Pumidor Newbie Odor Question
I think this falls under the category of “Am I doing this right?” and also “What should this smell like?”
I took an old dorm fridge, defrosted it, cleaned it out, aired it out, sanitized it with a bleach solution, and aired it out some more just in case. No smell. I then put some shengs in there—some 2014 and 2015s, but also some with more age on them like W2T White Whale. Glass of water in the bottom. Been keeping it between 60-70%.
I did put some other teas that I received as part of the W2T sale last year. Some were identified as shengs. I have a 100g tuo that I am reasonably sure is a sheng, but I really don’t know.
The fridge kind of smells like tomato sauce now. It isn’t a bad smell, but it wasn’t what I expected. When I say it isn’t a “bad” smell I’m going off of prior experience cultivating a keeping sour dough starters. There is no mildew smell and no visible signs on mold on the fridge, wrappers, or the cakes I have spot checked.
However, my 2014 and 2015 cakes now smell like this. I know you are supposed to air out tea when you take it out of your pumidor for a while, so is this the reason why? Or is something going wrong and should I abort?
It sounds to me like residual smells from the previous life of the mini fridge but I cannot be sure. My pumidor smells like sheng but very, very strong. You shouldn’t in my experience have to air out a tea taken out of the pumidor. Tea is very adept at picking up smells. It is for that reason that my pumidor only has sheng in it and no other tea. I had no previous smells from my mini fridge because I was forced to buy a new one from Home Depot. You might want to try taking everything out of the pumidor and airing the mini fridge out for another month or so. I just can’t figure any other way for you to get a tomato smell from your pumidor. Tea really shouldn’t smell like that.
Thanks. OK so chances are that I’m not crazy then. I did air it out for a few weeks, but a little longer probably won’t hurt. There isn’t anything in there that I am too attached to, but I definitely don’t want to ruin any new teas I get in the coming months.
I also took out the tea that I wasn’t 100% sure it was sheng. Maybe I should be keeping the young sheng and the old sheng separate too?
It also could be that you can’t get rid of the smells completely. If worst comes to worst it is not that expensive to buy a mini fridge. You can also get one slightly larger this way.
I don’t bother to separate sheng by age in mine but I also don’t have any real old sheng in it. A few maybe ten years old at most.
Have you tried the teas to make sure the taste hasn’t changed? I would recommend distilled water and changing it every so often as well. Sheng and shou far apart from each other and never in the same storage. Taste your new teas before you put them into storage to make sure they don’t have any smoke or off flavors to them.
Old sheng, if is at the point that you don’t want any more change to it, seal it in a food grade ziploc and keep it there.
So I did a taste test this morning and everything is still A-OK.
My house is typically dry, around 35%, which is why I started this experiment. Now I’m thinking that I just don’t know what a big pile of happy sheng actually smells like.
I try to keep my smokey sheng away from pretty much everything else. Like Old Bear for example. He’s the Pig-Pen of sheng.
Good question. Well, if she were a shu she’d be Pretty Girls (of course). Sheng… probably Tuhao as #$&%. I say that because to me the taste was bitter as hell, but physically it was all https://notesfromachair.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/10458design-1.jpeg
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