Category: Long-form Article

  • Aging Whites & Aged Whites. What I Learned From Char

    Recently, Char (Oolong Owl) joined me for an inbetweenisode to discuss aging and aged white tea. Aged whites have become a topic of increasing interest in the west, and while Denny and I have brought a few onto the show it has not been a principal area of interest for us. Here’s a few of…

  • Tea Progress Report – Washington State Stored Tea 2019

    This is an extremely overdue tea drinking report. It was conceived for two reasons. (1) I recently reconfigured my storage into a larger setup. (2) I have a yearly tradition of picking some teas out of deep storage to retry and note their progression (or lack thereof). The latter allows me to get a better…

  • Tea-Side, Vendor Profile & Interview

    I had the pleasure of meeting tea vendors and Russian expats Valerii and Jane when I went to Chiang Mai. I had not been planning on any tea meetups on this trip, but Valerii happened to see I was traveling to Chiang Mai on Instagram and we met up for tea. Valerii’s family was very…

  • Does Pu’erh Increase in Value? Part 2. Landmark Years & Dayi Special Productions: A Look at Price

    To some extent all pu’erh moves together in the market. When the pu’erh bust hit in 2007, teas across the board were hit. Raw tea, ripe tea, Dayi, Changtai, Lao Banzhang, Yiwu.. Of course this is only part of the picture. In the bust’s case, not everything was hit equally and teas definitely didn’t all recover at…

  • Does Pu’erh Increase in Value? Part 1. Big Factory Pu’erh Recipes

    When I investigated the teas that western vendors tend to sell (tldr: young raw pu’erh), the topic of pu’erhs value over time was brought up. In that post, I found that the average cost of a young raw pu’erh listed on western vendor’s sites tended to be less expensive than the semi-aged (7-15yrs+) or ripe…

  • No Frills. 18 Quick Hits, Less Premium Young Tea Report

    No Frills. 18 Quick Hits, Less Premium Young Tea Report

    One of the perks (or drawbacks) of having a blog is literally drowning in tea/samples. I’m not really in the market for young tea, especially not cheaper young tea. This is mainly because I don’t drink these teas nearly often enough and the number of samples I cross path with are more than enough to…

  • HK Report

    Big thanks to those that contributed knowledge and time to helping make this a successful trip. You know who you are! Hong Kong is a very different place than Taipei. Not having been to either, I naively expected a few more similarities. They’re both just big cities in east Asia, right? HK is dense, dense, dense,…

  • Shopping for Tea in Taiwan

    Forever alone.. Being a pu’erh addict in the west is a lonely endeavor and how we intake information and buy tea is in all likelihood very different than the average Asian pu-head. We’re often resigned to the tea table/closet all by our self. If we’re lucky we can get a good friend/significant other to come…

  • Can’t I Just Settle Down? Menghai County Raw Pu’erh [September 2015 Tea Drinking Report]

    Can’t I Just Settle Down? Menghai County Raw Pu’erh [September 2015 Tea Drinking Report]

    Shoutouts to Meng, Carolyn, Bellmont, and Dignitea for providing teas for this month and allowing the content to be what it is! Menghai County Part 2! This is the last of the pu’erh reports for 2015. I’ll be traveling to Taiwan and Hong Kong in October and will finish up the year with a pair…

  • Loving the Crane is Hard to Do. Tuition/Xiaguan Report Log for the Newb [August 2015 Drinking Report]

    Loving the Crane is Hard to Do. Tuition/Xiaguan Report Log for the Newb [August 2015 Drinking Report]

    After such wonderful raw pu’erhs in previous months, why subject yourself to lowly factory tea. Believe me. I asked these questions many times. So why do it? (a) I really need to do a stash check and determine how these teas really are. (b) I’ve made alot of mistakes in buying pu’erh, wasting both space and…