TeaChat

TIM - can you talk a bit about how you are aging your cakes in NYC?
Thanks!

I feel places like Beijing or other places in the US are not really for aging

A practice of aging Pu was like coincidental, Hong Kong had just a lot of humidity but in Yunnan there's no practice of aging spread widely. So in dry places, one needs to actually 'buy' aged teas unless they are avid follower of dry-storage...man, since when did Beijing start to import Qi Zi Bing and think about aging? My life's short.

Too much humidity ruins the tea whereas dryness makes a peterpan of tea, it's always dilemma.

chrl42 wrote:I feel places like Beijing or other places in the US are not really for aging

Beijing = 100% agreement

"Other places in the US" = 50% agreement. Depends where you are. New York, Arizona, and Florida will yield very different results. If you have a decently humid climate and keep a room at a relatively warm temperature, I think the US is fine. If you are using HK as a benchmark of "perfect storage", then the US will have a difficult time meeting the criteria, but Florida shouldn't be that far off.

TwoDog2 wrote:

chrl42 wrote:I feel places like Beijing or other places in the US are not really for aging

Beijing = 100% agreement

"Other places in the US" = 50% agreement. Depends where you are. New York, Arizona, and Florida will yield very different results. If you have a decently humid climate and keep a room at a relatively warm temperature, I think the US is fine. If you are using HK as a benchmark of "perfect storage", then the US will have a difficult time meeting the criteria, but Florida shouldn't be that far off.

I heard the main reason for US dryness is a air heater, meanwhile northern China uses water heaters which less effects humidity. I don't consider HK as perfect storage, it only applies to ones who how to handle humidity.

chrl42 wrote: I heard the main reason for US dryness is a air heater, meanwhile northern China uses water heaters which less effects humidity. I don't consider HK as perfect storage, it only applies to ones who how to handle humidity.

Yeah and I feel air-conditioner type of heating system and steam heater (as compared with water-filled heater) makes it even worse... I don't think much of tea, but the dryness could be bad enough even to people
I personally don't know anybody in Beijing who stores a lot of tea. Even if one is willing to give the effort to control the environment, he's got to have enough space. And most people who can afford that much space are not that much into tea, I guess. I know some people who buy houses in other cities as vacation homes and store some tea there, economic option for affluent people And Beijing is not a representative for dry-stored puerh anyway.
I think most of the vendors in Beijing either have their main storage in their hometowns or they act only as sort of dealers. And there don't seem to be many puerh vendors at all in Beijing anyway.
I guess your view of typical Hong Kong storage is probably influenced by mainland Chinese tea drinkers - mine too, under the same influence. Many Chinese I know didn't think they liked puerh at all until they tasted non-humid-stored puerh.
By the way, are there some major trend of Korean tea drinkers' tastes in term of storage type? (I mean, not leaf type, since I guess arbor tree is always preferred )

I think you all need to distinguish between traditional storage, which includes artificial increases in humidity, and natural storage, which does not. Natural HK storage doesn't have that "humid" taste that you talk about. Dry Beijing storage, as TwoDog can testify, is crap. There are plenty of people I know who store enough tea (tonnes) in Beijing to back the claim that Beijing storage is no good. It's a bit similar to Kunming, possibly worse, because it's really cold.

MarshalN wrote:I think you all need to distinguish between traditional storage, which includes artificial increases in humidity, and natural storage, which does not. Natural HK storage doesn't have that "humid" taste that you talk about. Dry Beijing storage, as TwoDog can testify, is crap. There are plenty of people I know who store enough tea (tonnes) in Beijing to back the claim that Beijing storage is no good. It's a bit similar to Kunming, possibly worse, because it's really cold.

Beijing is a lot dryer than Kunming.
I think it's equally important to distinguish natural HK storage and cautious (humidity-reduction) HK storage such as using upstairs, dryer rooms and dehumidifier. It's not my say which is better but I would prefer the cautious type of storage if it's from humid regions.
It took me some time to realize some people in Guangzhou who are proud of their own humid storage actually used cautious humidity-reduction storage all the time.

gingkoseto wrote:

chrl42 wrote: I guess your view of typical Hong Kong storage is probably influenced by mainland Chinese tea drinkers - mine too, under the same influence. Many Chinese I know didn't think they liked puerh at all until they tasted non-humid-stored puerh.
By the way, are there some major trend of Korean tea drinkers' tastes in term of storage type? (I mean, not leaf type, since I guess arbor tree is always preferred )

I wonder why you think Beijing doesn't have Pu vendors, in my view most of tea stores offer Puerh and many others(here in ShaoYaoJu/TaiYangGong, not to mention WangJing), even Yixing users drink Puerh, not greens they used to. I'm sure they are not as HK. My emphasis is that Puerh is a trend in mainland, too.

The Chinese didn't affect me but the Koreans. Most Koreans go for drier storage than I want. Korean storage condition is slightly better than Beijing, 'specially sea-facing Busan and Jeollado areas.

To like dry or wet, I still think it relates to preference, I've only had a few HK/SE asia-stored Pu's, the ones that don't have floating dusts. I gotta say I'm still mesmerized relatively dry storage..funny how preferences go for they belong to.

chrl42 wrote:

gingkoseto wrote:

chrl42 wrote: I guess your view of typical Hong Kong storage is probably influenced by mainland Chinese tea drinkers - mine too, under the same influence. Many Chinese I know didn't think they liked puerh at all until they tasted non-humid-stored puerh.
By the way, are there some major trend of Korean tea drinkers' tastes in term of storage type? (I mean, not leaf type, since I guess arbor tree is always preferred )

I wonder why you think Beijing doesn't have Pu vendors, in my view most of tea stores offer Puerh and many others(here in ShaoYaoJu/TaiYangGong, not to mention WangJing), even Yixing users drink Puerh, not greens they used to. I'm sure they are not as HK. My emphasis is that Puerh is a trend in mainland, too.

The Chinese didn't affect me but the Koreans. Most Koreans go for drier storage than I want. Korean storage condition is slightly better than Beijing, 'specially sea-facing Busan and Jeollado areas.

To like dry or wet, I still think it relates to preference, I've only had a few HK/SE asia-stored Pu's, the ones that don't have floating dusts. I gotta say I'm still mesmerized relatively dry storage..funny how preferences go for they belong to.

Oh I mean not as many as some other cities. It,s relative though. By city size or population there has got to be certain amount of vendors.
Also I don,t feel it,s a big concern if the city is not suitable for purer storage either due to climate or real estate. With today,s market flow, If people in the states don't worry about tea source, people in northern china don't need worry at all.

Maybe there are too many different puerh preferences to have a genuine discussion on ageing.

I'm no historian and on this Forum there are scholars on this subject, but I heard it from somewhere that tribute tea (could be pu) used to be stored inside Forbidden City during Qing Dynasty. There were high security around tea storage room and any unauthorised person came anywhere near would be cut up into pieces and NO question would be asked later.

Surely, those teas were really dry storage.

apache wrote:Surely, those teas were really dry storage.

Not quite. They traveled thousands of miles from Yunnan on horseback in semi-covered bamboo wrappings. Also, the tea was treated as medicine, and not as tea. If the emperor wanted tea, he drank greens.

MarshalN wrote:... Also, the tea was treated as medicine, and not as tea. If the emperor wanted tea, he drank greens.

That's interesting, I thought I was the only one ever who stays being sane by drinking pu.

apache wrote:There were high security around tea storage room and any unauthorised person came anywhere near would be cut up into pieces and NO question would be asked later.

Now that is the proper way to store your tea.

MarshalN wrote:the tea was treated as medicine

That's what I think about this tea these days, even as a tea it has more body or 'bone骨' as the Chinese refer to, than other small-leaf-varieties which have been consumed in previous days. Just my thought.