sukkat shalom- where i store my tea

22 kislev 5782

a while ago, i wrote about what holds my leaves and my water for brewing. but what holds my leaves when they are hibernating between bouts of getting doused with boiling hot water?

i live on a travel trailer. i am comfortable, it is warm, but it is still a trailer. in the summer, it can get very hot, and this is when i happily bring my tea inside my trailer to really soak up some heat. but int he winter and rainy times of the year, the trailer can only get so warm sometimes getting into the fifties at night even with my heat on. this means it is not a good place to store my sheng.

i live on a five acres property where there is a main house, a tiny house (where my boo lives), a converted school bus (where i used to live), a newly built yurt, and this trailer i bought for myself.

so where does my puer live? in my partner’s tiny house. that’s right, we don’t live together, but my tea lives with her.

her tiny house, sided with cedar, insulated with wool, and snug under some trees has a natural high humidity, plus it’s easy to keep the tiny house warm because of its size and insulation (she keeps it between 65-70F). i keep my cakes in mylar with 72RH bovedas (even though they usually read 65-70RH with a hydrometer) because if i did natural storage in her tiny house they would taste like cat, weed, and nail polish, which is great, just not for tea… (love you boo…).

what do i do if i want to drink from these cakes? do i walk over to her house every time to bug her? no. i have 2 separate small mylar bags, each with a boveda, in the main house, one for dry/natural stored teas and one for trad stored teas. i have small paper baggies in these bigger mylars each with about 30g of tea broken off from my cakes as easy access for drinking. once these lil chunks get drunk through is when i will go to bother my boo for my tea cakes to break off another chunk :p

conveniently, this storage system is also something people with traditional living arrangements do too. one benefit is that it helps the tea to be broken up and given a better chance to breath and hydrate before brewing. many do intentionally break up their puer ahead of time and either let it rest in clay containers or small vessels with mylars to help condition the tea before drinking.

one day, i will live in a warmer place and i will be able to keep a close eye on my tea like a smothering over protective parent. for now, i think my tea likes its life of relative independence. 

xoxo,

atzei besamim