Porcelain cannister to age oolong
I'm in the process of making a special order of 1kg of single bush dancong tea with the intention of storing it for long term aging. My question is does anyone know what I can expect to pay for a good quality glazed porcelain cannister large enough to hold so much tea?
I think for 1 kg of wiry tea, you'd probably want two canisters. The ones Stephane has that hold 600g (of rolled tea) would probably work pretty well; I don't think he carries them normally, but he had talked about getting more.
I have had smaller ones from him that are head and shoulders better than most of the other ceramic canisters with foil plug I've been able to get access to; they're not super cheap, but maybe ~ $20-30 ea?
http://teamasters.blogspot.com/2008/02/ ... n-jar.html
You can get smaller, cheaper ones for $5-15, but I don't know of too many western sources for larger ones with a good seal.
If you want to try sealing with wax, you can get sealing wax that will work with a hot melt glue gun.
Alternately, if you don't mind something more modern, you could get a couple of the larger Beehouse brand canisters (there are knock-offs that are much cheaper, but the ones I've tried have an off smell that seems really hard to get rid of).
You could also use a glazed earthenware jar if you can find one.
Would love to see suggestions from other folks for good ceramic jars with a tight lid.
Whether you want a tight lid seal or not depends somewhat on your environment and your personal preferences. I think for the early part of the aging process, you want to keep the tea pretty tightly sealed and without any extra space left in the jar. There are some good general threads on aging oolong that you should read through if you haven't already.
I have had smaller ones from him that are head and shoulders better than most of the other ceramic canisters with foil plug I've been able to get access to; they're not super cheap, but maybe ~ $20-30 ea?
http://teamasters.blogspot.com/2008/02/ ... n-jar.html
You can get smaller, cheaper ones for $5-15, but I don't know of too many western sources for larger ones with a good seal.
If you want to try sealing with wax, you can get sealing wax that will work with a hot melt glue gun.
Alternately, if you don't mind something more modern, you could get a couple of the larger Beehouse brand canisters (there are knock-offs that are much cheaper, but the ones I've tried have an off smell that seems really hard to get rid of).
You could also use a glazed earthenware jar if you can find one.
Would love to see suggestions from other folks for good ceramic jars with a tight lid.
Whether you want a tight lid seal or not depends somewhat on your environment and your personal preferences. I think for the early part of the aging process, you want to keep the tea pretty tightly sealed and without any extra space left in the jar. There are some good general threads on aging oolong that you should read through if you haven't already.
I was actually looking for that post on Tea Masters.
Have you tried baking soda for removing off smells? Last week I received two small japanese metal canisters that had double lids. The inner lids are made of plastic and they smelled strange, like fried onions. Never had any problems with japanese canisters before! I put the lids in a container with baking soda (dry stuff, didn't dissolve it in water or anything), really covered them completely, and kept for several days. Now the smell is totally gone.wyardley wrote: Alternately, if you don't mind something more modern, you could get a couple of the larger Beehouse brand canisters (there are knock-offs that are much cheaper, but the ones I've tried have an off smell that seems really hard to get rid of).
