I’m sick and tired of electric kettles

Session-worthy puer + the surprising difficulty of heating water for tea.

A tea to linger over

The tea: 2023 Jingmai Gulan puer, sold by Farmer Leaf. $198 for 357g.

There are times you need a quick tea break and occasions when you want an excuse to chill out. This puer from Yunnan’s Jingmai mountain is for the latter. Take it slow as you pry the leaves from the pressed cake. Let your anticipation build as you wait for your water to boil. Rinse the tea, inhale with your nose, and pause to consider what aromas you detect. There are whole market categories of “functional teas” full of supplements allegedly beneficial for the body. As I see it, the function of this tea is make you a little more present in the moment.

Many young raw puer teas have more in common with feisty greens than their older aged puer relatives. The processing is more or less the same as if you were making green tea. Floral and vegetal flavors are common, and the brew’s color is light. If you’ve only tried cheap ripe puer that tasted like fish food stored in a basement, you may prefer this fresh, sprightly style. Unlike most green teas, a good puer can be steeped again and again, long enough to enjoy over a full afternoon. I’ve been going through it with a new rescue puppy at home, and I really appreciated the breather this tea afforded me.

The source: Farmer Leaf is the project of William Osmont and his wife Yubai, who live on Jingmai mountain where they source and process tea into puer, white, and black styles. Yubai’s family has claims to old tea trees and she set up a factory to wither and pan-fry their leaves. William brings a level of nerdy enthusiasm that he shares in great detail on the company’s Youtube channel. I don’t love everything they make, but I like this cake a lot, and they bring a transparency to their work on Youtube, Discord, and their newsletter that I appreciate. If you’re curious about the nitty gritty of growing, harvesting, and processing tea, you can learn much from their stories of sourcing and production. Farmer Leaf is a young business by tea industry standards, and seasoned puer drinkers might wonder how their teas will age over the years. I honestly have no idea, but I suspect I’ll drink down my cake of Jingmai Gulan before I have the chance to find out.

To brew: This is a tea made for small-pot gong fu brewing. I use 5 grams in a 50 milliliter pot (1g/10ml) with continuously boiling water (more on that in the next section for paid subscribers). Rinse the leaves, then brew just a few seconds at a time, lengthening as you go. I find the flavor of this tea doesn’t change dramatically over the course of a session. Notes of jasmine and pine needles appear in the first steep and the tenth. A glossy, lubricating texture persists from start to finish. But the character does shift from sweet and verdant to more peppery and woody. It tastes balanced and clean with just a touch of bitterness and no mouth-drying effects.

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Water, water everywhere, and not a drop for tea

Few of us in developed countries have an appreciation for what it takes to boil water. Before industrial water treatment, boiling water was a matter of survival, and before indoor gas and electric lines, keeping enough fuel on hand for boiling was a constant chore. Imagine firing up a charcoal stove every time you wanted a drink!

A few years ago, I decided to step away from electric kettles in favor of a more analog approach. Do you know anyone who insists on playing vinyl records over the convenience of digital music? I’m like that, and just as annoying.

You may scoff, but tea people take heating water seriously. When I was on a reporting trip in Hong Kong, I met a person who had been going to the same dim sum house every morning for 30 years. The reason for her loyalty wasn’t the food. It wasn’t even the tea, as she brought her own to brew. It was that the staff kept kettles of water hot enough to properly steep her puer.

So let me explain my issues with electric kettles for tea, and how I choose to heat my water instead.