TeaChat

Today dug out a brick of 05 ODB ( Bo yan brick). I bought this brick for around five dollars about 4 years ago from a kunming vendor. The color of the tea has turned a nice aged brown. I have not drank this tea more than a few times since I bought it as the taste was off. Now the taste is similar to the 00 Kunming tai LAN yin I'm shocked. This is the biggest change/improvement I have seen in a tea in my short time storing tea.but I have noticed big changes in allot of teas I am certain this change is due to my pumidor.
I often see people putting pumidors down. Most of these people live in areas where one is not necessary to age tea or have heard horor stories of mold outbreaks. But I feel that if you live in a dry environment your tea will not age at all and may gain harshness of an overly dry stored tea. The Rh in my house right now is 38% due to heating with a wood stove. That would ruin tea or at the least stall out any chance of it gaining an age taste in my lifetime. Yes you have the risk of mold developing. I have had one incident where sweat developed on the wall and several cakes that where carelessly left touching the wall became quite moldy. Almost exactly what happened to the one who dips half way http://half-dipper.blogspot.co.uk/2013/ ... todes.html This only happened to a few cakes the rest of my collection was in harmed. The effected cakes where treated by removing any bad parts using a wire grill brush to remove surface mould and breaking off and throwing away any parts where the mould was more than just present on the surface. I completely sterilized the inside of my cabinet. The cakes where aired out for a week.wrappers thrown away then rewrapped and stored then in a dry environment for six months. The mouldy cakes now seem to be completely fine. All in all I think if you live in a dry environment, are serious about aging tea, and have the time to monitor it regularly a pumidor can be safe and effective.

Hmph!

Only takes one bad week. Just one baaaaaaad week!

As long as there is minimal airflow and you monitor the humidity carefully, I don't see how a pumidor is much different from a humidor. I burp my humidor every week or two and that has kept the mold away from my Habanos and kept my humidity at a constant 70%. My meager pu collection just sits on a shelf in a glass cabinet here in HK and does its thing!

Have you posted the details of your pumidor?

Congrats, GN, glad to hear it! Thanks for the update.

shah82 wrote:Hmph!

Only takes one bad week. Just one baaaaaaad week!

I'd rather have my tea be stored in a too humid environment than a too dry environment. I can scrape off mold and cut off chunks of cakes but I can't do anything to a dried out, sour cake.

Glad you posted this, gasninja. Besides the great concern of aging puerh, many of us store significant quantities of other teas (sometimes w/ hopes that time will improve our tea). Reports on these methods are helpful & interesting.
I use an Havana Footlocker w/o the humidification that would be part of a cigar set-up.

Exempt wrote:

shah82 wrote:Hmph!

Only takes one bad week. Just one baaaaaaad week!

I'd rather have my tea be stored in a too humid environment than a too dry environment. I can scrape off mold and cut off chunks of cakes but I can't do anything to a dried out, sour cake.

I disagree, I'd take a little too dry over a little too humid. Mold can really, really mess your tea (and you!) up!

That's what makes this all so great ... it's a personal opinion and there is no "right" or "wrong" answer. I agree with Exempt, but that's what works for me.

anyway to get a sample of that lovely aged pumidor-ed tea?

after my baaaad week. I put cookie wracks on the floor and I made sure none of my cakes where touching the walls. I keep the humidity in the mid upper seventies in the summer and around 65 to 70% in the winter.

gasninja wrote:after my baaaad week. I put cookie wracks on the floor and I made sure none of my cakes where touching the walls. I keep the humidity in the mid upper seventies in the summer and around 65 to 70% in the winter.

Can you believe my humidity has been less than 40% for over a month now in Bangkok! I keep all my puerh in a non air-conned room with an average temp of 32C. I live on a very high floor which must account for this low humidity. If I use my weather app, it tells me the humidity on the street is 74%.

jayinhk wrote:

Exempt wrote:

shah82 wrote:Hmph!

Only takes one bad week. Just one baaaaaaad week!

I'd rather have my tea be stored in a too humid environment than a too dry environment. I can scrape off mold and cut off chunks of cakes but I can't do anything to a dried out, sour cake.

I disagree, I'd take a little too dry over a little too humid. Mold can really, really mess your tea (and you!) up!

That's the problem. I don't live somewhere where my puerh would be "a little too dry." It is currently at 30% RH in my house, so if I stored my tea with no humidification it would certainly be undrinkable in a few years.

Exempt wrote:

jayinhk wrote:

Exempt wrote:

shah82 wrote:Hmph!

Only takes one bad week. Just one baaaaaaad week!

I'd rather have my tea be stored in a too humid environment than a too dry environment. I can scrape off mold and cut off chunks of cakes but I can't do anything to a dried out, sour cake.

I disagree, I'd take a little too dry over a little too humid. Mold can really, really mess your tea (and you!) up!

That's the problem. I don't live somewhere where my puerh would be "a little too dry." It is currently at 30% RH in my house, so if I stored my tea with no humidification it would certainly be undrinkable in a few years.

The RH changes over the year and you have to average in all the fluctuations. If you live in the desert, it may be a problem, but the Puerh would not be 'undrinkable'.

It would if you prefer teas that have traditional HK storage