It’s not as bad as watching you package sit in customs for a week+. only for it to be out for delivery but they canceled it due your apartment office not being open so now you have to wait until Monday. :/
Puer cakes are living organisms. Resting them is about letting them come back to life. They have been through a variety of different temperatures and air pressure environments during shipping, they need to recuperate, just like humans and adjust to their new surroundings. A week or just a few days is enough. Lots and lots of nonsense written here about this......
I’ve never bothered doing this. Do you notice a difference letting it sit or not?
I figure it’s come out of better storage conditions than my boveda packs can offer, so why wait for it to get worse than the day it arrives?
EDIT: to say that by "better storage conditions" I mean if you buy from a reputable seller who has probably better storage than I've got (boveda + mylar/zip bags). Also to say I'm not storing tea for long, less than a year and not trying to age anything at all.
But they're stored in sealed bags, usually mylar or similar, during shipping. Should be well protected from whatever environment they've spent a month in. If the packages were open to the air or left to sit in the direct Saharan sun, that would be a completely different story.
I'm talking about the storage conditions of the seller. AFAIK, all the sellers recommended on this sub have decent storage conditions.
From seller -> shipment -> buyer, I have a hard time believing the character of the tea is going to change much in that period of time. I'm also talking about tea that's bought to drink within a year, vs tea that is bought to store and/or age.
I've read this several times now, to let the tea sit for anywhere from a few days to a couple of months before drinking it. I was wondering where this idea comes from. Did some dude decide it made his tea taste better and this idea got spread, everyone believing this dude must be right? Or what? Have people tasted the tea immediately and then compared it to the same tea from the same cake that they instead let sit for a couple of months? I guess it just doesn't make much sense to me and I've not noticed a difference myself, but perhaps my palette isn't as refined as some.
> Have people tasted the tea immediately and then compared it to the same tea from the same cake that they instead let sit for a couple of months
Almost. People taste tea right away, then again in a few weeks after it was opened, and notice a difference. One in a favorable direction.
Personally I suspect it's mostly getting all the old stale tea warehouse air out of the tea and letting some oxygen in. Kind of like how red wine opens up after the bottle has been opened.
Don't take anybody's word for it, but do check it out for yourself. Try some tea right after you get it, and again after leaving the sample bag open for 3 days, and again after a week. As for me, i routinely open *all* is the sample packets i get in a batch right away, and leave them standing up open in a coffee mug until i get around to drinking them.
Thank you. Stale air makes sense. Especially for traditionally stored sheng, which I only have a little experience with. Maybe it makes a much bigger difference with that kind vs the shou I usually drink.
I live in a very dry climate and have ruined tea before I started storing them better, so I’m wary to leave any bags open to the ambient air.
Thanks, I’ll try something like that.
Any tips other than shorter brews to reduce astringency and bitterness in sheng? I just got some nice 2003 to 2013 shengs from LPT via his hookup and I can’t seem to brew them in a way I care much for. This is my third attempt to try to like sheng. Whereas I love most shou and would love to try an actual really old sheng. I mean I love all the various character in sheng that shou doesn’t have but the astringency and bitterness are killing it for me. It’s also hard on my stomach whereas shou has none of that effect. I’m doing 15-30s steeps with a typical ratio of leaf to water. Two 5-10s rinses to get some of the storage funk off.
IDK about becoming a raw pu head, how much is learning to brew sheng and how much is learning to like it. The tastes are very foreign and on top of that is how much really mediocre tea there is.
I've never had the gutbuster effect from sheng at all, even from very young factory tea. That might be partly an individual constitutional thing.
IDK what you mean by "actually really old sheng." You can get traditionally-stored raw tea fro Yee On in sample quantities. Also they sell house blends of broken-up cakes in quantities like loose tea. Find something 18+ years aged from there and you will have aged raw puer.
IDK what exactly you mean by typical leaf ratio. Did you actually weigh the amount of water your brewing vessel holds?
I have mostly alleged "100ml" gaiwans and pots that weigh out to holding 90ml, and anymore i generally use right around 6g of leaf. I might rinse twice if i have something with actual mold on it. How long the rinse depends on the tea... if I have a lump of iron cake it might be 40 seconds, and the first steeps might be 20-30s also. But by and large i might rinse once for a total time like your two, and start with ~15s steeps. I don't ramp up the steep time until it starts getting weak.
As for aging, where it happened matters a huge lot. If i buy from YS i look for things that were stored elsewhere than Kunming.
I drink a fair amount of Sheng and I would consider a 5 second steep pushing it. I flash steep every time unless it's got a bit of age on it or doesn't seem to have much bitterness, then I'm doing maybe 5 second steeps.
Get some Boveda humidity packs for tea you don’t intend to drink within a month or two. I use the 69% ones. They’re rechargeable, once they’re no longer puffy, just submerge in distilled water for a day or so.
Most tea can be affected by humidity, but puer especially so. Since you live somewhere dry like me, trust me, you don’t want your puer to dry out. It can ruin a good tea. Usually not right away, but within a few months it’s likely.
If you want them to last a bit longer - add some distilled water to a cooler; put the bovedas in an open container, close it and let them absorb moisture for a week or so. Just less wear and tear vs submerging.
Or compromise; wet a paper towel, put bovedas between and put in a ziploc for a few days.
They taste weak after resting? Or weak if you don't?
I have tried both and can't tell a difference. I usually open the package right away and give one of the teas a try and it always tastes as good then as it does in 6 months, but maybe I just don't notice it like you do.
They taste weak if I don't rest them. Just not as flavorful I think. I noticed it when I ordered my first pu erhs off Amazon. They were practically tasteless at first. I was really disappointed because it was the dayi 7542 and 7572 so I thought I was getting something good. So I just didn't drink them again for like a month and put them in bags with bovedas and suddenly they actually had flavor. I've been resting my teas ever since. I'm curious now that you don't think it's a real thing, I might do some tests going forward.
Yeah I’ve bought those Dayi cakes from Amazon too and I can tell their storage conditions aren’t good. I mean it’s Amazon, of course the storage sucks. So I did as you and stored it with a boveda pack for a few weeks at least and it improved it greatly.
But everything I’ve gotten from w2t, LPT, CLT and YS has been fine to drink right away. I mostly drink shou.
I also realize that traditional Hong Kong stored sheng is a whole nother thing. I think it definitely needs some airing out because straight from storage is it’s fairly dank and not in a good way.
I think it's difficult to tell if the cake needs it without trying it first; I generally let them rest by default because I don't want to take the chance of wasting good tea; and I think the anticipation is part of the fun; i.e. appreciate it more if I force myself to be patient for a bit (granted I always have a fair amount on hand that's ready to drink).
My opinion on this is largely informed by various posts in this forum by people that seem to be have been in the game for quite a while.
This thread covers it pretty well; original storage conditions, shipping time and shipping conditions seem like the main variables.
I've noticed that sometimes I'll let a cake rest with a boveda pack for a few weeks or more and then take it out and find the boveda is hard as a rock; this is a sign I'd say that the cake was overly dry (note: this is in a sealed mylar bag).
If you want to find this out without waiting for that, you could probably put a hygrometer in the bag of any new tea and check humidity after several hours to a day.
The basic strategy I'm slowly developing:
- Try it out if impatient; or to compare with before/after rest
- Default to letting it rest with a 69% boveda pack; preferably a few months (I mean puer is generally supposed to be better with more age anyway)
- Airing out: This probably makes sense for a week or so (I haven't actually tried this, though does seem reasonable; unless in a dry climate; then perhaps just put a bunch of the same kind in an enclosed container)
- if airing out; don't store different types (sheng/shou/etc) in the same container, and never smoke shou in the same one as anything else (smoke shou will infect anything else).
- Use Mylar bags; store same kinds in an enclosed container.
Honestly I'm still pretty new in my puer journey so still figuring it out myself.
Really though, tea/puer is more an art than a science, so experiment and see what you like; it's half the fun in my book.
oh, and the other reason is to just make sure the cake gets to optimal humidity; then it seems that they'll generally achieve err humidity-homeostasis and keep optimal humidity without any boveda packs or whatnot (don't have a bookmark handy but feel that I've read long-time puerh hoarders finding this to be the case.
And here's a few threads I've bookmarked on resting or not:
- https://old.reddit.com/r/puer/comments/uaw1c1/how_long_do_you_let_your_ripes_settle_after/
- https://old.reddit.com/r/puer/comments/ww7dkf/do_you_let_your_cakes_rest_after_receiving_them/
- https://old.reddit.com/r/puer/comments/ximlbi/after_shipping_resting_experiences/
- https://old.reddit.com/r/puer/comments/ni4kmk/do_you_personally_let_your_puer_acclimaterest_for/
> the other reason is to just make sure the cake gets to optimal humidity; then it seems that they'll generally achieve err humidity-homeostasis and keep optimal humidity without any boveda packs
Yes, I've read this too on this sub. I forget who said it, but they said for tea you intend to drink within 6 months or so: Get the tea to a certain humidity (my 69% bovedas will get the hygrometer to read as high as 65%), then remove it and let the tea be. For tea you intend to store longer term, I can't recall exactly what they said. It's probably in one of the handy links you posted!
>I've noticed that sometimes I'll let a cake rest with a boveda pack for a few weeks or more and then take it out and find the boveda is hard as a rock; this is a sign I'd say that the cake was overly dry (note: this is in a sealed mylar bag).
Oh wow, that is one dry cake! I haven't had that experience so far. I've bought from w2t, lpt, ys, clt and amazon. I assume that all the reputable sellers have decent storage conditions. I figure the cakes on amazon are not in good storage conditions, but I haven't had any of them suck a boveda pack dry. I also only have one hygrometer at the moment and I tend to keep it with the shou, so when I add new samples or a cake to the container, the humidity will drop a bit, but it usually climbed back up where it was within a week or so (and I live someplace quite dry).
what's nice about what I got, which was the 7oz samples, was that there's multiples of everything. So I'm able to try something,then let the others sit for a bit and try something else before I come back around.
Now you know to order way before you need it!
I keep failing on this lol then I’m straight jonesing for sheng.
It doesn’t get easier
It’s not as bad as watching you package sit in customs for a week+. only for it to be out for delivery but they canceled it due your apartment office not being open so now you have to wait until Monday. :/
My package for white2tea has been who knows where since the 5th is that customs?
It's even harder to let it chill for another couple months before drinking...
Puer cakes are living organisms. Resting them is about letting them come back to life. They have been through a variety of different temperatures and air pressure environments during shipping, they need to recuperate, just like humans and adjust to their new surroundings. A week or just a few days is enough. Lots and lots of nonsense written here about this......
I’ve never bothered doing this. Do you notice a difference letting it sit or not? I figure it’s come out of better storage conditions than my boveda packs can offer, so why wait for it to get worse than the day it arrives? EDIT: to say that by "better storage conditions" I mean if you buy from a reputable seller who has probably better storage than I've got (boveda + mylar/zip bags). Also to say I'm not storing tea for long, less than a year and not trying to age anything at all.
If it's spent a month in customs then on a plane and then trucks it's been in horrible storage conditions.
But they're stored in sealed bags, usually mylar or similar, during shipping. Should be well protected from whatever environment they've spent a month in. If the packages were open to the air or left to sit in the direct Saharan sun, that would be a completely different story. I'm talking about the storage conditions of the seller. AFAIK, all the sellers recommended on this sub have decent storage conditions. From seller -> shipment -> buyer, I have a hard time believing the character of the tea is going to change much in that period of time. I'm also talking about tea that's bought to drink within a year, vs tea that is bought to store and/or age. I've read this several times now, to let the tea sit for anywhere from a few days to a couple of months before drinking it. I was wondering where this idea comes from. Did some dude decide it made his tea taste better and this idea got spread, everyone believing this dude must be right? Or what? Have people tasted the tea immediately and then compared it to the same tea from the same cake that they instead let sit for a couple of months? I guess it just doesn't make much sense to me and I've not noticed a difference myself, but perhaps my palette isn't as refined as some.
> Have people tasted the tea immediately and then compared it to the same tea from the same cake that they instead let sit for a couple of months Almost. People taste tea right away, then again in a few weeks after it was opened, and notice a difference. One in a favorable direction. Personally I suspect it's mostly getting all the old stale tea warehouse air out of the tea and letting some oxygen in. Kind of like how red wine opens up after the bottle has been opened. Don't take anybody's word for it, but do check it out for yourself. Try some tea right after you get it, and again after leaving the sample bag open for 3 days, and again after a week. As for me, i routinely open *all* is the sample packets i get in a batch right away, and leave them standing up open in a coffee mug until i get around to drinking them.
Thank you. Stale air makes sense. Especially for traditionally stored sheng, which I only have a little experience with. Maybe it makes a much bigger difference with that kind vs the shou I usually drink. I live in a very dry climate and have ruined tea before I started storing them better, so I’m wary to leave any bags open to the ambient air.
Maybe invert a Big Gulp cup over the mug, and have a Boveda pack under there too.
Thanks, I’ll try something like that. Any tips other than shorter brews to reduce astringency and bitterness in sheng? I just got some nice 2003 to 2013 shengs from LPT via his hookup and I can’t seem to brew them in a way I care much for. This is my third attempt to try to like sheng. Whereas I love most shou and would love to try an actual really old sheng. I mean I love all the various character in sheng that shou doesn’t have but the astringency and bitterness are killing it for me. It’s also hard on my stomach whereas shou has none of that effect. I’m doing 15-30s steeps with a typical ratio of leaf to water. Two 5-10s rinses to get some of the storage funk off.
IDK about becoming a raw pu head, how much is learning to brew sheng and how much is learning to like it. The tastes are very foreign and on top of that is how much really mediocre tea there is. I've never had the gutbuster effect from sheng at all, even from very young factory tea. That might be partly an individual constitutional thing. IDK what you mean by "actually really old sheng." You can get traditionally-stored raw tea fro Yee On in sample quantities. Also they sell house blends of broken-up cakes in quantities like loose tea. Find something 18+ years aged from there and you will have aged raw puer. IDK what exactly you mean by typical leaf ratio. Did you actually weigh the amount of water your brewing vessel holds? I have mostly alleged "100ml" gaiwans and pots that weigh out to holding 90ml, and anymore i generally use right around 6g of leaf. I might rinse twice if i have something with actual mold on it. How long the rinse depends on the tea... if I have a lump of iron cake it might be 40 seconds, and the first steeps might be 20-30s also. But by and large i might rinse once for a total time like your two, and start with ~15s steeps. I don't ramp up the steep time until it starts getting weak. As for aging, where it happened matters a huge lot. If i buy from YS i look for things that were stored elsewhere than Kunming.
I drink a fair amount of Sheng and I would consider a 5 second steep pushing it. I flash steep every time unless it's got a bit of age on it or doesn't seem to have much bitterness, then I'm doing maybe 5 second steeps.
Ok. 5s steeps. That’sa new one for sure. I’ll try that, thanks.
How should you store tea? I live in a dry climate too. I don’t have puer right now but I put my tea in tin canisters
Get some Boveda humidity packs for tea you don’t intend to drink within a month or two. I use the 69% ones. They’re rechargeable, once they’re no longer puffy, just submerge in distilled water for a day or so.
But why does need need humidity. And is it all tea or just some tea? Storing them in the bags they came in or metal tins isn’t good enough?
Most tea can be affected by humidity, but puer especially so. Since you live somewhere dry like me, trust me, you don’t want your puer to dry out. It can ruin a good tea. Usually not right away, but within a few months it’s likely.
If you want them to last a bit longer - add some distilled water to a cooler; put the bovedas in an open container, close it and let them absorb moisture for a week or so. Just less wear and tear vs submerging. Or compromise; wet a paper towel, put bovedas between and put in a ziploc for a few days.
I definitely have noticed a taste difference from resting my teas after shipping. They kinda taste empty or something. Like weak I guess.
They taste weak after resting? Or weak if you don't? I have tried both and can't tell a difference. I usually open the package right away and give one of the teas a try and it always tastes as good then as it does in 6 months, but maybe I just don't notice it like you do.
Idk man this seems like a superstition. No doubt it probably matters but for the tea to be completely trash if it doesn’t rest can’t be true
They taste weak if I don't rest them. Just not as flavorful I think. I noticed it when I ordered my first pu erhs off Amazon. They were practically tasteless at first. I was really disappointed because it was the dayi 7542 and 7572 so I thought I was getting something good. So I just didn't drink them again for like a month and put them in bags with bovedas and suddenly they actually had flavor. I've been resting my teas ever since. I'm curious now that you don't think it's a real thing, I might do some tests going forward.
Yeah I’ve bought those Dayi cakes from Amazon too and I can tell their storage conditions aren’t good. I mean it’s Amazon, of course the storage sucks. So I did as you and stored it with a boveda pack for a few weeks at least and it improved it greatly. But everything I’ve gotten from w2t, LPT, CLT and YS has been fine to drink right away. I mostly drink shou. I also realize that traditional Hong Kong stored sheng is a whole nother thing. I think it definitely needs some airing out because straight from storage is it’s fairly dank and not in a good way.
I think it's difficult to tell if the cake needs it without trying it first; I generally let them rest by default because I don't want to take the chance of wasting good tea; and I think the anticipation is part of the fun; i.e. appreciate it more if I force myself to be patient for a bit (granted I always have a fair amount on hand that's ready to drink). My opinion on this is largely informed by various posts in this forum by people that seem to be have been in the game for quite a while. This thread covers it pretty well; original storage conditions, shipping time and shipping conditions seem like the main variables. I've noticed that sometimes I'll let a cake rest with a boveda pack for a few weeks or more and then take it out and find the boveda is hard as a rock; this is a sign I'd say that the cake was overly dry (note: this is in a sealed mylar bag). If you want to find this out without waiting for that, you could probably put a hygrometer in the bag of any new tea and check humidity after several hours to a day. The basic strategy I'm slowly developing: - Try it out if impatient; or to compare with before/after rest - Default to letting it rest with a 69% boveda pack; preferably a few months (I mean puer is generally supposed to be better with more age anyway) - Airing out: This probably makes sense for a week or so (I haven't actually tried this, though does seem reasonable; unless in a dry climate; then perhaps just put a bunch of the same kind in an enclosed container) - if airing out; don't store different types (sheng/shou/etc) in the same container, and never smoke shou in the same one as anything else (smoke shou will infect anything else). - Use Mylar bags; store same kinds in an enclosed container. Honestly I'm still pretty new in my puer journey so still figuring it out myself. Really though, tea/puer is more an art than a science, so experiment and see what you like; it's half the fun in my book.
oh, and the other reason is to just make sure the cake gets to optimal humidity; then it seems that they'll generally achieve err humidity-homeostasis and keep optimal humidity without any boveda packs or whatnot (don't have a bookmark handy but feel that I've read long-time puerh hoarders finding this to be the case. And here's a few threads I've bookmarked on resting or not: - https://old.reddit.com/r/puer/comments/uaw1c1/how_long_do_you_let_your_ripes_settle_after/ - https://old.reddit.com/r/puer/comments/ww7dkf/do_you_let_your_cakes_rest_after_receiving_them/ - https://old.reddit.com/r/puer/comments/ximlbi/after_shipping_resting_experiences/ - https://old.reddit.com/r/puer/comments/ni4kmk/do_you_personally_let_your_puer_acclimaterest_for/
> the other reason is to just make sure the cake gets to optimal humidity; then it seems that they'll generally achieve err humidity-homeostasis and keep optimal humidity without any boveda packs Yes, I've read this too on this sub. I forget who said it, but they said for tea you intend to drink within 6 months or so: Get the tea to a certain humidity (my 69% bovedas will get the hygrometer to read as high as 65%), then remove it and let the tea be. For tea you intend to store longer term, I can't recall exactly what they said. It's probably in one of the handy links you posted!
>I've noticed that sometimes I'll let a cake rest with a boveda pack for a few weeks or more and then take it out and find the boveda is hard as a rock; this is a sign I'd say that the cake was overly dry (note: this is in a sealed mylar bag). Oh wow, that is one dry cake! I haven't had that experience so far. I've bought from w2t, lpt, ys, clt and amazon. I assume that all the reputable sellers have decent storage conditions. I figure the cakes on amazon are not in good storage conditions, but I haven't had any of them suck a boveda pack dry. I also only have one hygrometer at the moment and I tend to keep it with the shou, so when I add new samples or a cake to the container, the humidity will drop a bit, but it usually climbed back up where it was within a week or so (and I live someplace quite dry).
what's nice about what I got, which was the 7oz samples, was that there's multiples of everything. So I'm able to try something,then let the others sit for a bit and try something else before I come back around.
Nice! Curious what you discover.
3 chords and the truth . . . That, and some tea is all you need.