Improving Character Recognition

Deciphering tea wrappers is one of the challenges all Tea Heads face. While some of us might choose to study Chinese or Japanese, the vast majority of us will spend our time pleasantly tea shopping until we hit a brick wall with the languages. Is there any way to improve our ability to read Chinese or Japanese without spending years studying the language?

The first difficulty we English speakers face is Visual Discrimination. Visual Discrimination is the ability to detect small differences in details between one item and another. Our language has only 26 letters, some of which aren't used very often, so our Visual Discrimination skills aren't very developed. Our worst problem in English lately is the correct choice between "their" and "there," and "your" and "you're." This issue is nothing compared to the seemingly tiny differences between Chinese characters, which contain huge differences in meaning. Until we can learn to SEE differences between characters, we can't begin to decipher them. The problem is, Chinese characters look like a mishmash to most English speakers.

Another problem is the abysmal pedagogy in self-taught books and online apps. These materials often start out in very unhelpful ways, either by focusing on tourist reading like renting an apartment, or the book goes straight into full sentences. And no matter how the books start out, they all end up relying on the same method of memorizing dozens of characters literally by rote, via flash cards or by smart apps which re-test on your mistakes. What the English speaker really needs is help in Visual Discrimination first, a method to decode what the characters are really about.

A hanzi or kanji character is really just a stylized picture of its meaning. These pictures started out on clay tablets, and the original Simplified form looked a lot more realistic. Later on, calligraphy and ink brushes led to characters looking like they do today. But the very early Simplified forms aren't so hard to distinguish and help make sense of what today's characters mean. And the Simplified forms are nearly the same as stylized Simplified characters you see on Tea Wrappers and Tea Ware stamps.

I'm going to recommend two small books which are a good introduction to someone who is interested in learning basic characters, and just to improve in ability to discern one character from another. The books cost a penny each on Amazon, which won't dent the tea budget. These books are: Understanding Kanji Characters by their Ancestral Forms, and Understanding Chinese Characters by their Ancestral Forms by Ping-gam Go. These books are only around 75 pages long, are excellent bathroom reading and you can open them to any page, any time. The Japanese Kanji book is a good first read because it spends more time on basic characters common between Japanese and Chinese. The Chinese book covers more complex ones. In addition, the Chinese book has a full section on Good Luck characters that you often see on teaware and other art works that we are likely to buy.

Here are some images to show you how the books work, and with images we avoid the problem of Character Encoding on internet browsers.

Man.

Notice how the head and arms were originally in the character, and over time the legs and part of the torso remain. Ink and brushes making straight lines allowed the character to be written quickly.

Woman.

With the Simplified form of Woman, you can decode and interpret my silly cartoon at the top of the post.

Tea.

Notice my red lines, how the Simplified version of Man is part of the character. The "grass" is the tips of the tea leaves above the man's head, and the bush itself is both above and below him.

Mouth.

How a smiley became a character. :D

Ten.

Not so obvious, but easy to memorize.

Old.

Here we are building upon having learned Ten and Mouth. How word of mouth over time became a representation of Old. All of humanity's ancient texts including the Bible were passed by word of mouth for many generations before being written down.

Hui Gan.

Notice the words for "mouth" here, and something inside the mouth. Tea is held in the mouth, and then becomes "sweet." Hui is also means to return, to go back, to recollect thoughts we have held. So too the sweetness of tea is the memory of the initial bitterness. Here I can appreciate how these characters function as language and meaning together. In English, our word like "sweet" looks like sweet because we have learned to see the word's meaning. In Chinese characters, the words actually mean what we see, form and function.

Raw.

The word Raw also means uncooked, and unprocessed and is taken from "green" and green comes from "earth." If you look up Green and Earth in the books or on Google, you can see how part of the character for green was adapted for the word Raw, which is pronounced "sheng." Again, form meets function.

Cooked.

This is a more complicated character, but it shows how simpler characters are stacked and arranged to produce a new character, and add to the meaning. This one is pronounced "shu." You can start to "take apart" the pieces of the character visually in order to get the meaning. Notice cooking is done over the "flames" of the fire, seeing this helps to remember the character.

Okay I got the Books, now what?

1) Chinese: I really like the app called Pleco, which is a user-friendly dictionary of sorts. Download Pleco and start typing in words. Try typing "raw" and "sheng" and "shu" and "cooked" and "green" and "Puer." Explore reading the results the app gives you. You can click/press on characters for more information.

2) Japanese: Get a Playstation 3 or 4. The controller has "smart" Japanese keyboarding built in. Press the Select button several times in a Chat box to see the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets. Typing in these will get you a list of characters on the Right to pick from. Use Google Translate to get both the Kanji and the Hiragana for the word "tea." Using the controller, type the Hiragana and see if you can find the character for Tea popping up in the list of choices. Pick up a game that is available in English and Japanese. Play the English one first, then the Japanese. Many people around the world play games in Japanese because the games aren't available in their own language, and because the online servers they have access to are Japanese.

Final Note.

Americans are often rightly criticized for lacking any ability or interest in languages apart from English. Now I don't speak Japanese or Chinese, but despite this we, and many people around the world, can learn to read a little of these languages in order to chat, play games, navigate websites and buy what we want on the internet. I've learned to type a basic conversation in a Japanese gaming room on the Playstation, and I've played Naked Avatar hide-and-seek with my Chinese guild mates online. While Japanese gamers are quick to boot English speakers out of an online gaming room, they are on the other hand warm and friendly to English people when you make even a small effort to cut-and-paste or type characters. You've improved your Visual Discrimination ability just a little bit by reading this post. Anything else you learn will allow you to meet even more Tea Nerds online, and make your tea hobby all the more enjoyable.

Example of one of the Good Luck character pages.

Everything I need to know.

Bad Girls 1997 7582

Some days I wander around the house wondering what to drink. That's the downside of having so much tea. Once the tea collection gets large enough, choosing a tea is like finding a snack, opening the refrigerator for something to eat and then shutting the door again. Especially if the tea is also in a refrigerator, the lines between eating and drinking begin to blur, plugged or unplugged, tea or sausage. I keep tea samples in a 1970s record case and my vinyl records in a milk crate. Anyway I dug up a sample of white2tea's 1997 7582 that I've been hoarding since last year.

1997 Light Green Private Order White2Tea 

Lately I'm not in much of a hurry to drink up aged tea samples when they arrive. Most of them need significant airing and this 7582 is no exception. I've had the envelope open during the past months and this amount of time wasn't long enough. Honestly I should have put this in some sort of crock situation or a clay pot rather than leaving it in the envelope. I got a bit of the center hole of the beeng with this sample, and stabbed my finger with the puerh pick trying to pry off 5 grams, drawing a tiny drop of blood from my ring finger. This tea is something bad, New Orleans bloodsucking vampire bad out of an Anne Rice novel. She's a Private Order to be sure and someone naughty had her made up special.

The tea retains significant storage odors and tastes despite my half-hearted efforts to air it. Not the most humid tea I've ever had, but there is a dusty/dirty humid dry-sticks-in-the-mausoleum taste in the initial steeps that I'm certain I could air out given enough time and attention on my part. This tea clearly passed out during all that humid storage and isn't in any rush to wake up. My Yixing worked it and worked it and all the tea gave up for NINE steeps was storage and a yawn. Clearly the Yixing was a mistake on my part, the tea is mineral enough already, I got triple minerals by using the pot. However, the tight fit of the leaves in my tiny 60 ml steeper seemed to squeeze out the wheezy storage without giving the old girl much of a kick in the behind, but rather like pulling the strings on a vintage corset, giving one last tug before finally letting go. Ten steeps in I am getting sweet honey nectar which fills my mouth and clings to my lips. She's a bad one all right and I roll her over into the gaiwan now that the party is getting started.

Sixth steep or so.

Two more steeps of honey nectar and the leaves are fully opened, and they are definitely plushy and big just as the description on white2tea says. Unfortunately my photo of the steep is taken from my bedside because I've gone all day long and now well into the night with this one. Instead of the coffee colored soup, all the brown storage is out by steep 12 and the tea is more orange-y amber which is the true color.

It's not very often I get a tea that seems older than I am. And boiling water isn't enough for her. I have to let the tea actually steep for a minute or so to get all that sweet thickness going, she likes it long and slow and hot to be sure. She needs to be rolled over several times in the gaiwan to change her position occasionally. It's clear she hasn't stepped out in a very, very long time, and I'm really with her instead of feeling sorry for myself for a change. I don't care about the bad photo you're getting, because the party is at the hazy stage now where I've had too much to drink and can't move.

12th steep, yeah it's my bedside table. Feelin' foggy.

This seductive old temptress costs $225 if you want all of her and she's worth it. Why can't I just throw hot water on myself and look this good? Plushy leaves like fat lips so unfair, but if I can't look this good at least I can drink Miss Pretty and pretend I'm her. Make sure you say nothing while she is waking up: if you try this tea right out of the wrapper wait 10 steeps before beginning your assessment.

If I had a whole cake of this I would break it up and crock it. Then I would add more humidity to wake up the entire cake again and let her soak it in for awhile before beginning the airing out process. Might take me a year, but I feel fairly certain I can work out these stale bed odors with enough time so that I can get the storage out by steeps 7-8, a more normal amount, rather than steeps 9-10 that it took me today. This would give me an additional two steeps to enjoy the promise of a stronger nectar buried within, as yet unappreciated. I definitely recommend an attentive airing of this cake, 'twould be a waste to just drink it up without paying the proper amount of respect for what this is. I'm not sure she's too terribly deep, but sometimes a old sweetheart for the night is all anyone needs. 1:00 a.m. and the moon is full and high in the sky, she's near 20 now and not done yet, and neither am I.

Requiestcat in Pace

Wisconsin Pu Heads

Lately my online tea buddies say they feel sorry for me because I don't have a cadre of real life tea friends. Of course Wisconsin is not really a tea place, but more of a beer and sausage place. It's true that I'd have an unlimited social life if I enjoyed bar hopping, instead of the solitary life hunched over a gaiwan which I'm sure nobody around here can understand even if I admitted it publicly. But I gave the idea of a local puerh community some thought, and I know how this would pan out.

First, I'll have to put up with a whole new level of conversation around here, a nightmare to contemplate. If you don't know what the rural central Wisconsin accent sounds like, well it's close to what you hear in the movie "Fargo." The guy who gives the "up at da lake" monologue is pretty close, and the wife who gets killed is a dead ringer for the feminine nasal, "Daad, you stayin' fer supper?"

Now transpose all that onto a conversation about tea, and you'll hear something like "Now yas just don know where 'is tea's been'n'at, he's got doze ya know goats in de house all winter hey," and "it tastes like 'er basement and she's got back-ups donchaknow, I seen dat truck around."

For sure Zen-inspired tea meditators and "masters" will permanently lose every exotic oriental wet tea dream they've ever cherished, and you too if you hear a Rural Wisconsin person talk about your Qi. There is a reason I don't make tea videos. people. We can ruin your Tea Fantasies the moment we start talking. Trust me, no one wants to hear it.

On top of the bad accent, a new puerh culture in my area would unleash yet another host of local nightmares. For instance, let's start with any given Sunday where I happen to see pu drinker Susan in church. Last week was her turn to host Sunday dinner. Catholics play "pass the priest" seven days a week, and for some reason fight over who gets to have Father visit for a meal he isn't required to pay for. By Wednesday I find out that Susan happened to mention to Father the pubic hair she found in my shu pu, and that she discussed at some length why she'll never swap samples with me ever again. After that social disaster, I can expect to lose my part time substitute teaching job at St. Patrick's because now the entire parish thinks that Susan and I...well you can fill in the blank.

Next we have the local businesses where I buy foods and the pharmacy where I get my medications. The pharmacist will now include a lecture on sheng consumption every time I get a prescription refill. I go to great lengths to keep my doctor at a 75 mile distance where she can't find out what I'm doing in my copious free time. Once puerh goes local, every busybody I see on the street will be happy to tell me how I'm living my life wrong in my tea hobby along with every other facet of my life.

And then we have the meth heads. These are folks who steal anything not nailed down, and they'll steal the nailed down stuff when they find the time. When you put the trash out Sunday evening for Monday's collection, pick-up trucks hauling trailers stop at every curbside trash pile to take away the aluminum cans and anything else of value. Around here you can leave your house for twenty minutes and all your copper water pipes will be gone from your house when you get back. Most people finally got wise to all this and started using PVC plumbing instead. All that accomplished was leaving the meth heads looking for something else to steal. Imagine what will happen once sheng puerh becomes all the local rage. Fewer beer cans in the trash. So, talk about stealing... I'm gonna have to start watching my stash.

Instead of the peaceful existence I have now, my naps will be routinely interrupted by people stopping by for tea. I'll actually need to answer the door which will mean needing to install a doorbell and fixing the outdoor lights that never work right. I will have a revolving door of neighbors who expect to be served, instead of just my ex-husband and his mother once a year. And oh, "can I take a bit of that cake home with me?" If I don't say yes I can expect Mr. Stickyfingers to slip some in his pocket anyway. And forget about bringing anyone home for the evening. All it takes is one bad break-up and there goes my tea ware when I'm not looking along with my collection of boxer shorts and push-up bras. The cops won't give a tinker's dam about tea ware and so the only recourse I will have is haunting EBay, waiting for my stuff to get posted so I can buy it back.

So to sum it up, if puerh catches on big here I can expect to lose my job and whatever shreds remain of my reputation along with my entire collection of sheng and teaware. Eventually that will translate into a bad social life and rocks through my porch windows. I suppose my view of the locals isn't as positive as it might be. But just to be prepared, I'm gonna start packing up the house.

Requiescat in Pace.

Taking Care of Your Shous. Puerh Airing and Storage

I am approaching the time in my life when shou puerh is one of the more comfortable teas for Old Lady digestion. A gong fu session with shou puerh is always enjoyable, and I also find a pinch of shou brewed western style in a mug is a good way to settle my gut and help me relax. Shou puerh helps balance out sheng days. However, I have yet to order any shou that arrives without needing something. Either the shou will need further aging, or airing, or both.

My eventual goal of treatment for a newly arrived shou puerh is to tin the tea for storing and consumption.

Checklist:

1. Does the shou have Heavy, Medium or Light fermentation?

Hopefully the seller discloses the level of fermentation. Vendors such as  Yunnan Sourcing generally describe the level of fermentation in their listings. Other vendors like those on EBay might not be so clear. We need to know what type of shou the cake is in order to figure out how to treat it.

Heavy: the cake is mostly dark brown. The leaves will seem like dried dark leather or dried tobacco. When brewed, the tea soup is very sweet and reddish, and the leaves look very black in the gaiwan. Often Heavy puerh contains lots of sticks.

Medium: this shou often shows flecks of golden or lighter colored tea leaves on the surface of the cake. The best shou factory puerh cakes seem to have an even distribution of more lightly fermented leaves, or unfermented leaves scattered across the surface. This is a beautiful aesthetic, and I always stop to appreciate cakes where such care is taken in the presentation. When brewed, the gaiwan will have some of the heavier, dark and leathery leaf, and then some lighter green pieces. Sometimes the green pieces aren't noticeable until a few steeps in and the tea soup fades.

Light: Even more greener pieces of tea, and a lighter colored soup. More bitterness in the cup, can taste sour fermented flavor because it still has years to go.

2. Taste the tea to check for condition too. Withhold judgement on the quality.

Here I am looking for things that need fixing, such as humid or dirt-smelling storage which will need to be aired. Or sour flavors which means the tea got dried out and will need a bit more humidity to wake up and work out.

Every shou will need something, either airing or more fermentation time. Shou will not be at its best when you first get it. So I just look for problems and really decide on the tea in a few months.

3. Break up all Heavy fermentation teas and any Light/Mediums that have humid storage odors on top of any wo dui odors.

This step might be difficult for some to part with the intact cake. As for Heavy fermentation, scad tons of this tea are produced in China every year. China has a many years back-load of shou which they are trying to figure out how to market and sell. Heavy fermentation cakes have no great value and will never have value except for drinking. Break it up.

In theory, Light/Mediums might retain value with further storage based on the fact that retailers bump the price every year. But in reality, where are you gonna sell them? Again, China produces tons of shou every year. A sensible strategy is break up the ones that arrive with musty humid storage and plan to tin these. For drier storage cakes you don't plan to drink for a few years, hang on to them intact if you want.

4. Place the tea in the correct storage solution.

The correct solution depends upon the level of fermentation and any problems.

Overview of storage solutions.

Heavy vs. Light Fermentation: Heavy needs airing and finally long term tinning. Light has essentially the same storage issues as for sheng. The advantage of lighter fermentation is more complexity developing in the tea over time, mimicking sheng puerh more closely than Heavy does. Since Light fermentation is essentially going to be similar to sheng, and must be stored separately from sheng, you will need two separate storage plans for sheng and Light/Medium shou. Yep, double the space in your house.

Any of these solutions can also be used for Heicha, Liu Bao, Liu An and Fu Zhuan.

Yixing, duan-ni and other unglazed ceramics. These ceramics are great for Heavy shou puerh for short and long term storage. The lack of glazing allows the tea to air and rid itself of humid storage odors. There is no further aging which needs to be done. All you need is to work out any odors from warehousing, or paper wrappers or bamboo. You can use the lids with unglazed ceramics because the whole thing will breathe even when covered. These ceramics are expensive to buy. If you like them and have the money, go ahead.

Crockware. Inexpensive crockware can be used for airing and storage. Leave lids off to air and cover the top of the crock with a paper towel or cotton fabric and secure with a rubber band. Replace the lid when you notice any odors have vanished. Crockware can be used to wake up a drier shou if it has lost the nice smell, keep the lid on to bring back the fresher smell.

Porcelain or Ceramic. Fine for airing and storage of all shou types. Leave the lid off for airing Heavy fermented tea until you notice any off odors have vanished. Then replace the lid. Keep it on for lighter fermentation cakes.

Cupboards. Fine for whole cake shous. You will want to add a bowl of water for Light/Medium fermented shous. Make sure you dedicate the cupboard for shou, but you can also store tins or sealed bags of other teas in there too, just not sheng.

Pumidor. Great for Light/Medium fermented shous. Unnecessary for Heavy fermented shous.

Tins. Use after you've finished any airing or aging. Break up the cake and tin it. I like to cut out a piece of the wrapper and tape or glue to the tin. You can also use Dry mount spray to make a decoupage of the tea wrapper around the tin.

Jars. These are fine for long term storage of finished and aired shou. Decorate like jam jars with colored cloth and string or ribbons.

Vintage shou, and my homemade on the right.

5. Brewing and tasting Shou Puerh.

Shou should lose most storage odors and flavors after six months of airing. A shou can taste markedly different six months later from when you bought it, so reserving your judgement on it is a good idea. I've hated some shou puerh on day one that six months later is awesome. Even so, you might find a few odors or flavors linger.

--soak shou pieces in cold water 5-10 mins. to help remove any remaining odors/flavors including musty or fishy smells. Guangxi Liu Bao and Hubei Heicha bricks benefit from cold water soaking to open them up.

--do at least 2 boiling water quick rinses on shou. Some Heicha fade quickly but often have off-smells and still smell funny after 3 rinses. And then you might only get 3-4 good steeps before the heicha fades. This is normal because heicha is not usually a Yunnan leaf varietal. Heicha is a unique tea group though it is pile fermented like shou. Fermented teas aren't consistent between teas and steep parameters are thus a new exploration with every tea you purchase.

--Gong fu brew heavy leaf to water ratio, 8-10 g/100 ml or higher. For a western-style steep you can use much less. But you aren't going to get a full experience of your shou with 3-4 grams and then tossing the lot after 5 steeps. If you have a good shou puerh, 10-12 g of tea will steep for days and sometimes taste better on day 2 than on day 1. Put the gaiwan in the fridge if you need to, take it back out to re-aclimate before adding water. Clay pots should not be refrigerated.

--Boil leaves in a pot for 5 minutes after they seem steeped out for yet another flavor profile.

My Favorite Shous

2014 Lao Cha Tou by white2tea
2000s "Chocolate" Shou by white2tea
2009 Lao Cha Tou Sheng Yun by Yunnan Sourcing
Golden Melon Shou by white2tea (brew all 20g at once, doesn't quit)
7572 recipes by Taetea and CNNP
Guanxi Three Cranes Liu Bao brick (heicha) by Chawangshop
2008 Bulang Old Tree brick by Crimson Lotus Tea



Thanks for Stopping By!

2015 Chawangpu Lao Yun

Could be this year's.

Although I've finished up testing my new 2015 Chawangpu cakes, a sample of the Lao Yun was included in my package. I can't quite make out the date on the bag, it looks like 2013, or 2015? Not sure. But I wanted to give this a try because Chawangshop has 2013-2015 versions of this cake available. Ringing in this year at a mere $12 for a 200g beeng, this is the lowest priced budget cake of the house label teas. That means just $60 a tong for this one. The Lao Yun has been reviewed elsewhere on other tea review and blog sites so definitely take a look around at other reviews if you are considering a purchase. I initially passed on this cake because from the photo I thought I could see some uneven processing and decided that perhaps some burnt leaves might be the cause of the low price tag.

Can't quite make out the year.

This tea is made by a group of old women for their own consumption. When looking at the leaves I couldn't help but think a few of those gals might need reading glasses but just don't want to wear them. My own grandmother refused to get her own set of readers, and instead borrowed my grandfather's pair for 30 years. My grandfather continued to work well into his 80s, so that meant my grandmother waited all day until he got home to borrow his glasses. I needed bifocals when I hit 46 or so, but since I already had worn glasses since age 10, this change in my eye sight didn't bother me so much. When you see resistance to reader lenses, it's always in people who had perfect eyesight all along, and perhaps still have perfect distance vision. They are proud of their eyesight and don't want to break down and admit they can't see up close any longer. As for me, I didn't want to break down and sell the handheld video games.

Turns out those ladies might see just fine, and at the same time I wasn't too far off about the tea. As soon as the hot water hit the tea, the straight up smell of campfire hits my nose. When we taste smoke in a sheng puerh, very often it is referred to as a tobacco flavor or scent. Or we see a lot of char in the strainer. In this case, I don't see much if any char, rather the whole cake has been infused with wood smoke. So I guess those old ladies can see just fine, but they are doing a kill green just over a very smoky wood fire. Some of this dissipates within a few steeps, but I can definitely smell it within what is otherwise a good quality champagne grape start to the tea and then the descent into straight up bitterness.

I kept my brew temps at a 208F, just off the boil. Going lower on the temps might have mellowed the bitter flavor in later steeps, but honestly this is a tea for aging and it's too much for me to drink this young. One reviewer at We Rate Teas reported a stomach ache from this, well that's what you get drinking a bitter young tea like this. No, this is one for the crocks.

Might be interesting to see how the campfire smoke integrates or dissipates. I am reminded of the wood furnace my dad bought, stoking it in the middle of the night with more wood. At home I never really noticed much of the wood smoke, but outside the house my clothes certainly smelled like it. Although I enjoyed the fireplaces and wood furnace, in my early adulthood whenever I got a cold, I'd end up with bronchitis every time. This tendency disappeared eventually, but I read someplace that problems like this are common when you grow up with wood fires in the house. And that big furnace was in the room right next to where I slept. The scent on this tea takes me back to that basement bedroom of mine near the wood furnace.

Second Steep

The tea soup is a really bright yellow, and has a bit of body by the third steep. Leaves are a nice mix of small and large, a few buds, and some older brown leaves indicating some age. I made it through three steeps and then stopped drinking for the sake of my system. Overall the tea has a high quality taste that is infused with the wood smoke, and this justifies Chawangshop's classification of the cake as a "Craft" or farm product tea, and the price tier. The cakes start at $12 and then go up by $2-3 after a year.

Bifocals, anyone?

Personally I appreciate the classification of "craft" tea, and I like some of the craft Heicha teas that Chawangshop also sells which are much easier to drink. I've seen plenty of sheng out there that really should be classified as "craft" due to the rough processing, but all too often the tea is sold for premium prices. I don't think sellers should shy away from offering a tea like this in their shop. The low price and unique experience justify picking up a cake. If you're into tea aging experiments, this cake is worth tossing into your cart to learn whatever you can, while you can.

A Nice-a Cool Glass-a Eliminate

I'm sending out another poke to the Marx Brothers fans to come up with the movie title for the Chico Marx "lemonade" pun above. Can you guess it? No googling!

Yes, it's an easy question. Politics and marketing are all a form of Duck Soup, and of course the tea world is not exempt. Now for you widely-read blog readers, here is one for you.

What do you get when you combine pesticides with Tea?

A dog with two heads. arf arf.

Okay okay, but listen. If you think vendors and tea buyers have problems when it comes to pesticides, I guarantee you none of that compares with what Old Cwyn's got. I still need to figure out what to do with the can of DDT out in my shed.

Everybody thinks I must enjoy writing loads of crap, and you can think that all day long but I still have a problem. I acquired a DDT can a few years back when I bought a large box of cleaning supplies at the flea market. I'm inconsistent when it comes to money. I'll pay $400 for the best gushu tea cake, but then turn around and refuse to pay more than 50 cents for a bottle of household cleaner. And while I might want my tea clean and chemical free, I am going to bomb the hell of out any bedbugs that I bring home from an $800 a night hotel room in Chicago. People have told me that bedbugs are immune to DDT, but I doubt they will survive my can of DDT plus roach killer doused in gasoline all lit up with a kitchen match. And I will feel perfectly happy to sleep on top of that burning pyre as opposed to an organic mattress full of bedbugs.

And while I'm at it, I plan to fill myself up as much pesticide as possible. This is not an activity for a mother preparing her body for childbirth. It's an activity for an old lady preparing for the mausoleum. In the old days, you could only hope to achieve sainthood with huge efforts, moral behavior, charitable works and zero masturbation. If you did all that correctly, then your holiness was rewarded with an incorruptible corpse on Display at the Vatican. Unfortunately, the traditional method of sainthood is closed to me because I know I've been Bad. However, I live in the 21st Century and appearances are far more achievable. The plan is to load up on pesticides so that when I'm all laid out, no bugs, worms or other rot dare come anywhere near my sweetly preserved flesh in the cemetery of Our Lady of Unspellable Surnames where 5 consonants or more are required to buy in. Then I will rise on the last day ready for a cuppa from one of the handy urns I've set up in advance, and be off for a late lunch at the meat shop currently located a quarter mile from the cemetery.

So I really do have a can of DDT. Actually it has pictures of roses on it and is labeled as "Rose Dust." And it came from the big box of stuff I got at the flea market, sold by some elderly people who probably didn't even know what the can really is. That, or they were fodding it off on someone else to deal with. And alas, this isn't the first time Old Cwyn has to be The One to take care of a DDT problem.

The first time was my very first weekend at the convent, of all places. Freshly moved into the Associate House (a residence for postulants), our schedule included a weekend at a cabin on a lake to get a fast course on the Liturgy of the Hours. This is the round-the-clock cycle of prayer performed by nuns, monks and priests, and the book which is used for this prayer is a complicated manual full of page turns from front to back. One has to learn to keep the book straight via a system of ribbon markers and holy cards. It's not really possible to learn the whole thing in a weekend, but we needed at least some basic starting competence at the cycle of prayer used within the community. Previously on my blog, I actually posted a photo of the book we studied at that cabin, here it is again.

Book of Prayer is the one.

This lake cabin belonged to the community and was used either for meetings or for retreats, little get-aways for prayer and contemplation. While poking around, I opened up a cabinet which had a few items arranged neatly along the edge of the shelf like amenities at a hotel. And here was a small paper can of DDT like a trial size of body powder, and a yellowed note with antique handwriting from the 1940s, saying "Please sprinkle this before you leave in order to control bugs for the next Sister."

I mentioned the can to my Director and she didn't appear worried. In fact, she seemed more concerned that I had my book ribbons in the right place than about the potential to bomb the local food chain with two-headed dogs for the next fifty breeding cycles. Or that we Virgins were placing our nubile young flesh on beds of toxic waste. Even worse, I couldn't deal with the problem and remove the can myself. Community Property is free to use, but rules are that one cannot dispose of Community Property without permission. So that meant I had to sleep out the weekend on 40 years of contamination and seek permission from the higher ups to dispose of the remains.

On the following week, I went to see Sister Marlene. She was the manager of the Motherhouse. Now,  note that I didn't immediately seek out the Mother General for a small problem like a can of DDT, no I went to a person of lower authority first, even though her authority did not extend beyond keeping the scheduling calendar for the cabin. She didn't really have the authority for permission to dispose of Community Property, but at least if a brand new postulant is going to stick her neck out and make waves, I showed respect for the levels of command by working my way up the food chain one rung at a time. And I was on the lowest possible rung of all, leaving me a long ways to climb. Unfortunately, Sister Marlene gave me a look which said everything along the lines of "this is hardly my concern."

So with all the bravado of youth I went to the office of the Mother General. Now Sister Patricia was a kind and regal woman whose most distinguishing trait was Grace, something she tried her best to teach me. Sister Patricia refused to accept any gestures from sisters which showed traditional respect for her office and her fine character which got her elected. For example, she never sat with her friends or other higher ups in the refectory. Instead she made a point of finding a table with the least amenable sisters, the most repulsive eaters, the sisters with nothing to say, the most irascible and uptight. In other words, she led by example.

However, it just wasn't her day to lead by example when Young Cwyn knocked on her door armed with a load of facts on the half-life of DDT, or she had concerns far more important than the local food chain. She expressed zero concern for that little can, and did not give me any particular permission to deal with the problem. A lowly postulant in her first week? I don't think so. She was pleasant enough while ushering me to the door and to her credit didn't tell me to find a toothbrush and bit of floor to scrub. Though to be fair, if she had done that I might still be there today. Their opinion later about me was they were far too lenient, and I can't exactly argue that point about the women who spoiled me rotten.

But at least I showed some respect of what they had in terms of authority, even though I made the decision to defy it. I removed the can of DDT myself. Obedience was always my problem and not the celibacy people think is the real problem with nuns and priests. It's Obedience, people, the most difficult vow of all, even with priests who bugger boys. Had they been Obedient, they would have told themselves NO, and listened, and that would prevent hundreds of years of problems. In the old days, those sisters might have just told me NO on the DDT just to test whether I could be obedient to authority, just as St. Teresa of Avila tested her novice by telling her to plant a fully grown cucumber so it could grow and the obedient novice did so without question. But St. Teresa wanted to demonstrate she'd rather have the novice who applied some common sense instead of the blindly obedient mule. Maybe Sister Patricia had this old story in mind herself, but I'll never know because just a few short years after finishing her tenure as Mother General and President, she suddenly died of brain cancer.

I put the can of DDT into a plastic store bag and brought it to the Department of Chemistry at our college next door to the convent. The professor there placed the can into a vacuum container which looked like a drink thermos and kindly assured me he would see to it that the container got taken along with other hazardous waste from the lab. I didn't tell him where I got the can so as not to embarrass the nuns and draw attention to myself stealing Community Property in case someone raised a fuss.

In recent years, my order of nuns adopted Environmental Protection as a community motto in keeping with the Franciscan heritage of concern for Mother Earth and Sister Sky. I've been astounded at how much they are now willing to pay to protest the Environment, especially after I was told the community could never afford to pay for my generation's retirement. A few years ago while in the city I decided to swing by the Motherhouse and saw a fleet of Toyota Prius cars parked in the nuns-only parking spaces, each car costing to the tune of some $35-grand in a system that vows Poverty. There's my retirement, I thought. And I wondered if it crosses the minds of the dear sisters that while a Toyota Prius takes less gas, the electricity they are using to charge the cars burns more coal. Might not the message of "take the bus" (just like real poor people) promote public transport, and reduce carbon emissions far more? Instead of parking and going in, I turned around my 20 year old rusty Corolla with the manual transmission and left town.

The karma people are correct and things keep coming right back around. Nowadays I think of my DDT cans when I'm faced with all kinds of  inconsistencies. Such as in Madison when I'm wearing a vintage mink jacket and get pelted with tomatoes by people wearing PVC shoes. The DDT just keeps on getting larger like a value-size can of Barkeeper's Friend. And instead of a convenient walk next door to a chemistry lab, I must drive for several hours to reach the closest proper disposal facility. Maybe that DDT is just fine where it is out in the shed, after all dear Son has a desperate fear of insects. I don't think he'll mind emptying that can onto his mother's corpse in the hopes of keeping bugs away, at least during the funeral. In the meantime, I won't have to worry about pesticide-fearing Tea Drunks showing up at my house to raid my stash. And you can safely conclude that if Old Cwyn still has a can of DDT, she probably isn't too worried about pesticides in her tea within the standard EU limits.

 Memorial Weekend 2015

Lots More on Puerh Storage

An article on puerh storage caught my attention this week when tea blogger Nicole Martin tweeted it from her blog teaformeplease. What I like about Ms. Martin's blog and Tweets is that they reflect her wide reading in everything about tea, which means I don't need to read. And she has a way of picking out the must-knows, so that I don't have to think. I can rely on her for all this instead of making any effort of my own. I'm not the only lazy tea head. Her recent win of a World Tea Expo award for Best Social Media is well-done, and exposes all of us who can't help peeking at what she digs up. This week her sifting dredged up a Fresh Cup magazine article called "House-Aged Puerh: The Whole Leaf." This article is accompanied by what appears to be a photo of Rishi mini tuos, and instructs you everything you need to know about aging more than half a leaf at a time. Except it leaves out a most crucial thing. THE most important thing.

Now before you get all excited about the prospect of Cwyn skewering an article, I'm actually not going to do that. We're talking only about one point, after all. And when I get worked up, I'm not a fighter. Or a self-mutilator. I'm a graffiti person and so I just draw bad cartoons with my permanently tea-stained index finger. That's right.

Getting on with it already, the most important factor to consider with puerh storage is

YOUR
LOCAL
CLIMATE.

Now, to be fair the article mentions things like RH factors and temperatures, but this is confusing for people because these can also refer to the conditions you need in your storage solution. The article covers possible storage solutions, but doesn't really help anyone with how to decide what storage solutions are needed, based on

WHERE
YOU
LIVE.

Write it down.

The problems we run into with information on puerh storage and fermentation  is that so many early articles on the net focused only on how puerh is stored in southeast Asia, where the climate is hot and humid. Places where it rains for three months or more a year, and I'm not talking about the oozy rain of the northwest US. I'm talking about torrential monsoonal downpours on a daily basis. This is why people in these climates stored their tea either just in the bamboo out in the open or in unglazed clay jars which breathe, and use fans to circulate whatever air is available during all this rain and hot weather. In this type of climate, circulating the air is a huge concern. Even with good circulation I'm sure people are fighting 6 inch thick mold even with the closest attention to their tea. But I have a theory that people in these types of climates don't notice musty tastes and smells as keenly as people in drier climates simply because everything smells this way all of the time. So "traditional" storage tea is musty and nobody tastes it because it reminds people of home.

I think the focus on southeast Asian storage has been repeated so often that everyone assumes the way tea is stored in Asia works willy-nilly everywhere else in the world where the climate isn't hot, humid and rainy. This makes absolutely no sense. When you live in a really dry climate, which is mostly every place which boasts a RH factor of less than 60% and temperatures lower than 78F/25.5C, you are going to need a storage solution that is NOT an unglazed clay jar. The only reason to use an unglazed jar is if you bought yourself a tea cake that was stored in a humid climate for a number of years, and all it needs is airing out before you drink it, or you bought a shou with pile fermentation odors and flavors.

So, the very FIRST thing you need to do when storing your tea is take a look at your climate and where you live. My house, this past winter, reached a temp of 62F/16.6C and boasted a RH of 24%. Yes, that's right, a cold desert. In fact, when I check my local ecosystem online, my area of Wisconsin is classified as "prairie" and "oak savanna." Savanna means really, really dry.

We need to think storage from the Outside-In, rather than Inside-Out. Start with climate outside, and then your house, and then pick the correct solution. Analyze what will be outside the tea storage and then pick the storage. When we do this, we pick the storage that matches the climate factors around the tea. But if we work from inside-out, choosing the storage before looking at the climate around the tea can mean making a choice that doesn't work.

What about you? If you don't know what the ecosystem is where you live, check on Wikipedia. This is important to know because your house is affected by degrees from the outside climate. Also helpful is knowing when the outside weather can help the tea, so on humid days you can expose the tea to the free boost. And then when the weather is dry or cooler, you can close your puerh away from the adverse climate.

Still not sure about your ecosystem? Go to your local drugstore and check the hairspray aisle. If the store primarily sells sprays to control fly-aways, your climate is dry. If the store sells mostly anti-frizz, your climate is humid. I can't guarantee this method is any better than 75% accurate. However, I have been to the middle of England in the West Midlands, and I had to buy anti-frizz hairspray which is pretty much all I saw in Boots. Also, I've seen the rubber seals on the high efficiency washing machines in that part of the world, and I tried to scrub one with bleach to no avail. Needless to say mine does not look like THAT, and I haven't used the Boots hairspray since. So, unless one lives in an island sort of place, I and probably you too will need some sort of storage solution that creates a separate micro-climate that is favorable for puerh.

Okay, so here is something of a checklist on When to Use which storage solution.

When to Use:

Cardboard Boxes and Paper Bags--When you are airing shou puerh or humid-stored musty sheng of unwanted odors. But don't do it for long. I've already tested this for you. I stored a shou puerh in a cardboard box for 5 years. And it tasted like cardboard box.

Plastic wrap and plastic bags--temporary until you develop something better. In the long term, my climate is too dry for plastic wrap, it just dries out and becomes brittle, and then so does the tea. Puerh needs heat and humid air to age, plastic does not survive cold, heat and dry air over the long haul. And do you truly want plastics all over your vegan, organic, BPA-free, lactose-free and gluten-free tea for thirty years?

Presentation Boxes---when you give a gift. Really.

Shelves--good for humid climates and storing out in the open.

Wood boxes/drawers--put the bras back in, ladies. Wood has too many variables like oils, odors absorbed from the air especially at the humidity levels you need for the tea. A large enamel pot with a lid is better, wipe the inside of the lid with a damp cloth for moisture if needed, and leave the lid slightly ajar.

Cupboards--semi-humid climates only, and not in the kitchen.

Yixing and other Unglazed Jars--only if you live in tropical and humid climates. You sweat constantly. These jars are good for airing shou puerh that has wo dui fermentation smells. Can air out any aged sheng for a SHORT time after you receive a package from China. Then move to regular storage. If your jar doesn't have a lid, you can cover it with either a china plate or cover with a cotton cloth/paper towel secured with a rubber band or string.

Glazed Stoneware crocks---anywhere Yixing Jars are not appropriate, anywhere less than humid, hot and muggy. Add tobacco pouch buttons as needed or shards of soaked terra cotta clay pots. These create a micro climate when stuffed full of tea cakes and tuos.

Porcelain jars--somewhat humid climates. The TeaDB folks are reporting some results on ceramic and porcelain jars in Seattle. I would think covered casserole dishes might be an option too for storing whole puerh cakes.

Old unplugged refrigerator--ugly but works. Add a jar of water or humidity device purchased from a tobacco store. Make sure the device doesn't smell of store tobacco. Keep a RH and temp device in there and watch it like a hawk, fridges are cold and can get dry if you aren't careful. Open the door every so often to air out. If you smell lovely tea smells, you're probably okay.

Wine Cooler--a stylish investment.

Custom storage vault--now we're talking. And I'm on my way over.

Objections:

1. But it's ugly.

Get creative, an old radiator cover that doubles as seating with a couple coolers inside.

Use black spray paint on the exterior of a few coolers or ice chests. Or use square baskets for humid climates. Toss a few colorful pillows on top. Lift the lid when you need to check everything. I keep my best cakes in an old dorm fridge which doubles as a side table in the living room in winter, and on the porch in summer.

2. I don't have any room.

Empty out your wife's walk-in California closet. Appropriate the shelving.

Maybe all of these ideas still leave you scratching your head. Go back to your local climate. Ask a few old timers what people in your area did to preserve food prior to the age of refrigeration. If nobody lived in your area prior to refrigeration, then you need to call a realtor right now. Or else you're facing the cost of an outbuilding with custom solar panels, a drip system, sodium halide light fixtures and an off-grid security system to watch out for cops. At that point, growing something other than tea mold is a more lucrative hobby for you. Then buy all the China-stored tea you want and throw it out when it goes flat. I'm considering this idea myself. It beats out what I've been doing at the truck stop lately to afford the new spring bings.

Now, a person doesn't need to store every single bit of tea you own in a custom storage solution. Teas you are actively drinking, for example, can be stored anywhere you darn well please. Like in your bed. Or in that pretty porcelain caddy you found at the dollar store. Pouches and baggies are great for small amounts of tea you plan to get to any day now, as long as that "any day now" happens in the next month or two. The teas you really want to find a solution for are the ones that need more time to turn into that fantastic sheng to sell for thousands of dollars at Sotheby's someday. Because if that's your plan, you'll be needing the best storage solution you can get. Unless you are old-like-Cwyn and plan to have "Dead Blogger" labeling large in the auction catalogue. In that case, well, bathroom storage is just fine.

Requiescat in Pace when you git 'er done. Don't end up like me 5 years on with a cardboard box going "oops."

*And if you have any more questions, really you needn't call me. Go to Steepster.com and message mrmopar. That is "m-r-m-o-p-a-r" all small letters. Thanks for stopping by!