Bananas and Lucky Monkeys – Flavoured Pu’erh Tea by The Tea Crew

Strong and earthy flavour, deep red colour and an opportunity to re-steep almost endlessly. Pu’erh is not everyone’s cup of tea, but many tea companies are trying to find a way for pu’erh to make it lovable even for those that don’t like it. And that’s exactly what The Tea Crew did with the Lucky Monkey tea.

Pu’erh is a great tea to drink. While flavouring raw aged teas should never really be an option, ripe pu’erh does offer a lot of fun opportunities.

Tropical Pu’erh? Why not!

What is Lucky Monkey?

Lucky Monkey is a truly interesting blend. Not only it’s enhanced with tropical notes but contains banana pieces and sencha green tea too. Pu’erh and sencha? Not a common match.

This blend is pretty. It has pretty pu’erh leaves, whole banana slices, red safflowers and small papaya chunks. And an occasional green tea leaf that gives it an even prettier look. The tropical scent may seem too intense at first, but many flavoured teas will have a scent that will rarely tell you what the flavour will be like. It just comes with the job.

We brewed this pu’erh using a brewing technique that’s somewhere in between traditional and western – starting with a minute at just a little below 100 degrees Celsius and prolonging steeping time with each subsequent steep.

How to brew this tea?

Some pu’erh teas may have a very intense artificial flavour that masks the flavour of pu’erh completely. But Lucky Monkey is different. Maybe that’ why it’s lucky. You can feel the unmistakable ripe pu’erh body, mellow, slightly earthy, and only light, lingering tropical notes. It’s not the strong, robust, dark pu’erh, it’s light, vibrant, and cheerful tea that has just enough of both earthiness and tropical notes to be described as flavoured, but not overwhelming. And it’s there as an aftertaste too. Lucky Monkey is an absolutely delicious tea.

This tea is great for re-steeping. Even with the second infusion, it doesn’t lose any flavour, which may often be a case with flavoured pu’erhs. In fact, it gives an infusion almost identical to the first one – deep ripe earthy pu’erh, gentle tropical and a light banana notes. This tea can give you at least 5 good infusions.

Any bitterness? No, but that’s common to ripe pu’erhs. How does it taste when it cools down? Also great. Lucky Monkey would be an amazing iced tea, but it could also make a great tea milkshake.

This is a really good daily pu’erh for tea drinkers that want to drink pu’erh but don’t like the flavour of pure tea. Because it’s sweet and flavourful, but not overpowering and still has a pronounced pu’erh note, it’s also a great introduction to pu’erh teas if you never tried pu’erh tea before.