/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>20429426
>I generally don't recommend buying tea specifically to age.
I think that is good general advice. Home tea aging can be a fun hobby but its not a prerequisite to enjoying these teas and you do need to temper you expectations on what you can achieve. It is not a cheat to quickly get expensive teas for cheap. I am trying to age some of my tea but it is a causal long term project. If I ever stock up on stuff I really want to fully age I will probably get good vale semiaged in order to cut down on the wait.

>>20429434
>but it's not going to develop the same flavor profile that people think of and talk about when they discuss aged tea.
Eh, There is a lot quite dry stored semi aged Puerh from china floating around right now. It seems likely to be fairly representative of the dry storage path. I think my tea is heading in that direction but its a very slow process. Even in warmer Chinese conditions it typically takes 20 or so years before sheng is "aged", more still before it is "fully aged". We really don't have access to 20 year old pumidor aged sheng to know what it is like. The practice is still too new and small scale.

For better or worse I think we are getting to the point where the average puerh drinker will have a different view on what counts as aged puerh. Many have never had any classic era aged puerh and even those who have probably cant afford to drink it regularly unless they are lucky enough (and old enough) to have a deep personal stash. I am also not convinced that the that the aged puerh market is not at least somewhat clouded by nostalgia either. People remember enjoying the tea they drank back in the "good old days" and are chasing that memory. Then they look at current aged puerh collector prices and decide therefore that their opinion must be justified. To be fair I have not had any of the $5+/gram teas that constitute "proper" aged puerh so I may just be ignorant of its true quality.