Pu'er ripe Tea when compressed into cakes, some are made loose (appearing more attractive), while others are made very tight (referred to as “pressed like iron” in Pu'er), making it hard to discern the individual tea leaves.

First, let's define what pressing tea into a cake means: it involves compressing loose tea leaves into a round disc shape. To maintain its form without falling apart, the tea leaves need to have a certain length; otherwise, they will not hold their shape.

Hence, raw Pu'er tea is easily compressed into attractive cakes because the leaves of raw Pu'er tea are very intact.

Ripe Pu'er tea is different. After fermentation, the tea leaves become much smaller and more fragile, making them difficult to preserve in their original form. Particularly with Imperial Pu'er ripe tea, which has a high proportion of buds, the resulting tea is very short. Consequently, to compress this type of tea into a cake, greater force and time are required, resulting in a tighter cake.

Does pressing too tightly affect the taste? In fact, a moderate level of tightness is best, but it does not significantly impact the flavor. Moreover, some teas, due to their inherently short nature, will naturally be pressed tightly when made into cakes.