Following on from my last post, I’ve been working to track and control the conditions in my tea storage boxes. Initially, I got some cheap units from Amazon. They were basically a humidity/temperature sensor, an LCD display, and a battery. But since I don’t just sit in the basement staring at my tea shelf, I wanted to upgrade to a solution that let me transmit that data to view it more easily. ...
I’ve recently been getting into collecting and drinking tea. A good friend introduced me to puer tea, which is noteworthy in that it’s designed to improve with age. That aging process, similar to wine, relies on proper storage characteristics. Puer originates in the Yunnan Province of China, and thus the expected aging conditions align roughly with the conditions available there: warmer temperatures and higher humidity, especially compared to my basement where my tea shelf sits. I could just accept that my tea isn’t going to sit in perfect conditions, but what fun would that be? It seems way more enjoyable to over-engineer some complicated solution. ...