TeaForum.org

I visited a Malaysian tea shop and bought a few cakes of 2003 Yellow Mark "B" then and they were quite good. Since the price was good and the guy seemed honest I ordered a bigger batch from home 6 months later. The tea is clearly the same tea but the storage is somehow really bad. The tea smells and tastes like ashtray or sawdust. It's undrinkable. The bad smell is really in there in the tea and not only in the surface. The vendor says "it's the same tea with same storage" and declined a refund.

Any ideas what to do?

Also if you know any rescue operations that I might try for the tea that would be highly appreciated. Since I have a few cakes I tried breaking a cake up and airing it and airing a whole cake. I didn't get good results.

Thats a bummer.
Who was the vendor?

Tertti wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 14, 2017 6:25 am

I visited a Malaysian tea shop and bought a few cakes of 2003 Yellow Mark "B" then and they were quite good. Since the price was good and the guy seemed honest I ordered a bigger batch from home 6 months later. The tea is clearly the same tea but the storage is somehow really bad. The tea smells and tastes like ashtray or sawdust. It's undrinkable. The bad smell is really in there in the tea and not only in the surface. The vendor says "it's the same tea with same storage" and declined a refund.

Any ideas what to do?

Also if you know any rescue operations that I might try for the tea that would be highly appreciated. Since I have a few cakes I tried breaking a cake up and airing it and airing a whole cake. I didn't get good results.

How long has the broken cake been airing out? Is it in a porous clay jar? If not then put it in one and forget about it for another 3-6mo or until it improves. I've had really funky HK puerh improve after spending a year in a yixing jar.

I will second breaking up and airing it out. You could send me a cake to try and rescue minus a small chunk upon completion. It has been said I have a knack with some storage things I do. You could also try to super humidify it but be careful to watch for any mold starting if you go this route. It is a dangerous slope but sometimes it will work.

Depending on what kind of bad smells/tastes you're talking about (and since it sounds like you're SOL on a refund), I'd leave them with a bit of humidity and/or fresh air and let them chill out for a month or two before you panic.

I bought three (different) 08 Dayi cakes a few months ago - each was light on flavour, heavy on smoke and astringency and just... terrible. Thought they were wasters.

Six weeks in a cooler at 74% and they've completely changed, and I just tonged one as a daily drinker.

It could be that you were sold bad tea, but it's equally plausible that your bigger batch was pulled from tong storage and sent straight over, and may benefit from a little time.

Wow thanks for the great advice! I don't have a porous jar at the moment. I have at my disposal: non smelly big plastic bags, paper bags, cardboard boxes and clay shards to humidify the tea if needed. Maybe humidify the cakes and seal them in plastic?

Brent D wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 14, 2017 1:56 pm

Thats a bummer.
Who was the vendor?

The vendor is Faongg SDN. BHD in Georgetown, Penang island. And the person called Eric Oh. So far I understood he's not the owner but a worker there. He is a nice dude however but this episode felt quite bad...
address: George Town, 62, Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling, George Town, 10200 George Town, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

mrmopu wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 14, 2017 9:15 pm

I will second breaking up and airing it out. You could send me a cake to try and rescue minus a small chunk upon completion. It has been said I have a knack with some storage things I do. You could also try to super humidify it but be careful to watch for any mold starting if you go this route. It is a dangerous slope but sometimes it will work.

I would be happy to ship you one cake for you. I will PM you.

I have broken up puerh with unpleasant storage taste into loose leaves and stored it in a porous clay jar. That was quite successful as the offensive taste cleared up when I tried it again a year later. I used a dirt cheap terracotta pot, and not some fancy yixing for it. My locale has a suitable climate for open storage of puerh, not sure how well it would work in colder & drier climates. Maybe you could try it with less porous materials - it would probably just take longer to clear up.

Sorry to be late to the discussion here. I’ve gotten different cakes from Taobao that smelled/tasted of nothing but cigarette smoke, thought they’d never be any good. However, within 6 months they recovered and became the good tea that they were. A vendor REALLY should know to —- cig smoke away from the tea, but alas, not all of them get this right. The way I fixed mine was in a stoneware crock, but shoot, a cooler is just as good (anything that will create a micro-environment, really). Toss a clay shard soaked in distilled water in there and leave it, let the tea soak a little. For me, in hindsight, the journey with cig smoke cakes was kinda fun. After a month I tried the tea and it had improved some. After 3 months I tried it and it was noticeably much better. After 6 months I felt like the tea was back to its ‘normal’

(Mod edit —-)

DoubleB wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 25, 2017 9:59 pm

A vendor REALLY should know to —- cig smoke away from the tea

Wait, what?

(Mod edit: —- )

must hope that was autocorrect

Also as an addendum I think the 'B' addition in Malaysia means the cakes are fakes!

Jeez, sorry about that, most definitely that was autocorrect, I meant to say “keep away from cig smoke”

First, may I suggest that the claimed "auto correct" error be revised/edited in the orginal post asap (as member says it was supposed to have been written prior to the error laden "auto correct") - can this be done by the user (it seems they can do so by clicking the pen icon next to their initial post and making the edits) or by board moderators asap? Can/should the other comments repeating the "questionable" language also be deleted?

Things are just gettting started nicely here, and there need not be any such things, errors or otherwise, to even see or discuss here. So can these various posts now be suitably scrubbed?

I also think that a clarified code of conduct may be appropriate (or something the moderators should consider) and by it members have a duty to review their posts for errors, spelling and content before pressing send. And if they fail to do so more than a X times and post things that are considered generally offensive, that the moderators step in and either ban them or sanction/limit their use somehow.

(Update: I see that such situations are actually covered by the already posted "Rules of Etiquette", but perhaps the Rules might expressly state something to the effect that: "Each member has a duty to review each of their draft posts for content and errors regarding any offensive language and/or content prior to posting it as public.")

This forum is such a lovely gift of the creators. Let's make sure everyone feels good here. Just trying to help. Better to scrub the various posts now and avoid further exchanges about this "spell check error". You can scrub all of mine above too for that matter - save the next part

Re the funky cakes, I got some shipped from China a while ago and they were packed in plastic and a tad funky smelling out of the bag. I was worried. I left them sit a few months and they are right as rain.

I would never moisten a cake slightly and put in plastic bag - as that is a recipe for mold and it's early demise.

We do our best, but sometimes **it happens.

Warnings are issued when deemed appropriate and at the ultimate discretion of the first mod/admin to come across an offense.

Chip wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 30, 2017 2:45 pm

We do our best, but sometimes **it happens.

Warnings are issued when deemed appropriate and at the ultimate discretion of the first mod/admin to come across an offense.

The only way to avoid these issues is by never creating a forum in the first place.