Pu'er ripe Tea should be rinsed. Pu'er ripe tea is made from Yunnan large-leaf sun-dried Green Tea as the raw material, after pile fermentation and steaming and pressing, and has been stored for a certain period of time. Therefore, rinsing the tea can better awaken the aroma and flavor components of the tea. To Rinse the tea, place the leaves in a Gaiwan and pour 100°C boiling water over them. After a short while, pour out the water. This is the rinse. Only after this rinse should the tea be normally brewed and consumed.

Is it necessary to rinse Pu'er tea before brewing?

I personally recommend rinsing the tea! The main purpose, without a doubt, is to achieve a better tasting experience. The main reasons are as follows:

If it's an aged tea, with a vintage over 20 years old, I suggest rinsing it 1-2 times.

a. In earlier years, the production process for Pu'er tea was relatively crude and rudimentary, especially during the final processing stage of sun-drying the green tea. Drying areas were typically concrete floors, and even where conditions allowed for the use of sieves, there were no professional drying areas. The raw tea was often exposed to the wind, accumulating a lot of dust. Rinsing the tea twice serves to filter out this dust;

b. Rinsing helps remove off-flavors and odd odors. Typically, when drinking aged tea, you would want to wake up the tea. Over the years of storage, the tea will absorb some off-flavors or odd odors. Even if it hasn't absorbed these flavors, aged teas tend to have a certain aged taste. Rinsing the tea can help reduce some of these flavors;

c. Rinsing also helps stimulate the tea's aroma. After rinsing twice, the aged tea is thoroughly awakened, and starting from the third infusion, the tea's flavor and aroma become purer;

If it's a tea made in recent years, especially new tea from the current year, I suggest rinsing it 1-2 times; the principle is similar to that mentioned above. New teas generally have a certain amount of grassy or smoky flavors, and rinsing can help mitigate these flavors. Time to pour out the rinse: Objectively speaking, there is no standard time to pour out the rinse. Generally, people tend to hold the rinse a bit longer. The criterion is that by the third infusion, the leaves at the bottom of the gaiwan should have mostly unfurled. At this point, the tasting experience will be better!