Store pu erh in Malaysia

[larry127]

Hi,

Is Malaysia a good place to store raw pu erh? How fast it takes to age?

And I have some loose raw moonlight tea, which is consumable (taste good), based on you guys experience how long does it need to be store to let it evolve into even more better taste tea?

[wyardley]

Storage is a complicated issue (and as I understand it, Malaysia has a lot of micro-climates). I've had some Malaysian stored tea that's on the dry side for my taste, but that may partially be because a lot of people store it in their home, which tends to be air-conditioned. But compared to most Western countries, Malaysia has the advantage of being relatively warm and humid.

I think the consensus is that so-called moonlight white tends to be a tea that's intended for drinking now vs. a tea that will age really well. If it tastes good, I'd drink it now.

[chrl42]

Agreed with wyardley, I think it's 'who stores it', rather than 'where to store'

[theredbaron]

It really depends. Malaysia can be an excellent place to store Pu Erh, one of the best in the world. However, the humidity can be too high at times, and can cause that stuffy wet storage taste if care is not taken.

[theredbaron]

Agreed with wyardley, I think it's 'who stores it', rather than 'where to store'

Sorry, but that i disagree with.
I have, for example, never had a Pu Erh stored in Kunming, for example, come even close in aging as comparable teas naturally home stored by me here in Bangkok - a climate slightly less humid than Malaysia (we got three distinct seasons here with only one painfully humid).
Microclimates of course make a difference (especially when air condition is involved), but i would dare say that climates such as Thailand and Malaysia cannot be reproduced, unless one has a large greenhouse and unlimited funds available.

[Cwyn]

Mississippi. Your books will mold even with air conditioning.

[ALTea]

Mississippi. Your books will mold even with air conditioning.

Yum! I enjoy a little moldy wood flavor in my puerh.

[gasninja]

Mississippi. Your books will mold even with air conditioning.

Yum! I enjoy a little moldy wood flavor in my puerh.

Hell yeah me too.

[shah82]

For me, it's more that I don't mind, if the underlying tea is good.

I just don't think that flavor is particularly interesting in an of itself. The sharper versions of that flavor, I find mildly offensive. Also, I've had enough nasty old puerh that I'm always a little mildly suspicious of off-taste. So much of the time, I'm just not tracking how nasty the tea is--a couple or three session later, I'm gagging at the mess. I guess, lastly, moldy wood taste is also an indication that the tea has been poorly humid-stored, and is pretty dead and shu-like. I can drink that and enjoy it fine, but I'm always emotionally outraged by what it must cost to buy this stuff I'm sipping.

What I want out of a nice, traditionally stored factory tea is some depth, gentle/pleasant/no sour, with lots of old furniture/paper, and some sort of sweetness in the finish, either vanilla, honey, or plums. Moldy wood is welcome for the ride, but it's not important, and can indicate problems.

[jayinhk]

I agree with shah82. I live in the home of traditional storage, where sheng can look like shu at some traditional tea dealers' stores. I agree that poor humid storage can be unpleasant. Humid home storage sans moldy aromas is my ideal. Mellow, sweet and still aromatic, but softer, is where it's at.

[Cwyn]

My point was that the US has perfectly humid places to store tea. Malaysia doesn't have a corner on humidity. I'm interested to hear more about places in North America (including Canada) where tea is successfully stored. Shah has said his tea is doing fine in Atlanta, GA. Again, another humid location. mrmopar is in Virginia and I can testify his tea is full of flavor, including teas he has owned for more than four years, I've sampled heavily from his collection, thanks to his generosity.

[theredbaron]

My point was that the US has perfectly humid places to store tea. Malaysia doesn't have a corner on humidity. I'm interested to hear more about places in North America (including Canada) where tea is successfully stored. Shah has said his tea is doing fine in Atlanta, GA. Again, another humid location. mrmopar is in Virginia and I can testify his tea is full of flavor, including teas he has owned for more than four years, I've sampled heavily from his collection, thanks to his generosity.

Four years is a blip in the life of aged Pu Erh, and is by then even in the most favorable climate just reaching the end of childhood. You can judge successful storage only after at least 10 years. I am quite sure that in similar hot humid climatic conditions in the US one can get similar results as here in the hotter parts of Asia, where we do have experience over time. I don't know if anyone has stored Pu Erh in hot and humid places in the US for ten to twenty years to able to have a proper comparison.

[Cwyn]

This is the kind of nonsense that continues to persist on Teachat. Heat and humidity are controllable variables. There is nothing miraculous about Malaysia unless you want to discuss unknowns like air pollen.

The only reason tea remains in decent condition in Malaysia is because people don't need any special storage to maintain the proper heat and humidity levels. Which means people can practically ignore the tea in a tong and have a better chance of ending up with decent cakes in a climate like Malaysia, assuming the base material isn't garbage. And the main reason puerh tea has gone flat and tasteless in parts of the US is because these variables are not maintained when allowed to fall beneath the levels needed to keep the tea from drying out. The microorganisms which are required for fermentation die.

At any point in the life of a tea cake, if the microorganisms are active, you can smell and taste the lively tea. If the microorganisms die, you can smell and taste that as well. Without the proper conditions, your tea will dry out and go flat in two years or even less if in a climate like mine where the indoor RH falls in winter heating below 25%, which is DESERT. Desert versus tropical heat and humidity is fact and fact. Live tea versus dead is fact and fact again. I don't need thirty years or more than two to know if the tea is fermenting or not.

After the variables are accounted for, the rest is BASE material as to whether the tea is decent. A thirty year old tea today has different base material. Heat and humidity are controllable constants. After that, Base wins out. You can't compare 30 year old tea base material with that available now in the past 10 years. It is apples and oranges comparison, now and 30 years from now.

[wyardley]

I have definitely seen it argued that having 4 seasons (as in HK) is a good thing (with a very humid and hot period and a drier, cooler period). I know there are different climates in different region, but my understanding is that the temperature varies less in MY than in a lot of other regions.

But basically, you see a lot of storage chauvinism, that is, people from HK insist their storage is best, people from MY say their storage is best, etc..

Of course, with HK, you have to separate out natural storage in that environment, from so-called HK storage, referring to intentional wet storage. Even teas like 88 qing bing or yuan ye xiang are said to have had some intensive storage early in their lifetime.

[theredbaron]

This is the kind of nonsense that continues to persist on Teachat. Heat and humidity are controllable variables. There is nothing miraculous about Malaysia unless you want to discuss unknowns like air pollen.

Nonsense?!

Sorry, love, i have been storing my own Pu Erh tea here in Asia since long before there was teachat, or much on Chinese tea on the internet, for around 15 to 16 years now, and have been drinking Chinese tea for 25 years, since i first got into it in Singapore back then. My oldest self home stored teas are almost 20 years old. I am far from a Pu Erh expert, but i have learned some over those years.

You can't just simply replicate entire macro climates at a whim unless you have large greenhouses available. Pumidors will not do that trick. Mircoclimates in the particular regions do also influence tea.
As to base material - it still is tea. High quality Pu Erh was far cheaper in the early 2000's when the Pu Erh surge began to really take off, and much that has been quite cheap back then is now moving into unobtanium regions.

Storage in Hongkong, Taiwan, or Bangkok are known entities (to some degree, as there is also quite badly stored tea from those areas as well, especially too humid stored tea from Malaysia) due to the length of experience, or teas that went through traditional Hong Kong storage, which i personally do not appreciate much. US and Europe simply does not yet have that experience yet, and we will have to see until the first teas stored in the different climates there reach maturity in a few years time.

Pu Erh goes through several periods in storage, especially in the juvenile period the tea does not yet know what it is - young or aged - and that period begins (at least here in humid Asia) with around 4 to 5 years of age, and ends after year 8 to 10, or even later. Only after this period you can be confident that a tea has aged well, or not. I have had teas that tasted quite terrible in that juvenile period, but turned into something great afterwards.