TeaDB

Category: Article

  • Why Shelf-Stored Pu’erh Storage in the West Is Usually Bad

    (un)wise words: If you’re comfortable in your living environment, pu’erh will also age well in that environment.

    In the search for information on pu’erh storage you’ll sometimes come across folk-wisdom like this that makes longer term pu’erh storage seem awfully easy. Thankfully this sort of advice has become increasingly less common as we’ve learned more, but it is still not difficult to find unwise words of wisdom on tea storage. So why is simply storing tea in your living environment on a shelf a bad idea? Storing it on a shelf is easy and displaying those beautiful tea cake wrappers has appeal. Also, don’t they just store it this way in Asia anyways. So what’s so bad about it?

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  • Five things I Like & Dislike COVID19 Edition…

    Five things I like & dislike COVID19 Edition…

    Very Slow International Shipping

    The most obvious thing and a clear dislike. We now have all kinds of time at home for tea. But unfortunately international shipping, especially from China, has grinded to a halt. I ordered tea in March from China via EMS (typically 1 week) and got it in July.

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  • The Gift of Skepticism. Why Having a Suspicious Outlook in the Online Tea World Can Be Beneficial

    Occasionally I get asked what advice I’d give myself if I were starting over in tea. There’s a lot of things I could do. I’d undoubtedly point myself towards better sources and away from worst ones. I’d probably choose to travel sooner. One answer I might give to myself in this scenario is to tell myself to assume a default posture of skepticism.

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  • Hobby Crossover in Western Tea Culture

    On instagram a few years ago, I was looking at a tea profile and immediately felt a sense of familiarity that dated back. After massaging my brain, I realized I knew them as an online personality from Blizzard RTS gaming that I used to play… An extraordinary random and tangential connection to something that really has nothing to do with tea. However, how coincidental is it actually?? If you’ve been around the western tea scene enough to learn about some of the participants, you’ll know it’s an eclectic group. Over the course of my tea journey I’ve been fascinated and occasionally befuddled at the other interests from the serial hobbyists. (more…)

  • Five More Things I Like & Dislike. Tea Meetups, Non-Tea Review Content, Aging White Tea, Exploring A Tea Category.

    Five more things I like & dislike.

    Tea Meetups & Online Tea Meetups

    (Written before Covid19) I’ve become more aware of some different meetups happening. This is very good. Chinese tea in the west is too often a solo venture.

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  • An Attempt to Look atPu’eh Price Over Time. & A Look at 7542s Over ~20 Years

    Recently, a new site called Sinensis Research posted an article titled Is Pu’er a Good Investment?. It’s an interesting project looking at the price per weight of tea being sold by a number of vendors. The goal is essentially an attempt to figure out if pu’erh goes up in price over time. A couple years ago, Peter Lista looked at a similar topic in age and pu’erh prices, specifically focusing on teas sold by Yunnan Sourcing and White2Tea. Both Peter and Sinensis Research came to it from different angles and found somewhat different things. Here’s my interpretation of what they found..

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  • How My Tastes Have Changed & Settled

    One question I get asked is how my tastes have changed since getting into tea. I’ve consumed tea intentionally as a hobby for around 8 years now and while TeaDB serves as a nice document for looking and reflecting back it doesn’t necessarily track my own interests in tea with 100% accuracy. (more…)

  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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