Step 1: Smash tea with hammer.
Step 2: Allow pieces to air out or adjust to your storage.
Step 3: Rinse 12 to 14 times to open up the leaf.
Step 4: Drink.
All kidding aside, this is a very heavily compressed tea. You’ll make plenty of dust breaking it apart. That said, I think this is a wonderful tea. Very clean storage not wet tasting but not Kunming tasting either, and definitely aged tasting. Lots of fruity flavors. It has some bitterness left to it and a little astringency too (I’m leafing pretty heavy and using full boil). I recommend this tea if you want bitterness and aged flavor together without any kind of staleness or musty wet stored taste. It brews out so remarkably long that I almost don’t believe it’s a plantation tea. Also I feel that this tea is pretty clean as far as agrochemicals go. Who knows really but I know my body reacts well to it and there’s none of that tip of the tongue sensation I’m coming to associate with synthetically fertilized tea. Again, who knows, I’m still learning this but my diet has been free of chemicals for some years now.
I’m wondering if there is a connection between heavily compressed tea and how many steeps it can get. I’ve tried a few heavy compressed ripe and raw aged that seem to steep well past their price tag. Almost like the machine compressing is another step of the rolling process and opens up things in the tea that may otherwise need to be boiled out??? Please comment on this if you have any thoughts.
I would say that Lao Cha is often like this. I have gone 15 plus infusions. They are little nuggets that you can steep forever it seems. This one will probably be about the same for you.