Time Flies - Another Year Of Pu erh Storage

 

Time flies.  Before you know its 2025.   For me, it had been a mind boggling light speed adventure last year. I was in Norway and Denmark last September and was happy to see many smiling tourists doing their touristy duties in the cities.......but at the same time, a military war was being waged in their neighbouring countries. We are living in a strange new world.  

Back to tea. To my readers, how is your aging and storing of your pu erh collection......how is your tea coming along?  I would like to suggest a way to check on your tea storage. 

You select a pu erh cake, break up into 6-7 pieces (about 30-50g), put the cake back in storage and take out a piece to drink every 2 years. Do remember to xin cha ( break up the tea and store in a tea caddy for 2-3 weeks) that piece before you try the tea. There would be no significant change in terms of taste and aroma of the tea in the first 5 years of storage.  But sampling the tea would give you an inkling (too dry or wet) about the storage conditions of your tea.  Yes, I believe that your pu erh tea will age with time.  Without being too technical. your tea will age slowly if you are living in a temperate country than in a tropical region. 

One of the difficult challenges of pu erh storage is time.  Storing a tea for more than 10 years or more is challenging. It is a very long wait.   I know many tea collectors giving up after a few years especially when they relocate or have a family.  You must also have the space to store your tea.  For a serious pu erh collector, you might own a few cartons worth of tea. This tea take up valuable real estate space in your home.......and once you start a family......priorities may change. 

My advice if you want to store a pu erh tea. Max 2 cartons. Leave the boxes alone.  Revisit the tea after 10-20 years. If the tea age well, you got nice tea to drink. I was lucky.  Tea was much cheaper 20 years ago and I had ample space to store my tea.   

I am thirsty. Time for tea.      

 

Tea Of The Year 2024

 

My tea of the year (drumroll) are old Baishaixi tea bricks. But there is a caveat. This tea has to be boiled. 

Place 3g of tea adding a mug of water into a pot.  Let the tea come to a small simmering boil for about 2 minutes. Switch off the heat and let the tea sit for another minute before pouring out the tea. Enjoy.

I had found that boiling Baishaxi tea makes for an extremely nice tea session. The aroma has a sweet dried berry fruit scent.  Using an older Baishaxi that is 10 years old or more makes the tea extremely smooth, sweet and mouthwatering.  Very addictive. 

If you brew this tea using the kung fu method, you would need to use more tea leaves (8g or more) to bring out the taste and aroma. I found out that boiling the tea brought  out the full flavour. 

I decided to name this boiled Baishaxi tea as tea of the year for a few reasons. Baishaxi bricks usually come in 1 to 2 kg sixes. Such a brick, if you brew 3g twice weekly will last you for a very very long time to finish a brick. 

Baishaxi black tea bricks are inexpensive when compared to pu erh and oolongs.   I would recommend that if you intend to buy a Baishaxi brick to start your tea boiling adventures, you should get the higher grade ones as the low grade Baishaxi range has more tea dust in the bricks. 

I am opening an old Baishaxi brick and will put some of this tea in my online store. 

To all my tea friends and readers, Merry Christmas. 

Jin Mu Dan Oolong

Jin Mu Dan Oolong, also known as golden peony oolong are grown in the famed Wuyi region in Fujian China. Wuyi oolongs are very popular among oolong tea drinkers and some of the rarer productions there can be extremely expensive.

There are many small villages that produced oolong in Wuyi China. These villages would want to showcase their tea and giving their oolong a nice sounding or unique name was a marketing strategy to stand out among the many oolong tea producers there.  I had recently opened a 'Golden Key' oolong from the Wuyi region 2 years ago and I was unable to identify this tea from a blind taste test.   In terms of taste and aroma, it is extremely difficult if quite impossible to identify an Wuyi oolong by specific region. The production methods like roast levels and different age of the tea would fool many tea experts in trying to identify a particular oolong. 

This Golden peony oolong is a 2018 production from Sea Dyke tea factory. This is a high roasted tea. It has a long pleasant aftertaste.  Smooth and mellow.  This tea is pleasant to drink when hot and just as nice when it had cooled down.  An enjoyable tea adventure. 

Bamboo Pu erh

 

I happened to have a bamboo-tube pu erh in my collection.  I had purchased it from my earliest trip to Guangzhou tea market. This tea had been in my collection for more than 15 years.  

You can see from the pix that this 500g tea was 'stored in this bamboo tube.  I had seen pictures that .....tea was actually stuffed into the bamboo tube and some pressure was applied  (by hand) to compress the tea into the tube. In some instances, some of these producers even placed these tea filled tubes over a fire to 'roast' the tea. 

This tubed pu erh I had opened was a ripe or shou pu erh. It had 'Yong Ming" brand on its label. The tea was moderately compressed. The quality was not high grade.... broken tea leaves and stems.  When I brewed up the tea, the tea was clean with a good taste and aroma. 

I had tried a few bamboo pu erh during my travels.....one was smoky while another one was quite woody in taste. My thoughts are that if you are a pu erh tea drinker, you should get a bamboo pu erh just for its novelty.     

Xiang Mu Hai Black Tea Ball

This is the Xiang Mu Hai black tea ball.  There are 500g of black tea in the box.  More specifically, there are 120 black tea balls in the box with 6 balls packed in a small self sealing pack. This would worked out to about 4.1g per ball. 

This tea was designed for convenience and all you need was to pop the tea ball into a mug of boiling water.  I found that I could refill my mug with boiling water to get another round of tea as well. Good for 2 infusions. 

The regular teabag from supermarkets has about 2g of tea. This black tea ball instead has 4.1g of tea.  The tea when brewed is strong and aromatic. I am not a fan of tea balls but this tea was very good and very appropriate for use in a busy office or while travelling. 

However, I felt that Xiang Mu Hai that produced this tea could had made a marketing error in naming this tea 'little black men'.   This label is not appropriate if this tea was marketed internationally.  I hope the tea factory would change the name for this tea. 

Bai Mu Dan White Tea - Fukien Tea Shop

 

I was in Hong Kong in 2008 sampling tea at Fukien Tea Shop, when the owner Mr Yeo asked me whether I wanted some white tea.  He said he had ordered some new Bai Mu Dan and found them to be quite good.  I purchased 500g and requested that the tea be packed into 4 smaller packets. Upon reaching home, I stored them in empty tea tins and only trying this tea today. 

This white tea was very aromatic even when I was unwrapping the wrapper. It was like a light perfume with nice floral notes. I used about 5g of tea in a 180ml teapot and I could get more than 6 good infusions. Lightly sweet in the aftertaste. I could enjoy the tea hot and even when it had cooled down. I think it will make a cold tea as well. 

Though this white tea tasted very light and delicate, I hesitate to drink this tea in the evening as my last experience drinking white tea kept me awake way past midnight.  An enjoyable tea and I am happy to have it in one of my tea caddies.  

An Older Mei Zi Jing Pu erh Cake

 

I opened an older Mei Zi Jing raw pu erh cake. No date chop on the wrapper but I had kept this cake in my collection for more than 12 years.  Mei Zi Jing is an area or region in the Lincang district of Yunnan, China. This 400g cake was produced by Yongde tea factory. 

Most of pu erh tea in my collection that were harvested from the Lincang area had a smoky background. This cake was non smoky and It was interesting when I had a tea session of this tea. 

With more than 12 years of storage in my collection, this tea is mellow and smooth.   The taste of the tea was mainly dominated by a woody taste. It was a little bitter but I could not detect any other flavours in the tea.  The after taste is nice with a pleasing salivating sensation after I had drank a cup of this tea. 

But I digress. Tea collectors like myself store away our pu erh for 10-15-20 years.  Even though we take pains to ensure proper storage for the pu erh to age, there will be many instances where the aged tea will not be what we imagined or desired. We may wish for a strong aged tea with complicating taste and aroma but there will be some tea that will come out extremely well and some not too well.  If you are intending to store and age your pu erh tea, be prepared for a wild adventure.