How Recipe Codes Work: Reading the Four Digits

The 7542, 7572, and 8582 on pu'er packaging look like model numbers, but they can actually be read. This set of digits is called the "maihao" (嘜號), or recipe code. Once you understand it, four digits can tell you roughly when a tea's recipe began, what grade of material it uses, and which factory made it.

The Term Maihao

"Mai" (嘜) is a transliteration of the English word "mark," meaning a product marking; some in the market also call it a "tea number." Recipe codes were first used on export tea to make ordering easier among factories, import-export companies, and overseas tea merchants.

The usual account is that in 1976, the Yunnan Tea Company held a provincial pu'er production conference that asked the Kunming, Menghai, and Xiaguan tea factories to expand ripe tea production and at the same time set out a numbering system for tea products. Compressed tea codes have four digits; loose tea codes have five.

Reading the Four Digits

So 7542 reads as: a 1975 recipe, mainly grade 4 material, made by Menghai Tea Factory. It's a recipe code, not a production year, and the same code can be produced every year.

The Last Digit: Which Factory

The most often cited codes, consistent across sources, are the first three:

• 1: Kunming Tea Factory, e.g., the 7581 Kunming ripe brick
• 2: Menghai Tea Factory, e.g., 7542, 7572, 8582
• 3: Xiaguan Tea Factory, e.g., the 8653 iron cake

From 4 onward, accounts diverge. Chinese tea circles commonly say 4 stands for Pu'er Tea Factory; English-language compilations list 4 as Lancang or Fengqing Tea Factory and 5 as Pu'er Tea Factory, with further usages such as 6 for Six Famous Tea Mountains and 8 for newer factories like Haiwan or Longsheng. These codes are industry conventions that grew by extension; there's no unified official reference table, so when you see a final digit of 4 or higher, it's best to go by the factory name printed on the packaging. Background on the old factories is in State Tea Factories in the Planned-Economy Era.

The Third Digit: Material Grade

The third digit is the grade of the main material. Loose pu'er is graded by tenderness: the smaller the number, the finer and more tender the buds and leaves; the larger the number, the coarser and sturdier the leaves, with more stems. 7542 is mainly grade 4, 8582 mainly grade 8, and 7572 mainly grade 7.

The word "main" is important: classic recipes are mostly blends, often with finer, more tender tea sprinkled on the face of the cake and sturdier tea inside, and the third digit only describes the grade of the bulk. More tender isn't necessarily better; coarser material has a thicker taste and holds up over many infusions. It's a different style.

How to Tell Raw from Ripe

No digit in the code itself specifically indicates raw or ripe; you have to look at the tea type stated on the packaging. Taking Menghai's classic codes as examples:

Ripe teas usually have larger grade numbers, but that's only a rule-of-thumb tendency, and you can't infer the type from it. The national standard for pu'er requires labels to state raw or ripe, so the label is the most accurate guide. The difference between raw and ripe is covered in Raw Pu'er vs. Ripe Pu'er.

An Exception: 7262

Read by the rules, 7262 would be "a 1972 recipe," but it's generally believed to be a ripe cake first trialed in the 1990s, and "72" doesn't stand for 1972. Ripe tea pile fermentation was only developed in Yunnan in the 1970s, so a 1972 ripe recipe doesn't make sense chronologically. This example is a reminder that the code system is the key to most teas, but not every number can be forced to fit.

How the System Changed Later

• From 1993: The Yunnan Tea Company began producing tea itself under the name of the import-export company, and its neifei and dapiao still used codes like 7581, 7542, and 8582. From then on, recipe codes became more like conventional product numbers that no longer simply indicated a specific factory or year.
• Around 2003: Menghai Tea Factory's codes and batch labeling were quite chaotic for a time, and were only sorted out after it was restructured as a private enterprise. How to read batch numbers is in Batch Numbers.

Do New Brands Follow This System?

Not necessarily. Some factories that came out of the old state-factory system keep the convention of four-digit codes and factory digits; Dayi later also introduced names combining letters and numbers, such as V93. Many more new brands and private factories simply use a mountain, a year, or a product name of their own, with no code at all. So when you see four digits, you can try reading them by the rules; when there's no code, that's perfectly normal too. The stories of the classic codes are in 7542, 8582, 7572: The Stories Behind Pu'er's Classic Recipe Codes.

FAQ

What do the first two digits of a recipe code mean? The usual reading is the year the recipe began; for example, the 75 in 7542 stands for 1975, not the year that particular cake was made.

What does the last digit mean? The last digit is the factory code: 1 for Kunming Tea Factory, 2 for Menghai Tea Factory, 3 for Xiaguan Tea Factory. 4 is commonly said to be Pu'er Tea Factory, though some sources assign it to other factories, so go by the factory name printed on the packaging.

What does the 75 in 7542 and 7572 mean? Both are recipes that began in 1975; 7542 is a raw tea mainly using grade 4 material, and 7572 is a ripe tea mainly using grade 7 material, both made by Menghai Tea Factory.

How do you tell raw and ripe recipe codes apart? No digit specifically indicates raw or ripe; check the tea type stated on the packaging.

Do new brands have recipe codes? Some keep the four-digit convention, but many more new brands name their teas by product name or mountain, with no code.