For the past week I have not consumed any puerh whatsoever.
Unfortunately, my back went out and most of my time is spent recovering from one
of the occasional bouts of pain from a former injury. Bad days do not come
often, but when the back goes out I spend a week or two taking either aspirin
or ibuprofen, or both, in as low a dose as I possibly can. The idea is to
slowly reduce the inflammation over a period of weeks as the medicines build up
a level in the blood. This is not a quick pain fix, but it works. One needs to
be patient.
One also needs to be mindful of the stomach. Aspirin causes
stomach bleeding, and thins the blood which can cause bleeding or easy bruising
in other parts of the body, including the gums. I thank the gods for ibuprofen,
a miracle pain reliever that came out while I was in college, and a
life-changer for women’s menstrual pain. Yet this medicine too, along with
naproxen sodium, now causes some stomach distress for me especially when taking
generic forms. As a result, I am not drinking any puerh during this medicine
course, but instead taking some roasted oolong and yancha teas.
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Puerh is called the “whiskey of teas” for a reason, and not
just because of the myriad of flavors. Whiskey is a hard beverage, and puerh is
hard tea. It is no different than taking a shot of whiskey. Ask yourself, under
what conditions will I take a shot of whiskey? Can I do so in the morning, or
on an empty stomach? While a hard core drinker might, he cannot do so forever.
Hard beverages can and will catch up with you. You pay the piper eventually
somewhere in your body, and very often the stomach is first to complain.
I never take any form of puerh first thing in the morning. I
have medications to take, and so I drink hongcha with milk to ease into the
day. Generally I prefer my puerh in the evening, an hour after supper, just as
I would any other shot or digestif. In fact, I think puerh is best taken an
hour or so after the largest meal of the day, so that the stomach is protected.
For some folks, any green puerh at all might not be digestible without
distress. Yunnan broad leaf tea is that strong, people.
Fortunately, I do not have any problem drinking green puerh
tea, although it is not the only form of tea I drink in a day, and I do not
always drink puerh every day either. I would guzzle it all day long, but instead
I drink other teas too, most of which I do not write about because I get email complaints
when I do. My tea avatar certainly drinks puerh non-stop, but she is an avatar,
after all, and not this writer in full reality. She is wishful thinking. She is
the person at work all day wishing she could drink tea instead of doing her
duty. For the sake of your stomach, creating a puerh avatar is helpful so she
can go tea shopping instead of cooking dinner for the family.
When I starting drinking puerh years ago, I found some blogs
to read which gave me real information and experience on the cautionary aspects
of puerh tea, blogs such as Tea Closet, A Tea Addict’s Journal, The Half-Dipper and TeaDB. The authors of
these blogs are honest about the stomach effects of puerh tea, both in general terms
and very specifically about teas they cover. These authors have found a way to
write honestly about puerh teas, even when they are drinking samples provided
by others. If that tea bothered the stomach, you can be sure they will say so. They cover stomach effects quite clearly.
Some tea vendors will say that a person can drink a very
fine quality puerh at any time in its life, whether green, or teenage, or
highly aged. The idea is that perhaps Gushu tea is safe. On the other hand,
harsh “factory” teas made from plantation leaf, younger trees, and/or those
grown with agro-chemicals, are the teas responsible for stomach distress. I say
that no generalization will apply to everyone about puerh tea, just as I will
say no generalization applies to whiskey or any other alcoholic beverages.
These are “at your risk” beverages every single time you swallow one. Just as you can find a ninety year old geezer surviving just fine on his whiskey and cigars, you can find another one dead of the same at fifty. Likewise, you can find an old fart like me drinking puerh tea, and a twenty year old whose stomach cannot take it at all.
I recommend reading the above blogs from front to back. Most
people don’t like to read much, or even search the internet for information on
puerh. But if you take up puerh as a serious hobby, really you need to read and
keep up on the reading as more information comes out. We are just learning more
and more every year about how puerh tea ferments. Reading blogs from the
beginning to today will require reading from the bottom of the pages on up, a
tedious task, but this is worth doing. You will see those authors travel a
journey with some wonderful teas, and also some gut-wrenching moments. In some
cases, you will read years of gut-wrenching moments as the authors learned what
teas they can drink and which ones they cannot.
My blog is about the worst one you can read, for my avatar
is not in reality whatsoever. Even more blogs get started every year that
mainly wax eloquently about wonderful teas with no dose of reality anywhere. I
call my blog Tea Fluff, or Tea Filth. It is entertainment for puerh drinkers
and me, but nothing more. You won’t find much tea education here. I worry that
with puerh tea hitting a new mainstream hype, the cautionary tales long
recorded on blogs will get lost in the excitement of new people taking up the
hobby. Nowhere in the new articles on NPR and elsewhere do I see a realistic
perspective on puerh tea. I can’t promise anything different myself, but I feel
as though other authors such as those I cited above have done a good job. They continue
to write honestly and informatively about puerh tea. Because of their work,
somebody like me has the luxury of entertaining and drawing filthy tea cartoons
as opposed to educating.
I think most mature tea drinkers drink a variety of teas.
They know how to pair oolong with dessert, or hongcha with breakfast. They know
how long to hold yancha and longjing, and how to detect a sour roast. They know
how well heicha settles a heavy meal. All this is part of the tea drinking
experience, and drinking widely amongst teas, not just puerh, is the best way
for the body to enjoy tea. When a person takes medications, as I do, even more
self-knowledge is required to continue enjoying tea and not wreck myself
further in the process. The whole point of drinking tea is for enjoyment, and I
want to continue to enjoy all of my teas as long as I can.
