I am new to Pu Erh...need help :)

[moonraser]

Hello everyone, I am new to pu erh and need a little help.

I have a small pu erh collection ( 4 cakes and 3 tuocha ). I have them store in my closet shelf with 2 cups of water next to them, is it ok? Do I need more or less water?

Thanks

[coloradopu]

I would suggest getting something to measure the humidity in you closet and in the room the closet is in / house. with it you can tell if you need more water. i can not tell were you are from but here in Colorado i need humidifiers. And I check the RH in the closet and the house often because @ 10,000 foot elevation it gets real dry some times.

Some of us have been keeping up with a thread on RH and pumidor’s check it out.

good luck

:D :D

[shogun89]

Coloradopu pretty much nailed it. you need a hydrometer to see. I would venture to say you need more humidity since you live in Canada. I highly doubt some cups of water is going to boost you to 60-70%. though it will help.

[moonraser]

Hey! thanks both for your super fast reply . I really appreciated

I have never checked the humidity before. Winter in Quebec could get very dry.
and last summer was extremely humid. I better get something to check on the humidity

So basically the best is to keep them around the 60 -70 % right?

Does this rule apply to all pu-erh or do we need to separate the ripe and raw pu-erh?

[shogun89]

For raw puerh you will want the 70/70 rule. 70 degrees and 70% humidity, of course some variation is OK. For ripe the humidity or temp does not matter from what I know. As long as they are not exposed to extremes you ought to be alright.

[coloradopu]

shogun89 makes very good points but do not get too close to the dew point for you area. this will for shore grow mold. it is a bit more complicated than just 70/70
i always watch the temp and do not drop it to the dew point and the higher the RH the easier it is. at some cases dew point can be influenced by barometric press. so if you can take all of this in to account then you will be ok. i keep my stuff around 35-45 RH and temp @ 75 deg F.

also i have been told to keep shu away from sheng. i do not know the exact why but i do it.

P.S the higher the RH the lower the temp the closer to dew point you are warmer air holds more water and if you decrees the temp the water has to go somewhere and if the bar pressure goes up temp increases so if it goes down dew point can be reached without changing temp. i needed a weather man to teach me this stuff i hope i learned good.