After drinking my cheap chinatown beeng for a while, I found an upscale tea shop here in toronto that sold some loose puerh, I bought some 2 year old and some 20 year old...not cheap either! The 2 year old stuff looked and smelled like typical loose puerh tea i think, the 20 year old is more clumpy, because, i was told, the leaves have sort of fused together over the years, makes sense I guess. (btw both are cooked puerh apparently..from yunnan that the owner gets first hand on her travels). Anyway I noticed today that the 20 year old stuff has a smell that the 2 year old doesn't, it's earthy and musty but also maybe a bit onzony or sort of choloriney but not really? Not offputting, and i may be just smelling normal old puerh aromas, I don't know... Got me wondering about florine which is apparently in "some" puerh. anyone know what the deal is with that and if i should be concerned?
both teas taste quite good...though I'm sure I'm over paying. ($20 100g/2yr, $30 50g/20yr)
is there anyway to know if what we're drinking is in fact dangerous?
Re: Florine, can you smell it?
It's definitely not fluorine. Fluorine is a reactive gas, so it 1) wouldn't have survived for 20 years, and 2) it would smell different -- it would smell like burning, in the sense that your lungs would be burning as the fluorine formed hydrofluoric acid in there.
If there were fluorides of some kind (ions, think salts), you wouldn't smell those, and they wouldn't be volatile.
I've had old liu an (a tea that's done 'similar' to shu) that had a very 'brisk' quality to it, like those "spring morning" detergents.
All that aside, is it bad? It really depends on how the tea was grown, prepared, and stored, most of which you (and even the person you bought it from) likely don't know.
In any case, let the tea air out a bit and see if the odd aroma goes away. If not, it may simply be part of its flavor/aroma profile.
As for price... there are certainly cheaper options available of similar years. It all depends on the taste...
If there were fluorides of some kind (ions, think salts), you wouldn't smell those, and they wouldn't be volatile.
I've had old liu an (a tea that's done 'similar' to shu) that had a very 'brisk' quality to it, like those "spring morning" detergents.
All that aside, is it bad? It really depends on how the tea was grown, prepared, and stored, most of which you (and even the person you bought it from) likely don't know.
In any case, let the tea air out a bit and see if the odd aroma goes away. If not, it may simply be part of its flavor/aroma profile.
As for price... there are certainly cheaper options available of similar years. It all depends on the taste...
Re: Florine, can you smell it?
I suspect the chlorine smell was likely from your water source.trenchrun wrote:After drinking my cheap chinatown beeng for a while, I found an upscale tea shop here in toronto that sold some loose puerh, I bought some 2 year old and some 20 year old...not cheap either! The 2 year old stuff looked and smelled like typical loose puerh tea i think, the 20 year old is more clumpy, because, i was told, the leaves have sort of fused together over the years, makes sense I guess. (btw both are cooked puerh apparently..from yunnan that the owner gets first hand on her travels). Anyway I noticed today that the 20 year old stuff has a smell that the 2 year old doesn't, it's earthy and musty but also maybe a bit onzony or sort of choloriney but not really? Not offputting, and i may be just smelling normal old puerh aromas, I don't know... Got me wondering about florine which is apparently in "some" puerh. anyone know what the deal is with that and if i should be concerned?
both teas taste quite good...though I'm sure I'm over paying. ($20 100g/2yr, $30 50g/20yr)
is there anyway to know if what we're drinking is in fact dangerous?
Re: Florine, can you smell it?
Or this, too...ycleong wrote:I suspect the chlorine smell was likely from your water source.
Re: Florine, can you smell it?
thanks...i'm thinking maybe it's just part of the aroma profile as you say...it's not the water as i can smell it in the dry tea. brisk is a good way to describe it....like an ozone smell in a lightning/rain storm...hard to describe.Drax wrote:It's definitely not fluorine. Fluorine is a reactive gas, so it 1) wouldn't have survived for 20 years, and 2) it would smell different -- it would smell like burning, in the sense that your lungs would be burning as the fluorine formed hydrofluoric acid in there.
If there were fluorides of some kind (ions, think salts), you wouldn't smell those, and they wouldn't be volatile.
I've had old liu an (a tea that's done 'similar' to shu) that had a very 'brisk' quality to it, like those "spring morning" detergents.
All that aside, is it bad? It really depends on how the tea was grown, prepared, and stored, most of which you (and even the person you bought it from) likely don't know.
In any case, let the tea air out a bit and see if the odd aroma goes away. If not, it may simply be part of its flavor/aroma profile.
As for price... there are certainly cheaper options available of similar years. It all depends on the taste...
ive been reading about florine poisoning in heavy tea drinkers in china (and puerh in particular...do a "florine puerh" search you'll see what i mean) and it got me thinking...