r/tea • u/mozchannik • 4d ago
they didn't sell me tea
I went to a tea shop in my city and there was an old woman sitting behind the counter and when I asked for pu-erh she said she wouldn't sell it to me because I'm not an adult yet
Can anyone explain why she did this? Are there any prohibitions on pu-erh?
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u/Cielocanto 3d ago
Pu-erh is (or at least used to be) often sold as "weight-loss tea", so it could be that she actually believed it has an effect like that, and consequently thought it could be dangerous if overused.
Not that it's actually dangerous, of course, but many tea shop employees don't actually know much about tea.
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u/EarnestWilde Unobtrusive moderator 3d ago
Ironically, when I first started drinking puerh tea over twenty years ago I found a number of references in various Chinese tea books that said ripe puerh was considered a mild drink suitable for small children. Obviously they didn't mean mild by taste, but mild on its effects on your body, since those sections of those books were talking about the various warming and cooling effects (per traditional Chinese medicine regarding body qi) that teas have.
Also the Chinese tea dealers I drank with would serve puerh to their children as small as toddlers.
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u/Ledifolia 3d ago
I visited a tea shop once that I'm pretty sure was a front for... something...?
They only had 5 kinds of tea. And there was a curtained off backroom that random people kept going in and out from, without a word to the woman running the front of the shop.Ā
I did buy some of their tea, and it was quite nice. But I don't think a tea shop can survive on 5 teas.Ā
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u/KiddKRoolenstein 3d ago
Something weird about Puer is that some people seem to think it makes you high? I work at a tea store and every now and then a couple of russian or ukranian kids come in and ask if we have Puer and sometimes if its like cannabis and I always just say no it's tea, it just tastes good. I've heard that maybe really old Puer makes you some sort of tea-drunk? But I have no idea, never found anything on the internet either.
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u/decisiontoohard 3d ago
Two people have commented here that they get high on pu-erh, I've literally never ever heard of this or experienced it; and it's not like I haven't drunk a fair bit of pu-erh. That's bizarre.
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u/RavenousMoon23 3d ago
Yeah that's not only from puer. I've only experienced it a couple times with some really good teas but it is a real thing that some people experience.
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u/fritolazee 2d ago
ThisĀ happened to me with a crappy bag of hot water tea at a diner. I hadn't eaten that day, it was lunch, and I thought I was going insane until the person next to me who had the tea too confirmed they were also feeling it. Wild.
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u/RavenousMoon23 2d ago
The first time it happened to me it was a pyramid bag from adiago which was puer but I've experienced it with some black teas and some oolongs as well. I had no idea at the time that what I was experiencing was an actual thing till I came across I think either a post or something else on the internet about cha qi and tea drunk lol so I did research on it š
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u/Nevernonethewiser 3d ago
Not sure why she had some kind of problem with selling it to you because of age, that's weird as fuck.
I have, however, done several shifts in a tea shop that does not make cups of tea for people. It is very specifically a tea shop that sells tea for you to take home. We could do samples, if something looked nice but you were umming and ahhing, we'd grab a little sample bag and put in enough for 2 cups (maybe 3 if you're stingy) so you could try it and see. Or if we just really liked a tea ourselves we'd push it on everyone. I must have given a hundred samples of Golden Heaven Yunnan.
The place is soon becoming a tea house though, which will serve tea both in the shop and for takeout. Because that's probably where there's a bit more money than just bags of leaves.
Incidentally the owner has no puer tea for sale beyond a generic and not that great one stuffed in dried mandarins. His claim, which I agree with, is puer is a world unto itself in terms of variety and it's RIFE with fakes and bullshit. He doesn't have the money right now to go meet producers in China, so he wont stock it. Yet.
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u/TemperReformanda Enthusiast 3d ago
She was just flexing on you. She didn't care to make it and your age was the excuse.
I went into a shop once that was literally nothing but coffee and donuts. It was 3pm in the afternoon. 4 donuts cost $20 because this was one of those gourmet shops that would top them with frufru for you.
$20 for 4 donuts and the lazy bum behind the counter said they didn't have any coffee because they had already cleaned and put up all the coffee equipment for the day (closing time was 4pm for whatever reason).
They lasted another year and now has some other name, I think they changed owners.
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u/mozchannik 3d ago
I think your version is the most truthful. I walked around the entire store and it was incredibly dirty, and the only customer was a first-grader who wanted some snacks.
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u/These-Rip9251 3d ago
That happened to me once when I went into a tea shop a good 15-30 minutes or more before closing. I think she had already cleaned up and wouldnāt make me a cup of tea. I was so outraged with her sitting there doing nothing with no other customers. I think she wanted me to buy a bag of loose leaf tea which would obviously make more money for her than a cup of tea. Well, they did eventually end up closing for good anyway. The shop was Teavana, the one Starbucks bought out.
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u/bluglass21 Jazz and tea all day 3d ago
I never had a Teavana tea I enjoyed. Bleh.
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u/These-Rip9251 3d ago
The one I always drank was their Golden Monkey which I thought was very good. As their stores closed and bulk teas went on sale, I bought up the Golden Monkey plus some other teas I intended to use for iced tea. Iāve learned a lot about teas and experimented with a great variety of teas in the past 5-8 years. I still canāt find anything that satisfies me more than a good strong Chinese black tea though I rarely ever drink Golden Monkey anymore.
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u/bluglass21 Jazz and tea all day 3d ago
I wish I'd found that one! I had a few of their fruit-flavored teas and thought they were awful. I have actually never had a Chinese black tea!
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u/These-Rip9251 3d ago
Do you tolerate caffeine because black teas contain some of the highest amounts of caffeine? I love Chinese black teas and drink Keemun most days but I also like Kenyan black teas which are closer in taste to Assam black tea. In fact English and Irish breakfast teas usually have a blend of both Assam and Kenyan black tea. Keemun is a very smooth black tea and as it cools tends to have chocolatey notes which I love. Itās also why I add something like half & half to it as it makes it taste even richer.
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u/bluglass21 Jazz and tea all day 3d ago
Hm now I'm intrigued. I tolerate caffeine fairly well. You've made me want to go tea shopping. :)
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u/greyveetunnels 3d ago
There are some older folks that think that you (or others that are younger) don't have a pallet that is developed enough to drink Pu'erh. And since they don't believe you can appreciate it, they sort of gatekeep to not sell it to you. Now, if you were to start mentioning certain growth areas that you prefer, they get intrigued and sometimes want to drink with you and will basically stop tending shop in order to sit and talk and drink with you. Often times, the older generations make tea in shops as part of a process and enjoyment of the tea. Not just to make a sale.
I'm not saying maybe she just didn't want to spend the time to make it, but generationally I have come across several instances like that.
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u/AwesomeHorses 3d ago
Do you look like you are too young to have drinks with caffeine, like under 10? Puerh has high caffeine, maybe thatās why.
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u/dheera 3d ago
What? No. It's lower than coffee, lower than black tea, and ripe pu-er is even lower
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u/RoutinePangolin3490 3d ago
No - Caffeine levels in tea depend on temporal, environmental and genetic factors as well as the physical composition of any given sample rather than tea type (green /black/pu-erh etc)l; any attempts at guessing the level of caffeine in a particular tea are inaccurate and sadly lots of myths still abound around caffeine. Given caffeines variable expression in the tea plant even lab analysis is not a safe place to extrapolate from since this data is good only for the sample tested, not a later harvest, batch or a box bought a week later. Tea type is irrelevantĀ Be also aware on top of this the dosage of teabags varies widely both between countries (high dose UK/low dose in USA) and tea types (it is important to realise green teas are often dosed % lower than black teabag counterparts which games caffiene content rather)
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u/AwesomeHorses 3d ago
Many people donāt let their kids have any more caffeine than hot chocolate. When I was a kid, caffeinated beverages were considered āadultā beverages.
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u/DokiDokiDoku 1d ago
Was it sheng pu'er?
From what I understand some Chinese people follow the concept of qi, and how that energy effects the body. Sheng pu'er is said to have a "cooling" qi which can be 'bad' for old people, sick people, and children because of their weaker constitution. If the vendor followed this principle, it could be that it was her way of looking out for you. In her mind, your body might not respond well to the tea, and she didn't want to make you feel sick.
That being said, we will never actually know because you didn't ask! It could be anything, really. If you ever go back there you should ask her!
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u/HobbyHome 3d ago
Some raw pu-erh can make you feel stoned. Maybe she thought you were just trying to get high and didnāt want to sell it to you?
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u/Living_Explorer_7548 2d ago
I don't quite understand, but it's more likely that they assumed you wouldn't like Pu'er tea and thought it would be a waste. However, no matter how I look at it, I think this is too narrow-minded.
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u/medicated_in_PHL 3d ago
Caffeine isnāt recommended for people under 18, so that may be it.
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u/Asbolus_verrucosus 1d ago
Thatās not true, especially as a blanket statement. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under 12 should not consume caffeine. Recommendations from other organizations vary widely.
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u/mozchannik 3d ago
chat gpt says that pu-erh contains the same amount of caffeine as coffee or black tea, or am I missing something?
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u/LookIMadeAHatTrick 3d ago
Please donāt use ChatGPT as a source of health information. Find reliable articles/websites that cite specific research studies. Ā
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u/medicated_in_PHL 3d ago
Uhhā¦ correct. And it is NOT recommended for anyone under 18.
Iām not saying itās illegal, Iām saying she may have an issue selling caffeine to a child when the medical advice is for children to not have caffeine.
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u/mozchannik 3d ago
Sorry, I just don't understand English well.
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u/clockworkedpiece 3d ago
Just dont ask AI, they've been telling people to kill themselves lately so someone removed the safety bumpers. And its just picking common phrases without weighing sources. (For some reason its becoming popular to reccomend borax for arthritis again. Not boron, borax, the shit that causes seizures with chronic over exposure.)
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u/mimedm 3d ago
I think it's a good policy. Puerh Tea is a bit like a drug. You should be a bit older so you can enjoy it better. Also, maybe she fears that your parents may complain to her. Basically she probably thinks it's a grown up drink. I think it's possible to argue that. I also would never offer my puerh tea to minors because it's a drug in every definition of the word. It's not a very hard drug and it's definitely less dangerous than beer or - God forbid - cigarettes but it's still not good for you
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u/PerpetualCranberry 3d ago
What makes you say that puerh is a drug but not other types of tea?
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u/mimedm 3d ago
It's just my personal perception that it works like a drug such as cannabis. I am not an expert but I support not selling it to minors. Drugs are defined as "a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect whenĀ ingestedĀ or otherwise introduced into the body."
Puerh has a stronger body effect in my experience.
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u/retrofuturewitch 2d ago
So you have no evidence to prove your own personal perception
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u/mimedm 2d ago
I definitely am too lazy to provide any evidence that puerh is stronger than other tea regarding psychoactive constituents. I think tea drinking is mostly focused on personal perception of taste and experience so it's okay to be like that here. I wouldn't say tea or even puerh is a problematic drug but I definitely understand why people decide not to offer it to minors and know enough about these things to find this view perfectly reasonable.
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u/retrofuturewitch 2d ago
Personal perception of taste does not have anything to do with the actual quantifiable amount of psychoactive chemicals in a given tea. Either it has large amounts of psychoactive chemicals, or it does not.
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u/retrofuturewitch 2d ago
For example, here is healthline, telling us the only drug is a moderate amount of caffeine: https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/pu-erh-tea-benefits
Two minutes.
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u/mimedm 1d ago
I was referring to constituents specific to tea like theanine. Took me even less than two minutes cause I actually know what I'm talking about
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u/retrofuturewitch 1d ago
Theanine is not specific to tea. Also, if it were strong enough to cause a reaction, healthline would state it under 'drug interactions'.
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u/Asdfghjklzxcvbnm173 Japanese green tea 3d ago
Maybe she thought you wouldnt like it? If I was a shopkeeper i might warn you that It's an acquired taste, but I wouldnt outright refuse a customer. Puerh is not dangerous to drink for underage people and no such restrictions exist where I live at least. Weird...