Hei Zhuan (Black Brick)
Hei zhuan, the 'black brick,' is a pressed Anhua dark tea from Hunan made from coarser, more mature leaf and stem than fu zhuan and packed into a dense, dark slab. Unlike fu zhuan it is not flowered, so it carries no golden flowers; what matters most is the quality of the fermentation and the grade of leaf in the brick. It is a workhorse border tea, robust and woody rather than refined.
Hei zhuan is meant to be coarse, but it should still be clean. Look for a dense, well-pressed brick that chips into layers rather than crumbling to dust, a deep dark-brown leaf, and a clear liquor without sourness or musty cellar notes. Some stem is normal and even expected for the style, but mostly stem and dust signals bottom-grade material. A faint pine-smoke note from traditional drying is authentic. Harsh, sharp, or sour cups point to rushed or poorly stored fermentation.
Anhua County, Hunan. Hei zhuan uses lower grades of the same leaf that feeds the rest of the Anhua family, pile-fermented (wo dui) and pressed into a hard brick suited to long transport to the northwestern border regions. It sits below fu zhuan and hua zhuan in the traditional grade hierarchy and was made in volume as everyday border tea rather than as a connoisseur grade.
Gongfu: 6-8 g per 100 ml, 95-100°C, one or two rinses, then 10-20 second steeps extending gradually; very forgiving. Western: 4-5 g per 250 ml, 95-100°C, 3-4 minutes. Break the brick along its layers, do not pulverize it. The later steeps and the spent leaf reward boiling or simmering, with milk optional in the border style.
€3-15 (about $3-16) per 100 g; one of the more commodity-priced dark teas, with little premium tier.
Prices reviewed June 2026
Fu Zhuan
Fu zhuan is the flowered, finer sibling brick; hei zhuan is the un-flowered, coarser, cheaper one.
Hua Zhuan (Flower Brick)
Hua zhuan typically uses better leaf than hei zhuan and carries a decorative stamped border; both are pressed Anhua bricks.
Qing Zhuan
Qing zhuan is the Hubei-associated green brick, another dense border brick but from a separate regional tradition.
Young Shou (1-5 years)
Both are dark and earthy, but shou gets there by Yunnan wet-pile fermentation while hei zhuan is Hunan hei cha, woodier and often lightly smoky.
Hei zhuan and hua zhuan are made from broadly similar Anhua material, and the most visible difference between them is cosmetic: hua zhuan carries a decorative pattern stamped around its border while hei zhuan is left plain, which is part of how the two bricks earned their names ('black' versus 'flower').