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I was thinking about the trip that tea takes from Asia to the west. Especially with COVID changing flight behavior, a lot of places are switching to boats. I am about to order some from a shop in Germany, and was wondering I'd the tea would experience freezing as it crosses the Atlantic to the US.

Does anyone know how freezing effects raw puerh?

I'd suspect that enzymes, bacteria, fungus that cause the aging process are pretty resilient to freezing. I'd be a little more concerned about freezing affecting the cellular structure. The low water content might allow the tea to freeze without forming ice crystals, so that freeze-thaw cycles wont damaged the leaf.

I guess this would be easy to test. Has anyone tried freezing half a cake for a month and then return it to store with the other half?

i haven't tested, but gut feeling is it should be ok.

why not get DHL from germany though?

Isn’t it more likely to experience freezing on an airplane?

I live in Canada and I've been doing lots of Puerh orders from China over the years. I even get mail dropped in a somewhat inaccessible post box that means it sits in -33C for a few days before I manage to retrieve it.

So I've had my fair share of 'frozen' sheng. Terrible postal delays as well recently, so I've had tea that's been sealed up for 3-6 months and stored god-knows-where.

In my experience, adding it to a pile of friends and letting it sit for a while 'gets it going' again with little harm done. I've had the occasional 'dead' cake, but I put that down to other things than it getting frozen its journey.

pedant wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 22, 2021 9:04 pm

why not get DHL from germany though?

Because of limited airline flights (people not flying) DHL isn't offering air for "non premium" shipping.

I was quoted at 37 € for about 200g of samples and an extra 16€ for the premium.

Its really a lot of money considering O get packages from Taiwan and China for half that.

BriarOcelot wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 22, 2021 9:57 pm

I live in Canada and I've been doing lots of Puerh orders from China over the years. I even get mail dropped in a somewhat inaccessible post box that means it sits in -33C for a few days before I manage to retrieve it.

So I've had my fair share of 'frozen' sheng. Terrible postal delays as well recently, so I've had tea that's been sealed up for 3-6 months and stored god-knows-where.

In my experience, adding it to a pile of friends and letting it sit for a while 'gets it going' again with little harm done. I've had the occasional 'dead' cake, but I put that down to other things than it getting frozen its journey.

Thanks! Leave it to a Canadien to know about cold

Bok wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 22, 2021 9:37 pm

Isn’t it more likely to experience freezing on an airplane?

Cargo holds are pressurized and heated. Not to comfortable ranges, but to prevent damage to cargo.

air post might not do you much better anyway from what I've been seeing. The post here hasn't had any problems from what I've found, and I don't know if its covid alone, but I have the feeling that also the USPS still hasn't fixed itself since DeJoy tried to put the final nail in the coffin. packages I send are in Frankfurt within one or two days, and then they sit for weeks at a time. so you'd probably be waiting the same amount of time anyway.

Mine's regularly at below-freezing temps for days before I snag it and bring it indoors. Seems to tolerate and brew up well without any issues, so far.

I had some bings and tuos stored in Zip-Locs in variable sub-freezing temperatures down to about -10⁰C for months and they allsurvived without any noteable effects even though the humidity content of the tea was up to 8% of its total weight. Anyway, I still prefer temperatures somewhere between 25 and 30⁰C for my Pu's

Tea, being as dry as it is, shouldn't suffer any direct harm from freezing. The only two potential issues, that I see, are risk of condensation when bringing it back to room-temperature, and that the enzymes and microbes might have been killed, leading to poor ageing-potential.

Limited condensation is arguably not a particular problem for pu'er, since you want it to have some humidity anyway, and it can be dried again. As for the enzymes and microbes, I don't know how sensitive they are to cold, but most likely they'll just go dormant and then "wake up" when the temperature is right.