"Oolong Puerh" Processing

Puerh and other heicha
John_B
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Mon Feb 04, 2019 3:54 am

TeaZero wrote:
Tue Jan 29, 2019 10:43 am
The way pu erh shoul be stored depends really on your local environment. I can imagine in HK one would seal my teas completely to avoid too much humidity, while in dry climates just keeping the tea in original packaging is fine. In mild climates with moderate humidity, a bag would do. There's just no correct way that works for everyone...

There is a clear enough consensus that pu'er shouldn't be sealed for storage that a reference doesn't really require being cited. Even if someone did cite one, who is to say that wasn't just one person's opinion (or 10, if someone collected up 10 such)?

The main citation from the outlier vendor recommending sealing teas and isolation from air contact even cites this as a view with limited acceptance, from Hojo:

https://hojotea.com/en/posts-38/

From the food scientific point of view, any kind of tea must be kept under low humidity. In fact, we highly recommend keeping pu-erh tea in a tightly sealed aluminum bag where the oxygen is trapped inside the bag providing sufficient condition to mediate further maturation compared to those that are kept in open space. Moreover, there is another way to create a unique maturation method for pu-erh by storing the raw pu-erh in a vacuum-sealed bag even though most people may think this storage method is ridiculous. Traditionally, pu-erh tea was compressed to remove oxygen from the leaves and keep it intact....


There seems to be a few different concerns working in parallel here, but safety of storing teas in different environments tends to drop out, and the main concerns relate to optimums for fermentation transition. Some people like wet storage transitioned teas (the way that affects taste and other characteristics), others teas stored in a relatively drier environment.

It's not as clear that it's even possible to replicate good dry storage in a relatively humid environment by putting sheng pu'er in bags, or vacuum sealing it. The claim alone tends to not come up, never mind reference citation justification, or anecdotal account of the same (except in this one vendor's case).

The source of common sense reasoning that the tea requires air and humidity contact is easy enough to follow: bacteria and fungus cause the fermentation changes, and both these require both humidity and oxygen to thrive. Common sense alone doesn't help determine if a limited degree of sealing a tea (kept in a ziplock bag, for example) would be problematic, or an improvement.

I looked back through background research I have handy on pu'er storage, which goes into a lot on what is occurring during fermentation, which bacteria and fungus are responsible, and how various compounds change, even into traces of toxins present as a by-product. The consensus is that pu'er is completely safe, but it might still be something to consider.

None of the references recommend any particular storage environment range or practices, or discusses those as a factor at all, even though it's clear enough that humidity is a main concern and related factor.

I'll cite some related articles anyway; they might make for an interesting read for people into in such things:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0157847

http://or.nsfc.gov.cn/bitstream/0000190 ... 548757.pdf

http://www.lifescienceglobal.com/pms/in ... /2217/1318
m2193
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Joined: Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:31 pm
Location: Boston

Sun Dec 26, 2021 1:12 am

Screenshot 2021-12-25 at 2.23.38 AM.png
Screenshot 2021-12-25 at 2.23.38 AM.png (591.65 KiB) Viewed 1539 times
Saw this chart comparing sheng and apparent "pu-long" last night in a YT video. Even with reading through old posts on here and TeaChat, and assuming I could better evaluate the potential of younger teas, I am pretty unconfident about aging anything in Western dry storage. Seeing the results of Marco of Late Steeps' comparisons between young sheng hotboxed vs. stored at room temp. (with proper humidity, so that's not the issue) has been pretty discouraging.

@tealifehk Did you ever end up making the comparison set available for purchase? That's something I'd be interested in picking up just for the learning experience.
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LeoFox
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Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:01 pm
Location: Washington DC

Sun Apr 24, 2022 10:07 pm

So has anyone recently cracked the seal open and tried a pre 2013 sheng from hojo, stored in vacuum?
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