Cakes are too dry
I have some new cakes that I ordered and each that I try seem to be a bit drier and more brittle than I have experienced. These are shou and sheng. Any ideas on moistening them up or is that even possible? Or why they are so dry? Storage? I have them all currently in double Ziploc Freezer bags.
The only way I can think to moisten the cakes is to add humidity through a pumidor. You need a mini fridge and a cigar humidifier. Mr Mopar could give you suggestions in greater depth.
Damn, that sounds serious! Thanks for the suggestion. Maybe if a I had a hoard of cakes I’d concern myself with a humidor…hopefully one day! I only have a handful. That sounds like a cool invention.
I do kind of a weird thing that seems to help. I put a humidifier in a seldom-used guest bathroom and pushe the humidity up to about 80% and expose the puerh in there for a day, then wrap it up tightly. This seems to help. When I do it with teas in a plastic storage bin, it raises the humidity in the bin by 5-10 points. I’m sure it’s not as effective as a pumidor, but also easier.
I’ve tried putting the tea in a tight plastic bin with some water, but the vapor pressure of the water didn’t significantly raise the humidity in the box.
Where do you live? Other things besides humidity matter,e.g. temperature, elevation, air quality.
Hi, I live half the year in Seattle and the other half in Los Angeles. (Two extremes in terms of humidity!) My cakes are in Seattle at the moment. I have only had them for a few days. They arrived dry.
Another thing you can try is breaking them apart. I’ve resuscitated a couple in this way…
Thanks. Yeah I was thinking of breaking some off and putting in a mason jar to pull some moisture out. I have some “mixed” jars for pieces that come off my cakes when. I raw mix and a ripe mix. I noticed with the raw that it became more aromatic and a bit more moist.
I keep my cakes in a diy pumidor. TeaDB has a really great article on storage here http://teadb.org/puerh-storage/
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