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“Takes forever to loosen up. Brewed in a new tea set. Eventually lost patience after about 10 steeps and prodded the nuggets open with a pick. This changed the flavor and made the liquid cloudier....” Read full tasting note
Lao Cha Tou! These dark little nuggets of shou puerh are sure to please. During the wodui process to make shou puerh the heat and intense weight of the wet pile fermentation creates a perfect environment at the bottom to make ‘Lao Cha Tou’. In Chinese ‘Lao Cha Tou’ (老茶头) means ‘Old Tea Head’, where head refers to a boss or chief. Every wodui pile creates Lao Cha Tou, but not all are created equal. We have had many that were merely sub par experiences. The wodui that we took our Lao Cha Tou from was a high quality Menghai area production that was stellar.
We’ve been looking for an above average Lao Cha Tou to add to our offerings for years now. None that we tried really met our expectations until this Spring. These dark little chunky nuggets of tastiness brew super smooth. You can steep these long, or boil them til they’re motor oil. They always brew smooth and mellow and delicious. They will seemingly steep forever!
The Lao Cha Tou come in a lot of different sizes. In the tea markets in Yunnan they are sold by size. The larger they are the more expensive they are. We have chosen to include a full range of sizes for your drinking pleasure. Some of the bigger chunks can be an entire session all on their own.
We had some special storage jars made just for this awesome material. They’re custom made in Jianshui for us. Storing tea in these jars is advantageous to most other methods. The jars provide a micro climate that is resilient to humidity shifts. You can continue to store tea in these jars for many years. After the tea is gone you can continue to store other teas.
Since these jars are handmade products each are unique. There are slight variations to each. Yours will vary slightly from the pictures. They may be a little bit taller or wider than measured. These jars measure on average 12cm total width and are about 12cm tall. Each jar comes with 100g of Lao Cha Tou.
We have samples of this material and are selling it loose without a jar, but it’s much cooler with a jar.
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Takes forever to loosen up. Brewed in a new tea set. Eventually lost patience after about 10 steeps and prodded the nuggets open with a pick. This changed the flavor and made the liquid cloudier. Next time I will try to stay patient. Sharing tea makes it enjoyable in a different way, but also impossible to take flavor/scent notes.
