Sealing bings in plastic

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Apr 25th, '14, 15:11
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by bonescwa » Apr 25th, '14, 15:11

hop_goblin wrote:
William wrote:
hop_goblin wrote:
William wrote:
hop_goblin wrote:NEVER in plastic! Unless of course, they are rare antique shengpu that will command thousands of USD.
I imagine that this statement, comes from the fact that you have tried, for many many years, this method of conservation, as well as many others, of course. So you might tell us more, right?


Have a nice day my friend.

Seriously?

Actually, now that you state that, Yes I have. I have been an avid Puerh collector for over 11 years. I have an extensive Puerh collection if you need to know.

Why would you want to stifle the aging process by artificially placing beengs in plastic. Aging only occurs when there is a humidity factor and oxygen none of which you will have if you put them in a garbage back.

Actually, putting them in a garbage bag will be exactly where they belong if you surround your puerh in plastic if you are wanting to age them.

Good luck my friend.
I am more than happy that you are an avid Puerh collector and that you have an extensive Puerh collection, but this does not mean that your statement is the absolute truth.

In 11 years you should have understood that the methods of conservation are numerous and all very different, each of which will give different characteristics to the tea stored in a given way.

There are those who stores Pu Erh in a sealed bag, who stores in mylar bags, who stores in humid environment, who stores in a dry environment, who stores at temperature near 0 C°, who combines two or more methods of conservation, e.g. humid (before) and dry (after).

Who are we to affirm that one method is correct and one is not? People's preferences are often very different, so common sense should lead us to reflect that there is not a correct method.

Have a nice day.
Being pedantic will not make your statement true also. As I noted in my post, if there is a humidity problem buy a dehumidifier. I would be hard pressed to find any of the great tongs and/or prized puerhs that exist were stored in fancy smanzy bags. I can be certain of this since the technology didn't even exist at that time. Remember, it are these beengs, that we as we collectors are attempting to emulate. I would seriously rethink your methods.

Dry environment does in no way mean without humidity, it means controlling the humidity to some extent, extending the oxidation process which is a relatively new concept. Wet-storage typically is done as a consequence of not controlling humidity in very humid environments, either as a result of wanting to turn Sheng pu as quickly as possible, or the inability to control the humid environment. Conservation shouldn't even be part of the equation until the puerh has reached its peak.
I understand that ideally, you could keep them out in the humidity and this is the traditional way of storage. I asked this question coming from a very dry climate, and I have also heard that very low humidity conditions will dry the cake out even more, as the fluid inside evaporates. I was reasoning that wrapping them in loose plastic would at least keep the humidity that the tea naturally has inside .

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Apr 25th, '14, 15:15
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by William » Apr 25th, '14, 15:15

hop_goblin wrote:
shah82 wrote:You've been away awhile, hop_goblin...those are the theories that have popped up these days. Let 'em do what they want to do. Feeling like they are in control of the process is important to their enjoyment.
Puerh is a 'living tea', which for the most part is already destined to be a good, or bad tea even before we receive it in the post. It's all about the region, manufacturing processes and effort by those who produced it that matters most. What we do after the fact will have minimal effect and vacuums, Mymar etc cheapens the mystic. Not to say that storage considerations do not matter, in fact they do, but a bad tea in any condition will remain a bad tea. All that we can do is attempt to make a bad tea palatable so not to piss our money away. lol.
In my opinion, what you say is incorrect.

The conservation of tea, whichever way it is made, should simply maintain great, over time, a tea that is already very good when it was produced.
If you need to make a bad tea palatable, just buy a better quality.

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Apr 25th, '14, 15:25
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by kyarazen » Apr 25th, '14, 15:25

lets have some fun! how about a neutral party to do a tasting and to give feedback on the teas we have kept, whether it is good, bad, rubbish, sewage or excellent?

i wouldnt mind if a moderator, or some adagio staff would be willing to sit down and sample, and to give their honest feedback to the general community so that everyone can make more informed decisions on how to store their pu-erh and what can the pu-erh turn into.

I'll be ready to provide samples free of charge inclusive of postage to a single grp of neutral tasters
1) 07 Sealed stored Bulang gushu
2) 07 Sealed stored Mengsong (da menglong ms) gushu
3) 03 Unsealed stored Jingmai Gushu
4) 03 Unsealed stored Youle Gushu
5) 03 Unsealed stored Yiwu Gushu
6) 03 Sealed stored Banzhang Gushu
7) 09 Sealed stored Yiwu Mahei
8) 80s Unsealed stored Guangyun Gong bing 1
9) 80s Unsealed stored Guangyun Gong bing 2
10) 80s Sealed stored Guangyun gong bing (hopefully teaism can spare some? i dont feel like cracking my last cake after having drank a couple pieces)

these teas are all personally stored, or obtained from people whom personally stored them over the years. No warehouse storage, so no warehouse effect/smell. Essentially a good simulation/representation of what happens to pu-erh tea that is kept at home in small quantities.

on request i can send the teas out without any labels, just numbers and random alphabets so that the tasters can be objective.

Apr 25th, '14, 15:31
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by puyuan » Apr 25th, '14, 15:31

kyarazen wrote:lets have some fun! how about a neutral party to do a tasting and to give feedback on the teas we have kept, whether it is good, bad, rubbish, sewage or excellent?

i wouldnt mind if a moderator, or some adagio staff would be willing to sit down and sample, and to give their honest feedback to the general community so that everyone can make more informed decisions on how to store their pu-erh and what can the pu-erh turn into.

I'll be ready to provide samples free of charge inclusive of postage to a single grp of neutral tasters
1) 07 Sealed stored Bulang gushu
2) 07 Sealed stored Mengsong (da menglong ms) gushu
3) 03 Unsealed stored Jingmai Gushu
4) 03 Unsealed stored Youle Gushu
5) 03 Unsealed stored Yiwu Gushu
6) 03 Sealed stored Banzhang Gushu
7) 09 Sealed stored Yiwu Mahei
8) 80s Unsealed stored Guangyun Gong bing 1
9) 80s Unsealed stored Guangyun Gong bing 2
10) 80s Sealed stored Guangyun gong bing (hopefully teaism can spare some? i dont feel like cracking my last cake after having drank a couple pieces)

these teas are all personally stored, or obtained from people whom personally stored them over the years. No warehouse storage, so no warehouse effect/smell. Essentially a good simulation/representation of what happens to pu-erh tea that is kept at home in small quantities.

on request i can send the teas out without any labels, just numbers and random alphabets so that the tasters can be objective.
That's a much more level-headed approach to the subject. (:

I've been thinking about this very issue for a while and would love to participate. And this just made me remember I still owe sending Teaism something. (sorry!)

(But, just for the record, that's a fair bit of good tea and I wouldn't mind paying for the samples at all, if needed.)

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Apr 25th, '14, 15:36
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by William » Apr 25th, '14, 15:36

kyarazen wrote:lets have some fun! how about a neutral party to do a tasting and to give feedback on the teas we have kept, whether it is good, bad, rubbish, sewage or excellent?

i wouldnt mind if a moderator, or some adagio staff would be willing to sit down and sample, and to give their honest feedback to the general community so that everyone can make more informed decisions on how to store their pu-erh and what can the pu-erh turn into.

I'll be ready to provide samples free of charge inclusive of postage to a single grp of neutral tasters
1) 07 Sealed stored Bulang gushu
2) 07 Sealed stored Mengsong (da menglong ms) gushu
3) 03 Unsealed stored Jingmai Gushu
4) 03 Unsealed stored Youle Gushu
5) 03 Unsealed stored Yiwu Gushu
6) 03 Sealed stored Banzhang Gushu
7) 09 Sealed stored Yiwu Mahei
8) 80s Unsealed stored Guangyun Gong bing 1
9) 80s Unsealed stored Guangyun Gong bing 2
10) 80s Sealed stored Guangyun gong bing (hopefully teaism can spare some? i dont feel like cracking my last cake after having drank a couple pieces)

these teas are all personally stored, or obtained from people whom personally stored them over the years. No warehouse storage, so no warehouse effect/smell. Essentially a good simulation/representation of what happens to pu-erh tea that is kept at home in small quantities.

on request i can send the teas out without any labels, just numbers and random alphabets so that the tasters can be objective.
Or we could just create a list of users, each one will receive the teas, try some, add some, and send to another person.

We could decide some minimum requirements in order to have access to that list, for example, being a member of TC, for at least 6 months or 1 year with at least a minimum number of messages posted here.

Apr 25th, '14, 16:29
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by shah82 » Apr 25th, '14, 16:29

Of course, me being me, I volunteer my taste buds...

I don't particularly care about the storage issue. People can be as defensive as they wanna be about it. However, if there's one thing I've learned from reading about puerh is that different people pick up different notions of what is a good tea and what is good storage, and they fight over it. Much of the time, the people who really get into it are the people who know least about what they are talking about.

Beyond making sure that the readers here know that the sealing of bings into plastic is...unorthodox to say the least. You'll volunteering your own cakes for your own experiments. Mostly likely though, what changes (or does not change) will have had to do with *more* than the fact that you sealed it up in plastic. If you, perchance, ruin your tea, it will be by a constellation of storage problems.

If I get to try kyarazen's tea, I'm mostly going to after the chance to try some of that tea in general, and not evaluating whether the storage is good. Although, I definitely can tell storage problems/natures, though.

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Apr 25th, '14, 16:53
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by miig » Apr 25th, '14, 16:53

Hmm, interesting posts... first I'd like to say that I don't want to argue, and that if you think that I'm doing the wrong thing, thats great! Because I probably can learn something from your different perspective. So please, tell me! And now I have an open question: What would you have me do?

My situation is as follows: I live together with some people and i have one room for myself and my dog. This is where I can guarantee that no perfume clouds or smoke or anything will be around, hence, the only place where I can store my teas. So a cabinet is there, no extra room or anything. And the dog's around, he kind of has his own perfume :lol:
And then, the climate. In Southern Germany, the air is really, really dry. I don't fancy the idea of sealing into ziplock bags too much, first because i'd rather not seal the tea and second because i'm not a huge fan of plastic in the first place. But I don't want to build a pumidor, that really is way too complicated for my tea and me. So I reached the conclusion that I simply do not have the means to age the tea properly, but to risk it turning really bad if it dries out entirely, while ziplocking it might give me a chance to conserve it to a certain degree.

So, you say, ziplocking the tea is bad.. ok! Why? Just because it won't mature anymore? That would be OK. Or do you think it will turn bad, will turn worse than if its out in the dry air? Please hopgoblin and the others, seriously, tell me: what do you think is the proper course of action in a situation like bonescwa's and mine?

Thanks already for your input!
Last edited by miig on Apr 25th, '14, 17:02, edited 1 time in total.

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Apr 25th, '14, 16:59
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by William » Apr 25th, '14, 16:59

shah82 wrote:Of course, me being me, I volunteer my taste buds...

I don't particularly care about the storage issue. People can be as defensive as they wanna be about it. However, if there's one thing I've learned from reading about puerh is that different people pick up different notions of what is a good tea and what is good storage, and they fight over it. Much of the time, the people who really get into it are the people who know least about what they are talking about.

Beyond making sure that the readers here know that the sealing of bings into plastic is...unorthodox to say the least. You'll volunteering your own cakes for your own experiments. Mostly likely though, what changes (or does not change) will have had to do with *more* than the fact that you sealed it up in plastic. If you, perchance, ruin your tea, it will be by a constellation of storage problems.

If I get to try kyarazen's tea, I'm mostly going to after the chance to try some of that tea in general, and not evaluating whether the storage is good. Although, I definitely can tell storage problems/natures, though.
I see that it is not possible for us to arrive at a common point, from which could be possible the start of a discussion, as long as you believe that there is something totally right, immaculate, untouchable, while everything that differs from this, for various reasons and in several ways, is merely treated and considered as mistakes and incorrect knowledge.

Apr 25th, '14, 17:04
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by shah82 » Apr 25th, '14, 17:04

At the end of the day, what I know for sure is that ziplocking is for preserving the aroma. Beyond that...

You could just buy tea you want to drink right now. Forget all that storage stuff! Just let it live in that closet, and if it changes in a way you don't like, just throw it out and buy some more.

The purpose of humidity, beyond keeping the tea alive, is about browning it. I think that puerh is generally pretty forgiving, more than you'd think given how much people complain about Kunming stored teas. In a dry climate, keep it dark and don't let the air move too much. Not stagnant, but don't let it move much. Maybe put a bowl of water in there. In general, if you really want to age tea, especially towards dark flavors, you should find a way to use a pumidor.

Apr 25th, '14, 17:07
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by shah82 » Apr 25th, '14, 17:07

William, you have a passive aggressive style of argumentation that is fairly aggravating. This little hobby here involves a ton of people with quite high IQs--attempting to make the argument, as Isaac Asimov is so annoyed by, that your ignorance is just as good as my knowledge, will rub many people wrong.

Particularly when you come to a conclusion about someone's argument that seems to be diametrically opposed what they actually said, such that it paints that person as intolerant.

Apr 25th, '14, 17:13
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by puyuan » Apr 25th, '14, 17:13

shah82 wrote:At the end of the day, what I know for sure is that ziplocking is for preserving the aroma. Beyond that...

You could just buy tea you want to drink right now. Forget all that storage stuff! Just let it live in that closet, and if it changes in a way you don't like, just throw it out and buy some more.

The purpose of humidity, beyond keeping the tea alive, is about browning it. I think that puerh is generally pretty forgiving, more than you'd think given how much people complain about Kunming stored teas. In a dry climate, keep it dark and don't let the air move too much. Not stagnant, but don't let it move much. Maybe put a bowl of water in there. In general, if you really want to age tea, especially towards dark flavors, you should find a way to use a pumidor.

I think that's the crux of the issue. I'm under the impression that the idea of sealing isn't about creating a difference in degree, but in kind. Meaning, there shouldn't necessarily be a major similarity to the "normally" stored tea in any stage of its maturation, except perhaps in the keeping of the aromatics. Because of that I don't know if "slower" or "slowed" have any value beyond the merely conventional here, or that this method is akin to (mainly) a form of preservation. It should preserve the aromatics, sure, but still fundamentally change the tea plenty through the action of the microflora, oxidation and whatnot, and I'm under the impression that these changes should be noticeably different from the ones stemming from other types of storage, if the seal remains intact throughout the storage, that is.

I think a good analogy is the storage of oolong, forgetting the caveat that puerh can endure conditions that oolong can't. As I'm quite crazy about well-aged yancha, I can't help but being curious...

Obviously, that's just a faint impression and speculation on my part. I would love to have the actual experience to prove or disprove it.

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Apr 25th, '14, 19:30
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by the_economist » Apr 25th, '14, 19:30

kyarazen wrote:lets have some fun! how about a neutral party to do a tasting and to give feedback on the teas we have kept, whether it is good, bad, rubbish, sewage or excellent?
Two thumbs up, here's a man who dares to puts his tea where his mouth is!

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Apr 25th, '14, 20:09
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by SilentChaos » Apr 25th, '14, 20:09

William wrote:
hop_goblin wrote:
shah82 wrote:You've been away awhile, hop_goblin...those are the theories that have popped up these days. Let 'em do what they want to do. Feeling like they are in control of the process is important to their enjoyment.
Puerh is a 'living tea', which for the most part is already destined to be a good, or bad tea even before we receive it in the post. It's all about the region, manufacturing processes and effort by those who produced it that matters most. What we do after the fact will have minimal effect and vacuums, Mymar etc cheapens the mystic. Not to say that storage considerations do not matter, in fact they do, but a bad tea in any condition will remain a bad tea. All that we can do is attempt to make a bad tea palatable so not to piss our money away. lol.
In my opinion, what you say is incorrect.

The conservation of tea, whichever way it is made, should simply maintain great, over time, a tea that is already very good when it was produced.
If you need to make a bad tea palatable, just buy a better quality.
I don't really care about this fight/debate, but I'm wondering....... On your reasoning, how are you comparing the quality of a tea that was originally bad but turned good through aging against the quality of a tea that is good to start with? Or does aging not fundamentally changes the tea in kind?

And, I take it that you don't really like aged teas?

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Apr 25th, '14, 21:06
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by Teaism » Apr 25th, '14, 21:06

kyarazen wrote:
I'll be ready to provide samples free of charge inclusive of postage to a single grp ....
10) 80s Sealed stored Guangyun gong bing (hopefully teaism can spare some?
Bravo kyarazen! Very positive attitude!

For the nicely stored Guangyun gong bing, I only have one piece. It cost a fortune now! Perhaps it is better for me to brew it if anyone drop by Singapore. :D

I have resigned myself from debating on this issue and rather enjoy drinking tea quietly. But it is important that we constantly drink the tea that we store to monitor and understand the aging process, rightly and wrongly. Also try to taste other methods of storage to widen our perspectives.

Peace and have a great tea day!

Cheers! :D

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Apr 25th, '14, 21:31
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Re: Sealing bings in plastic

by chrl42 » Apr 25th, '14, 21:31

At least I've learned one thing from this arguement.

No plastic in dry condition :)

this super-dry Beijing weather is really bugging me, I've got a better result after breaking Bings into pieces, other than that, they never seem to age :mrgreen:


Am seriously thinking to get myself a decent Pumidor.

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