Puerh Storage Conundrum
For the past couple months, I have been trying to find an acceptable way to store my puerh and hei cha, but unfortunately the layout of my house and my current living arrangements limit me. I used to keep my puerh and hei cha in boxes in the closet of the spare bedroom, but my grandmother recently moved in with me, so that’s no longer an option. At this point, I have been reduced to storing them in separate shoeboxes and keeping them on the top of the shoe rack in my closet…the same closet in which I am now literally storing all of my shoes and clothing. I would love to have something more ideal, but this was the only way I could devise to store them. Storage space here is extremely limited, as this house has virtually no closets or anything remotely resembling them, and well, I really didn’t want to store my teas in kitchen cabinets for obvious reasons. With all of this in mind, is this current storage method okay for my tea? Also, does anyone have any creative storage solutions?
Cwyn used to store her pu’er in an old fridge but now whe stores them in big ceramic pots. Is probably not a good idea to store it in paper or card boxes as with the humidity they could release unwanted aromas.
I use fridges and mini fridges to store mine in. I think cardboard will impart a taste maybe. Not in the kitchen, absolutely right . Too many odors could be picked up.
If you have access to a vacuum sealer you could try that as well.
Rui, I read about some Cwyn solutions a couple hours ago. I like the idea of the old fridge. I used to have one, but unfortunately it was scrapped last year. Yeah, the boxes are admittedly not the best solution. I basically just used them because that was what I had available at the time. So far, they have not seemed to cause a problem, but then again, the jury is out on that. Some people have suggested that such methods are okay for short-term storage, while others do not seem to have a problem with doing such things long-term. I live in an old house in a humid part of the country, but central heating and air conditioning seem to keep the air in my house at least somewhat crisp. The closet I’m keeping things in has good airflow. I’m still a little concerned about my tea picking up closet odor though (literally all of my clothes and shoes are in there), but I haven’t noticed anything unpleasant creeping in yet. I think I may look into getting a couple of big ceramic pots. If memory serves, my parents may even have some old ceramic planter-type pots on hand. Thanks for the suggestion.
Here are a couple of good links.
http://deathbytea.blogspot.com/2015/05/lots-more-on-puerh-storage.html
http://deathbytea.blogspot.com/2015/03/mr-mopars-puerh-storage.html
Great info and Cwun is very in depth on these.
I am using an old cooler for my sheng and old plastic semi-air-tight boxes for my shou. I emphasize the old, since new plastic can out-gas a chemical odor that you wouldn’t want to flavor your tea. We had been using these at home for decades, but other people have suggested buying old coolers at flea markets or yard sales.
Not all boxes are created equal. So I think that’s why the debate is ongoing, people aren’t comparing apples to apples. Some boxes are cheap, others made of different wood pulp, different glues, some are laminated, dyed, etc.
Some factory puerh is sold and stored in boxes, Xiaguan comes to mind. They also sell boxes to put your puerh into for storage. You just have to test your storage periodically and see if you’re noticing box aromas, or closet aromas, or anything else creeping into your stash. If so, then take action before it gets out of hand.
In the book “First Step to Chinese Puerh Tea” the author mentions puerh is packed into boxes, which are then wrapped in plastic bags for long term storage. Is that author wrong? Is there a right or wrong?
People who advocate against storing puerh in boxes are most likely drinking their tea stash, so they’re not airing it out after removing it from storage, and so they taste the box and say “no” to box storage. However, I think they are really advocating for a long-term storage solution which you can break into at any moment and drink, without any intermediate processing, storing, airing out, etc in between.
So I think the “no box storage” debate depends on a lot of things and shouldn’t be immediately discounted. But if you’re a large vendor with a warehouse, its much cheaper to pack tea into boxes than buy a bunch of old refrigerators, so maybe its a practical approach.
I store much of my puerh in boxes because it is the only way I can reasonably store the amount of puerh I now posses. While storing tea in crocks is nice I just don’t have the floor space to store it all in crocks. Cardboard boxes I can stack and make the most of my space. I don’t know if it the boxes I use but I have never gone back to a tea and noticed a taste.
I recently went from crocks to wine fridge. Those small bar fridges takes much less space. My stash greatly condensed once it was put into a wine fridge.
It depends how many cakes you have too. But a huge perk is I only have to control 1 climate instead of multiple ones. I’ve gotten lucky on getting these broken fridges for free as it costs money to throw out those fridges.
I may eventually move to a mixture of crocks and a wine fridge. RIght now I have no place to put the fridge, so I store my crocks in what used to be my wife’s wet bar. I am outgrowing that space at an alarming rate and cannot fit another crock in it. There is a place in my house where I’ll put the fridge when I can, but right now that space is being occupied by my wife’s geriatric cat and his stinktastic litterbox. It’s a lots-of-poo-therefore-no-pu zone.
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