China Puerh Tea Leaves

Puerh, also known as Pu'er, Bolay, or dark tea (hei cha), is a tea produced in Yunnan Province, China.
Sheng or 'raw' puerh has been aged with minimal processing, in loose leaf form or cake, or compressed form. The aging of the tea is under supervised conditions and can be from 5 to 20 years, which can increase the flavour profile.
Shou or 'cooked' puerh has additional processes where heat and moisture, along with beneficial bacteria are added to the tea leaves. This has been done to speed up the aging process, or ripen the tea, but can be aged for flavour as for Sheng puerh.

Key flavour notes of puerh are earth, spice, camphor or wood, fruity, and tobacco.

When making tea using the puerh tea cakes (or bing cha), you will need a fine shaped tool, much like a letter opener to pry the compressed leaves apart. These leaves can then be infused many times.

Depending on whether you use a teapot or Gaiwan for infusing, you should use boiling water with quick infusion times from 10 to 15 seconds for the first and second, 30 to 45 seconds for the next two, and then increasing the infusion time up to a minute at your later infusions.

Rinsing the tea leaves is also a popular thing to do inorder to cleanse the dust etc off. This is a quick infusion over the tea leaves in the teapot or Gaiwan and then discarding almost immediately.