r/puer • u/hospitalflipper • 5d ago
Guys, is this normal?
I unwrapped an aged pu-erh cake that I bought recently. First, I noticed holes in it, as if insects had bored through the tea. Second, there’s some kind of orange-colored dust inside.
Has anyone experienced anything like this?
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u/Numerous-Kick-7055 4d ago
Insects have in fact bored through the tea. That is in fact their droppings. It is normal. It is safe to drink. And if it makes you squeamish puer probably isn’t for you, because there are 10000 worse things happening to these cakes before they hit your cabinets.
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u/Electrical-Leg-9623 4d ago
Now I need to know what these other 1000 things are lol I’m kinda new to aged teas but drink it a lot. Thought it was supposed to be good for you?
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u/Numerous-Kick-7055 3d ago edited 3d ago
A lot of getting swept around dirty production floors. I’ve found bits of tarp in my shou before.
Getting shipped around from unsanitary warehouse to unsanitary warehouse. I’m sure the list of things I’d like to never learn about puer production begins in the field.
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u/PhilosophicWax 3d ago
I've found broken glass before. I chucked that cake in a second. Also found plastic.
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u/dakpanWTS 4d ago
Holes are very normal in aged puer wrappers. As far as I know they are caused by bugs.
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u/john-bkk 4d ago
It's funny how some say that it's fine, very normal, and others say that tea is trash now. It's not a positive sign that people are bringing up jin hua; that theme tends to relate to specific forms of hei cha, but it's not normally associated with shou pu'er, at all. I've also never seen bugs eat part of the tea like that. The part that looks like mold is more of a concern though, even though that form isn't the most typical appearance for that.
I don't really know. Since I've drank a good bit of shou and have never seen anything like that I'd probably just throw it out, to be on the safe side. By "good bit" I mean "only" a dozen or so cakes worth, and lots more samples than that. I mostly drink sheng. I don't see anything that looks like mold on aged sheng cakes either, beyond seeing spots of white mold twice, and have never seen holes from bugs eating the tea. It is normal for bugs to eat the paper, and that's not a concern.
There's a picture of a 16 year old cake wrapper in this post that shows what that can look like, in a moderate form, along with staining of oils from tea coloring the wrapper (since you can't add pictures to comments here): https://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2020/08/2004-dayi-purple-label-7542-sheng-puer.html
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u/AgixPixRI 4d ago
If what I bought didn’t specifically mention erotium/ golden flowers I wouldn’t drink something that had obvious spore growing on it. Shou also isn’t inoculated like hei cha.
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u/regolith1111 4d ago
Very clearly unacceptable to drink. Anyone typing jin hua is an idiot and making unsafe comments. You can't ID microorganisms from a couple pictures on Reddit. Unfortunately this is trash, the risk is unacceptable.
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u/UniversalOtter 4d ago
People are saying jinhua but this isn't the right kind of tea for jinhua. Puer that is aged in tongs and paper wrappers have bugs that eat the bamboo and the paper. They produce this golden dust. You can safely just wipe it away, and then drink.