I’ve seen the hashtag #drinkingnumbers around instagram used by a few pu’erh heads. This usually means that you’re drinking a tea labeled by the recipe number.. The recipes are usually four digits, and you’ve probably seen them attached to certain teas, both raw or ripe pu’erh. 7542, 7572, 8653, etc.. (more…)
Category: Article
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Five Things I Like and Dislike. The Secondary Market, Four Year Old Pu’erh, 2017 Prices.
Things that have been occurring in the tea world that I like and dislike.. (more…)
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Western Tea Culture & Tea Hermits
Whenever I’ve been to Taiwan or Hong Kong, I’m reminded of the solitude of being a western drinker. In tea hotspots out east, you learn about teas by drinking with other people, shop owners, hobbyists, etc. You can explore different tea shops, drinking and talking about tea with other people. And while there’s plenty of writing online about different teas, tea as a hobby is a very social and interactive experience. In the west, most of us more closely resemble crazy, gongfu hermits. Outside of a few assorted tea shops there’s not really much tea culture in America and Europe that resembles east Asia. We may occasionally read an article online or watch a video, most (or all) of us do our gongfu sessions by ourselves or if we’re lucky with one other person. This presents some dangers in how we are developing habits and acquiring knowledge. (more…)
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Travel Write-Up (JP + TW + HK)
I recently had the privilege of traveling to Asia for the third time. Within 3.5 weeks I traveled to Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. I wasn’t going to write anything originally, but a slow chatter of emails and messages have convinced me to type up a report. The trip was primarily not tea-related, I did manage to squeeze some tea experiences in along the way. My apologies for those looking for something 100% strictly tea. We are looking to travel to the Cayman Islands next so stay tuned; you can look over here for travel information. (more…)
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The Secondary Pu’erh Market & A Few Pricing Factors
The secondary market is defined in this ebay guide on collectibles terminology as: “the buying and selling of collectibles previously sold on the primary market by retailers to collectors.” . Even though it is a consumable, the pu’erh market is also a collectible market and has a very active secondary markets in the east. In the west there’s a somewhat constant exchange of goods and money in an active secondary market, albeit much lower volume. This market is mainly composed of other drinkers (or people who bought pu’erh to invest) reselling their tea. Sometime it is because they no longer like the tea or bought too much or maybe they are trying to make a profit. Long-time tea drinkers like Wilson or Geraldo set up sites and eventually became pseudo vendors, but most of the western secondary pu’erh market are hobbyists selling off odds and ends in places like facebook groups, teachat or steepster. (more…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)