Denny and I drink a higher-end ripe from W2T. The tea is complex and layered. Well above average ripe pu’erh. https://white2tea.com/
Author: James
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Young Sheng Variety Pack. The Western Tea Scene Has Loads of Young Sheng Options
In my first couple years of drinking pu’erh I sampled heavily. Many vendors and many different teas. While I originally did not go into it with a goal of trying specifically young pu’erh, this ended up making a pretty strong majority of pu’erh that I sampled. This is due to a few factors. One is that there’s a predictable vendor drop with the harvest, sometime in late Spring/early summer or in mid-Autumn. This generates demand and buzz amongst the tea community. The second is that young pu’erh makes up the vast majority of raw pu’erh being sold to the west. If you put together a list of the five most popular western pu’erh-centric vendors and listed all of the teas they’ve released in the past year and randomly picked 10, you’d likely end up with ~8 or so being young pu’erh. You actually need to be pretty intentional about not picking young pu’erh if you want to try a different category of raw pu’erh..
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2019 WuyiOrigin Premium Tieluohan [Episode 356]
This episode, Denny and I drink a premium Yancha from WuyiOrigin. The tea is complex, dynamic, and very tasty. https://www.wuyiorigin.com/
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2019 Yunnan Sourcing Last Laugh Ripe Pu’erh [Inbetweenisode 218]
I drink a ripe from Yunnan Sourcing’s 2019 line here. The tea has been my morning brew for a week or so and is partly creamy and woody and well-balanced.
Rating: 5.9
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2009 Yongde Daxueshan Raw Pu’erh & Storage Progress Report [Inbetweenisode 217]
This episode I drink a tea I originally featured about 5 years ago on the show, the 2009 Yongde Daxueshan. Now that tea is 11 years old and it is an interesting revisit to test both the tea and my storage.
Rating: 6.5
2020 Progress Report: https://teadb.org/2020-tea-progress-report/
Original Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwrAhUfg4gk&feature=emb_title
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Storage is Wicked. Long & Short Feedback Loops. Innovation in Pu’erh Storage
David Epstein’s book Range makes the case for generalization in a world that has become increasingly specialized. One of the ways the book categorizes areas of interest are as wicked and kind environments. Kind environments are where information and feedback is very available, patterns repeat, and situations are more constrained. Examples of mostly kind learning environments are golf or classical music. Wicked environments are inherently trickier, noisier and typically involve situations where not all information is available. Conditions are dynamic and involve other people and judgement where feedback is not automatic. And when feedback is given it may be partial or inaccurate.
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1970s Ripe Pu’erh [Episode 355]
This episode we drink a very old ripe pu’erh stored in Taiwan. Thanks to Wooju for providing the tea!
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2005 Dayi Ba Ji Pu Bing Ripe Pu’erh via YS [Inbetweenisode 216]
This episode, I bring on another ripe I’ve been storing for several years. Unlike the previous two Dayi episodes, this tea has larger leaf grade (size 8) and features a very different profile. I really enjoy this tea.
Rating: 7.3
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2019 Tea-Encounter Bangdong Raw Pu’erh [Episode 354]
This episode, we drink a fresh, sweet, robust raw pu’erh from Tea-Encounter. The tea is from the Bangdong area within Lincang.
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2020 Tea Progress Report
I’ve stored tea for around six years now in Seattle and while I’ve fussed a bit over a few small things, the methodology has been overall consistent. The pu’erh has been stored in an enclosed container with Boveda packs to ramp up the humidity to around 65RH. Airflow is low. Most people would call this a pumidor. Every year I look at my spreadsheet and decide on pulling a few teas to retry.
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