Rainy Season Mold Report

[Puerlife]

I know that this post is irrelevant to those who live in completely different climates so please bear with me or skip reading it. I hope it will be helpful to some and also that some of you will be able to help me.
A couple days ago I decided to check some of my tea. Since mid July the relative humidity has constantly been in the low to mid 80s. The temperature has been in a range from 26 to 30C. (These are readings inside my house where I keep my tea; official Chiang Mai readings bear little relation.) My sheng is fine. Most of it is in zipped ziplock bags (individual cakes) placed inside cardboard boxes. I assume the extra protection of the cardboard is beneficial because upon opening the box the tea aroma is strong. I’ve used big clips to keep the top flaps secured, at least preventing big gaps that would let air in.

I’ve done the same with tongs. Many are in plastic wrap and I have some mini tongs in ziplocked bags. Those are all fine. I also have various new and semi-aged shengs in tea caddies that all smell wonderful and look and taste just fine. (After finding so much moldy shu I wrapped a sheng tong in plastic wrap because I can’t find ziplock bags big enough. Is this OK?)

But I took less care with some of my shu. I had four cakes in a shallow box in two stacks of two, and the box went weeks at a time with the flaps carelessly closed but letting in air. The worst of the four was a Yunnan Sourcing cake which I hadn’t drunk for a long time. It was very one dimensional when I bought it and I got bored with it at about the time I became predominantly a sheng drinker. It has gray/white mold not just on the surface of the cake but inside as well, and the fast moving little off white critters that most of my moldy shu has. After the initial shock I took a quick spin around the Internet and felt reassured enough to brush off what I could and brew it up after two long boiling rinses. Mm, good. The moldy acceleration has made it more interesting. Also in the box were two cakes of Golden Needle White Lotus, one unopened and one opened but 3/4ths intact. The opened one is moldy but not as bad as the YS one. I opened the paper wrapper of the second one and the color was still fine but there were obvious mold hairs starting to spread. Fortuitously, I broke up a fourth of the first one and put it in a ceramic tea caddy on July 17 and that tea looks fine, no visible mold.

Also in the box was half of a YS 0532 (2012?), and very moldy and crawling with little critters. Also fortuitously, on July 17th I broke up about 150 grams of this cake and put it in a ceramic tea caddy. That tea is just fine. Oh wait, there is one tip of one chunk that is very moldy but the rest looks fine. I broke off that little bit. No great loss. If this chunk were England the moldy bit would be just a fraction of Cornwall. I examined the lid of the tea caddy and discovered that it is particularly ill fitting, the only bad one I am using. These caddies are factory seconds and I got them for a song.
Then I checked my tong of 2009 7572 and a tong of 2007 7262 and both are just fine. The 2007 is in bamboo. The 2009 is a tong in paper wrapping to which the vendor added a tight layer of thick cardboard. Both tongs were in a box with a tight fitting lid, no plastic. I also have some of each in tea caddies and that tea is fine.
I also bought a lot of cheap lao cha tou in Malaysia. I really liked it when I bought it and thought I could sell it but I don’t like it anymore. That is a problem with tea expos. Being a noob, I poured way too much tea down my throat, making it impossible to evaluate it. Indeed, I am not always sure about any one tea even after having all-day sessions with it. Anyway, this stuff is moldy. About half of the pieces are very moldy and the other half can still pass for OK. How was it stored? It’s loose pieces in 500 gram boxes of thin cardboard/ thick paper. I think they would have been fine if I’d left them in the original box and kept it tightly shut but I wanted to ‘display’ these nice looking containers tied with cute red ribbons and decorated with Chinese brush writing.
I bought a lot of another cheap lao cha tou in brick form from the same vendor. I left it all packed snugly in a box with tightly closed flaps. It’s all fine. No plastic.

There is one more box to go through if you’re still reading. It’s a miscellany of cheap shu, most of which I bought when I was very new to shu. The box was only carelessly closed, leaving a gap in the flaps.
Xiaguan ripe tou cha in round cardboard. Pristine
4 250-gram bricks of 7581 bought in June. Perfect – Maybe mold needs longer to grow and is invisible at first?
2010 Dayi Hong Yun Ripe Mini cake – Moldy as heck, with lots of fast moving little off white critters. I guess Dayi’s nice looking but thin red cardboard isn’t so great in this humidity.
V93 tong of fakes – Not a speck of mold. Maybe pesticide is a good mold inhibitor.
Loose ‘puer’ from a Shan area in Burma/Thailand – Not a speck of mold but no aging either. I have an almost pathological inability to throw away tea even when it is obviously dreck. I also once held a stock from a dollar to zero. OK, I admit it, in my naïve heart of hearts, but not my head, I hold out hope that this turd will transform into gold. Isn't it funny how we Westerners like to separate the head from the heart. It's very handy when we are being dumb and only want to admit to being half silly.
Eight-gram pieces in a paper bag lined on the inside with something transparent and shiny – Still looks good and has the original dry leaf berry aroma.
Sample in small plastic ziplock bag – Looks and smells fine
Teaspring.com Tibetan brick – The website bills this as “indispensable part of Tibetan diet” which I find hard to believe because it tastes like piss. I mean urine, literally. How do I know what urine tastes like? I was drinking this with a friend who has a serious health condition for which he has tried every alternative therapy under the sun, including yup, you guessed it, urine therapy. So when I said this swill tasted like what I imagined a number one tasted like, he confirmed. I recall this one giving both of us a very bad feeling in the gut so although I have a large and hungry compost heap outside, this one goes straight into a plastic bag that will be picked up and taken away by the garbage men to either a toxic land fill or dioxin emitting trash incinerator.
So now you all know how slack I am when I think I can get away with it. As for conclusions and observations, I’ve tried to keep those to a minimum so you can glean the facts but if you have your own don’t be shy. For all I know I could have mold spores already growing on tea that looks OK.

[ethan]

If you drink tea all day, your urine will taste like tea. Don't ask any ?s; take my word for it. Sounds like you own a lot of tea!
Hope to see you this January for a tea session or two.
Your post is interesting.

[Puerlife]

So you're coming back to Thailand. Glad to hear it. After the initial excitement of motorbike trips and related pleasures in the late 80s I'd had my fill and didn't come back for 15 years, but now I live here. lol Thailand has a way of drawing one back. Yes, I have lots of tea and have more on the way. Still not more than I can drink in a lifetime but I'll be passing that milestone soon enough. BTW, that Tibetan brick I threw away didn't have a speck of mold on it