How to break a puer biscuit

Hi I have a pu’er biscuit at home and I’m lost as to how to get a sizable piece to brew it. This is the first pu’er tea that I’ve bought; I typically drink oolong and green tea – loose tea varieties. Do I break it into a small enough piece to brew? It’s incredibly difficult to break. Is there a age-old way of breaking pu’er tea?I know what pu’er tea is and how to brew it from your invaluable articles. What I’m concerned with is how best to go about getting the tea leaves to begin with. At the moment my pu’er biscuit is in two…I’d appreciate your advice

Claire

that puer cake too new. old puer cake easier to break

To break a hard puer discus that has already been split into two halves, hold the corner of one half at the breaking edge and bend a few times to loosen up the leaves. Then use a thick metal letter opener or something like that, such as the flat end of the spoon handle etc to ply into the center of the thickness of the loosened corner, on the broken side. Swivel the metal inside the thickness a few times to loosen up more the leaves. Hold the corner and bend to break the targeted portion.

Sorry for not replying to this sooner! Thank you both for your input and advice, I’ll have another go once it gets a little cooler over here. How old is a mature pu’er tea? I’d be interested in maturing it.

You are welcome Clairelie. You must be in some southern region to be still quite warm this time of the year. As for maturing puer tea, we are actually preparing an article at this moment for posting in the next update of Tea Guardian. If you are not already a subscriber, you can subscribe here: 

Yes I live below the equator so it’s getting quite warm. Thank you for the link to the updates!