One of the eternal questions: do you really need to use a pu'er knife to separate compressed tea cakes, or can you use a letter opener, Swiss Army knife, ice pick, or whatever else is around? And does the question change when discussing a well-compressed Xiaguan tuocha?
This recently came up in a Facebook tea group, but it gets asked in a Reddit pu'er sub several times a year. I commented this:
A pu'er knife or pu'er pick can work slightly better than something like a letter opener, but there's definitely no need to spend $50 on something that looks more impressive. Inexpensive versions of the same devices will work in exactly the same way, and just as well. If your favorite vendor only sells something costly, because it's damascus steel or something such, just keep shopping. It probably makes sense to buy both an inexpensive pick and a knife, to see what you like best.
Others answered everything that you might imagine, every possible answer. That reminds me of seeing a notice of a pu'er knife that actually looked cool recently, maybe not this one, but essentially the same thing:
That style is typically made by a blacksmith of some sort, either crafted from damascus (layered) steel or made from some novel original source, like from a railroad spike. That would definitely work. Those tend to cost about $70, which I guess may be about right given the labor that would go into making it. This site sells them for $100, the first version that comes up on a Google Lens search about them, and in this Reddit post (showing that version) it had cost them $77.
I'd rather buy a tea cake, but that cake would be gone in a couple of months, and this novel knife could last forever.
Crimson Lotus sells this: "The Bingslayer" Tea Pick ($14.99)
The catchy marketing name works, and it should be functional. It's funny how vendors spin all that:
May we present to you "The Bingslayer", First of their Name, Victorious at the Battle of Xiaguan, Breaker of the Iron Cake. Legend has it that this tea pick is so pure of heart that it doesn't open puerh cakes, the cakes open for it to allow it to pass through.
Setting that aside, $15 for a functional tea knife is fine. Versions that cost $2 or 3 also work, probably just as well, like the one I've been using for a few years that a friend passed on, after I accidentally packed my tea pick in a carry-on bag, and the TSA got it (or actually the Thai equivalent).
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my old pu'er pick; I really liked that too |
I don't see any version of a knife or pick on either Yunnan Sourcing or White 2 Tea's sites. Strange. You would think they would find an inexpensive and functional version to sell as a service to customers, if not so much to profit from.
This Shopee version (like a Thai version of Ebay) sells for about $8; it's not far off what I use now:
Technique, the real problem
The problem people are really having relates to technique, not the form of the device they use. That cause could get lost as they explore both devices and approach, because their technique would improve as they gradually kept swapping out devices, and the same devices would keep working better and better. A pick works about as well as a knife, when you are good at using one. I'll explain how to break apart a tea cake then, or at least how I go about it.
For the loosest pressed cakes it kind of doesn't matter. You can pull a chunk off the side with your fingers and that won't break the leaves very much, which is the main concern. More broken material will extract a lot more astringency, which isn't as pleasant. For harder pressed cakes it works well to start from the inside lip of the pressed indentation (beeng-hole, some say), and work outwards towards the edge to peel off a good sized flake, maybe two inches across. No matter how you approach it all you don't want to push the knife towards your other hand, so early on using a wood cutting board is ideal, so you stab that instead as you get better at it. It could also work starting from the outside and working inward, I just don't prefer that myself.
For a very hard pressed cake this won't work very well, but then nothing really will. It's an option to break such a cake into large sized chunks, probably using some variation of pliers, and then separating the layers by pressing a knife or pick into the side of the chunk. The main idea is to work along the layers of how the cake or tuocha (ball shape) is pressed, and if you tear a chunk off a cake those layers will be evident.
For a tuocha holding the dome side downward and starting from the rim works well. You can press the device into this lip, separating off a good sized chunk of the outside, again without pushing that knife towards your other hand, probably by resting the tuo on something that it's ok to stab into. Typically you can peel off the outer one fourth of the entire tuo this way, piece by piece, and then keep going, working with the now-stranger-looking inner three fourths of the ball shape.
One last concern is what to do with the more broken dust and small fragments that can be by-products of this process, especially when separating tighter pressed cakes. You have options. Some people throw that out; it shouldn't amount to much, and it doesn't brew as well. It could work to save it in a miscellaneous material jar and brew it separately, as a blend. I like the idea but I almost never do that. I put some in a tea-bag a year or two ago--from some spare bags a vendor sent along with loose tea--and saw that still stashed somewhere recently; when I actually do it I might not get back to it.
Or you can let it collect in the paper wrapper and brew a round that's based on more broken material once in awhile, or a mix of finer broken material forms, broken leaves down to dust. That's what I do.
It throws off results that round, all to utilize a couple of extra grams of really broken material however often that comes up, but it seems disrespectful to the tea to just bin it, to me. For looser pressed tea cakes this isn't even a concern; leaves might break a little, but it's not like how things go with harder pressed cakes. I suppose this is why the "iron cake" form didn't last, as well as related to those not aging in the same way, being isolated from any and all air contact that might enable it in a normal form.
A 2011 mini Xiaguan iron cake, basically, last reviewed here in 2019. I've tried this in the last 6 months and it's not quite ready yet, 14 years into aging. In 5 more years I'll probably feel the same way.
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