Tangerine Pu-erh
Xiǎo Qīng Gān · 小青柑
Ripe pu-erh tea leaves rested in sun-dried green tangerine peel.
Drinkers describe a steady, level cup — company for a long afternoon rather than a push.
7 pieces / 84 g
Open it.
Lift the stem cap; the fruit opens where it grew. One whole piece per pot, rinsed once at 100 °C, then short steeps.
Three ways to open one fruit.
Chinese brewing guides give the little tangerine three preparations. Each is a different ratio of peel to leaf in the cup, so each is a different tea. Start whole.
Zhěng kē chōng pào — the piece steeps intact, cap lifted. The slowest to open and the longest-lived of the three.
Jiǔ kǒng fǎ — the nine-hole method. A tea needle puts small holes through the shell, and leaf and peel arrive together. The middle path; rounds come faster.
Suì pí chōng pào — peel cracked and brewed loose with the leaf. The loudest cup and the shortest session, and the honest way to finish a piece.
A session drawn to scale: seconds per steep, rinse poured away. Water at a full boil — cooler water reads thin on a dense piece. Xinhui columns treat the first cups as a warm-up and put the peak between the third and sixth steep; the chart stops counting before the fruit does.
Slow warmth, long attention.
Drinkers describe a shou session as ballast: warming, settling, alertness that sits low rather than spikes. How much caffeine reaches the cup is mostly a decision you make with the kettle; heat and seconds do the extracting, so ten short steeps read differently from one long mug. Tea carries caffeine and L-theanine, and what drinkers call calm attention is the two together.
Descriptions of what tea people report, not promises. Effects vary by person, by piece, by afternoon.
You have the black box. The silver one is the morning half — same peel, lighter leaf, 90 °C.
Post your first steep — tag @chifir.us.
Read the field notes →Back to top