Another Short Video on Wrapping a Puer Cake

I loaded a video on wrapping a puer cake from my previous blog post and I mentioned it was the sweet factory owner. My apologies. That was one of his employees who showed us how to wrap a puer cake.

Here it is. This one is from the Puer factory owner. Enjoy!

A Short Video On Wrapping Puer Cakes

The other day I was drinking this purple leaf Puer cake that I purchased from a very sweet puer factory owner in MoJiang, Yunnan during my April 2015 trip. I loved that trip and a lot of good memories came back to me. I suddenly remembered that I took a short video of him showing us how to wrap a Puer cake. He is actually not a very fast wrapper, but he knows that. You will see his cute facial expression at the end of the video. Enjoy!

Videos of Pressing Puer Cakes

Here are some of the Puer videos that I promised to post. These were taken in a small factory in Mo Jiang that we had visited this past April. You can see that it's clean and all the workers wear uniforms, hats and masks. Before we entered the factory, we were asked to put on a similar uniform and shoe covers.

After a worker weighs the Mao Cha, it goes into a holder that is placed on top of steam to soften the leaves. I love this process, it's like magic!

Then another worker takes the steamed leaves and skillfully wraps the leaves in a piece of cloth before pressing. It's very difficult to do it right and he does it with such beauty.

This is a video of the machine pressing a Puer cake.

There will be more videos in the next couple of posts. I can't wait to go back!

Pressing Puer Cakes

Here are some of the basic steps involved in pressing Puer. I will share more information and some videos with you after I return to Seattle.

1.  Prepare the Puer Mao Cha.

2.  Weigh the leaves.

3.  Steam the Puer tea.

4.   Place the steamed leaves into a cloth wrapper and then tie the bag into a specific size and shape.

5.  Press the cloth bag with the steamed leaves about 3 times.

6.  Lay pressed cakes, wrapped in cloth, on tea racks.

7.  After the pressed cakes cool enough, the cloth wrapper is removed and the cakes are laid on racks for further drying.

Making Puer Mao Cha

After we collected the freshly picked tea leaves from the XiLi tea field, we went back to Mr. Wang’s tea factory. He instructed one of his works to to help us make Puer Mao Cha.

Here are the steps:

1. Build the fire for firing the tea

2. Put freshly picked leaves on tea baskets for withering

3. Once in a while, shake the leaves to help the components in the leaves react with each other

4. Fry the leaves

5. Air dry the leaves after firing the leaves

We were grateful to Mr. Wang and his worker for showing us the traditional way to fire the tea with a wok. He said they now use machines to fire the tea in his factory. The withering leaves smell very fragrant. They reminded me of Oolong. I touched the leaves after they were fired and they felt kind of sticky. I loved watching the tea maker firing the tea in the wok. His hand movements were very beautiful.

We had to leave before the leaves were dry. Mr. Wang said he would send it to our hotel in Kunming. I can’t wait to taste this Mao Cha!