ICYMI, last summer I had a guest appearance on the Tea Fix where Geoff, Leona and I talked about tea storage in the west.
Category: Aged Pu’erh
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Tea and Tobacco Guest Appearance
This is not a TeaDB episode, but a guest appearance I made on Tea and Tobacco. It was a fun conversation and we talked about a wide array of topics from pu’erh storage, how I got into tea, and a few other of my hobbies.
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2001 Menghai Tea Factory 7432 Raw Pu’erh, Traditionally Stored via TWL [Episode 305]
This episode, Denny and I drink a traditionally stored tea from Menghai Tea Factory, the 7432. No that is not a typo. This is a recipe that isn’t frequently produced, but the tea is quite legit. It is traditionally stored but overall quite clean. Would make a great introduction for anyone curious about this sort of storage. Sample provided by Marco at Teas We Like. Thank you Marco!
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Why Storage Advice from Humid Parts of East Asia isn’t Always Very Useful for the West
Storage: keep in cool, clean, dry, ventilated, no peculiar smell, no pollutant, no direct sunlight place.
This sort of advice is common. It’s especially prevalent when looking at vendor descriptions on ebay or amazon or whatever. For a novice it all looks pretty uncontroversial, and for certain parts of the world it’s pretty good advice. But there are some real issues when this advice is directly applied to a drier climate. The first issue is with cool. This advice seems translated and copy/pasted from a place where temperatures are often higher. It’s important to keep in mind that places where pu’erh has been stored for the longest are hot. If you interpreted storing your tea “cool” relative to room temperature you may end up doing something dumb, like storing your tea in the garage at sub 50F degree weather for an extended amount of time. There is also ventilated. Airflow is a hotly contested topic in western circles, but leaving your tea in an open air environment in the west where room temperature air is a lot drier is not great for the long-term outlook of the tea.With the help of Titan Garage Doors Vancouver experts you can secure your garage with a great quality door. (more…)
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What’s a Bargain? Some Musings on Relative Price in Tea
What’s a real bargain? Below are some of my musings on how we think about price.
The restaurant I probably go to most often in Seattle is a local taco joint. Their menu is simple and they execute their food well. I’ve been going pretty much since they opened. It’s a little more expensive than taco trucks but in a city that’s becoming increasingly expensive, paying around $8 or $9 for a meal is pretty good. When I leave I feel satisfied and feel as if I earned some well-earned frugality points. My wife and I also eat a good deal of seafood. Sometimes we will indulge in something nice like Black Cod, which our local Asian market had on sale for $18/lb. Typically around .5-.6 lbs is enough to feed us for a meal (with rice and veggie sides). This puts our the cost for two people around $9-11, quite a lot for a home meal. These meals feel like a splurge and sometimes induce a tinge of guilt. But the cost of the fancy-feeling Black Cod meal per person is actually less than the cost of my tacos. So why do I feel like Mr. Fancy Pants for the Black Cod and frugal for the other? (more…)
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2001 Zhongcha Huangyin via TWL Raw Pu’erh [Inbetweenisode 182]
This episode, I drink a tea that is currently being sourced by some tea friends on their new project Teas We Like. The tea has been aged in Taiwan and is well-balanced, decently potent, with a strong huigan that mixes a lot of positive traits into a solid session.
Rating: 6.7
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Advice I’d Give to Someone Just Starting With Pu’erh
One good thing about TeaDB is it encompaseses a large chunk of Denny and my tea journey. This includes when we were new and fresh in the western tea world and while it results in some early embarrassing episodes, it also helps to document our own learning and progression. Here’s the advice I’d give to myself (beyond which specific teas to buy) if I were to rewind 6 years or to someone just starting in pu’erh now. (more…)
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Rare Tea: 1970s Ripe Tuocha
This tea was generously gifted to me by Su as a wedding gift. Thanks so much for your generosity!
About the Tea (& Is it Legit?)
Ripe pu’erh was invented in the 1970s, so this represents an extremely early specimen. The process has been tinkered with throughout the years so this humble tuo might show us a bit of how ripe has changed with time. (more…)
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Correcting Your Storage & Preventing Mold. What are Safe Parameters?
So you got mold? This is a real risk for anyone aging pu’erh, especially those with setups designed to add some form of humidity. After you deal with the immediate outbreak, you essentially have two options.
- Scrap your setup and find a new one.
- Tinker and mess with small things within your setup.
I think people often freak out and choose option 1, when option 2 will usually suffice. In some cases finding a new setup is justified. If your container holding pu’erh is leaching off aromas into the tea or if your container is susceptible to a spill risk, you’ll probably want to make significant changes.. (more…)