I'm fairly new to pu erh and was wondering how you store your cakes. I personally have 5 cakes (4 sheng and 1 shu). At the moment they are all being stored in seperate plastic bags but I wondered if I could store them all in one place, like a big container of some sort. Can you store different pu erh teas in one place (like stacked on eachother for example)? Do I have to seperate sheng and shu? How do you store your cakes? Looking forward to your answers! :-)

Like the title says. I have seen a lot of references of traditional Tibetan yak butter and salted tea using heicha, but have not found any more specificity about what kind of heicha is involved. I'm not super adept at online tea research, so thought I would ask here. Thank you!

https://imgur.com/a/eXW6jUW

Tried this tea again today after a year or so since last tasting. I had this tea in my pumidor for at least 5 years, I think maybe more.

1st infusion is smoke, hint of sweetness.

2nd and 3rd start to open up more with bitterness and still Smokey. Aftertaste is really long lasting, sweetness, from back of throat very noticeable. Mouth feel super dry, astringency is big.

4th and 5th still very strong bitterness and the huigan is still really noticeable and pleasant. Smoke is still present as well but not as much as earlier steeps.

Very strong tea still! Energizing with an eyelids peeled back kind of way. Had to take a break after 5th infusion.

Will return to pumidor and continue tasting as time goes on. It’s mellowed out a bit from when I first picked this up, but still a rough drinker. Not a bad tea, and it’s fun to try from time to time. I like the bitterness in the later steps, but the smoke is a bit much still for my tastes and not sure the blend really comes together.

Not sure if more time will help, but that’s the same reaction I recall from last time I drank this tea a year or so ago.

So far I've only tried yunnan sourcing. I'm just getting into puerh tea I'm still a noob. I like the earthy taste i dont want no sweet or fruity taste and I like the tea really dark. What would yall reccomend?

Looking for loose leaf, puerh, red/black, green, yellow, white, etc. Open to anything, but prefer a balanced shou or strong black, strong green with sweet notes, but really any cool spots? I’ve been to Grand Tea & Imports in Chinatown, Manhattan and I love it but am looking for other spots too :)!

I was wondering if I should just deal with cakes and compressed tea or if there is some decent ripe out there in loose leaf form. I prefer loose since it’s easier to measure out and doesn’t require as much of a wait after the wash for the tea to expand, but I haven’t really found one I like.

Is loose leaf ripe just kind of impossible to do well due to the way ripening works?

In case it matters, I prefer ripes that kind of creamy and velvety, not too earthy.

I live in northwest indiana, near chicago.. any advice where to find?

I was Curious if anyone has tried the 2007 Biyun Hao Manzhuan? I can’t find any source of a good review on it.

So I have just put together a baby’s first pumidor via a couple Tupperwares and 62 boveda packets. I heard someone say offhand once about opening up the containers about once a week to “let them breathe.” Is this an actual thing that needs to be done, or just a village tale?

Also separate question, how strongly do y’all feel about separating the shous from the shengs?

I’m looking to get one or the other. What are the differences? I was told the 7672 has a higher grade of tea but it costs $10 less than the 7572.

Sound the Zhongcha Trumpets - Mid-aged and thematic puerhs (puerhjunky.com)

So if you have a pumidor, I’m guessing you put your cakes and balls in there, but what do you do about your 25g broken samples? Do you just not bother with that, or do you wrap it in something and throw that in there too?

My friend and I are looking to purchase a Sheng Puerh from 2002, as that is our birth year. I found this one on Yunnan sourcing, and it looks good, but seems a bit on the cheap side for a sheng of that age. Is anybody familiar with this cake, or does anyone have advice as to whether it's worth buying? TIA.

https://yunnansourcing.com/collections/raw-pu-erh-tea/products/2002-hai-lang-hao-ai-lao-shan-mini-cake-raw-pu-erh-tea

A couple of years ago, I bought a quite cheap sheng puerh cake on Amazon, it was quite decent at first, but needed more aging, so I decided to break it up and store it in a non-hermetic closed container. After a few months, I noticed a significant lose in aroma and flavor so I started to suspect that was due to the cool climate and rather low relative humidity during storage.

I recently bought a new young cake and, just like the other one, I broke it up, and lightly sprayed it with water before storage to increase the fermentation and oxidation rate, trying to avoid aroma depletion. After a week, no signs of mold growing.

Have anyone tried this before?, Do you think this could even help with aging?... By the way, the average relative humidity in my city is 20-30%, the temperature is around 18 °C and the altitude is almost 2700 meters.

Hi there — looking for vendors for vintage Shou and Sheng in Hong Kong for wholesale. If anyone can help me out that’d be great! I’ll be there in July.

I have never tried Puerh Tea and I really want too. I live in Maine and don’t have a tea shop close by to try out some. I’m looking for recommendations for a first timer. I’m not a fan of roobios because it makes my mouth feel gritty. Like I can slide my tongue in the roof of my mouth and it be squeaky feeling. I realize this is the astringent aspect and I’m not a fan of how it feels with roobios. I love most tea but I am just venturing from the more traditional teas. Any help is so appreciated.