It’s been a year since I started this little storage experiment with my two identical cakes of He Kai sheng from Jalam Teas. One of them is stored in the “natural” Canadian storage in my living space (I will call this one the “dry” one), the other one together with all the other cakes in a controlled environment (which I will refer to as the “humid” one). Let’s see what the difference is, if any, after one year.
From the very start, there is a startling difference in terms of the aroma. The “dry” version has a strong creamy, sweet, grassy, and milky scent, while the leaves of the “humid” version smell flowery with notes of honey and breckland thyme. The two are really quite different, but neither seems ‘better’ per se.
The humid one has a very slightly darker liquor and is less green in the leaves. The next significant difference comes about in the taste. The profiles are not that different, but the dry tea has a short finish, and is more subdued and metallic in general. The humid version has a much more pronounced taste with a stronger huigan. It is grassy with a biting finish and a sweet, cooling aftertaste. The late infusions seems to be more similar overall.
As for the mouthfeel, I’d say the humid tea thicker body, is more astringent and has a more distinctively creamy and lubricating texture.
It’s hard to extract any significant conclusion from this session, but at the very least it doesn’t make me disassemble my pu’er storage solutions :D
Flavors: Biting, Bitter, Creamy, Floral, Grass, Honey, Metallic, Sweet, Thyme
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This is great intelligence. What are your pumidor parameters?
Generally between 62% and 68% in relative humidity (recently sheng seems to be stabilized at 62 and shou at 66) and temperature averages somewhere around 22°C (I don’t use any additional heating at the moment).
This is great intelligence. What are your pumidor parameters?
Generally between 62% and 68% in relative humidity (recently sheng seems to be stabilized at 62 and shou at 66) and temperature averages somewhere around 22°C (I don’t use any additional heating at the moment).