1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

One of the intentionally aged teas, Pu-Erh has a loyal following.


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Aug 30th, '12, 14:16
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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by TIM » Aug 30th, '12, 14:16

After your long recession on tea chat, I still am in lost with your opinion.
Bloom is not mold, it's the crystallization of mostly oil from the leave. Same on cigar and tea. Do you have any personal experience on both tea or cigar bloom, perhaps you can share some of your picture with us?

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by Drax » Aug 30th, '12, 14:34

A search on "cigar bloom" brought up some interesting articles with some good information.

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by teaisme » Aug 30th, '12, 16:09

Wh&yel-appr... wrote:Someone pull out the microscope already
benm3 wrote:I even took a piece into my work, asked a friendly biologist down the hall for some help, got to use a fun and fancy microscope, and we saw mold.

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by gingkoseto » Aug 30th, '12, 18:24

wh&yel-apprentice wrote:
gingkoseto wrote: From the photo and from my experience with this tea, I guess the white color is from broken stem end (solid white dots) and crystallization on the surface of the leaves. I just don't see mold. But for people who believe there is mold, probably these pictures (from the product page) have better resolution to spot any white or yellow colors. So maybe my pictures look even "moldier" than the above-linked picture?
http://bit.ly/Pshqhy
http://bit.ly/RsWfiT
http://bit.ly/NXmm2f
The last photo (wet leaves) was included to show that those little hairs were grown by the stem and leaf themselves, not by another creature :P

As I mentioned in the steepster discussion, I thought it was pretty easy to distinguish wet and dry storage, mold and non-mold. Maybe I just underestimated things?

By picture, you can always find some white and yellow, hairy and non-hairy spots. For example, are these teas molded? :mrgreen:
http://bit.ly/Tw4s3p
http://bit.ly/NCPTIE
http://bit.ly/OvQ5KA
http://bit.ly/RZwSHZ
http://bit.ly/SSqrWt
http://www.lanhuas.com/upload/2012-06/6 ... 358287.JPG
white vs yellow? again, ginko? more racistist statement...and tea pr0n talk too. hairy vs non-hairy...well I never :p (sorry Chip) ...need more popcorn with Marshal & Tim being appoligists for ginko...yeah sure guys, she must of just sent the wrong thing, like accidentally sent the moldy tea as a mistake, for dry??? As she mentioned she only sells dry stored, so I guess the mistake was just a loose sample of moldy tea that somehow got into customers orders??? Uh-huh, credibility/stretches believability much guys?

Someone pull out the microscope already
Apologies that I fail to understand either your writing or your logic, or both? :P
Honestly I don't think I sent the wrong thing, whatever your take of it is.

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by Chip » Aug 30th, '12, 21:58

You could not pay me enough to sell pu-erh! :twisted:

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by TwoDog2 » Aug 30th, '12, 22:04

wh&yel-apprentice wrote: yeah, and how much relative humidity on aver...again, is in Kumming or Tejas?
89 Qing beeng>>> Hong Kong dry-stored cake of fame, was not stored out on the streets of HK, lol. It was *dry* stored in relative controlled humidity...d'oh.

Kunming = dry

Texas is huge, depends on location.
Houston = humid
Dallas= medium
Some small cities are like deserts

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Aug 30th, '12, 22:48
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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by Catfur » Aug 30th, '12, 22:48

TwoDog2 wrote:
wh&yel-apprentice wrote: Texas is huge, depends on location.
Houston = humid
Dallas= medium
Some small cities are like deserts
Some cities ARE deserts, and they don't have to be small (like El Paso).

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by MarshalN » Aug 31st, '12, 11:13

wh&yel-apprentice wrote:need more popcorn with Marshal & Tim being appoligists for ginko...
Excuse me, I was not trying to be an apologist for anyone - when you have one isolated example of tea being claimed as very wet stored, and then a whole bunch of other people trying ostensibly the same tea and saying it's very dry stored - I'm going to trust the whole bunch of people more. That's called weight of evidence - I trust a whole bunch of people more than I trust one person, given that I know very little about any of them.

There are now two people who claim to have received moldy tea with regards to this tuo. More interestingly, Ben, the second person, claims he bought a sample first, then a whole tuo, and the tuo is molded - which I presume implies that his sample was ok (for him to buy a whole tuo anyway). So what we've got going on here is that it seems some of the tuos are molded, and some are very dry stored. The chances of two wrong teas being sent to the wrong person is basically zero, since the second one is a whole tuo and not just a sample.

So, it seems like gingko needs to check his whole lot, and see which ones are molded and which ones are not. It could very well be that he procured the teas from two places, or whoever sold them to him actually stored them in two places, one of which is seriously compromised.

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by benm3 » Aug 31st, '12, 12:48

Hi Gang,

I think this is a very interesting conversation, and I really hope we can keep it going with civility and without needless accusations. We are talking about tea, after all, [Moderator edit]

Marshall, you are right. I did not notice any mold at all in my initial sample. However, I suspected/wondered whether that sample might have undergone some traditional storage because it seemed rather mellow in taste, to me, for such a tightly compressed Tuo Cha.

when I received my whole Tuo, I noticed a few things right away: first, the leaves looked slightly less shiny than the ones in my sample. Second, the wrapper smelled a little musty/funky. Third, there seemed to be both white and yellow mold inside and outside the Tuo.

I thus deducted that my Tuo had received some humid storage, but I must confess that this is only inductive, not deductive, logic. I am truly not certain. I suppose that a lot of molds only need upwards of 60 percent humidity to flourish. It is possible, therefore, that my Tuo could have been exposed to mold spores from an infected cake and flourished in what is a more dry- aged environment.

the only thing that I am fairly sure about is that my Tuo has mold. I can't take pictures from a microscope, but I will try to take some close-up pictures of my Tuo this weekend and post them here.

Finally, I want to conclude by saying that my moldy Tuo ain't half bad. I mind it much less than other moldy teas I have tried. It is mostly mold of the white and fuzzy sort, though there are specs of yellow here and there. I did not confirm whether these yellow specs have a crystaline nature or not, so maybe they are golden flowers and not mold. The white stuff is mold, though.

Oh, I also think that maybe we should all go online and order something from Life in a Teacup if we are going to have this conversation:). I shall do so today.

Ben
Last edited by Chip on Aug 31st, '12, 21:36, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Moderator edit: political content removed per forum rules located under TeaChat Announcements, User Guide, Contact

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by MarshalN » Sep 1st, '12, 13:01

Brush off the mold with a soft toothbrush - old tea friends do that routinely.

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by ImmortaliTEA » Nov 4th, '12, 01:56

I just wanted to chime in here I know I'm a little late but I didn't even realize this thread was happening. My initial intent for the negative steepster review of this tea was after having it with me on a trip to my favorite tea room, having pulled it out to get input about it from 4 teachatters (simultaneously in the flesh lol), as soon as they pulled a chunk out of the silver sample bag and saw the white dust from the mold poof up in one of their faces, they immediately were weary but then proceeded to pass it among them to check and as they all agreed it was moldy and they would rather not drink it, I told them it was claimed to be COMPLETELY dry stored and this shocked all of them as they all conclusively agreed that they all doubted the fact that it was dry stored with that much white mold on it. The only reason I created the negative review was because I was of the opinion that completely dry stored tea should have absolutely no white frost and if it does it should be in maybe a few spots not a thin layer across the entire surface area of the Tuo like this one. Then my initial hypothesis that it was too frosty to be completely dry stored was confirmed when I had that experience with all of those fellow tea drinker's opinions that not only did they doubt it was dry stored, but that they also thought the white frost was actually mold and said things like "If I would ever even attempt to taste that tea, I would rinse it 3 times with boiling water before I'd even consider taking a sip". Not trying to criticize the vendor at all just sharing my opinion as well as others' on this tea that seems too frosty to be dry stored. Thanks again guys!

ImmortaliTEA-

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by gasninja » Nov 4th, '12, 09:38

Wow Mold clouds that's shady.

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by gingkoseto » Nov 5th, '12, 22:36

Ok guys... I didn't follow up Nick305's post on steepster because it looks like he is so sure of what he thinks and already drew the conclusion. Confucius said, "no more discussion after somebody has already drawn his conclusions." So that's where I stopped.

I followed up this teachat post because this was opened for the sake of discussion. My comments are on the second page of this thread, and I don't have anything new to add.

Just to add a little more... I somehow felt secretly guilty that I seemed to have (passively) benefited from this discussion. Although I can never be sure which person is which forum ID, I guess quite a few emerging (curious?) buyers of this tea (even during the time my store was closed...) were from teachat and/or steepster. Thank you all for everything. :wink:

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by TwoDog2 » Nov 6th, '12, 02:34

gingkoseto wrote: Just to add a little more... I somehow felt secretly guilty that I seemed to have (passively) benefited from this discussion. Although I can never be sure which person is which forum ID, I guess quite a few emerging (curious?) buyers of this tea (even during the time my store was closed...) were from teachat and/or steepster. Thank you all for everything. :wink:
You can shed your guilt. Most everyone here continues to sample and search for tea out of curiosity. If some discussion provoked that curiosity, it is nothing to feel guilty about.

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Re: 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo : latest discussion on blog

by gingkoseto » Nov 30th, '13, 12:08

ImmortaliTEA wrote:
This is the first time I've ever given an open declaration like this. I'm fully grateful that I didn't have to do anything like this before, as vast majority of tea drinkers are the most truthful and kind people.

I understand this thread is not about ImmortaliTEA but a discussion on tea. I appreciate the opportunity to hear people's opinions on this tea. In spite of the statement I'm going to give, I think most part of this thread has been great discussion.

But since ImmortaliTEA is involved in this discussion and is the one who started the initial comment about this tea on steepster, I should give some updated response here. The following statement is about ImmortaliTEA only and doesn't involve anybody else:

All my previous responses here were made before I gained better idea about who ImmortaliTEA is and where he is from. If I had known, there would have been a very different response. (That being said, all my comments directly on the tea remain the same.)

FYI: http://gingkobay.blogspot.com/2013/11/f ... it-is.html

The above post and the above-linked statement were made after I contacted ImmortaliTEA through teachat PM and failed to get any response. No personal identifiable information of any sort is released in any of these statements.

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