If you have been living in a cave with your pu’erh stash for the past 15 years and arejust reemerging to restock your stash, I have some news for you. You should’ve bought apple stock. And google. And loads of pu’erh. Young pu’erh is expensive now. There was a time not so long age when three figure young pu’erh was considered an outrage. Now it’s commonplace and very easy to spend over $100 for a tiny little 200g beeng that may not even be that good. (more…)
Category: Article
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Practical Brewing Nuances
There’s quite a bit to take into account when brewing. Most of us figure out how they work in our setup and fall into routines that eventually get filed away into muscle memory.. It can take being removed from our familiar home setups for us to really think and utilize improvisational gong-fu skills to bring the most out of a tea. Maybe, you’re used to serving one or two and are suddenly brewing for eight, or you don’t know exactly how much leaf you have or are using an unfamiliar pot. There’s an infinite number of important and less important factors to consider when brewing tea.. Knowing these factors and how they interact with the finished product are not only important for your own gong-fu but important when evaluating a tea, where you might not be brewing but are observing and drinking in order to make a purchasing decision. (more…)
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![Wistaria Pu’erh Mini-Report [April/May 2016]](https://teadb.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ripe-puerh3-940x198.jpg)
Wistaria Pu’erh Mini-Report [April/May 2016]
Wistaria (website) is an iconic, Taipei teahouse. The building itself is nearly 100 years old and lived through its share of history. As a teahouse, Wistaria and it’s proprietor (Zhou Yu) have played an important role in the development of modern chayi (tea art) and tea culture in Taiwan. For tea folks or people traveling to Taiwan looking for a tea experience, it’s usually one of the first places on the list. The tea menu is a mix of Taiwanese tea, older teas, green tea, pu’erh, etc. It’s also relatively English friendly with an English menu and a conversationally fluent staff. (more…)
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How Much is Your Vendor Marking Up Your Pu’erh?
No one wants to pay for unnecessary things, but even so very few of us know the actual cost of goods, or actual item cost that the vendor bought the tea for. We’re often left clueless about what their markup might be. There are inevitable costs of running a business that we as consumers don’t really think about. Certainly not often. Storefronts, sourcing, marketing, sample costs, a living wage. The money you pay for the tea will go towards not just your tea but as presumably some amount of profit for the vendor.. Are you paying for fancy boxes, marketing material, padding the vendors pockets or is your $$ going to the actual tea. Pu’erh has the advantage of being sold as a labeled cake, which makes it easier to cross-check prices against the Chinese market and help to determine if we are paying a fair and reasonable price. (more…)
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Mature Pu’erh Report [March 2016]
I drank through these teas in March of 2016.
The last mature report was about 16 months ago, but with my Taiwan trip approaching I figured it was about time to drink through my lingering pile of samples.. This report is a mix of teas I own, teas still available from western vendors, and other teas that have since sold out. After traveling through Taiwan and Hong Kong in October my feelings on the market have changed a bit as the limitations present in the mature pu’erh market out west (really a subsection of already a niche market) have become increasingly obvious.. (more…)
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Yangqing Hao Profile & Interview
During my recent trip to Taiwan, I had the opportunity to visit Mr. Yang (Yangqing Hao, 楊慶號) and his family at their home base in Tainan, Taiwan. Yangqing Hao is a Taiwanese boutique producer of pu’erh tea, and is one of the earliest boutique producers to make its way to the west. Mr Yang’s teas have been generally well-received and have been covered here in a couple reports (1, 2). Having made pu’erh in Yunnan since 2004, it was a pleasure to ask Mr. Yang about a number of topics, ranging from some of his earliest productions to to the ever-changing landscape in Yunnan. Big thank you to Emmett and Sandy for coordinating, Sandy for translating and the Yang family for organizing, facilitating and hosting me! (more…)
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Shopping for Tea in Taiwan FAQ
Since my first trip to Taiwan, I’ve been frequently asked about what to do and where to go for tea in Taiwan. This is an attempt to answer some of these questions.. I should also preface this with a warning. I’m by no means an experienced sourcer and have had my share of purchasing errors and regrets, so please take this all with the proper context with appropriate reservations.. These are more or less the answers I’d typically give venturing off to the island of tea. (more…)
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Pu’erh as RTS Resource Management
According to Youtube’s analytics, TeaDB’s video audience is 87% male, nearly half falling into the 25-34 demographic. Denny and I also fall squarely into the middle of both of these categories. From this data we could theoretically cross market things that “normal people” like.. Movies, cars, fantasy football, etc. However, given our status as nerds, I’m more likely to draw a different conclusion.. That many of you grew up playing a Blizzard RTS.. Starcraft or Warcraft 3. (more…)
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Loose vs. Compressed Tea & A Riff on Aged Loose Pu’erh
There’s lots of tea that doesn’t strictly fit the definition of pu’erh. Border tea grown from the neighboring Laos or Burma does not technically fit the definition for pu’erh, likely excluding things like 1990s Tongqing Hao. Some definitions of pu’erh also restrict the plant to being the large leaf varietal which would make some of the traditional growing places technically not pu’erh (i.e. Yibang, Jingmai, etc.). However.. There’s no such exclusion for loose tea that’s grown in Yunnan and processed as pu’erh but left in its loose form. Pu’erh was originally compressed principally for ease of transport and not necessarily for shape. The issue of transport is a lot simpler in present day than the six famous mountains days and it’s a lot easier to ship loose leaf tea around the globe inexpensively and quickly. Still loose leaf pu’erh is not fashionable and often excluded from western vendor’s catalog as well as most meaningful discussion. Why is that? (more…)
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Budgetary Committee: What My Tea Budget Actually Looked Like
I spent too much money in 2015. Emmett’s group orders and the Asia trip being the large culprits of pushing me from a little over to wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy over.. I’ve compiled some data from purchases from 2015 and without divulging exact teas and $ amounts, here’s some data that is ambiguous enough to save me embarrassment.. This includes all cakes purchased that weren’t intended as sample cakes. 30 different cakes (all raw) in total with 67 different cakes.. (more…)