I can hear Professor Z's stern tut tuts across the vast oceans - yet another hapless home aging experiment gone awry. I had stored some pieces which had been conditioned with a bit of extra humidity then stored in plastic bags- I had been monitoring those pieces quite closely twice a day until last week. I had a serious work deadline last week and forgot all about this experiment.
After reading this fascinating article in the leaf I am a little more reassured:
http://the-leaf.org/issue4/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/puerh-storage-part-222.pdf
But there's lots of different white molds in the world and not all white mold could be indiscriminately good. I posted a craigslist posting to get help identifying them. In the spirit of science, I was going to do a few more experiments with these samples. For starters, I was going to cut away the sections of mold and store them in tiny baggies to build up my tea mold library and see if they bloom any further. I was also going to remove as much as possible and keep on monitoring the chunks to see if the mold comes back. Then as is such time passes, I was going to sample some of the tea.
(My husband wanted to make sure he got photo credits as my lab technician. My hands were to shaky from brewing up too much tea earlier today.)
The damage isn't so terrible- just six chunks of mediocre tea which I was experimenting with. All less than a pound of tea. As my husband says- "Hey, you've got more stuff you can look at under your new microscope." Yup.
http://the-leaf.org/issue4/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/puerh-storage-part-222.pdf
But there's lots of different white molds in the world and not all white mold could be indiscriminately good. I posted a craigslist posting to get help identifying them. In the spirit of science, I was going to do a few more experiments with these samples. For starters, I was going to cut away the sections of mold and store them in tiny baggies to build up my tea mold library and see if they bloom any further. I was also going to remove as much as possible and keep on monitoring the chunks to see if the mold comes back. Then as is such time passes, I was going to sample some of the tea.
(My husband wanted to make sure he got photo credits as my lab technician. My hands were to shaky from brewing up too much tea earlier today.)
Your husband sounds super-chill. Like, REALLY chill. Sounds like he's the opposite of "No Chill".
ReplyDeleteDear Jake,
DeleteA flighty tea drinker like me needs an anchor like my husband who is the original puerh drinker in the house. However if he were to have a tea blog, we would be lucky to get three word entries if at all. "Not so bad." "Yup it's good." Or "don't buy this one."
H
1950's Red Mark - cool
Delete88 Qing Bing - nice
1920's Liu An - yum
modern CNNP - nah
uhhh... I think I need a microscope too... me worry :(
ReplyDeleteOh No Ira,
DeleteI've had chunks in plastic bags for years without trouble. It's only if you had made them wet before sealing. You can borrow mine next week if you don't need one right away.
H
Those molds are beautiful! I am so glad you photographed them, I look forward to seeing if the samples bloom anymore.
ReplyDelete