Random pics of piled tea

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Maerskian
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Thu Nov 19, 2020 4:25 pm

Just a couple days ago found myself with a digital camera on my hands... a rare event ( yes! it's 2020 ) . An ancient piece of technology, a 15yr old ( maybe older ? ) budget digital camera in the hands of somebody not used to take pictures, so bear with it.

@pedant & @powersnacks ( hello Stan :) ) wanted to see some pics of my storage even though i made clear it's currently a disaster... need to order some custom furniture soon but since some months ago have bought (much) more tea than i planned to store, therefore tea has been invading everything slowly, had to get creative sometimes... it's total chaos, more Kg of tea is coming... and desperately need space, keep this in mind as well.

It's just a few pics, barely everything because when i was about to shoot the biggest departments noticed it didn't make sense, cakes or big bags are inside carboard boxes so that's essentially all you'd see, then there's the oolongs department where all you'd see is the front row of 50g bags piled up covering everything... same on other deparments.

While i don't find the time to get the new cabinet & reorganize everything as it should ( by the end of this year should finally have a clear idea of how much space i might need ), here's an appetizer .

Horrible pics, you will only see the frontal stacks not the background piled cakes with tuos/smaller cakes/bricks thrown in the middle... but it's something :| .

There we go:

Image

Some stacks of huang pian "gushu" Mansa bricks, a couple 2015 Bulang "columns" ( the one opened is what i'm drinking these days, loving it more & more ) ; on the right stack there's Fangmingyuan cakes, with 2008 Bama on top ( getting better on each new session )

Image

The shu deparment; Phoenix tuo with the hygrometer on top, one CNNP brick below, loose leaf shu from TeaGuru, more low-grade loose leaf shu ( Dim Sum-like , nice to drink with some meals, not brilliant, not bad... affordable as well ) , not visible... plenty cakes from the usual factories ( Some nice Dayi cakes - thanks to @mrmopu for the tip last year - , Xiaguan, etc... ) , 1Kg CNNP brick wrapped in bamboo leaf, more tuos, some more bricks, the world famous CrimsonLotus mini shrooms, tibetan market 250g shroom-shaped shou....


Image

More sheng.

That carboard box is choked full with plenty - VERY - generous samples for me to taste, from HK stored 2011 factory anniversary cakes, to 2003 Laos bamboo sheng (>__>), some '99 HK stored factory sheng, gushu dragon balls, giant samples ( close to 40g ) , mystery samples for me to guess ... lots & lots of 'em .

Holding that box : a dozen of 2015 Bulang columns ( bought one - the one that's open -, tasted it, decided to buy a dozen of it ) , on the right another one ( 14 colums total in the end ) over a pile of cakes, one tong of smaller cakes... and more stacks of cakes on the back that can't be seen from that angle as usual .

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Tea out of place. With no more space inside the cabinet had to remove all kind of kitchenware and place tea - temporarily - here. Mostly smaller cakes ( 250/200-100g ) , one 1Kg Kunlu Huang Pian brick, plenty tuos .

That's it for the time being :| . All you'd see on the biggest departments would be a huge or big box covering everything... choke full with tea ; other departments are choke full with bags of loose leaf teas ( mostly oolongs ) , not exactly funny to look at .

Not sure if this kind of pics can help... probably a lesson on how not to do things, focus on storage first-buy later... however it was forced by the circumstances.
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YeeOnTeaCo
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Thu Nov 19, 2020 7:20 pm

that's a nice little personal collection! some separation with different types of tea is a good start already so don't get too caught up with it
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powersnacks
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Thu Nov 19, 2020 7:44 pm

Wow, thank you!! What a great stash you have! I appreciate finally being able to get a glance at it all :D

Have you bought multiples of nearly every tea you own? It's amazing seeing so many tuos in one spot :D
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Iizuki
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Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:51 am

Quite a stash in deed!
however it was forced by the circumstances.
I love this. "Circumstances forced the tea drinker to buy yet another kilogram of tea" :D Totally going to use this the next time someone questions my sheng hoarding.
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mrmopu
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Fri Nov 20, 2020 6:38 am

That is a good looking stash! Looks like some pics of mine. I hope you don't run out of tea though.... :mrgreen:
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Maerskian
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Fri Nov 20, 2020 10:43 am

Thanks everybody ;-)

Also to offer a more complete background ( since this thread originated from a request/conversation on a different thread ) :

This is just a partial look of my storage, the teas that aren't inside boxes ( have plenty 500g bags of Liu An still on the same cardboard box it shipped on ) or simply are dozens & dozens of loose leaf bags... because i thought that taking pics only to show a big cardboard front it's useless in the end.

The full collection is already 200Kg+ ... and growing ( 92 cakes coming from T-E ---> BTW , didn't receive any email but Tea-Encounter teas are on sale now ... until december <-- + 12 other cakes from a pseudo-private event coming at some point next week )... although this very month of november marks a stop on my relentless stream of buying tea for my 40yrs of tea project ( and here i considered myself utterly pessimistic ... this proves otherwise... for i believe i'll be alive to drink everything ) , it's time to stop for a long while, focus on the new storage - which i desperately need - and re-organize all my tea .
YeeOnTeaCo wrote:
Thu Nov 19, 2020 7:20 pm
that's a nice little personal collection! some separation with different types of tea is a good start already so don't get too caught up with it
Thank you. Already have departments for oolongs, hei-cha, white pressed cakes, sheng... then started running out of space and have my loose white / black ... some liu bao, etc... scattered around . Need new storage.
powersnacks wrote:
Thu Nov 19, 2020 7:44 pm
Wow, thank you!! What a great stash you have! I appreciate finally being able to get a glance at it all :D
Just a partial look at it... but will try to add more pictures to this same thread as everything updates.
Have you bought multiples of nearly every tea you own? It's amazing seeing so many tuos in one spot :D
Not of every tea... but found myself "pushed" to go for the usual teas that were still fairly ( or even "under" ) priced and clearly the kind of tea that was overlooked considering region & leaf quality . Also went for multiple cakes of those T-E Fangmingyuan's ... bought one of each on my initial order but each session was better than the previous one so... why not?, love the taste, that 2013 cake looks like it'll only get better with age and Nannuo material prices keep rising anyways.

The fun part was blind-buying multiple factory cakes last year ... because it was incredibly successful ( a big part of it thanks to @mrmopu and the Discord CommuniTEA which helped me A LOT ). These days i - obviously - have lots of teas to taste for the first time... and no longer have to worry about it since they are all at hand.

Have been betting on another hard lockdown for the month of october... now it feels like "they" are bent on ruining christmas... so i plan to spend this new hard lockdown exploring teas each & every day.
Iizuki wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:51 am
Quite a stash in deed!
however it was forced by the circumstances.
I love this. "Circumstances forced the tea drinker to buy yet another kilogram of tea" :D Totally going to use this the next time someone questions my sheng hoarding.
Wouldn't you feel forced to buy 'em all if your leaves look into your eyes with such a gorgeous face ? ^__^

Image


On this particular case it was the deadly combo of : prices rising + tax wall 1 growing higher ( hard Brexit ) + tax wall 2 getting higher & higher & higher ... now postponed until July 01 2021 ... but i keep hearing of importers finding more & more issues to import goods ( some now banned ) from Asia these days even though the new EU laws aren't in place yet ( arguably all custom agents have received some internal EU-level directive because this is happening within all EU territory since early summer ) .

Now my 40 years of tea project is virtually completed... all i need is to ... last 40 years more on planet earth with no health issues affecting my tea drinking habits :P , let's call it optimism .
mrmopu wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 6:38 am
That is a good looking stash! Looks like some pics of mine. I hope you don't run out of tea though.... :mrgreen:
Read above :) , certainly won't . Thanks again, again & again for your unrivalled sniper-grade recommendations from KTM last year , enjoying every one of 'em .

Paradoxically... blind buying while backed up by community members creates a false sense of security... that made me think myself invulnerable to fails... so in the end i did fail ( two fails... one toxic, the other one just horrible ... 4 + 3 cakes on top of that ) on some of my lone adventures, makes you appreciate tea communities even more... although this is like learning to ride a bycycle, at some point you have to fail on your own, learn on your own, ride on your own ^__^ .
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pedant
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Fri Nov 20, 2020 5:53 pm

nice collection. thanks for sharing it!
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cbrace
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Sat Nov 21, 2020 6:44 am

Great getting a peek at your magnificent stash!

You mentioned your oolongs. If you don't mind my asking, what was your strategy for buying oolong for long-term storage? Are these all rolled oolongs? Are they vacuum-packed, like many Taiwanese are sold? Are there oolongs that are known to specifically age well?
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mrmopu
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Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:11 am

@ Maerskian glad to hear those recommendations were close to the target for you. I don't know if I recommended the 2018 XG Fei Tai Da Yun or not. That is another I think people should consider as well.
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Maerskian
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Tue Nov 24, 2020 3:49 pm

cbrace wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 6:44 am
You mentioned your oolongs. If you don't mind my asking, what was your strategy for buying oolong for long-term storage?
Of course i don't mind :) .

Didn't find as much info about aging & selecting oolongs like there is about puerh although there's enough ... to reach the same crossroads you tend to reach with plenty things, so in the end there wasn't any particular strategy and to be honest... the more i looked at the usual variables on this kind of equations the more convinced i was this would be - as usual - more about experimentation and first-hand experience with my own impressions and the conditions of my environment.

I did try to purchase oolongs from different sources ( YunnanSourcing, TaiwanTeaCraft, Eco-Cha, KingTeaMall, TeaMania, GoodTea.EU, WuyiOrigin ... ), some of 'em were recommendations from tea-drinkers i trust & share their profile... others were personal blind-bets... and then my most massive oolong-order was the one from TeaMania the moment i realized he offered the very same "Chen family" / WuyiOrigin oolongs ( more than well known on this forum ) which is a tea producer i certainly trust very much and willing to bet on it .

Focused more on the interaction of my storage with the teas i placed inside. More than aware that my natural conditions are more Kunming-like ( not a tea-aging temple like HK, Taiwan, some eastern China locations ... but good enough to proceed with such a project and produce results ) what i really needed was some obviously successful results with different kinds of tea and once confirmed ( 1 ruined tea-cake brought back to life, plain black tea improved over time, fossilized oolong from KTM fixed to drinkable shape , sheng slowly improving... ) decided it was time to just experiment on my own, keep in mind all the opinions i read... and somehow just keep the skeletons of it... for all of 'em - mine included - are highly subjective & relative... we shouldn't forget this is "the internet"... we have people that just started drinking tea yesterday ( i could fit myself there ) making big claims about anything, same about very young people with very bold opinions on aging teas for longer than their own age based on simple readings, we have people from those aging temples, experienced sellers, experienced tea drinkers... some on tropical climates... some on very dry western climates... different teas, different conditions, people using boveda packs/hot boxes... both , different profiles, different preferences... the more variables you add the more complicated to find a conclusion directly linked to your particular case.

So it's just a range of different oolongs: dan cong , yancha ( mostly from WuyiOrigin / Chen family ) , taiwanese... plus a selected few from Japan, Thailand, Georgia



Are these all rolled oolongs? Are they vacuum-packed, like many Taiwanese are sold?
Only rolled oolongs are the Taiwanese & Thai ones; the vast majority arrived vaccum-packed ( most taiwanese from Teamania arrived on regular 50g bags ) but after testing & experimenting for a while found out
that it's better to just keep 'em inside cans as it's usually advised. Also some Indian teas are shipped this way as well, but i open 'em as soon as possible.
Are there oolongs that are known to specifically age well?
All i know is that i know nothing :) .

mrmopu wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:11 am
@ Maerskian glad to hear those recommendations were close to the target for you. I don't know if I recommended the 2018 XG Fei Tai Da Yun or not. That is another I think people should consider as well.

Nope, missed that one i'm afraid :/ ... although i did catch this one you pointed me to just in time ... which incidentally was the one that showed me John Hou's worst face and lead me to put KTM on my block list forever .
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mrmopu
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Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:13 pm

Maerskian wrote:
Tue Nov 24, 2020 3:49 pm
cbrace wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 6:44 am
You mentioned your oolongs. If you don't mind my asking, what was your strategy for buying oolong for long-term storage?
Of course i don't mind :) .

Didn't find as much info about aging & selecting oolongs like there is about puerh although there's enough ... to reach the same crossroads you tend to reach with plenty things, so in the end there wasn't any particular strategy and to be honest... the more i looked at the usual variables on this kind of equations the more convinced i was this would be - as usual - more about experimentation and first-hand experience with my own impressions and the conditions of my environment.

I did try to purchase oolongs from different sources ( YunnanSourcing, TaiwanTeaCraft, Eco-Cha, KingTeaMall, TeaMania, GoodTea.EU, WuyiOrigin ... ), some of 'em were recommendations from tea-drinkers i trust & share their profile... others were personal blind-bets... and then my most massive oolong-order was the one from TeaMania the moment i realized he offered the very same "Chen family" / WuyiOrigin oolongs ( more than well known on this forum ) which is a tea producer i certainly trust very much and willing to bet on it .

Focused more on the interaction of my storage with the teas i placed inside. More than aware that my natural conditions are more Kunming-like ( not a tea-aging temple like HK, Taiwan, some eastern China locations ... but good enough to proceed with such a project and produce results ) what i really needed was some obviously successful results with different kinds of tea and once confirmed ( 1 ruined tea-cake brought back to life, plain black tea improved over time, fossilized oolong from KTM fixed to drinkable shape , sheng slowly improving... ) decided it was time to just experiment on my own, keep in mind all the opinions i read... and somehow just keep the skeletons of it... for all of 'em - mine included - are highly subjective & relative... we shouldn't forget this is "the internet"... we have people that just started drinking tea yesterday ( i could fit myself there ) making big claims about anything, same about very young people with very bold opinions on aging teas for longer than their own age based on simple readings, we have people from those aging temples, experienced sellers, experienced tea drinkers... some on tropical climates... some on very dry western climates... different teas, different conditions, people using boveda packs/hot boxes... both , different profiles, different preferences... the more variables you add the more complicated to find a conclusion directly linked to your particular case.

So it's just a range of different oolongs: dan cong , yancha ( mostly from WuyiOrigin / Chen family ) , taiwanese... plus a selected few from Japan, Thailand, Georgia



Are these all rolled oolongs? Are they vacuum-packed, like many Taiwanese are sold?
Only rolled oolongs are the Taiwanese & Thai ones; the vast majority arrived vaccum-packed ( most taiwanese from Teamania arrived on regular 50g bags ) but after testing & experimenting for a while found out
that it's better to just keep 'em inside cans as it's usually advised. Also some Indian teas are shipped this way as well, but i open 'em as soon as possible.
Are there oolongs that are known to specifically age well?
All i know is that i know nothing :) .

mrmopu wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:11 am
@ Maerskian glad to hear those recommendations were close to the target for you. I don't know if I recommended the 2018 XG Fei Tai Da Yun or not. That is another I think people should consider as well.

Nope, missed that one i'm afraid :/ ... although i did catch this one you pointed me to just in time ... which incidentally was the one that showed me John Hou's worst face and lead me to put KTM on my block list forever .
LP will have the FTDY and cheaper than KTM too I think. He also bought the 2008 XG Kylin cakes too.
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Maerskian
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Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:01 am

mrmopu wrote:
Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:13 pm

LP will have the FTDY and cheaper than KTM too I think. He also bought the 2008 XG Kylin cakes too.
LiquidProust ? hmmm... while i (still) don't have the same customs issues with small US parcels... i fear the size of it ( the bigger the more it stands the higher chances to get stopped ), although worth considering.

I'd love to find that service that allows US sellers to slip my US books/music orders through - reshipped from - Sweden / Estonia; awfully slow but zero taxes since they shipped from "within the EU" >__> .

On the meanwhile my storage today received their new siblings so they can keep singing that deliciously aromatic song like the mass choir they are :

Image
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Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:05 pm

Maerskian wrote:
Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:01 am
mrmopu wrote:
Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:13 pm

LP will have the FTDY and cheaper than KTM too I think. He also bought the 2008 XG Kylin cakes too.
LiquidProust ? hmmm... while i (still) don't have the same customs issues with small US parcels... i fear the size of it ( the bigger the more it stands the higher chances to get stopped ), although worth considering.

I'd love to find that service that allows US sellers to slip my US books/music orders through - reshipped from - Sweden / Estonia; awfully slow but zero taxes since they shipped from "within the EU" >__> .

On the meanwhile my storage today received their new siblings so they can keep singing that deliciously aromatic song like the mass choir they are :

Image
Nice looking haul there. Yeah, LP is Liquid Proust. He will be doing a BF sale too.
Did you snag some of the personal stash from TDC?
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Maerskian
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Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:43 pm

mrmopu wrote:
Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:05 pm

Nice looking haul there. Yeah, LP is Liquid Proust. He will be doing a BF sale too.
Just read Karma's post on reddit, checked Xiaguan's shroom.... noticed shipping is higher than the tea itself :| ... oh well, won't run out of tea for a while...
Did you snag some of the personal stash from TDC?
That's precisely what's pictured there:

1 X "Gu Zi Shan" 2011 (Xiao Jinggu area) 400 gr cake
1 X "Ailao Shan" 2007 (Qian Jia Zhai area) wild young trees from Xu Hong Bo, 357 gr
2 X "Gelange" 2012 big trees, from Chen Yun Ming 100 gr
1 X compressed Yue Guang Bai, 2010, Chen Yun Ming /Lie Yun Tang brand 250 gr
2 X Chen Yun Ming "Mulan 2008" Sheng Cha, 250 gr-
2 X Terre De Ciel "Wuliang Mountains" 2009 250 gr. Sheng Cha
3 X "Pa Sa" 2017 old trees from Mr Ba Er, high altitude tea, 200 gr, Sheng Cha

First time i was warned about this special sale only the 99 shu brick was insta-sold ; discarded the 07 Jingmai ( even though i just started drinking the sample they sent me a while ago yesterday, turns out it was better than expected... wouldn't get it at that price anyways ) , slept on one of the three available Gelange mini-cakes and got just the two , then took me a good while to decide on those three Pa Sa... fortunately one of the owners walked the extra mile for me and did a session with one of his own cakes compared to the available TdC PaSa version ( the one i already own & knew ) and some of the additional notes made me remember better PaSa versions i already own ( Teamania's PaSa Autumn Gushu version was better than expected ) so in the end decided to give it a try .

They also promised extra samples on top of everything for the ones joining... and certainly delivered. Need to try that Naka sample they sent ( bottom-right corner ) and make good on your motto ;-)
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mrmopu
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Fri Nov 27, 2020 9:59 am

Looks like you will have plenty to keep you busy for a while. Happy brewing!
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