Puerh Storage
I’ve been searching through a few threads today and have found a lot of information on puerh storage, but nothing concise. I’ve started to find some different puerh teas that I like (both raw and ripe) and am probably going to invest in some whole cakes soon. That being said, I want to make sure I have a good way to store them so that they will last a while. What are some basic ways to store a small amount of cakes? I won’t have a collection anytime soon, but am just looking to store probably 2 or 3. Anyways, let me know your thoughts! Thanks.
There are as many opinions on puerh storage as there are people storing puerh. I store some of my puerh in a pumidor built out of a mini fridge and a cigar humidifier. The mini fridge doesn’t get turned on it is just a good way to keep in the humidity from the cigar humidifier. It is generally agreed on that puerh needs a certain humidity to age well. Most of my puerh, however, doesn’t fit in the pumidor and is just aging in cardboard boxes with the natural fluctuations of humidity that the New York State environment provides. If you don’t want to build a pumidor you basically have to age your tea the slow way with the natural humidity of wherever you live. Someplace like Hong Kong will age you tea faster than someplace comparatively dry like New York. Some people who don’t have a cigar humidifier try to place a bowl of water near their tea but I have never attempted this and am not convinced it is a good idea.
That makes sense. I imagine you could use a variety of containers as well. As Dr Jim mentions later, even a cooler. Basically you are looking for something that seals in the humidity you add. What about air circulation then? Does opening the fridge once in a while provide enough airflow? Would it be better to use something somewhat porous? Just throwing out ideas here in order to learn :)
have you thought of making a pumidor? i hear they work. allank has a great idea
They are easy to make. Mr Mopar helped me with mine. They are quite simple. The only drawback was I had to buy a new mini fridge. No one tries to sell a broken one. If you are building a pumidor with a full size fridge you can find someone selling a broken one but broken mini fridges people just throw out. They are not deemed worth repairing and the amount of people wanting one who don’t plan to turn it on are small.
im not too tech savvy. what do i have to do with the electrical gear? i cant solder
You don’t have to do any soldering. The fridge is just a box. The cigar humidifier comes with it’s own power connector.
The cigar humidifier is about $100. Mini fridges vary in price. You might find one cheap if you want to build a pumidor. If your not storing a fair number of cakes it may not be worth it though. Mine is packed.
i don’t buy many cakes. at most i had was 3 or 4 which lasted me a couple of months
If you are using the cakes up every three months you don’t really need to worry about storage. If you get into it more and have fifty or 100 cakes then you need to worry about storage. The only thing you still need to worry about concerning storage is avoiding mold growth. Don’t put your cakes in the refrigerator or anyplace else where mold growth is likely.
Thank you guys! While reading this, I remembered that I have an old broken wine fridge in the basement! I was too lazy to throw it away :)))
We got it from in-laws. It’s basically same size as dorm fridge, but the door is made of glass and the shelves are…hm…wavy :) so that bottles stay put. Classy :))
The wine fridge will work well to seal. You may want to get something to humidify the storage. Lion has an idea using terra cotta that works as well. If you check craigslist sometimes you can pick up old or non running fridges pretty cheap. Just make sure they have no metal that can be exposed.
Kirk it would probably take $130.00 or so in US funds to set one up when you acquire the fridge.
I was wondering if you can use tobacco humidifiers. Something like this
http://www.iwanries.com/Mini-Brick-Humidifier-P6793C26.cfm
My Dad is a pipe smoker, and he uses them to keep his tobacco from drying.
Not sure if those are the ones I’m thinking of, but there is a type of humidifier pellet like that that gives off ammonia. Not sure if that’s it.
@elena-z i smoke a pipe so i’ve heard of those. however, i’m not sure if they will work? you might not get much in them. maybe if you store a 100g brick or broken up puerh bits?
Metal can give rust and give off an odor. The best ones to use will have food grade plastic in them and plastic shelving. If you do use a humidification device use distilled water. The steam should have killed any unwanted spores in it.
The ones I am thinking of, and I’m not sure if that’s them will ruin puerh. They are small humidity packets or pellets or something like that and they give off ammonia gas ruining your puerh. There was a Teachat thread a while back that talked about them. People tried them to control the humidity of their puerh and got ruined puerh. I think they were intended for cigars.
A warning: be sure your storage does not have an odor of wood. A wine cooler would be ok if there are not wood shelves, and a cigar storage container is likely to be a very bad idea as they typically carry an odor.
Yes as Rich suggests humidors made for cigars are made of Cedar wood because of a type of bug that is allergic to it and likes cigars. Cedar is bad for tea because of a strong odor. That’s why pre – made cigar humidors are no good for tea. If it wasn’t for the cedar wood there are some really nice large cigar humidifiers that would hold more than a hundred cakes of puerh.
Just sharing my experience… I bought a second hand wine fridge and an Aristocrat humidifier. The wine fridge is sealed so well though that I don’t use the humidifier anymore, even during winter. I just monitor the r/h and leave a glass with some distilled water in there when it gets too low. Once I reach 70%, I remove the glass and leave it like that for a while. I find humidifiers are a bit risky since if one goes defect or uncalibrated, it might keep the r/h too high for a while and ruin your whole collection. I ruined a cheap tuo that way with my humidifer as it was brand new, straight out of the box and factory-calibrated – and this is one of the higher-end humidifiers.
The wine fridge was 120% filled up and I needed more space, so I kept the fridge for short-term storage (cakes that are already opened) and I use a plastic Ikea box for longer term storage (cakes I got no plan to drink for at least a few year). The fridge is more convenient on a day-to-day basis. I bought the plastic box 5-7 years ago and it was stored without a lid all these years, so it has absolutely no odor or plastic smell. I will be using the same way to keep the r/h -70%. The restaurant supply stores also sell odor-free plastic boxes made from polycarbonate, but these aren’t cheap though.
As Allank already said, though, if you just drink your stash and have no plan to age them for at least a few years, you should not over think. You can just store them in ziploc bags. Then think about better storage if tou decide to age more tea.
I can second using restaurant supply store plastic containers. As bef said, not cheap, but I think the insurance against plastic smells is worth it.
@a bad pasty
@bef
> restaurant supply store plastic containers
You mean like this? http://www.webstaurantstore.com/rubbermaid-fg330400clr-clear-polycarbonate-food-storage-box-18-x-12-x-9/690330400CLR.html
[EDIT] also, where is the formatting help that describes how to compose messages/replies with links, bolded usernames, etc.
@aardvarkcheeselog Yep, that kind of container. Polycarbonate.
Otherwise, just pick a plastic box that has absolutely no trace of odor. If just like me you got a few plastic boxes that have aired for years, that might be OK.
How often will you drink the pu? Two or three cakes isn’t very many, so if you drink them with any degree of frequency, I wouldn’t worry too hard about storage conditions…
This is worth a read:
http://deathbytea.blogspot.com/2014/10/puerh-storage-is-crock.html
My 2 cents, or is that Tim’s? http://themandarinstea.blogspot.com/2007/10/storage.html
Yeah, I understand that it’s Tim’s, I could have been clearer. Also similar to what I do, and hard to call it my advice when Tim deserves all of the credit.
I misread that post. Sorry.
I read up on his and a bunch of others and worked mine out. I don’t see why people seal it in plastic. I thought that would choke it off.
No worries, I wasn’t that clear. I have some 2009 Yong De Da Xue Shan from Finepuer that came sealed in plastic, and I’ve left them that way (also each in it’s own cardboard box, fwiw). I have no confidence that it’s the best way to store them, but I definitely see a logic to it, so I have left them wrapped and we’ll see. I imagine that there is still plenty of space for whatever microbes to do their work, but that’s speculation.
I would think as long as it isn’t extremely airtight that would work. I can always notice a difference between a newly arrived sealed tea and one I open and let breathe. It may just be how I sense it though. I like to have it wake up a bit.
Yeah, I like to give my tea a breather before steeping too, and usually have broken off pieces of a few cakes airing at ready.
I am using an old picnic cooler with a small container of water inside. The cooler is pretty air-tight (the lid sits down inside the cooler to make a good seal). This keeps the interior at about 60% RH. A word of caution: a new cooler will out-gas chemicals so you want an old one. We’ve had this one for decades. If you don’t own one, this is the sort of thing that you can buy at a rummage sale or yard sale.
This isn’t an original idea, but I don’t remember where I read it.
Sounds easy to implement. What level of humidity are you aiming for? I imagine you also don’t want so much as to promote mold growth etc.
I wedge the water container (an easy gaiwan with a lip my wife gave me that I don’t like for steeping) against some of the cakes, but you are right, it is a risk. Since I am simply evaporating from the surface, I only put about 1/2" of water in the container, and refresh it frequently. You can jump start the humidity by starting with hot water. I aim for 60%, which is enough to encourage some aging, but hopefully too low for mold. Once the room’s humidity regularly reaches 60% I will transfer all the tea to a wooden wine crate for less air-tight storage for the summer.
It sounds like a lot of this is simply up to trial, error, and personal adventure. I like the idea of using a less air-tight storage system for the warmer months though. That makes a lot of sense. Is there anything bad about the tea being stored a lower humidity besides slow aging? For example, will it hurt the tea in the long run if you kept it in the wooden crate all year?
Here’s what it looks like: https://www.instagram.com/p/BDt_2YKpnf0/
You can see the easy gaiwan in the upper left. I keep a lot of my samples in the pumidor; I open the zip closure so they can be exposed to the humidity. Every few weeks I swap them out with the ones that are my ready supply.
The biggest down-side is that I often have to dig to find a cake. On the other hand, that helps them air out.
Looks like a great system. Is it best to air out the tea before you drink it? It seems like a few people have implied that but it wasn’t explicit. Do you just take out how much you’re going to use in the next week and let it air out for a few days or what?
Sometimes I just break off a piece and steep it, but I also take enough for a few steeps of some of my favorites and store in small baggies or tins. That’s why I only access it every few days. When I do, I usually change the water.
i really don’t like the idea of having a container of water in there. seems too risky to me. :( if i ever build a pumidor, ill use soaked clay and wipe off excess water drops
Some important matters that we should pay much attention while storing pu-erh tea:
Humidity: 50%-70%
Keep out of direct sunlight
Avoid odor
Here we also recommend: Indocalamus, Carton and Zisha Tea Container, which can be easily found in our daily lives. View detailed information via: http://www.teavivre.com/info/store-pu-erh-and-other-teas/ , hope it helps you.
Some of my puerh is stored in a giant yixing container that I was lucky enough to find in the USA. They abound on Taobao but are basically impossible to find anywhere else. Although I may have seen a few on Aliexpress. Most sellers I guess are unwilling to take the risk it will break in shipping.
I would love to get my hands on one of those giant yixing containers!! My puerh is living in the bamboo caddies I got from guangzhou. But I’ll definitely need to migrate them to a bigger container soon
You can get giant yixing containers on Taobao if you can find an agent willing to ship it to you. However, the agent will make you agree to take the risk in shipping. If it breaks you are out the money. You can definitely find them on Taobao. Many agents will simply refuse to ship something that big and fragile though.
Hmmm… I’ll definitely look around taobao. Hopefully I find a seller who will pack that bad boy safely
Unless you are in China it is not a matter of getting the seller to pack it safely. The seller will only ship within China. You need to go through an agent. You make first payment to the agent and he buys the item off Taobao. You then wait for him to receive it in his warehouse. Then the agent repacks the item and you pay him his shipping fee. Then he ships it to you. Taobao agents are a little picky about what they will ship, however. They won’t ship puerh knives that resemble actual knives for instance. Getting on to pack and ship a giant yixing container will be difficult. If you do get one to do this you have to take the risk in shipping. If it breaks, even if the reason is it was improperly packed, you are out the money. There is a high probability a giant yixing container will break in transit.
I wonder about temperature. How hot is too hot? I live in SE Florida and am thinking about keeping tea in my garage.
No, it gets way hotter than that, in the summer. Not sure how hot, but probably over 100F.
What kind of facilities are common in Guangdong? That’s about the latitude I’m at. I would think that non-air-conditioned warehouse storage is common there, would I be mistaken?
[EDIT] We are having some days in the 80s this week. I expect the garage is getting up in the 90s at mid day.
I think they usually store in the upper parts of the buildings. Or at least that is what someone told me. I am not sure about the temp fluctuation over there. I could be cooler in an upper part I would think.
Maybe no one knows for sure what the acceptable range of temperature, humidity, etc. for ideal storage conditions are – as not enough study has been done on it. Higher than average humidity and temperatures are probably good for aging tea – with the risks that higher humidity could lead to mold and higher temperature may cook the tea and a combination of them could alter the storage taste of the tea.
Upper parts of the room are hotter and humid – for the simple reason that hot air rises up.
Guangdong is much cooler than your garage, it peaks at 90F in summer probably and non-conditioned storage should be OK at that temperature.
Maybe it is fine to store it in the garage, and maybe you should dig a cellar under your garage, who knows :-)
@Psyck -
I don’t plan to store a lot of tea for a long time… I don’t have a lot of decades left. So I’m mainly buying tea to drink now. I have a few things I don’t care about that much in the garage as a kind of test this summer, a couple of Xiaguan tuos and a 7542 cake that were all previously stored in Kunming. I figure if they’re not obviously ruined by the end of the summer, I might put something nicer out there for next year. And if they are ruined, well, the loss won’t be too great.
Oh, and the “over 100F” is inside the garage, when the air outside is 90-ish.
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