I would never finish these pu-erh ... what should I do?

[gunbuster363]

Hi, I came from Hong Kong where there are many Chinese tea lover. My parents have the hobby to buy tea but I am not sure of the quality. Some pu-erh were friend's give-away where some pu-erh were bought in tea house/department store.

I took them all out from the cupboard and had a display. The environment was rather messy in the cupboard. There were too many tea cake/brick in a closed environment so I tried to separate them with plastic bag. ( Later I read that you shouldn't put raw pu-erh in plastic bag because they will absorb the smell, but I didn't have other material to separate them. And I was lazy to buy other material to wrap them one by one. They were still wrapped in sealed plastic bag anyway )

I am not sure of the quality of these pu-erh. I've read the requirement for proper storage of pu-erh ( Hot, wet, windy ) but our cupboard had been closing for years and there were absolutely no wind nor humidity eventhough Hong Kong is rather a humid city.

As far as I know ( my mother told me so ), some of them are raw cake, and some are cooked cake. I couldn't distinguish them. I tried one of these which was written "raw" on the wrapping paper and felt nothing extraordinary. Sure the cakes were in the cupboard for over 10, or even 15 years.

If I want to start out fresh and buy proper raw cake, should I finish these first? Should I dump some? Could you have a look at them? Could you identify any of them?

More importantly, there are absolutely no wind and humidity in the cupboard if we do not keep the cupboard door open.


P.S. These are not all. The brick at 10 o'clock I have two.. the brick at 12 o'clock I have eight, the brick at 8 o'clock I have three. Really there are too much.

[Exempt]

If you decide to dump any I'll send you my address and money for shipping

[gunbuster363]

If you decide to dump any I'll send you my address and money for shipping

I am not fans of pu-erh and they are in abundance.. anyway I would try them out one by one later before if I am going do anything with them.

For what I've said about dumping that, it's because the cupboard is nothing like a good environment for proper growth of raw pu-erh. By the way I assume this doesn't matter for the cooked cakes... well, I couldn't distinguish the raw cake and cooked cake anyway.


I think 1 cake is just too much. I think there are 300g per cake? I seldom drink pu-erh because the flavour doesn't have much complexity like green tea - umami and sweet. Most of the time there are just woody flavour and sometimes smoky smell over the leaves.

[Poseidon]

If you decide to dump any I'll send you my address and money for shipping

I am not fans of pu-erh and they are in abundance.. anyway I would try them out one by one later before if I am going do anything with them.

For what I've said about dumping that, it's because the cupboard is nothing like a good environment for proper growth of raw pu-erh. By the way I assume this doesn't matter for the cooked cakes... well, I couldn't distinguish the raw cake and cooked cake anyway.


I think 1 cake is just too much. I think there are 300g per cake? I seldom drink pu-erh because the flavour doesn't have much complexity like green tea - umami and sweet. Most of the time there are just woody flavour and sometimes smoky smell over the leaves.

I completely agree. The "good" stuff is way too expensive IMO. Puerh is nice in the fall/winter though but so is a nice dark roasted oolong for a fraction of price.

[AllanK]

I would hold on to them, its not like they will go bad any time soon.