PU'ER ENCYCLOPEDIA
A working reference for sheng, shu and the long arc of Yunnan tea
New to pu-er, evaluating a specific cake, or wondering if the one already in your cabinet is ready to drink — puerh.app is the field-note layer for that decision, a deep catalog of cakes, factories and mountains across processing, aging and brewing.
WHERE TO START
Three ways in — pick yours
New to pu-erh?
Five questions, two minutes — get a starting category and a real, safe first SKU to try.
Open → — 02Evaluating a specific cake?
Run the sheng-or-shu quick classifier on what's actually in front of you — leaf, liquor, cup.
Open → — 03Already have pu-erh at home?
Enter the pressing year, category and storage — get a drink-now-or-wait read, plus a storage-risk check.
Open →REAL SKUS
Five cakes and formats, actually for sale
Real weight, real pricing and real brewing parameters pulled from the teamotea retail catalog — not placeholder copy. Each links through to its live product page on shop.teamotea.com.
Shu · imperial grade
Gōngtíng pǔ'ěr
The finest bud grade in the thirteen-tier shu classification — smooth, with no earthy notes.
Shu · tea nuggets
Lǎo chá tóu
Dense pectin-rich clumps from the wò duī pile — thick, sweet, and famously forgiving of a heavy hand.
Shu · golden bud
Dà jīn yá shú pǔ'ěr
Large, downy buds with a reddish-gold sheen — graded for size and visual impact.
Shu · green tangerine
Chénpí sī xiǎo qīnggān
Ripe pu-erh packed into a whole aged mandarin — a citrus-and-wood profile from Xinhui.
Pu-erh paste
Chágāo shú pǔ'ěr
A concentrated tea extract that dissolves on contact — no leaves, no strainer.
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Recent additions to the library
History & culture
2007 — the year the pu'er market crashed
Pǔ'ěr pàomò · 普洱泡沫
For eighteen months Yunnan ran hot — speculation, cake-flipping, factories printing tickets. Then in spring 2007 the floor dropped, and an entire category had to relearn what tea was for.
Ānchá
Ānchá · 安茶
Ancha is one of the most enigmatic and distinctive teas of China, standing apart even within the six-category classification system. This traditional post-fermented compressed tea from Qimen County (Keemun) in Anhui Province has a history spanning approximately three hundred years.
Ānhuà hēichá
Ānhuà hēichá · 安化黑茶
Anhua Hei Cha is a collective name for an entire family of post-fermented dark teas produced in Ānhuà County (安化县, Ānhuà Xiàn) of Hunan Province. This is one of the oldest and most significant representatives of the Hēi Chá (黑茶, Hēichá) category in China, including the famous "Three Tips" (三尖, Sān Jiān), "Three…
By topic
8 topics
Where pu-erh sleeps shapes what it becomes
cāng · 仓
Brewing pu'er — method follows the leaf
pào chá · 泡茶
Six centuries of pu'er — caravans, courts, and crashes
Pǔ'ěr chá · 普洱茶
From fresh leaf to bǐng — the craft behind pu'er
Máo Chá · 毛茶
Six mountains, six flavours — terroir in pu-erh
Yún Nán · 云南
The raw leaf, and the long wait it asks for
Shēng Pǔ'ěr · 生普洱
The cooked half of the pu'er story
Shú Pǔ'ěr · 熟普洱
Learning to taste a cake before you trust it
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