Sheng Pu’er Tea Resin (生普洱茶膏, Shēng Pǔ'ěr Chá Gāo, "Raw Pu'er Tea Paste") - Tea resin or 茶膏 cha gao is a traditional tea concentrate created by steeping or boiling tea (traditionally pu'er tea) and then reducing the strained tea soup, either by further boiling (traditional method) or low-temperature evaporation (modern method). It forms a hard, shiny, obsidian-like crystalline substance that is primarily composed of polyphenols. References to "tea paste" date back to the Southern Tang dynasty, but the solid reduction that we know today was created during the Qing dynasty. Historically, different grades of tea resin have been produced for different purposes - premium tea resin was produced from high-quality tea leaves as a highly concentrated, value-added premium product reserved for tribute to the Emperor, while less expensive tea resin using broken leaves and fannings (tea dust) could be a method of reclaiming saleable product from what would otherwise be waste. Modern tea resin is produced using low-temperature methods that preserve more of the tea solute than the traditional boiling process. We chip apart the resulting brick by hand into roughly 1 gram chunks. It can be steeped gong fu style, with each steeping slowly melting the solid resin until it's gone, steeped for 10 minutes in a large vessel (like a thermos) until it fully dissolves, or boiled. It's made from ecologically-grown pu'er tea from Nannuo Mountain, processed by Master Li Shulin. The sheng resin is clear and a dark glossy color throughout, resembling a dark glass or obsidian. It yields a rich, light brown infusion with less astringency and more sweet caramel notes than sheng pu'er steeped from leaves.
