I often get asked this question: After we've received samples, should we let them rest before drinking? Here is a quick explanation. It's about temperature, humidity, pressure and, as always, microorganisms.
Great video William! I can only confirm the fact that tea needs to acclimatise to the local conditions. Recently I had some issues with some Yancha (shipped from Singapore) which I opened and immediately tried, it had a slight sour taste to it. Trying it again after the pouch was sitting non-airtight in my flat for 10 days the sour taste was gone completely. I think that teas that are either strongly roasted or are ageing in some way or the other, sometimes build up some kind of in-balance when their sealed airtight, when they start to breath they kind of smooth out again.
Thanks, William, for a very valuable piece of advice. It gets cool here in California for much of the year, so I'm airing all my Yunnan-packaged pu-erh right now.
I now activated the little bell to get notized when a new video is on, cause it did not show up on my start page. I just read his email wherein he described some new nice teas. Hopefully I soon will buy some new tea on his nice online site. Good luck, teaheads. :)
Hey William, thanks for the extensive discussion. I'm incidentally drinking a sample of Jingmai Shu I got from you about two and a half years ago, it's been into its small airtight pouch ever since and it kind of shows, very dry feel although it's gradually improving somehow. So yeah. 😐
i would think that the harder kill green step in stabilized tea means that their micro biome is greatly reduced if not destroyed,whare as puerh is not killed and so has life to respond to changing humidity... my thought
Hi William, At some point you raised a question about why Sheng ages in a unique way. It may be due to having low surface to volume ratio while compressed. Such systems have resistance to completely drying out (evaporating surface area is smaller and they are enclosed) and also resisting accepting new humidity from air. This could be taking the edge off the sudden changes in microorganisms local ecosystem conditions and in a way protecting the microorganisms' colony. Humidifying before compressing is additional step worth considering. Maybe you can explain how MaoCha ages comparatively to pressed Sheng to add more data?
Actually pu erh tea changes itself. I packed some sheng pu erh tea in a wodden box wherein an older pu erh from Menghai was kind of dusty. Now it seems it has changed. The other sheng healed the older one. Probably. :)
