Early morning on the first day of the summer month, yet another morning of relentless drizzle!
Since summer set in, Beijing’s weather has been exceptionally humid; the mornings are always veiled in mist, and as the sun climbs high and gradually breaks through, the air keeps steaming upward. Friends in the south keep telling me lately that southern summer weather “steams the sky and boils the earth” \u2014 and now, in Beijing, I feel it too.
In such humid weather, what concerns tea lovers most is naturally the question of how to store their tea.
Up to now, the storage methods for pu-erh tea we encounter most often \u2014 whether in textbooks or on the packaging of tea products \u2014 all use the same official wording: avoid light, ventilate, protect from moisture and odors.
Some may say today’s topic must be moisture protection for tea. In fact, no \u2014 avoiding light and guarding against moisture and odors are already well mastered by consumers at large. Today we want to discuss a far more controversial question of tea storage: should pu-erh tea be stored ventilated or sealed!
Among veteran tea drinkers the debate never ends. Some say pu-erh should be stored with ventilation so that post-fermentation can proceed better; others say pu-erh should be kept as airtight as possible, since excessive ventilation only over-oxidizes the leaves and drains their inner substance. So how should we store it? Today we start from the changes in pu-erh’s inner qualities, and let the tea itself tell us how it should be kept.
Pu-erh is a post-fermented tea; a good pu-erh grows more fragrant with age. What we mean by “the older, the more fragrant” is speaking of drinking value \u2014 it simply tastes better and better. Concretely, “better and better” can be understood as: the soup becomes thicker and smoother, the throat-feel deeper and deeper, and the bodily sensation ever stronger.
How does pu-erh achieve such qualitative change? Two pathways drive it: oxidation and microbially-driven transformation. The improving cup we drink is mainly the work of microorganisms.
In the transformation of tea, microbes play a crucial role. The microorganisms in pu-erh use energy supplied by glycosides in the leaf to continuously break down the tea fibers, decomposing and reducing substances in the leaf tissue that are insoluble in water until they dissolve \u2014 yielding ever more water-soluble polysaccharides and free amino acids.
The rise in water-soluble polysaccharides thickens the soup; the growth of free amino acids deepens the throat-feel; and gut flora use those polysaccharides to generate warmth, producing a strong bodily sensation. All of these deepen pu-erh’s aesthetic pleasure cup by cup.
Besides this, pu-erh’s other transformation pathway is oxidation.
Oxidation is the reaction that happens when pu-erh meets the outside air. It shows itself concretely as: amino acids, tea polyphenols, vitamins and other compounds in the leaf, on contact with air, are oxidized and degraded, so the tea’s cha-qi declines and the taste turns thin; aromatic compounds exposed to air lose their fragrance molecules in great quantity; catechins and polyphenols meeting oxygen soften bitterness and astringency while forming tea pigments that redden the liquor; and as the leaf’s contents transform, after three to five years of storage the tea develops an oxidative, cardboard-box-like note.
Reading this far, we see that the transformation of truly good pu-erh actually requires separation from air \u2014 microbial transformation in pu-erh needs an anaerobic environment. Only in a sealed micro-environment, with leaf moisture held at about 10%, does pu-erh transform at its best.
As the years pass and you witness a young tea, through 10, 20, even 30 years of storage, become an aged tea, believe me, what you drink will be far more than the taste of a single cup \u2014 what stirs you, thread by thread, are the traces of time itself.
Summer is in its dog days, the heat hard to bear. At this hour, a cup of characterful aged tea relieves summer’s oppressiveness best.
So right now, take stock of the pu-erh in your keeping and put it into plastic bags, foil bags, or better-sealed ceramic jars! Give the microbes a micro-environment friendlier to transformation, and only then, years from now, will we drink something more astonishing \u2014 something that touches the truest self deep within.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
Author: Lam Sam (LamSam), the Old Tea Head
ZENTEA MANOR
Alliance Supply Chain Services Limited
Unit 902-3, 9\/F, Mini Cube, 10 Sam Chuk Street, San Po Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong
www.zentea-shop.com Email:info@zentea-shop.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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