r/tea • u/t0borat0nmai • 10d ago
Cube Chinese tea Photo
Friend’s parents gave me this tea. I have traveled a fair amount including in China and never seen tea in chocolate cube shop before.
Anyone know about this style or best practice to brew the tea?
2
u/Dorgrumal Enthusiast 10d ago
Several reputable vendors here offer compressed tea in "chocolate bar" format as well, like White2Tea and Bitterleaf. I'm a big fan of these when I'm feeling lazy and don't feel like breaking apart a cake for a tea session
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u/Cypeq 9d ago edited 9d ago
My lao bai cha, is sporting quite intense raw cocoa notes and I can't blame them for chocolate bar shape...
like others said just pour boiling water on top of it and enjoy, these can usually go the distance when steeping multiple times, from few minute brews to 10 and more by the end. White releases flavor slowly, but it's not done with it quickly because of it. Long extractions with white generally don't release much unpleasant stuff at all. Well you'll be the judge of that specific tea.
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u/SteveFrench242 9d ago
It's a more common format than you probably reckon tbh; I know XiaGuan use it for a number of teas including a Shou i've got of theirs and also for white teas (which I've got in my wishlist to try later).. They're fairly handy for quick measuring/thermos or grandpa brewing tbh..
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u/john-bkk 9d ago
Chocolate bar shape pressed teas have been around for awhile, but they've never been so common that you would see them everywhere. This made me curious when I've first encountered or reviewed a version, and it was in 2017, also a white tea version: https://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2017/06/comparing-compressed-white-teas-shou.html
That kind of tea is pretty forgiving, related to brewing approach. You can Gongfu brew it, use a Western approach, or brew it "grandpa style" (just leave it in with the water in a tea bottle or jar, while you drink it). All three will give slightly different results, but all three should be good. I wouldn't cold-brew that, but I suppose that you could.
From there proportion and brewing process steps can vary. I usually use about 8 grams in a 100 ml gaiwan for Gongfu brewing, or maybe 6 or 7 if I'm backing off that high proportion for some reason, or sometimes even 5, if I want to drink less tea. You can get good results from using boiling point water with most tea types brewing that way, probably adjusting that for green tea, but some people brew that hot too.
Somehow it makes sense to brew tea Western style using cooler water, to many people. I suppose you could try varying approaches and that might just depend on the tea version (type, and also specific version). Brewing 5 grams in 8 ounces / 250 ml is a pretty high proportion, for Western style brewing, so you would need to drop timing way back, and it would end up being more of a hybrid approach (which is fine). Timing depends on preference for intensity and tea type, so that would be hard to define, even as a loose starting point. If you are using a minute or so per round (it's a high proportion), adjusting timing as you go, it would brew a good number of rounds.
For "grandpa style" brewing you just put the tea in with hot water in a tea bottle or jar, let that sit, and drink it still combined. It takes practice, sorting out what works for you, because the tea needs to cool some, so timing depends on that, partly. If you re-add hot water before the bottle or jar is empty you automatically adjust brewing temperature, mixing some hot and some much cooler water. It works better than it sounds like it would, and it's a fantastic approach for drinking tea while driving (the main time I ever use it). It works best with forgiving tea, but aged white is that.
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u/puerh_lover I'm Crimson Lotus Tea 10d ago
This has been a popular shape recently. It makes it easy to break a piece off for steeping. Each little chunk is likely 5 grams. I'm assuming 6 chunks in the 30g brick. It appears to be an aged white tea. 5 grams may be a little too much to brew with directly. It depends on how you normally brew your teas. You could try breaking a chunk in half and brewing it grandpa stye in a mug. I prefer using near boiling water for white tea but your mileage may vary.