Removing An Odor From Old Puerh?

[Intuit]

Not to be facetious, but you could add other flavors like ginger and cardamon to make a cool puerh chai. Do it the same way, store the a small amount of pu with these spices in your box, but not mixed in the tea.

I found several puerh blends sold that contained cloves and other spices in chai-like blends. Could be quite nice as an evening tea.

[Tead Off]

You abandoned good Puerh for 17 years? How?

I gave it to my daughter along with a few yixing pots when I moved to Thailand. When I asked her if she used any of it, she said no, it was all packed away. When my wife found the things, there were spices put into the same box. At least the pots are okay. I just had her removed from my will.

Intuit: great xmas ideas. Puerh chai, maybe even a little Puerh eggnog, eh?

[oldmanteapot]

17 year old clove pu-erh ... a new Thanksgiving tradition perhaps?

Which will fade first, the clove aroma or the pu-erh taste/aroma? Considering the clove aroma has stuck around for all those years, it is not likely to give up the pu.

Hhhmmm... Would it go well with roasted turkey and cranberry sauce? Perhaps it can be a new Thanksgiving Tradition :-p

Well, as for the aroma, it's going to be a 50-50 chance (keeping my fingers crossed).

Cheers!

[nonc_ron]

great xmas ideas
It would be better then a lump of coal.

[nonc_ron]

Put some potpourri (I had no idea how to spell that word)
in the gift box with the Puerh then blame the mess on the Post Office.
Thats what I'd do, Honest.

[Tea and coffee]

I actually made a pu erh blend on the Adagio website that was Pu Erh chai
Someone buy it please?

I'm sure the people who thought of pu erh chai would enjoy it

http://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/b ... crollTop=0

[Dogma_i]

I had a somewhat similar experience: bought several loose cakes and a bound stack of shu Puerh from a dusty back-corner in a SF Chinatown apothecary. The place smelled strongly of mixed herbs and spices (and dried lizards and pickled unicorn horn, probably), and so did the cakes. I bought them anyway, in hope that something might be done.

When I got home and brewed all three varieties, the dominant note was those mixed medicinals. Not bad, but not very good either. I put the cakes away in an average-ventilated space.

Within six months, almost all of the odd aroma and flavor was gone. In a year, there was no trace.

As both chemist and Puerh drinker, I recommend doing what I did. Roasting may cause unwanted chemistry to occur, and will likely drive off some desirable components. (I have tried roasting a number of shu and sheng Puerhs, with no very positive result.) Baking soda will do nothing; it helps reduce meat and dairy odors because the dominant element in these is low-molecular weight fatty acids. Alkaline aromas (like trimethylamine from fish) are not absorbed, nor are non-ionizable organics like the terpene alcohols and aldehydes that make up most spice smells and tastes. Charcoal adsorbs almost everything, to a degree, but is mainly useful in closed spaces like a refrigerator - it acts like a large open space (or thermodynamic sink) for chemicals, but no more than that.

Since there is probably nothing in the tea that will bind terpenes more strongly than did the original spices, they ought to diffuse out about as quickly as they diffused in, taking into account the lower starting concentration in your tea.

Good luck!

-DM

[Intuit]

The tea and spices sat packed away in an attic for a box for many years - not months.

Clove isn't a terpenoid. It's Eugenol (C10H12O2), is an allyl chain-substituted guaiacol (substituted methoxyphenol). Guaicols (gu-waya-cols) also give coffee it's characteristic aroma.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaiacol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenol

This is a fairly oleophilic contaminant; it will readily partition into exposed tea oils. Ain't going to diffuse out that much, and even if it looses odor at room temp, when it's heated for infusion, it will readily efflux. That's why I also suggested a backup plan.

[Dogma_i]

The tea and spices sat packed away in an attic for a box for many years - not months.

The cakes I bought had apparently been in proximity to TCM herbs for at least a decade, based on dust and wrapper dates. The off-odors still cleared in about a year.

Clove isn't a terpenoid. It's Eugenol (C10H12O2), is an allyl chain-substituted guaiacol (substituted methoxyphenol).

Clove is a dried flower bud. Clove oil comprises a complex mixture of flavor and aroma components, mainly (but not only) eugenol. Eugenol is definitely a terpene, as defined by structure, function and prenoid biosynthesis. Wikipedia is a a good starting point and a poor ending point for scientific understanding.

This is a fairly oleophilic contaminant; it will readily partition into exposed tea oils. Ain't going to diffuse out that much, and even if it looses odor at room temp, when it's heated for infusion, it will readily efflux. That's why I also suggested a backup plan.

From a chemical viewpoint, the thermodynamic sink represented by tea oils won't be any deeper than that of the original clove buds. So if eugenol et al. evaporated from cloves, they will from tea. While the absolute rate will be lower (because less is present), the relative rate may be similar or faster.

From a practical viewpoint, it worked fine for me, which is why I suggested avoiding measures that might damage the tea, and just waiting - which is generally not a bad thing with Puerh anyway. It is true that the superficial dry-leaf aroma disappeared from my cakes well before that taint was removed from brewed tea, but that eventually went away as well. (I no longer regret paying $18 each for the mini-cakes, which are flat-out the best shu I have tasted.) And I doubt that clove notes are any more persistent than some of that TCM stuff.

Advice and experience freely offered and free to ignore; no need to quibble.

-DM

[oldmanteapot]

Wooo.... Woooo.... Guys... Let's chill for a moment.

Thanks Intuit and Dogma_i for such an insightful and informative presentation on the subject.

But, allow me to interject, IMO, tea is something very simple and best to be kept that way. Society is already complex enough as it already is. Therefore, IMHO, let's not get too scienific over a cup of tea or a matter of fact, tea leaves. But rather, let's indulge in amazement how a small cup of tea can be a common denominator that bridges societies and cultures thousands of miles apart! We're all so different in our own unique way, but yet share such similarities over a simple cup of tea.

I'm truly happy that I've forged friendship across such vast landscapes, again, simply because we all share a common goal, to attain the ultimate cup of tea. Be it young, aged, oriental or western, it's still a cup of tea. Yes, we do have our personal preferences... these varieties in our taste buds bring colour to our daily life! Like I always mentioned, there's nothing more enjoyable (in teaworld) than to kick back, brew some tea, enjoy them with a bunch of teabuds, laughing and enjoying each moment we take a sip.

Let's not take the fun out of a tea fellowship, but rather let's sit back and share our lighter moments with each other, over a cup of tea.

Cheers!

[Tead Off]

Dogma, the tea is sitting quietly in a shallow basin airing out. I'm in no rush and have plenty of tea to drink, so, I'm willing to wait and see what happens. The tea was in storage with the cloves for only 3 years.

[MarshalN]

Dogma, good to see you here!

[betta]

Intuit: great xmas ideas. Puerh chai, maybe even a little Puerh eggnog, eh?

[Tead Off]

Almost 1 month now since i've aired out this Puerh. I put my nose into the dish, breathe deeply, and smell clove distinctly, perhaps ever so slightly less than when I posted here last. At this rate, perhaps by 2012, the smell of cloves may be weakened enough for me to enjoy this Pu again. But, isn't waiting for Pu what it's all about?

[nonc_ron]

Almost 1 month now since i've aired out this Puerh. I put my nose into the dish, breathe deeply, and smell clove distinctly

Sorry about that,
Does it taste like cloves or just smell like cloves.
Hold your nose and drink some.
If it taste good all we have to do is change the smell to something you like. (without changing the taste of course)