The ageing of PuErh (and Oolongs and Whites) is a little controversial with everyone having their own opinions on how to store your leaves to get the best brews. Some like to keep the cakes in an airtight environment, others break up their PuErh cakes and store them in an air permeable container. Some prefer high humidity (wet storage), others swear by a dry environment (dry storage). So making this video was always going to cause a few arguments.
In my opinion, the process of tea ageing is ridiculously unstudied and everyone is basing things on passed on knowledge, a smattering of personal experience and their own taste. The difficulty of course is how to run good experiments to compare ageing styles when we are talking about years if not decades of testing. I am trying to design experiments which can give clearer answers myself but in the meantime, here are my personal thoughts on ageing of PuErh tea.
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Temperature Guide for US viewers:
PuErh pan-firing is at 250 Fahrenheit compared to most tea which is above 500 Fahrenheit heating. Storage for PuErh cakes should be between 68-86 Fahrenheit which is room temperature.
PLEASE NOTE: If you are planning on using cardboard boxes to age PuErh then ensure that they are made with 'clean' cardboard without any chemical treatments.
