Single puer cake storage

Puerh and other heicha
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d.manuk
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Tue Sep 03, 2019 8:59 am

I've seen some Japanese tea shops that have a plastic casing around an entire puer cake and that is how they store and sell it.
Has anyone had any experience using them and does anyone know where to buy them?

Do you not have a pumidor but store your single cakes in a special way? I'd like to know more.
Chadrinkincat
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Tue Sep 03, 2019 9:24 am

Breathable clear wrap? https://www.formaticum.com/products/bio ... age-sheets

I’ve never used it but Ive seen it mentioned a few times. Prob not very cost effective though.
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d.manuk
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Tue Sep 03, 2019 11:10 am

They were like a hard plastic shell that went around the entire puer cake to keep the humidity stable.
John_B
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Mon Sep 09, 2019 10:01 pm

A tea blog that described doing storage experiments at different temperatures (Late Steeps) also describes sealing and conditioning humidity levels by putting a boveda pack and a cake in a mylar bag:

https://mgualt.com/tealog/2017/12/14/co ... xperiment/

The part about heating the tea and relative humidity increasing could be a little clearer, since it's not clear whether that involved adding humidity at that stage or not, and it would have to involve this. Just heating a cake that has the same level of moisture in it would decrease relatively humidity, not increase it.

It's as well not to overthink all that since the point in this case seems to be using a mylar bag that seals might work. I'm not familiar with plastic shells or other wrappings used in Japan.

One might naturally wonder how long a tea cake could stay completely sealed before not introducing any new oxygen to that environment would change things, and would suspend fermentation (since the fungus and bacteria would consume oxygen). I can't begin to answer that, just pointing it out as an obvious concern.

Completely sealing a tea cake for some months would seem fine, since that's what this blog author seems to have done, with results of different storage environments described (he tastes the separated examples of tea together).
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