TeaDB

Category: Article

  • Importance of Drinking Moderation

    After I had scheduled this post for publication, Marshaln published a post on Caffeine Detox. This is worth reading over. The comments section also includes some personal experiences about overconsumption / overdosing on caffeine.

    I suspect the vast majority of the people crazy enough to read this blog and buy tea from the internet started out drinking tea prolifically. Getting home from work or school to a big package of 30+ samples at 6:30PM and starting a five tea marathon session until midnight. Good luck sleeping off that! After a while most of us settle into certain rhythms of when we do or don’t drink tea and end up with fairly different habits than when we first got started into the tea world. (more…)

  • Big Region. Small Region. Tree Age.

    Pu’erh marketing is filled with noise that ranges from the mildly inaccurate to absurdist comedy. One of the most important lessons you learn early is to filter out out information that isn’t important. In the end most of us can come to an agreement that the most important thing is the tea quality, taste and your own enjoyment. That is a lot easier said than done when trying to figure out what to try online. Information and descriptions still play a key role in decision making for purchases. You may just say sample.. But none of us want to or can afford to try everything. This is also the treacherous land of pu’erh, where you will be far better off playing the role of the skeptic until proven otherwise. A vendor like TwoDog has gone so far as to basically refuse to give out any information on his teas. He’s received a fair amount of negative feedback but his point remains. With so much BS out there, do those cookie cutter pu’erh descriptions (xx village, yy tree age, etc.) mean anything at all? (more…)

  • 10 Non-Tea Items To Help You Get Started With Puerh – Guest Post w/Garrett

    Garrett is a local tea friend of mine who I drink pu’erh with regularly for the past two years. He’s appeared in a few inbetweenisodes and you can follow him on Instagram at islikewater.

    Maybe you have tried a few samples of pu’erh, scoured the internet for articles on brewing techniques and want to brew gongfu style but you don’t have the necessary equipment. Maybe you want to move away from that big 300ml+ tea pot you’ve been using and you’ve seen starter gong fu sets for sale. Are these good deals?  What do I really need to get started with gong fu process of brewing and enjoying pu’erh? (more…)

  • Xizihao Report & Tasting Note Compilation

    Xizihao Report & Tasting Note Compilation

    Xizi Hao is a boutique Taiwanese pu’erh brand. With Xizi Hao coming available from Taiwan, I’ve decided to release a few of my notes from my google spreadsheets of tea notes. Unlike other reports these teas were not sessioned in close succession of each other. Thank you to Emmett for sending me a few of these recently. (more…)

  • Drinking Log Reflections v1

    Last December, I finally ran out of new samples. After that, I began drinking from my stash exclusively. Being an unabashed data nerd I decided to also record my own tea consumption. This is interesting because it is essentially a speed test and can be helpful and informative for my own buying. My uninterrupted drinking was halted in mid January when a whole sleuth of samples arrived creating the obvious caveat of a small data size. Nevertheless, here’s a quick look at the data. (more…)

  • Simple Home Storage Solutions

    Pu’erh storage is as complicated as you want to make it. But it’s also an issue that needs to be addressed for anyone with a stash. Keeping your pu’erh in open air or close to aromas is a good way to slowly ruin it. Pumidor is a scary sounding word and can represent overly elaborate, endlessly complex solutions.. For instance there are some pu-heads that have hand-built a sealed non-aromatic wood box from scratch with multiple humidifiers and hygrometers. Or installed a fishtank heater to emulate the humidity of more humid storage. This can all be a bit intimidating for someone just getting started with a cake or two. There’s also an appeal in keeping it simple. In many ways, the more complex the solution the more points of stress or concern. Maybe you’re just tipping your toes into the water and have a couple cakes or maybe you prefer a minimalist approach to tea. Either way, it is very possible to create simple, workable solution that don’t involve adding humidity or hygrometers. (more…)

  • Baseball Closers, 99 Bottles of Wine (Drink Your Damn Tea & Buy the Good Shit)

    In major league baseball a team’s best relief pitcher is nearly always their closer. For years, the closer has been only used under very specific criteria. (a) Their team is ahead by three runs or less (b) there is one inning left. As advanced statistics and improved game theory have seeped into the sport, some teams have realized that this is a mistake. For instance… Utilizing a team’s best pitcher sometime in the middle of the game can make a lot of sense if stakes are sufficiently high. This logic has slowly caught on amongst some analytical savvy managers, some traditionalists continue to prefer waiting for a “save situation” and have suffered the consequences. This infamously occurred in the 2016 playoffs when long-time manager Buck Showalter never put in the best relief pitcher of the year in a winner takes all game, waiting for a lead that never came. (more…)

  • Five Things I Like and Don’t Like. Group Buys, Buying Off the Shelf, Old Trees, YS Wet Teas.

    Things that have been occurring in the tea world that I like and dislike..

    Group Buys

    Group buys have been popping up with increasing frequency over the past 1.5 years. They can be a very good way to try teas, often very inexpensively. When there’s a markup it’s nearly always smaller than a vendor and you’ll usually get very fair value for your money. It’s also worth doing, because there’s a lot of learning that can happen when people are drinking and discussing the same teas. Here’s a couple public ones worth mentioning: (more…)

  • Early Yunnan Sourcing Production Aging Mini-Report & Some Pu’erh Thoughts

    Many of the original pu’erh productions by western-facing vendor were in the 2009 or 2010 and principally done by Essence of Tea and Yunnan Sourcing. A lot has changed since then, and while there’s the odd production that has stayed somewhat consistent (i.e. YS Wuliang) both vendors are making from very different gardens and areas now. All of the retastes are still available, and despite them being double (or more) of the price originally sold the pu’erh market has risen meaning most are still reasonably priced and attainable as mid-range, dry-stored tea. (more…)

  • 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 satiate my sporadic young tea craving. As a result, I cranked through this batch of samples pretty quickly in a series of shortish sessions.. Here’s some quick impressions on thoughts on teas I’ve had recently that were priced beneath the Fomo Report on more premium teas (>$0.40/g). (more…)