2020 'KUURA-Cola' Ripe Pu-erh Tea
KUURA-Cola is Kuura's mainstay in-house ripe puerh tea cake. A blend of material fermented in 2018 and 2019, and pressed in 2020, with the goal of providing an affordable, clean, and workhorse ripe puer for daily drinking. If you’re new to puerh tea, ripe puerh is the most common kind you’ll come across out in the wild, rather than raw or sheng puerh. The tea undergoes wet-pile fermentation for a period of around 40-60 days, turning the tea very dark, rich, and smooth. This process was originally intended as a way to accelerate the ageing of a raw puerh tea, but has evolved into its own style.
When brewed, the tea is dark brown and opaque—looking similar to brewed coffee—and has a thick, rich, earthy flavour and fragrance, with no bitterness. Ripe puerh can sometimes be a little ‘funky’ or have a some fermented qualities in the taste or smell, but with clean processing and some time to age, the result is an smooth and soothing tea. If you’ve never tried a ripe puerh before, it’s one of the most obviously different styles of tea and unlikely to be similar to anything you’ve tried before.
If you’re familiar with the style, we can say this particular tea was produced and blended to be clean, thick, and durable, with a sweet-leaning fragrance, sometimes hinting toward vanilla or sweet wood.
Some people can be particularly sensitive to any sort of fermentation fragrance or flavour; whilst this tea has had some time to age since it’s production, we’d encourage you to let the cake rest a little after shipping to have time to acclimatise. We also like to rinse all ripe puerh twice, rather than just once, to help open up the leaves and clean out any lingering fermentation funk.
Artwork by Sprinks. Pictures by Pingle Pictures.
Brewing guidelines
Use boiling water (100C).
We recommend approx 1g of tea per 15ml of water for Gongfu-style brewing in a teapot or gaiwan. Rinse the leaves once and then brew several times until there is no flavour left.
For Western-style brewing in a larger teapot, use approx. 5g per 100ml of water. You can re-brew the leaves a few times.
To brew direct in a mug, use 1-2g of tea in the bottom of the cup, fill with boiling water, and drink once cool. Re-fill the cup with more water when you've drunk 1/3rd of the tea. Repeat until there is no more flavour left.
For KOMBUCHA - 2-5g for 2 litres is plenty - let steep for 30 minutes to get the full flavour and colour, adding your choice of sweetener while it's still warm to dissolve.
Delivery
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FAQs
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