FISHY TEA?! What makes Ripe PuErh taste funky?

peytie heads this is done from a teeth in this video why does my tea taste fishy so many times I hear people say I don't like to drink tea especially ripe pure tea because it has this funky fishy aroma so I thought what I would do is explain that today and take one for the team and drink some goober fishy tea so what causes this fishiness in tea and I have to say it is mostly related to ripe or cooked pour tea if you're not sure what right party is I'll put a link in the description below to check out another video explaining all about right Bertie it can happen in other teas but essentially right puah is always the focal point for this discussion and these suckers here these cheap tor teas tor meaning this shapes of these small pellet ripe teas are always top of the list when it comes to teas which have the most likelihood for having a swishy aroma in China they call this aroma the dried a squid aroma which is no more appetizing or you may hear of the term water which is the aromatic smell this particular smell which comes from the wet piling ripening process of poorer tea what causes this aroma this aroma is caused primarily by bacterial breakdown of the plant matter and I think that the biggest suspect in creating this aroma is trying methyl amine now apologies if I'm pronouncing that wrong but that is an aromatic which has this funky fishy aroma so when you are ripening poety you are obviously wet piling it which means you're piling it up with in a hot environment in a humid environment you're pouring water over it you're trying to maximize this bacterial and fungal fermentation of the tea now if this process is not done very carefully then you can create more bacteria so a higher proportion of bacteria which will create this tri methyl amine but I have to say that with all ripening processes this tri methyl amine is created so when you get freshly ripened purity it will always have this smell in different varying degrees sometimes more sometimes less depending on the skill of the fermenters however that is why is very important that the producers do not bring that tea to market until the tea has had a chance to dissipate this aroma so what they'll usually do is they'll pile the tea into breathable bags and there will store the tea in a very good clean well-ventilated warehouse for a minimum of a year usually two years to release all of this would way smell and then and only then it's ready for market so what I have here is some freshly made ripens Tisa this I just asked my suppliers in China just send me a small amount of your freshly ripened tea because they're ripening right now so this is fresh off the pile so I expect a full fishy hit from this here we have some cheap you nan tour tea you'll see this all over the market and as I said it is usually the candidate that most people react to when they're first purchasing peyote they first purchase these torti bricks and if they are pressed too early in other words the tea has not had enough time for that smell to dissipate or the processing the fermentation has not been done really well and you've developed far too many of these bacteria which contribute to this trying meetha I mean then you are gonna get some locked in fishy aroma and here as a treat I have some black Yunnan tor 96 this is 23 year old aged ripe puah it's a tor tea but I want to show you what a great tour tea can taste like with zero fishy aroma so this is new in on the may leaf collection we've just replaced our black unit 198 with this black Yunnan 96 so even our the right let's get stuck in I'm gonna pick this right purity here you can take a little look at it see if I can get a focus on here standard look nothing particularly exciting that's what you'll expect to see and I have to say that you're not going to be able to see from looks whether or not the tea has this fishy aroma I'm now gonna take some of my black unit or 96 open this one up similar color not much difference you can see there and I'm gonna throw in 5 grams of this from boolong so this is a high quality right pure this is going to be stored for two years in a factory to release that water smell and so it's going to make a really excellent right cool nothing wrong with it but I fully expect it to have that freshly cooked aroma tour teas need to be rinsed for a little bit longer because they are pellets so I'm just gonna pull that off and then leave the lid on to allow the pellets to just sort of steam open before I sniff them and then we're gonna rinse this boo Lang raipur already getting a cornucopia of aromas hitting my nose so you have the classic sort of aromatics of right poety that most people speak about is a sort of earthiness or crypt like quality now I think once you get some good write power then you start to really get the aromatics beyond that use you should start to get aromatics that are more like antique woods fudges vanilla a lot of that ripening process develops vanilla move develops the vanilla notes of the tea so you want to pick up more of those sweet herbal aromatics alright here we go let's have a sniff of this black unit all I have to say this was just one of the cheap black bean and tours that has been sent to me yep definitely fishy I mean it's got other aromatics it's got a like a sweet cranberry note it's got some antique wood some nice notes going on but definitely there that dried squid aroma try to expel that from my nose okay here we go looking forward to this ready so freshly ripened cool well you know what it's there for sure it's there it's a little bit more than in this one here so considering this is freshly off of the pile it's not too bad but definitely something that I would stay away from it's got some vanilla notes it's got some little nutty chestnut notes but definitely this dried squid aroma fishy aroma I mean the best way to describe it is if you have ever visited a place where they dry fish you can kind of just get this waft in the air this sort of fishy not not like not like wet fishy not like sort of slimy fishy but just a dried fish aroma right we're gonna increase the temperature of the water here I want nice boiling hot water you can see the different teas here and you can see how much more this one has opened up compared to this one here so that one's gonna be a harder one to brew so I'm gonna hit that one first boiling hot water we're gonna leave that for at least 30 seconds to really maximize the flavor hit there and then I'm gonna hit this one here which is already breaking up and finally we go for that fresh boo Laing you go interesting to see the difference in the colors of the liquor here my condo bays I'm actually gonna start with this one and leave the middle one to prove it longer because I know it's gonna take some time then we go with the pulang similar color lovely chestnut auburn brown and finally come on come on little one let's go it doesn't necessarily mean it's a low quality tea if it's not opening quickly but it does mean that it's been compressed very very hard pellets and the question is how soon after the cooking or ripening process was the tea press that's a very important bit of information really because that will suggest whether or not the tea has that fishy aroma because you can't really assess it by the look of the leaves or the smell of the dry tea unless it's really really bad okay here we go let's see the different colors here clearly this one is lighter because it needed some more time to open up that pellet is still pretty hard in there but let's taste anyway okay here we go put these aside three cups which one should I taste first I'm gonna taste the lightest one this is a cheap UNAM torti now all tour tees tend to be cheaper than cakes tend to be cheaper than loose ripes so you know that's why a lot of people first discover poor through these cheap tees and that's why they have a bad experience and that's why we hear oftentimes people go oh I can't drink that pour and they haven't really tried the best stuff out there yeah there it is definitely this sulfurous fishy not pleasant not pleasant at all taste and it's very hard to get past that now what a lot of people will suggest that you do if you pick up this aroma is throw away the first infusion rinse the tea a couple of times and that will dissipate some of this fishy aroma and that is true you can usually tell when a tea was decently ripened but was pressed to earlier was brought to the market too early because you can wash away that Wadley aroma if however the tea has been badly fermented in other words too many of the of the cultures of the bacteria which create this trimethylamine are in the fermentation process then it's very hard to get rid of those aromatics okay not nice if that was my first experience of raw power right pure I would not be returning to it the smell coming off this funky funky whoo oh yeah oh yeah definitely they're stronger than Linda than the 40 and I can tell from the texture in my mouth from the sensation from the sweetness that's developing already that this is a high quality tea but it just needs to be left for a couple of years to breathe oh yeah no definitely not something that you should be drinking now what is it about this ripening process that creates these bacteria well there are bacteria that are on the fresh leaf already in fact plenty of bacteria on the fresh leaf but through the fermentation through this heated environment through this wet piling you're going to create even more in fact the studies that I've seen show that ripe pour has about 500 over 500 different bacteria in the tea this is just bacteria not funk funk II but bacteria and the roar has shares around 90 so you can see that there are about 90 that are common between raw and ripe but there's an extra for over 450 different bacteria that are created through this ripening process right finally I get to taste this beautiful coffee liqueur looking tea and it's just a world of difference remember that this is 23 years old it's smooth its silky its creamy mmm what a tea it has those vanilla notes antique woods vanillas a little bit of Chinese herb or note like Angelica root some to do a very very slight sweetness there of jujube a I'm getting the sort of spices that you get in incense sandal woods things like that really really complex and delicious very smooth very very silky absolutely zero funky fish aroma mmm creamy as well the smell of these leaves this one here [Applause] it's like charred charred woods so bourbon casks that sort of charred vanilla rum notes going on a little bit of toffee notes happening a bit buttery and toffee like as well and the finish in my mouth is mineral and sweet and this is or should be your first experience of ripe party so I advise everybody please try to make sure that you pick up if you're gonna try some of this torti this ripe port or tea then try to pick up a good quality one ask the right questions preferably one that's been aged for at least a few years all right 23 years is a bit extreme but you know at least a few years so find out when it was picked find out when it was cooked and that will give you a lot of information lovely dark liquor the kapap and this will go for infusion and infusion it'll go for so many different infusions you can definitely drink this the whole day see what I love about good right pure is you're getting a great balance between minerality and creaminess between this sort of cleansing bracing refreshing quality and this silky vanilla cream equality now let's smell the empty cup and see what we're getting here so what you're getting here is very classic dried la quite dried Chinese herbs and Locke what fruit it's a very specific smell dried Locke what even a bit syrupy there's a sort of sugared dried fruit note but it has this sort of charred note to it a little bit of a toasted note to it as well so there you go watch out for the fishy T's you now know what's causing it as I said it could be to do with the fact that it's been brought to market too early so always look for dates and if that fishy aroma doesn't dissipate after a couple of rinses then I would throw that to your way because it means it was badly fermented let us know your experiences let us know if you've had this fishy aroma and which teas you've experienced it with that's a tea heads check out our other videos taste our teas wherever you are in the world by browsing mail if calm will come and visit our tea house if you're ever in London other than that I'm Don from a leaf thank you for being a part of the revelation of true tea stay away from those tea bags keep drinking the good stuff and spread the word because nobody deserves bad teeth bye

Channel: Mei Leaf

Views: 13,865

Keywords: tea, mei leaf, don mei, loose leaf tea, white tea, green tea, yellow tea, oolong tea, matcha tea, black tea, puerh tea, puer tea, pu erh tea, chinese tea, taiwanese tea, tea ware, teaware, tea gifts, gong fu tea, gong fu brewing, ripe puerh, cooked puerh, shu, shou, fishy tea, fermented tea, kombucha, tuo tea, yunnan tea, wo dui, cooked tea, puer

Id: wG8kg2bcu_w

Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 24 2019