1. According to processing procedures

　　Cooked tea: If the artificial stacking process is adopted to make the tea become ripe, then tea made by this procedure is called “cooked//fermented/ripe/shu tea”. This cooked tea could be ready for sale and drinking after it is further stored for quite a long time when its taste becomes stable and pure. It usually takes 3—5 years for this process.

　　Green puerh tea: “Raw tea” means tea becomes ripe by purely natural-changing by itself instead of artificial stacking. This natural process could be as long as at least 5—8 years.

2、According to different storage methods

Storage in dry warehouse: it means to store this tea in dry and clean warehouse with good draught to make the tea naturally ferment. 10 to 20 year is the ideal time for this process. Storage in wet warehouse: it means to settle this tea in a place such as basement with a relatively high humidity to accelerate the fermentation process of tea.

3、According to different outer form：

Tea in pan form: the form of this tea is as flat as a pan. Each piece of this pan tea has a net weight of 375g, and there are altogether 7 pieces in a tube that weights about 2,500g totally.

Tuo Tea: The shape is as big as a bowl with the net weight being 100g or 250g. Now there are even mini-Tuo Tea with net weight of 2g—5g.

Brick Tea: In rectangle or square shape with an average net weight ranging between 250g---1,000g. This shape is very suitable for transportation.

Golden Melon Tribute Tea: Compressed into half-melon shape with the weight ranging from 100g to hundreds of kilograms

Tea in stripe form: Compressed into tight stripe form with relatively heavy weight per stripe ( the smallest stripe could have a weight about 100 kilograms), thus it is also called Qianliang Tea (1 qianliang equals to about 100 kilograms in China)

Loose Tea: There is no compressing involved during the processing and the tea in loose stripe form. If is further classified into big leaf tea from complete tea leaf in robust stripe form and bud tea from tea leaf bud in slim stripe form.

3、Storage

In terms of storing Puerh Tea, there are two choices: storing tea in dry warehouse and storing tea in wet warehouse.

In dry warehouse: it means to store this tea in dry and clean warehouse with good draught to make the tea naturally ferment. 10 to 20 year is the ideal time for this process.

In wet warehouse: it means to settle this tea in a place such as basement with a relatively high humidity to accelerate the fermentation process of tea.

Fans who have interest in collecting long-term drinking and food must have some knowledge that the storage is a key point to get best taste, no matter what it is, wine, plum or tea. Different container and environment would absolutely bring up different quality. To only pay attention to the tea material and processing is not enough, we should also emphasize five key points for containing Pu Her Tea: constant temperature, constant humidity, avoiding sunshine, avoiding impurity taste and warm environment.