almost always rinse, too, for the same confusion of reasons. But
> sometimes the would-be rinse smells so good that it becomes the first
> steep. I confess to the same spinelessness with (some) oolongs.
>

I was told once that if you ever been to the tea factory you would rinse
every tea, but this probably could be said of any food related factory :)

I don't know think I'll be rinsing loaves of bread anytime soon. :)

oleg shteynbuk wrote:
> Lewis Perin wrote:
> >
> > I almost always rinse, too, for the same confusion of reasons. But
> > sometimes the would-be rinse smells so good that it becomes the first
> > steep. I confess to the same spinelessness with (some) oolongs.
> >
>
> I was told once that if you ever been to the tea factory you would rinse
> every tea, but this probably could be said of any food related factory :)

just don't visit the bread factory :)

Jason F in Los Angeles wrote:
> I don't know think I'll be rinsing loaves of bread anytime soon. :)
>
> oleg shteynbuk wrote:
>
>>Lewis Perin wrote:
>>
>>>I almost always rinse, too, for the same confusion of reasons. But
>>>sometimes the would-be rinse smells so good that it becomes the first
>>>steep. I confess to the same spinelessness with (some) oolongs.
>>>
>>
>>I was told once that if you ever been to the tea factory you would rinse
>>every tea, but this probably could be said of any food related factory :)
>
>

Mike Petro wrote:
> ALWAYS rinse your puerh, it is the safe thing to do! That being said I
> sometimes cant resist tasting the rinse on the really old dudes, its a
> weakness of mine.

Just as an aside to this issue, it should actually be fine to drink the
rinse if the water was hot enough. If anything this is perfectly
sterilized at this point, now any heavy metals or non-bacteria stuff
that came off in this rinse would still be present though.. and this is
where the rinse would help most.

See, it is how you look at things. I tend to be very logical by nature,
so in my mind I try to think things through an extra couple steps. If
the Pu-Erh contains so many harmful bacteria then the quick rinse at
fairly high temps will kill some of them, true, but then the bits that
didn;t receive the full temperature rise have more likely been raised
to perfect breeding temps. Now if one uses very hot water as they
should this is a non-issue because the next steep will then kill even
more. But if someone uses less than optimally hot water they are
stimulating more division and more bacteria, and through multiple
steeps and time of rest in between it would be a bacteria soup. Pu-Erh
is a unique creature like this, and I still believe that the only real
important thing is to use extremely hot water each and ever steep.
Other than that, it makes little difference to me.

A lot of things are like this, teas or medicines that claim to lower
body temperature when you have a fever... if they really worked they
would be making things *worse* as the fever is your body doing its job.
If anything you would want something that raised your temperature for
you to take the strain off your body, which is more what they actually
do.

And as for the rice, there are many many times where rinsing rice is
NOT a culinary preference. I would implore you to check up on this,
actually learn where some rice is grown and the conditions and
processing... some of this would make Pu-Erh bacteria seem like candy.
I have very close friends who live in Korea and grow rice, they will be
the first to tell you. We're not talking about Uncle Ben's or even
packaged "authentic" rice, but real rice imported and not inspected at
normal levels or thoroughly like much of what can be bought in asian
markets and Chinatowns. The same thing applies as I stated above with
rice too, even a rinse in very hot water will still not eliminate the
contaminants that are *in* the rice naturally from the soil and
environment... and that is the real harmful part, much moreso than what
is on the outside.

- Dominic

X-No-Archive: Yes

There you've all gone and made me quite ill, and I shall never drink
tea again. :((((

Everyone wrote of the horrible things that may well dwell in
tea.........

<randomm@mindless.com> wrote:
>
>There you've all gone and made me quite ill, and I shall never drink
>tea again. :((((
>
>Everyone wrote of the horrible things that may well dwell in
>tea.........

Not one of them, however, was as horrible as a Lipton's bag.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."