I broke an extremely tight tuocha apart a couple of months ago by steaming it briefly, breaking it apart, and then redrying it. Then I forgot about it. Now I am curious--I understand it will age faster than compressed puer because it is looseleaf, but if I age it for a year or two, will there be a significant drop in quality, or will it taste similar to a slightly older aged compressed puer?
What if I break a cake into smaller pieces (of about 5-10g each) and store them in a jar? Will that age the tea faster without fading the quality?
The best way to age tea is wait it out. I can tell you from experience my thirty year old teas taste more similar to the ones I buy today than not. I think compressed puer maintains its taste better than any other storage. So a given taste from years ago is not some mysterious byproduct of bacterial change. Already any puer just three years old is in demand because of lesser quality in the leaf of today. You can easily change the taste of puer by wet storage or steaming as a short cut but that isn't aging. Besides if shu is the accelerated aging of sheng there is nothing to wait for. For whatever reason I don't think loose shu taste like the compressed counterpart. You may like the taste of the loose better if the compressed is too much. You will find you like the taste from different factores but this is recipe for now and in the future.
You are sort of on new territory there as most people who steam, only steam enough for short term consumption. The fear being that the steam might halt any microbial activity that may have been taking place, thus inhibiting proper aging.
As for loose aging faster than compressed, the collective wisdom as I know it states that this is true, but only to an extent. The broken bings and tuos will mellow faster than their compressed brethren, but they will not reach the same depths (regardless of age) as they would have had they been left compressed.
In my own personal experience, most methods designed to speed the aging process will eventually take their toll somewhere.
As for fading, that is not normally a concern with pu-erh unless it is exposed to far too much air, light, or temperature. This is one of the great things about pu-erh, it can be stored for decades without "fading". If left compressed, wrapped in its original wrapper, and stored in an environment that is comfortable for humans (i.e. not too hot, cold, humid, or dry), it will not fade. A notable exception to this phenomenon is that serious collectors will often shrinkwrap cakes once they reach about 30 years old or so. This is stop the loss of the aromatics of the tea.
He wouldn't be the guy behind Fu Cha Ju (sometimes transliterated Fo Cha Ji), would he? Because I've heard that FCJ's 2003 cooked Wuliangshan bingcha, which I love though not everyone does, was slow-baked.
Mr Huang (Fo Cha Ju / Jing Mei Tang) is not the only person who skilled in slow roasting everything, there are others, such as (another!) Mr Huang of Zhu Li Guan, and the old teashop Wang De Chuan...though Mr Huang of Fo Cha Ju may be the one who publishes most of his findings.
Of course, but he's the one who talks about it the most often, I think. There are lots of people out there who are quite skilled in this sort of thing, with varying degrees of success.
Either way though, it might be something to be learned for the tobacco toasting folks out there :)
Interesting, thanks. I don't have much of the tuo cha left (my original intent was to break it apart so I could drink it soon, but I became distracted with other teas), but now I am really curious to see what happens if I leave it for a while.
And I have a strange urge to start smoking. I don't know if that is a good thing or not. Interestingly, if I am reading correctly, tobacco is aged in tins, not compressed. They don't press it into cakes, do they? Does a densely rolled cigar age better than loose tobacco?
Mr Huang talks about it most often, yet not many understand the theories behind his method. He asked me once if I understood what he wrote and spoke about, and I told him less than 10%. Visit me, he replied, and you'll understand another 20%...all in all, he is a very entertaining person who is talks about almost anything under the sun.
Oh my. Can that be good? Some friends have this theory: one gets hook on pu'er as an alternative to smoking; but at the teashops we visit, I found on several occasions that when the teashop owner brews a pu'er, the ashtray gets filled up quicker...
I don't suggest this as a method of loosening the tuocha, some people believe that if you don't control the temperature correctly you might just end up with a pile of spent leaves that is basically green tea- ish, and these would not age well, if not at all. Of the various methods of processing green tea, the steam method is one that usually doesn't allow the tea to age or change in its flavour (for the better). If you keep a Longjing which is panfried, and a gyokuro which is steamed processed, for a year, you'll find that while the Longjing is still drinkable, the gyokuro would taste quite nasty.
How one re-dries the tea is also a contributing factor to the condition of the tea later. From what I've read on other forums, the end product of tea should not undergo sun-drying, for reasons unclear it affects the taste of the tea and make it bland. Low heat baking might alter it into a different tea, and leaving it to air-dried but not dry it thoroughly.
You also asked if the tea broken into smaller pieces and kept in a jar would age faster without fading the quality...
That is an interesting question. I'll let you know in 5 years' time...
Conventional wisdom lays down several guidelines on this:
Break the cake into smaller pieces only if you intend to drink them in the near future
For long term investment, it is better to keep the cake as intact as possible
If the pu'er is new, a zisha clay jar would be ideal for it - to allow it to breathe and age
If the pu'er is old (I wonder how old is old), a porcelain jar is better - to slow down its ageing process
I think there are more guidelines, please feel free to add...
Tobaccos are pressed into cakes, except in tobacco terminology these are called "plugs". They sometimes leave tobaccos compressed for months, which alters the taste profile. When you slice these aged plug into thin (2-4mm thick) pieces, they are called "flakes". Tobaccos have also long been baked, except in the tobacco jargon it's "stoved". Many of the old English mixes have heavily stoved leaves.
While I'm not sure if rolled cigars age better than loose tobacco, I can definitely say that there is nothing like good Virginia flake. They smell like so good...like fig newtons. A good pipe tea IMHO is a strong rosey Indian black, like assam, though you can also do Lapsang Souchong.
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