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Compost Tea

We all make tea-purchasing mistakes. Some are small, some are large, but for me, they all end up in the same place. I had been stubborn about this one, but Hobbes’ recent post referenced an earlier experience with a damaged cake that convinced me to send this 2007 Changtai 7538 to the compost pile. I purchased it about a year and a half ago from China Cha Dao for a measly $8. You get what you pay for, I guess. The two tastes of the tea gave a strong and vile burning rubber aroma and flavor. Being stubborn, I had hoped the character would blow off. Finally, Hobbes’ description of a similar aroma convinced me it needed go decompose for awhile. I left the wrapper on as I’m curious to see how it returns to earth.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 at 3:51 PM and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

11 Responses to “Compost Tea”

  1. gingko Says:
    March 28th, 2012 at 6:55 PM

    You literally compost it?! :-o You could have done some wet fermentation experiment with it :-p
    I have the same cake too. I haven’t opened it yet and don’t remember why I got it. But I kind of wished they had good value since Changtai has been somewhat boycotted in China and didn’t get a chance to raise prices until the last a couple of years. I have another red-cover Changtai cake that was said by somebody not so good as for now. I haven’t opened any of them yet and now I’m even less motivated. Oh I did open a Changtai mushroom tuo that’s not bad.

  2. Marlon Says:
    March 28th, 2012 at 8:06 PM

    I”m curious about the wrapper too. Luckily this wasn’t an expensive tea purchasing mistake!

  3. the_skua Says:
    March 28th, 2012 at 10:00 PM

    I figure that aged pu’er is already a little bit “composted.”

    In regards to Changtai, I think this particular cake was just stored poorly by someone along the line. I’ve had some very good Changtai tea.

    And my feed is showing up properly in Hobbes’ Blogroll. I don’t know why it isn’t in yours.

  4. gingko Says:
    March 28th, 2012 at 11:46 PM

    The blog roll looks good now! Probably there was just a time delay.

  5. gingko Says:
    March 28th, 2012 at 11:54 PM

    Oh at the beginning I thought you mean the tea tasted the dry-harshness kind of bad instead of composted kind of bad :-p

  6. the_skua Says:
    March 29th, 2012 at 9:03 AM

    Yeah, flaming tires bad.

  7. Cloud Says:
    March 29th, 2012 at 3:29 PM

    I have a few of those “Flaming Tire Pu’ers”
    The trials and tribulations of cheap ebay Teas.

  8. the_skua Says:
    March 29th, 2012 at 3:36 PM

    I need to play again, because I haven’t really ever had an eBay success.

  9. gingko Says:
    April 7th, 2012 at 1:30 AM

    I’ve just come across a post about this tea on a Chinese tea forum, with several nice photos:
    http://teabbs.zjol.com.cn/viewthread.php?tid=185310&extra=&page=1

    The author of the post says he likes this tea a lot. Meantime, it’s a curious phenomenon that current price of this tea on taobao ranges from $4.5 to $28. I don’t think anyone would be interested in making fake tea of this specific one (but I could be wrong), so I wonder if there are good batches and bad batches of this tea. I guess I will taste mine soon :-)

  10. the_skua Says:
    April 8th, 2012 at 2:57 PM

    I believe there probably was a decent tea there, it was just a very, very obvious storage problem for the cake that I bought.

  11. YSLLC Says:
    April 16th, 2012 at 5:41 AM

    I tasted this tea a few times… I always thought it was garbage… just hope it doesn’t negatively impact the quality of your compost.