I received a brick of tea as a gift from a relative wherein the wrapper immediately made me suspicious, saying something to the effect of Bingdao thousand year gushu 1978, when to my knowledge, 1. the gushu craze started in early 2000's and 2. BingDao region was popularized in like 2005. The wrapper was taken off and then the cake was mailed to me wrapperless. I did not see pictures of the brick before, but it is by far the ugliest tea I own. Anyway, my parents said to give it a chance, so I brewed some bits that fell off today, and the color was a mild orange. The brick smells strongly of mothballs, and tastes like it too, both in upfront taste and aftertaste (and I gave it two rinses!). I was surprised it didn't dry out during transit from China, as without rehydration via Boveda and just sitting in a sealed pack it generated an RH of 58.
At any rate, I figured it'd be best to let it sit for a few years, but I don't know what else to do. I remember reading a blog post from Marco of Late Steeps on reducing the geosmin note using heated storage on a XZH cake took 2 years, so I'm wondering if anyone else has experience with fixing a cake with bad storage. I'm guessing material plays in too, so if the underlying material is of low quality to begin with, it won't ever recover. Does anyone else have specific experiences with trying to "fix" puers with bad storage?
Timeline on fixing storage issues
Your brick may be beyond saving...m2193 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 02, 2022 9:07 pm[...] the wrapper immediately made me suspicious, saying something to the effect of Bingdao thousand year gushu 1978, when to my knowledge, 1. the gushu craze started in early 2000's and 2. BingDao region was popularized in like 2005. The wrapper was taken off and then the cake was mailed to me wrapperless. I did not see pictures of the brick before, but it is by far the ugliest tea I own. [...] The brick smells strongly of mothballs, and tastes like it too, both in upfront taste and aftertaste (and I gave it two rinses!). [...]
You can store a tea to let its storage aromas and tastes dissipate, or to let the storage character integrate better with the tea and present itself in a more palatable way.
Teas aren't meant to be tasted straight out of wet storage, for example, and they can taste better after a few months broken-up in a tea jar after ordinary (not wet) humid storage, even for people like myself you enjoy those humid notes.
And, ordinarily, I might think that one person's mothballs could potentially be another person's lovely storage aromas (especially if this were just an ordinary wet-stored cake or brick out of Hong Kong or such).
However, everything that you said above suggests that there's something seriously wrong with this tea.
Do you have any photos of this suspicious item?
Andrew
I have no idea on storage history, but I don't think it's been out of China until now. Some pictures attached, both of the brick and the spent leaf. No leaf breakage when rubbed, though gaiwan lid reminiscent of shou smell. The color doesn't make sense for shou pu though, with how light it is. I don't have the original wrapper as it was shipped to me unwrapped, and am just using Xuan paper to keep it wrapped.
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Looks like Huang Pian. Big leaf in that one.
if this is the cake from a particular vendor that has been discussed on this board that comes up when you google for those terms I wouldn't plan on it getting any better unfortunately 
whether its just bad tea that won't get any better regardless of age and is as old as it supposedly is or whether its just a bad fake tea I can't say. shu would be a very young process then - with pu erh in general already not being pricey as it is now I find it hard to imagine someone would bother taking huang pian and fermenting it. that sounds like something you would stand to lose a lot of money on more than anything else.
whether its just bad tea that won't get any better regardless of age and is as old as it supposedly is or whether its just a bad fake tea I can't say. shu would be a very young process then - with pu erh in general already not being pricey as it is now I find it hard to imagine someone would bother taking huang pian and fermenting it. that sounds like something you would stand to lose a lot of money on more than anything else.@m2193: I think you should assume that this is a fairly recently-made cooked tea, probably from huang pian as mrmopu says (but those big leaves could just be hiding some tea dust in the middle of the brick).
It is hard to distinguish between old raw, old cooked, recent heavily wet-stored and recent cooked tea through photos. But it is so inherently unlikely to be what is claimed on its wrapper (or a wrapper that someone put onto it after taking off the original one) that new cooked tea seems like the most likely explanation. That's also consistent with the wet leaves and the description; "mothballs" sounds more as though it was made to seem old or that it was cooked recently and needs time to get rid of those fermentation smells, rather than being an ordinary storage issue.
Additionally, the brick does not look aged, though that is hard to tell; the colours and level of compression just seem consistent with a young cooked tea and somewhat inconsistent with an old tea.
For example, just at a very general level, compare it to this 80s cooked brick from Yee On: viewtopic.php?p=40068#p40068 Or the photo below of another aged cooked brick.
If you wanted to experiment with it and see what happens, I'd suggest breaking part of it up into little chunks and bits, putting them in some kind of earthenware jar (or alternatively any jar) without filling it too much, and trying it again in, say, two months.
Hopefully it is a decent tea that just needs to be aired-out a bit, and hopefully it has just been mislabelled and not 'faked', but "mothballs" does not sound promising, and if it was sold as a 1978 thousand year gushu Bingdao, I would not have any faith in its quality. If it still smells off-putting in a few months, I wouldn't really want to try it...
Andrew
It is hard to distinguish between old raw, old cooked, recent heavily wet-stored and recent cooked tea through photos. But it is so inherently unlikely to be what is claimed on its wrapper (or a wrapper that someone put onto it after taking off the original one) that new cooked tea seems like the most likely explanation. That's also consistent with the wet leaves and the description; "mothballs" sounds more as though it was made to seem old or that it was cooked recently and needs time to get rid of those fermentation smells, rather than being an ordinary storage issue.
Additionally, the brick does not look aged, though that is hard to tell; the colours and level of compression just seem consistent with a young cooked tea and somewhat inconsistent with an old tea.
For example, just at a very general level, compare it to this 80s cooked brick from Yee On: viewtopic.php?p=40068#p40068 Or the photo below of another aged cooked brick.
If you wanted to experiment with it and see what happens, I'd suggest breaking part of it up into little chunks and bits, putting them in some kind of earthenware jar (or alternatively any jar) without filling it too much, and trying it again in, say, two months.
Hopefully it is a decent tea that just needs to be aired-out a bit, and hopefully it has just been mislabelled and not 'faked', but "mothballs" does not sound promising, and if it was sold as a 1978 thousand year gushu Bingdao, I would not have any faith in its quality. If it still smells off-putting in a few months, I wouldn't really want to try it...
Andrew
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I guessed huang pian too. The only other tea that looks similar is the other HP samples I bought from Yiwu Mountain Tea, but they're not very aged yet so don't look quite as ghastly. Brewing in a gaiwan could be part of it due to decreased heat retention, but it did have very poor longevity.
@wave_code
Good point on shu. There are some vendors who sell huang pian shou, but not many. This was a gift from a relative. I also regret mentioning it directly to them because I don't think they were too happy to hear my actual thoughts on it and I may have accidentally forfeited my yancha source.
@wave_code
Good point on shu. There are some vendors who sell huang pian shou, but not many. This was a gift from a relative. I also regret mentioning it directly to them because I don't think they were too happy to hear my actual thoughts on it and I may have accidentally forfeited my yancha source.
Thanks for posting that picture Andrew! A stark difference indeed. I broke up the brick and will leave it in Mylar for a couple of months to see what happens, purely out of curiosity at this point. No dust hiding, but a few seed pods, branches, a couple strands of hair, a piece of plastic, a piece of straw and a tiny chunk that looks covered in something akin to Chinese rou song/pork floss. To add insult to injury, a tiny part of leaf flew into my left eye during the process. Was able to get it out though. This brick has got to nearly rival the scariest tuition tea I ordered from some site back in like April 2020 during my initial serious foray into tea (was sufficiently scared to take a few months away afterwards). Said relative must've seriously offended whoever gifted this to them initially...
At any rate, I'll update if I can get mass spec data on it at some point.
At any rate, I'll update if I can get mass spec data on it at some point.