TeaDB

Category: Raw Pu’erh

  • Living Your Best Tea Life

    Living Your Best Tea Life

    What Would An Ideal Tea Day Actually Look Like For You? What About An Ideal Tea Day For A Regular, Routine Day?

    For my first decade of tea drinking this is a question I never really asked myself. I suspect I’m not the only one. An ideal tea day does not mean narrowing it down to a hyper-specific tea, but more about the context and types of teas. What time would you drink tea? Would you enjoy Yancha, Yiwu?? Maybe a rotation between a few different types of tea? How many teas? Do you enjoy drinking with tea friend A or tea friend B? How much time do you need to have a satisfying session?

    Two followup questions. How often do you achieve an ideal tea day? What is preventing you from having more days like this?

    An ideal tea day is something that can’t happen everyday for most folks due to life constraints. Work, kids, school, etc. Most of us have a fairly regular and routine schedule… Now, on an average day, ask the same question. Under the constraint of an ordinary day, what would the ideal tea day look like?

    The Goal:

    The goal is to pursue both your ideal tea day and teas so you can appreciate and enjoy tea more! By defining this clearly, we can strive for it more frequently.

    For Myself:

    My ideal tea day is having a leisurely 1.5-2 hour morning or early afternoon session with a good tea friend. My best and most memorable sessions are rarely alone, but in the company of someone else. We would share 3-4 great teas we both enjoy. Ideal tea types: pu’erh with age, Yancha, and aged tea. A good quantity to savor and enjoy, but not too many to overwhelm the experience. Teas I would not drink: younger pu’erh, Taiwanese oolong, Dancong, most Heicha, green tea.

    The more routine ideal is to have two excellent quality teas in one day and then go on a run afterwards. The teas should be distinct from one another. For instance, one fairly active pu’erh around 20 years old followed by an aged tea or Yancha. An example: 2004 BYH Manzhuan, followed by some old Liubao.

    Determining the ideal tea day is not particularly relevant for newer drinkers. The exploratory phase is something that plays out largely on its own and takes everyone in different directions.. Mostly you don’t want to over accumulate tuition during this period (samples are your best friend). But I think if you’ve been drinking tea regularly for a few years and have an idea of where your tastes lie you should try to move towards our ideals.

    What Would An Ideal Month or Year Look Like?

    This is a deceptively different question than an ideal tea day. Looking at a full month or year time frame, gives a different perspective than what you’d like to drink today or tomorrow. That level of distance and long term thinking is also good for preventing tempting impulse purchases that may not fit your vision. Having a zoomed out point of view also allows you to sample and dabble with a bit more purpose. Perhaps this month or year you want to explore Liubao. As much as we love to build a fantasy cart made up with teas we have the slightest interest in, you can go a lot deeper if you eliminate the clutter and focus, sample, and drink in a purposeful manner.

    For Myself: Do 2-4 wide samplings (10+ reps) to get a feel for a tea maker or a tea type, i.e. Liubao. More routinely having a regular rotation of teas, 15-20+ year old pu’erh, Wuyi, Aged Oolongs.

    I still enjoy sampling around and try different things on occasion. It remains fun to shop for tea that I enjoy. I continue to get a fair bit of edification by doing themed tastings and explorations. 10 years ago, I sampled too hard at different points so I know there is a limit to this for myself but there’s still enough variety out there in pu’erh and all tea types to enjoy the learning process. One difference between now and a decade ago is I’m much faster to move on from a session or sample if it isn’t working for me.

    Managing Finite Resources. Did You Buy Too Much? Or Did You Spend Too Much?

    As an RTS (Real Time Strategy) enjoyer, one of the biggest in-game mistakes you can make is floating too much of one resource. In the Age of Empire Series (I currently play AOE4) you have four resources, Food, Wood, Gold, and Stone. At a certain level of play if you are floating too much of one of them you’re probably dead. Why? You might be rich, but because you have mismanaged your economy you won’t have as much to invest into units. Tea is obviously different, but in the same way you can definitely over commit in certain areas.

    Did you buy too much tea? Or did you spend too much money? These are different questions that don’t always overlap. Someone who spent too much money, means they likely don’t have enough for other things outside of tea..

    Someone who bought too much tea has a different problem. Both are a resource allocation problem but should be thought of differently. The good news: if you misallocate too much into tea quantity it’s not like an RTS game where you’ll be dead in a couple minutes..

    The two most important things someone who bought too much tea can do:

    • Give away or sell teas you value less.
    • Focus on teas that are of superior quality.

    I have fallen into the “bought too much” camp more often than the former. I probably spent too much in my first couple years of tea hobbyism. But once my job and income stabilized I was buying too much quantity rather than spending irresponsibly.

    By my own calculations I technically do not have a lifetime of tea, I would be able to brew and drink prolifically for around 30 years without buying anymore. Given my healthy stash of tea, one of the largest mistakes I can make now is to buy loads of value-oriented say $0.07/g tea. Another of my focuses in the past two years has been on giving away teas. Tea is better consumed by someone who enjoys it, rather than a tea hoarder padding his stash. I’ve opted to give away, and have given away at least 10kg in the last couple years. If a cake is indeed a sample, you should do the same thing you’d do to a dud sample you’re no longer interested in drinking. Get rid of it.. I fortunately do not need the money and can be thankfully picky about the tea I keep. So in the end I’m happy to give it away. After all, I overbought in quantity not in $$!

    I don’t buy as often as I once did, but when I do make a purchase, I try to not buy on price performance or over focus on value as much as I once did. Obviously price and cost are always a part of the equation, but I am buying up a bracket from what I did when I accumulated most of my tea and trying to look at sheer quality and enjoyment. We do not drink dollars..

    How Do We Know Tea Is Expensive?

    Many people spend and judge price sheerly by feel. When something is too expensive, it’s often more of a feeling and not by an objective measure. Expensive also almost always means relative. $500 feels like a lot compared to $100, so therefore it is expensive. If you scroll back into the annals of pu’erh discourse you’ll find the days where people complained about $35 young cakes. This seems obvious in 2025, but they weren’t complaining because the cake was expensive in absolute terms. They were complaining because $35 was more than other pu’erh being sold at the time and they could not see what future pu’erh tea prices would be. It’s important to be aware of this psychology we use when judging prices.

    I’ve long advocated for $/g metrics and I continue to hold to that. This is simply smart math and helps to standardize any purchasing calculations. Standardizing $/g is one thing, but there is also adjusting tea expenses to life circumstances. Tea fanatics range in life stages and can have hugely variable levels of income. It does not make much sense for an unmarried 30 year old working in tech in the Bay Area making $600,000 vs. a college student with no income to abide by the same budgeting rules.

    So how much to spend on tea? For people who have an income, I would suggest using a % of income as a baseline. Perhaps it could all fit into some sort of bucket for all discretionary spending or hobby spending or perhaps it’s a tea budget line all on its own. This gets into somewhat uncomfortable territory as it is taboo to talk too openly about one’s own financial situation in most social situations. It also can feel like you’re spending too much if you are framing it this way. This is a psychological barrier and I think having a healthy and honest view on spending money on something we enjoy is ultimately a good thing. I also believe spending in proportion to income makes sense, when compared with spending by feel. It would be prudent to be frugal during tougher times when income is lower. Likewise when things are going well it is OK to spend more.

    One obvious caveat is that the actual % set can and should vary. After all two people can make the same amount of money in the same city and one can live comfortably while the other drowns in housing costs and credit card debt. It is probably unwise for someone paying high interest credit card debt to spend a lot on tea. Whereas the one with a fully funded retirement account can probably afford to allocate a higher %. Judge what is expensive or not based off of real numbers not just a feeling.

    A Couple Quick Calculations

    At what rate are you buying vs. consuming tea? This is pretty simple to figure out. It’s easy enough to calculate out how much quantity and how much $ you’ve sent within a specific timeframe. It might be painful to tabulate, but it is better to live honestly than with purposeful self-delusion.

    Calculate:

    • Quantify Amount Purchased
    • Quantify Amount Consumed
    • Quantify $ Amount Spent
    • Quantify $ Amount Consumed

    At what rate are you drinking tea vs. consuming it? This is helpful as a way to measure how quickly you are accumulating. A lot of people humor the idea they will have a short burst of buying a lifetime of tea perfectly suited for them and retire into their idyllic wood cabin with beautifully designed, aesthetically pleasing pu’erh storage. It is true that once people have a lot of tea they do tend to slow down. And perhaps some people have that sort of self control but it is far more frequently fantasy than reality. It’s important to be realistic about our human impulses and not rationalize extremely rapid acquisition under the false idea you’ll stop on a dime.

    One calculation I suggest is calculating the $ amount consumed. It is entirely possible to consume several times beneath what you are buying. It essentially means you are drinking your cheaper teas at a decent pace but saving your nicer teas. I know because this describes my own habits for years. I would manage to save up and justify pricier purchases, that I would hardly touch. Part of this was the premise that the tea was not at its peak. Part of it was simply good old fashioned hoarding. You could argue this means the teas don’t pass the speed test. But the only reason they don’t pass my speed test is because I deemed them too expensive to enjoy.. Drink and enjoy stuff you like when you can. Now as someone with a young child, I generally try to get a good session whenever I can and the conditions are good enough, not when the stars are perfectly aligned!

    Remember.. For a lot of your favorite tea, you are amongst the most ideal people to enjoy it. You bought it for a reason. It can be OK to wait for the perfect opportunity to share tea, but sometimes a good but not perfect time to enjoy a tea is all you need.

    Tea Drinker A:

    • 20 Cakes Purchased Annually (7,140 grams)
    • 10 Grams a day consumed (3,650 grams)
    • 2:1  Weight Purchasing to Consumed Ratio
    • $2,400 Spent Annually ($200/month)
    • $65 Consumed Monthly
    • ~3:1 $ Purchasing to Consumed Ratio

    Opportunities for Quality Sessions (OQS)

    Life dictates how we drink tea. Tea is a caffeinated beverage and different people react in varied ways. I have a friend that strongly prefers to be done drinking before mid-morning or his sleep gets messed up. Others can tolerate evening tea sessions without losing much sleep. Some people can also drink multiple teas easily, whereas others are strictly one per day. Opportunities for Quality Sessions (OQS) is essentially how many chances you get to have a good session.

    I am fortunate to have a high OQS in my current life. Quality sessions are doable for me on most workdays, where the nature of my work allows me an objectively good schedule to enjoy tea. I tend to have time for morning tea sessions where the caffeine is least likely to impact my sleep.

    Having a low OQS unfortunately means less chances to really enjoy and savor tea. It does however have some positives. For instance if you can only have good sessions on the weekend you could just load up on daily drinkers for the work week and bring out the $1k cakes for Saturday, Sunday. If I could only drink tea intently once per week my buying would and should look different (bring on the $3/g cakes!).

    You Don’t Have To Feel Bad About Spending Money On Tea

    One thing you’ll notice when money gets brought up in tea circles (reddit or discord) is a shared sense of shame for how much they’ve spent. I think this is mostly because it isn’t normal to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on tea leaves. While this is true, most of it is based on societal expectations. For instance, far more people spend irresponsibly on another vehicle than tea, something that is more or less accepted as normal. I don’t think people who spend a good amount on tea need to feel bad about it, provided they are doing so responsibly.

    It is very easy to gawk at someone who spends an outrageous $2/g for a $12 session as an unwise use of money. But that $12 might be the highlight of their day or week and something they looked forward to before the session, enjoyed in the moment, and savored afterwards.. If that’s the case, $12 is an absolute bargain. It is a good thing when people spend money on hobbies they personally value and enjoy. Especially when the alternative is self-enforced tea poverty. Spending as little money as possible is not a good or inspiring goal and we shouldn’t besmirch someone who responsibly spends a few thousand on tea in a year, in the same way we shouldn’t talk down on someone who does their best with a more modest $100/annual budget.

    How we feel is often uncorrelated to reality. Take a step back. Are you actually spending too much?? Or does it simply feel like you are spending too much?

    Don’t Sell Your Self Short

    I realized I was drinking lesser tea than I needed to. Things like that BYH Manzhuan I enjoy had lingered in deep storage only coming out on rare occasions.. Sure even if I believe they’re not at the peak of their potential, but I like drinking them in their current state and I have enough that I should have some around later. Why should I only drink that tea five times in five years?

    Would you rather have your eccentric uncle’s antique coin collection or cold hard cash. Unless you share very similar interests as your uncle, 99.9% of people would likely take the money. In the case of inheritance, money beats esoteric interests. The same is true of tea. We are the eccentric uncle. And unless you are in a tea aficionado family your loved ones do not want your tea and will not enjoy it a fraction as much as you do. Even if I inherited another pu’erh fan’s tea, their taste and choice in tea would likely be different than mine. Passing on jians of tea to the next generation isn’t something that should be a goal in most cases.

    Setting Matters. Activities to Do With Tea

    Confession time… I find it suboptimal if I sit with the tea alone. I often get bored and the cycle inevitably ends with me scrolling on my phone or some other inane activity. My solution? I like watching films while drinking tea. Ideally I’d be able to share the tea with someone else, but that’s just not the reality most of the times. Sometimes the best setting given the options isn’t always a high-minded lofty one.  Yes, I know it isn’t very zen or meditative or whatever… Sorry. I am who I am..

    For others, the context would no doubt be different. Setting the right scene and mood matters. I know many folks love nature sessions. As a nature-agnostic who has bad allergies, being surrounded by trees isn’t my preference, but I can understand and respect why others love it. The same goes for teaware. It’s not always about a mathematical calculation to extract the best cup. Sometimes drinking tea in nice things we enjoy enhances the enjoyment even if the chemical compounds of the cup are held constant.

    Pre-Scheduled Sessions, Anticipation & Savoring Sessions

    In the travel-sphere, they say you experience a trip three different times. Firstly in anticipation and planning of the upcoming trip, second during the actual experience of the trip, and finally through savoring the experience and enjoying the memories after the trip happened.

    I’ve started scheduling my sessions, kind of like meal planning. Sometimes plans change, but I rarely arrive at the tea table and think about what I’m going to drink. I’ve already decided a few days before. Like the travel example I derive a similar level of enjoyment where I look forward to the sessions and savor them afterwards. Scheduling sessions also forces me to make sure to plug in nicer teas at least once a week that I can look forward to.

    How Much To Buy? A Math Problem. How Far Does 4 Cakes vs. 2 Tongs Get You?

    It’s important to tackle this question once your tastes settle and you have a good idea of what will and won’t pass the speed test. There’s a certain danger with overplanning and outlining an idyllic tea life before you’ve had enough experience to even figure out what you like or want. But once someone figures out what they like…

    In trying to determine how many cakes or tongs to buy of teas we like, I think these easily start to feel too complicated and potentially overwhelming.. We can reduce the purchasing to a simple math equation. For the calculation:

    • Approximately how long you will be drinking tea or that specific tea. For some teas maybe drinking it until the end of your life doesn’t make sense.
    • When do you approximate the tea will be at a state for you to drink and enjoy?
    • How often do you want to drink the tea?
    • How big are your sessions?

    If you talk to old veterans of tea some of their hammers are very heavy. Splitting jians two ways, several tongs of tea. In my opinion, this is due to a few factors. (1) High quality pu’erh wasn’t always as expensive as it is now and (2) they were younger with time to drink these teas (3) the price is often quite a bit less if you can buy in higher quantity.

    For Myself:

    I estimate ~40 years more of tea drinking or until I’m around 80. (Like retirement planning, slowly aging tea forces you to reckon with your own mortality.)

    If I bought 4 cakes of a tea and I wanted to enjoy it regularly for the 4 next decades, I’d be able to drink it 6 times per year (5 gram session + 20% cake dust/weight loss) or every other month for four decades. If I bought a tong + 1, I’d be able to drink it once per month for that same timespan.

    Think Long Term. Why Younger People Should Consider Hitting Harder. A Tong Isn’t Always Enough

    Looking ultra long term like this hopefully doesn’t discourage you from drinking your tea (you can always buy more), but it should encourage long term planning. I was puzzled at first to hear how much experienced people bought when they like a particular tea (wait, how many tongs do you have?). But now I do get it and in some cases do my best to replicate that behavior. A tong might seem like a lot, but if we are talking about a lifetime it is not that much. When you like a tea and want to be drinking it regularly for the rest of your lifetime you don’t just buy two cakes or five tuos. You buy two or three tongs.

    It is true that most people tend to buy more than they consume, but the more haphazard buying often results in an odd assortment of slightly consumed cakes. Buying like this lacks focus and vision. Usually what is left are the worst teas that don’t pass the speed test, with the best stuff long gone. Would you rather have a random assortment of teas, or smaller variety but higher quantity of teas you love and can enjoy more freely.

    Teas that won’t be ready for a while, you probably don’t need to hit as hard. There’s a few cakes that I’ve become convinced won’t be ready for at least 20 years in my unfortunately slow storage. Since I will only start drinking those in 10-20 years, I probably don’t need several tongs of these.

    Younger folks whose taste have gotten somewhat settled, frequently don’t hit hard enough. They simply have more time, to both age and drink tea. If you have the resources, hitting hard makes the most sense for younger people. If you are crafting an investment portfolio, someone like my mid 70s year old Dad acts and invests in a different, more conservative matter than myself. Neither of us are wrong. Our situations are simply different.

    If you are a young person who has been drinking for a few years and you run into a tea you like a lot and want to drink you should buy much more than two cakes. You don’t have to be impulsive.. Sleep on the decision and take a breather but when you run into a tea you love, it is very unlikely it will be around forever. Your old version will thank you later.

  • The Five Types of Raw Pu’erh You Should Try

    The Five Types of Raw Pu’erh You Should Try

    Help identify this cake (generic Zhongcha wrapper). Help me with my order from White2Tea/Yunnan Sourcing/TWL? What’s a genuine pu’erh source? What pu’erh should I try?

    Sometimes I feel like parts of the tea community (reddit) are stuck in a Groundhog day time loop, doomed to ask the same questions over and over. One of my continued aims with TeaDB was to make content that remained useful and helpful over time and help get out of repeated patterns. The results have been mixed. Some articles I still see linked regularly whereas I’m sure a huge chunk are buried in the archives. The aim with this post is to create a guide for someone just journeying into pu’erh in selecting and exploring this diverse category of tea.

    Cakes

    If You Are A Beginner You Should Try These Five Types of Raw Pu’erh

    There are large differences based off terroir, processing, age and storage. Some things matter considerably more than others, and if you are new it’s important to cut through the massive info dump (who cares which micro village it’s from) and get the most important basics down.

    This is my preferred way of breaking down the categories of raw pu’erh for someone new.

    1. Young Boutique Raw Pu’erh – There’s a ton of different smallish outfits making young pu’erh. Young pu’erh will brew a lighter, yellowish color and have lighter, fresher, more floral profile. It can be pleasant now and there’s definitely a large group of pu-heads that drink these regularly. It was and perhaps still is the dominant type of pu’erh promoted to westerners. White2Tea, Yunnan Sourcing, Farmer Leaf, Chenyuan Hao, etc.  Not all brands are the same, but you really have to try them to determine which brand and areas suits you best.Why not young factory pu’erh? While there is a general sentiment that these have gotten easier and smoother to drink, these are historically teas for storage and aging. For the sake of simplicity I would not bother trying these until later.
    2. Semi-Aged (10-20 years old) Factory Raw Pu’erh Stored in a Hot + Humid Place – An important aspect to pu’erh is its ability to transform. Different climates and different storage methodologies will yield different results. Hotter and more humid areas will transform the tea more quickly. These teas should brew darker than younger tea, orange or even red. Generally they will become smoother over time.It’s important to note that humid is relative with most of the defaults being significantly hotter and humid than your average western climate. The United Kingdom or Pacific Northwest reputation aside do not qualify as humid in this case. (a) Hot + Humid place = Guangdong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Xishuangbanna, etc.. (b) Factory = Menghai Tea Factory, Xiaguan, Mengku, etc. Menghai Tea Factory is probably the ideal factory although different people have different factory preferences. The ideal: 2005-2011 Menghai TF tea stored in Taiwan.
    3. Semi-Aged (10-20 years old) Factory Raw Pu’erh Stored in a Cool + Dry Place – While age will generally smooth and darken pu’erh, drier climates in general will result in a slower transformation and keep the original character of the more tea intact. Teas in this category will have a darker color than young tea, but not as much as 2.
    4. Semi-Aged (10-20 years old) Boutique Raw Pu’erh – The more aged version of tea type 1. One hurdle is a lot of the western facing boutiques have not been around that long. Semi-Aged boutique tea is probably easier to find from Taiwan-based vendors which has a high number of boutique vendors that are accessible to the west..  You can also find more dryly stored examples. Example: 2007 Chenyuan Hao Yiwu.
    5. Traditionally Stored Raw Pu’erh (10+ Years Old)  – This is an important type of tea that is different from what people sometimes disparagingly call wet storage. Read about traditionally stored pu’erh on Marshaln’s blog. Generally this will brew the darkest of all the categories, reddish. Traditionally stored pu’erh is the most difficult type to find. It is important to try as traditional storage transforms pu’erh in a different manner than more natural Taiwan/Guangdong/Malaysia/Hong Kong. While there are some more indie vendors that have some traditionally stored tea, the biggest, most reliable place to get traditionally stored tea remains HK-Based Yee On who is a traditional storage specialist.

    Samples & How Many Should I Get?

    If possible, order samples! Samples cost a little more per gram, but getting the extra value from a full cake is relatively unimportant compared with getting good examples for the tea you want to try. Getting a good baseline for these categories of tea is an essential step in moving forward. It is more important to get good experiences from a diversity of sources than 60-70 reps with one cake. With 16 gram or 25 gram samples you can try the tea multiple times and if you want, you can always reorder a second sample.

    Ideally I’d order at least 3 examples of each type of tea. There’s a tremendous amount of diversity within all five of these categories, so before dismissing a category entirely you want to make sure it’s not just the specific example. Please do not be that person who dismisses pu’erh categorically on reddit after you’ve tried one cheap & crappy grocery store ripe..

    Where can you order these?

    The simplest way to get these.

    1. Young Boutique – So many options! Yunnan Sourcing, White2Tea, Essence of Tea, Farmer Leaf, etc. You can also seek out accessible Taiwanese brands, like CYH.
    2. Semi-Aged Factory Hot + Humid – Liquid Proust (US), Teaswelike (Taiwan), Quiche Teas (Taiwan), King Tea Mall (Guangzhou).
    3. Semi-Aged Factory Cool + Dry – Yunnan Sourcing (Kunming), Chawangshop (Kunming).
    4. Semi-Aged Boutique Hot + Humid – Liquid Proust, Teaswelike, Puerh Guy, Sunsing.
    5. Traditionally Stored Pu’erh – Yee On (Hong Kong).

  • When 20 Years Isn’t Enough

    When 20 Years Isn’t Enough

    I’ve been fortunate to meet and get connected with a variety of drinkers and pu’erh collectors throughout the years. One of these fine folks is Geraldo of Far Wenwa, who was a collaborator for the old tea blog Chadao. I recommend people check out his store if you want a taste of US stored tea (based a couple hours east of Seattle). He is in the first wave of western pu’erh drinkers, a nice guy, his prices aren’t bad and the storage is interesting. Geraldo bought the bulk of his tea back in the mid 2000s, when the pu’erh scene in the west was in its infancy. It was acquired partly through traveling, places like Taishunhe, some from Jing Tea Shop and some through a very young ebay store called Yunnan Sourcing.

    Pumidor Setups.

    One tea I had from Geraldo is the 2005 Dayi Menghai Peacock. This is one of the fancier products from what has become an increasingly expensive year for Dayi. A friend bought some back in 2016 and I ended up with a cake and some leftovers. At the time I dismissed it as needing more time and put it in my storage. It’s now hung out in my storage for about nearly a decade. The tea currently sells for a very high (dumb) price in China, so I decided to retry it, given it is now 20 years old, and stored almost exclusively in Washington state.. So how is it?? You can tell there’s high quality material here, but it still needs more time. It brews a faint orange and the green edge of younger sheng is still quite prominent. And most depressingly, the tea is 20 years ago. This is true not just for the Menghai Peacock but for a lot of the teas that have been exclusively western dry-stored. I tried a few teas with lesser pedigree (2004 6FM Youle/Yiwu) and the results are not anymore promising. This is not to insult Geraldo as a large chunk of the storage time was spent in my care!

    I originally thought 20 years or so would be a good amount of time to age a tea to achieve a satisfactory level of aging. 20 years is a long time! It is also a long enough amount of time that you can trick yourself into waiting. Western dry storage on decent factory teas, even with humidity added, has only slowly moved it. Some people talk about teas eventually turning a corner. It hasn’t happened yet.. Perhaps in another 20 years? In unheated pumidor land we are most definitely not on the express train for aged tea.

    You could argue that many of the classics needed more than 20 years of dry storage, but I think we’re talking about an entirely different beast (slow western storage vs. HK Dry).

    There is Very Little Exclusively Western Stored Teas Aged to a Satisfying Amount

    This is the sad state of (unheated) western storage. I’ve had teas that are moving in the right direction, but there’s very little that has been exclusively western stored that I’d consider to be a good aged tea. This is a bit unfair as there’s not many people that have stored tea for 20 years. I also don’t doubt someone like shah, based in the south, will have some decent enough aged tea given enough time. Still, the lack of track record 20 years after Geraldo and the early western pioneers bought pu’erh is concerning.

    Revisiting Teas

    Ways Around The Long Term Aging Question (Buying Already Aged, 6FM, Hotbox)

    I get around the aging dilemma by buying teas that are a lot more aged from a hotter and more humid climate than my own. Taiwan, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc.. This has more or less worked especially for certain types of teas that have the greener edge already taken off before purchase.. For instance, Yiwu and other 6 famous mountain productions are a category I’m alright drinking with around 10ish years of Taiwanese or Guangdong storage. After some time in Seattle, it’s not totally clear how much they’ve changed but I still like them and my storage has at least maintained them. Even something like the 2006 Chenguanghetang Yiwu Yecha stored in Houston and Seattle isn’t bad, although I’d probably like the tea more if it had a decade in Malaysia instead.

    Less successfully, the factory (Dayi and Xiaguan) teas just need longer. Despite a generally favorable opinion of Dayi teas and following a similar buying strategy of purchasing semi-aged tea, there’s very few I’ve bought that I enjoy drinking. Not because the material is bad, they’re just too green and abrasive for my tastes and need more time. Most are moving in the right direction, but aren’t at an acceptable point to be easy enough to drink. Part of this is my preference for smoother, darker tea that not everyone shares. But a lot of it is simply that the good versions of these teas were not created for immediate drinking and certainly not for storage in western climates. Drinking them you can also tell they are not close to their potential yet. As a final caveat, it is possible 10 years from now many of them will have turned the curve and changed my own feelings on that topic..

    Another potentially promising storage method would be Marco-style hotboxing. Heated storage has really caught on out west, especially amongst newer pu’erh enthusiasts. I’ve tasted the Bosch from Marco a few years back and it seemed promising. For myself, this sort of storage is unlikely for reasons mostly related to my personal life. I have too much tea that takes a good deal of space already (unlikely to change) and I doubt setting up another huge project will improve my WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). Despite this, if I was a part of the new generation of drinkers without a huge quantity of cakes, it’s likely I would’ve been one of the hotboxers.

    Final Note: If you’ve been hotboxing for a few years and want to donate a sample, I would be curious to try.

  • Denny’s DIY Pumidor w/ Live Data Feed

    Denny’s DIY Pumidor w/ Live Data Feed

    [This is a living document]

    Jump to Pumidor V3

    Tea Den Aging Project Goals:

    • Accurate representation of variables influencing tea aging
    • Accurate visual representation of tea aging over time
    • Subjective perspective of tea aging over time

    Creating a “Smart” Pumidor

    Materials & Tools:

      • HomeAssistant
      • Wifi Smart Socket
      • Zigbee Humidity & Temperature Sensor
      • Seedling Heating Mat
      • Boveda 65% Two-Way Humidity Control Pack, Size 320
      • Insulation
      • NodeMCU ESP32 SBC
      • SHTC3 Temperature and Humidity Sensor

    Version 1: Zigbee sensors

    I used a Zigbee-protocol humidity and temperature sensor to start (the square device in there).  While zigbee is great for household lights, zigbee devices work best in a tight mesh with amplifier or repeaters within the system.  As my pumidor is far away from other zigbee devices, the quality of the signal was iffy at best, and the sensors in this device aren’t great.

    pumidor v1

    Gotta build my own I guess.

    Version 2: ESP32 + SHTC3

    I’m using a ESP32 board (NodeMCU 38 pinout) and a SHTC3 humidity and temperature sensor.  Way way better.

    Wrap it up in blankets (insulation):

    ESPHome Code

    Here is the added logic beyond a standard ESPHome template for an ESP32 device, in case you want to build your own:

    • i2c:
      • sda: GPIO21
      • scl: GPIO22
      • scan: true
    • sensor:
      • – platform: shtcx
      • temperature:
        • name: “Pumidor Temperature”
      • humidity:
        • name: “Pumidor Humidity”
      • update_interval: 30s

    While it does require a wired power source (I mean I could run this off a portable battery but w/e), this device is way way way more accurate.

    I also moved my pumidor into the room adjacent to our furnace to reduce the burden on the heating pad and save a bit of money.  The concern in this room is the ambient humidity is extremely low, but so far so good!

    Here’s how it looks inside my HomeAssistant UI:

    Wattage reading, effectively its power cycle visualized:

    Generating Data

    Humidity and temperature updates every hour directly from my pumedor to the interactive graph below.

    Full Screen Interactive Graph Link: https://teadb.org/humidity_temperature_graph.html

    Publish It Online

    Naturally I had to figure out a way to get it online.  I’m using HomeAssistant’s API, pulling data to a spreadsheet file via an hourly cron job, which I then run some simple python on to generate the above graph.  My script also takes a screenshot and updates the featured image of this blog post hourly.

    Taking Photos: Color Accuracy Over Time

    Turns out, to do this right is hard.

    My 80/20 TLDR:

    • Taking photos at night
    • Same lighting setup
    • Take a lot of photos
    • Color match photos across time

    Materials & Tools

    • RawTherapee
    • Color Correction Card

    Lighting Setup

    White2Tea Hypnotrain

    TeaDB Episode #520: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBFJ9Hy2Nho

    URL: https://white2tea.com/products/2022-hypnotrain

    Photos taken on 1/28/25:

    VERSION 3 + MORE

    (Update May 4 2025)

    IDK why I didn’t start with this cooler:





    Full Screen Interactive Graph Link: https://teadb.org/humidity_temperature_graph.html

    Dry Storage

    Added another temp sensor to the dry, unheated storage; here’s the setup:

    This drawer is enclosed completely, including from the bottom.



    Full Screen Interactive Graph Link: https://teadb.org/humidity_temperature_graph2.html

    Graphing Both Sensors

    Full Screen Interactive Graph Link: https://teadb.org/humidity_temperature_graph3.html

    Power Data

    This data visualizes how frequently the heating element turns on and off, and for how long it’s on and off.

    The change of a suspended heating element makes a big difference overall.

    New Home Assistant Dash

     

  • Old School Pu’erh Categorizations: Yinji, Haoji & Ways to Break Them Down

    There are a lot of ways to categorize pu’erh. On a very basic level there are raw and ripe. You can also categorize it by age, storage, area, etc.. One very old school way that I rarely but sometimes see mentioned is categorizing raw pu’erh by two very old eras of tea. The old and the very old, Yinji and Haoji..

    Yinji Cha (印级茶)

    Yinji Cha translates to Mark Grade Tea and the era is generally acknowledged as the time period between 1950s and up until the early 1970s. Big operations like Menghai Tea Factory, Xiaguan, and Kunming Tea Factory were established around ~1940, ushering in this era. During this time period, production was done by larger big state-run factories, although the actual factory isn’t usually denoted in the tea name. Much of the material used especially by Dayi is thought to be from Menghai County. These teas usually have the familiar zhongcha wrapper. Famed examples include the Hongyin (Red Mark), Lanyin (Blue Mark), and Huangyin (Yellow Mark). Within these there are a number of different productions that are marked with other signifiers (Conscientious Prescription, Iron Cakes, etc.).

    This era eventually gave away to another era of factory production, the Qizi Bing era, where factories were signified and teas were given names such as 7542, 8582, etc. The following era also coincided with the invention of ripe pu’erh.

    Yinji Teas
    Red Mark, Blue Mark. Yinji Era Teas. Source: Sunsing.

    Haoji Cha (号级茶)

    Haoji Cha is an era predating the Yinji era, running from the start of the 20th century up until the Yinji era. During this time, pu’erh businesses were centered around the Yiwu area and were dominated by Han-Chinese family businesses. The tea produced is thought to be from the six famous mountains nearby Yiwu (Youle, Mangzhi, Yibang, Gedeng, Manzhuan, Mansa), with Yiwu township acting as central distribution point for tea to be dispersed outwards to Tibet, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. Tea was produced by family run brands, like Songpin Hao, Tongqing Hao, Tongchang Hao, Fuyuanchang, etc. Unlike the Yinji period, tea was produced in smaller quantities by smaller producers. The tea’s qualities could vary depending on the producer and a particular production. Certain producers and productions are held in particularly high esteem.

    As 21st century modern pu’erh fans this may seem like a simpler time, but amazingly there were fakes with anti-counterfeit measures dating back to the Haoji era. There’s also been a good deal of speculation on the actual tea processing during this era, with some suspecting that the teas were oxidized before the shaqing (Kill Green) process.

    During the Yinji Cha period, production from the six famous mountains area and Yiwu was largely unnoticed in this eras as big factory production dominated. Much of the raw materials still produced made in these areas was sold to the big factories as maocha.

    Haoji Teas
    Songpin, Tongqing, Old Jincha. Haoji Teas. Source: Sunsing.

    Why Is This Relevant?

    It may seem pointless to categorize tea by two eras where the tea cakes are both outrageously expensive and inaccessible. In particular, it’s difficult to find any reliable notes on Haoji era and if the processing was so different what is the point!

    The fingerprints of both the Yinji and Haoji eras are all over the modern boom of pu’erh (1990s onwards). At the onset of the modern pu’erh scene in 1994, a group of Taiwanese tea men traveled to Yiwu to find old pu’erh. They ended up disappointed as unbeknownst to them production from the family operations of Yiwu had long ceased.. Some of these men eventually decided to attempt to produce teas from these dormant areas, and recruited the two surviving employees of the old Tongqing Hao factory. This tea is known as the Zhenchunyahao.

    If we take a look at productions in both factory and 3rd party productions in the late 1990s and the early 2000s we see a good deal of productions marketing itself as Yiwu or from one or multiple of the famous mountains area. The name recognition of Mengla County and Yiwu, predates both larger areas like Bulang and Lincang and smaller areas like Lao Banzhang, Guafengzhi, etc.

    It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of small-scale pu’erh operations pressing tea from all around Yunnan. The old family operations of the Haoji era also set a precedent for the smaller scale productions that would come to form a large and very visible chunk of the modern market. While these more modern boutiques have gone in very different directions, the model of the modern boutique was formed from the Haoji era and rebooted in Yiwu in 1994.

    Successors to the Yinji era are a bit more clear, as there was never a huge lapse in tea production comparable to Haoji teas. In the 1970s, the market shifted partially due to the advent of ripe tea as well as numbered recipes. Up until this point the factories were not named in the production. While teas like 1980s and 1990s 7542s and 8582s are not necessarily the same as Hongyin or Huangyin, you can see the lineage of strong factory tea and the factory style processing from the Yinji era.

    (Shameless) Recreations

    There have been countless direct commercial attempts to take advantage of the past fame of both eras. If you search taobao, you’ll see that the modern market is littered with these old brands attempting to shamelessly cash in on the fame of the Haoji producers (search for Songpin Hao or Tongqing Hao on taobao). These teas have no meaningful connection with the old brands and have flooded the market to the extent that these brands in the modern era are essentially white labels.

    It’s also not difficult to find contemporary teas named Hongyin or Lanyin.. You can argue whether or not these are shameless recreations in all cases, but for the vast majority there is no substantive connection to the original. In more rare cases with accomplished producers, there can be exceptions. For instance Zhou Yu of Wistaria who is very familiar with the originals, made Hongyin and Lanyin recreations that presumably bear at least some resemblance to the original.

    Taobao Search Tongqing Hao
    Taobaoing Tongqing Hao. NOT a good way to shop for tea.

    Contemporary Successors

    Both Menghai county and six famous mountains remain very popular areas today, so this can give us some insight into how some of our tea will age. The good news is that good versions of both Haoji and Yinji era teas are both thought to have aged well, albeit differently. The flavor of Yinji era teas like Hongyin and Lanyin are considered strong, powerful and long-lasting. It’s more challenging to find reliable accounts of Haoji teas and depending on the original production and condition, it sounds as if there is a fair amount of variance. People do rave highly about the good examples.

    The successors can be somewhat simplified to large-scale factory teas (Yinji) and smaller scale operations pressing select leaves (Haoji). Factory teas have a stronger taste that requires aging and more boutique operations sourcing tea from Yiwu and the 6FM (i.e. Chenyuan Hao, Jixiang Jushi) have more elegance but less up front taste.

    This comparison probably worked better in 2007 than 2018 and in my opinion doesn’t really fit that neatly into the contemporary scene. 2007 was the year which Zhang Jinghong did much of her research for Pu’er: Ancient Caravans, Urban Chic creating a fascinating snapshot of the scene. At that point, pu’erh had grown significantly and she surveyed a few of the many boutique operations going to Yiwu where the local farmer’s did the fine processing..

    Since 2007 the tea has evolved and the more contemporary pu’erh scene is its own complex, amorphous thing. Boutique Yiwu and 6FM tea are still very much a thing it has gotten increasingly crowded and prices have risen far beyond 2007/2008… Operations like Chenyuan Hao (who also has made Songpin and Tongqing recreations) are probably some of the closer examples to contemporary versions of these old Haoji outfits but are definitely not the same thing. The scene is undoubtedly very different from 100 years ago.

    Good recreations.
    Modern teas by Chenyuan Hao (2017 Mahei) and Wistaria (2007/2008 Hongyin & Lanyin. Source: Teapals.

    For Yinji era successors, big factories like Menghai and Xiaguan never really stopped pressing tea. Still there is constant clamoring that the big factories have fallen off  significantly from their glory days of yesteryear. There are boutique operations pressing strong, up-front, supposedly higher quality blends (i.e. Chensheng Hao), that stake their claim as the contemporary successor to the Yinji era. There is also constant clamoring that the modern versions from both big factories and Chensheng Hao operations are not the same as the originals. These traditionally made Yinji teas were strong, bitter and smoky when young, characteristics that proponents argue will result in a high-quality aged product.

    I think it is highly likely that 99% of the teas made in the image of either Haoji or Yinji tea will not age as well as the originals. Production is much higher and quality material are scarce. When Zhou Yu made his own Hongyin and Lanyin in 2007, he noted environmental factors commenting that the earth was not as healthy in 2007 as it was when the original Yinji teas were made. This is sadly probably even more true in 2018 than 2007..

  • The Case for Northern Tea (North of Banna)

    In the pu’erh world there’s three major prefectures in Yunnan that make pu’erh tea, Xishuangbanna, Simao (pu’erh), and Lincang. These do not necessarily get proportionate coverage. It’s hard to argue there’s not a heavy Xishuangbanna bias when it comes to the dialog in the pu’erh scene. I’d admit that TeaDB by extension of my own habits has a significant lean towards the southern prefecture, Xishuangbanna. Banna contains two heavy-hitting regions in Menghai county and Mengla county. Menghai gets a lot of press for being the home of Dayi and lots of factory raw and ripe production. It is also home to sought after areas and smaller villages/areas like Banzhang. Likewise, Mengla county is extremely well known and well-regarded, especially for Yiwu tea. Both of these areas in the west and east of Banna have long, rich histories with making pu’erh. And if we look north, there are some areas you’ll see referenced but it doesn’t really rival the southernmost regions in buzz within the tea scene. You’ll even find some downright northern haters, including some terribad bloggers that compare the most prominent northern factory to their toilet (wtf!?).

    (more…)

  • Low Barrier Pu’erh Storage Solutions for Casual Pu’erh Drinkers

    To the casuals, pumidors are intimidating.. They’re not something anyone really wants to jump into quickly. For seasoned pu’erh folk, one feature of using a pumidor to store tea is that it tends to scale fairly well if you can get the right size container for your stash. The maintenance and monitoring can be appealing.. But for most normie tea people all the hoops they see people jumping through in pu’erh storage create a significant barrier to entry. But there’s no reason to go pumidor or bust. I’d argue having a low-maintenance pu’erh solution is pretty important for anyone that intends to hold onto a pu’erh cake for even a year or two.

    (more…)

  • Tea Reflections During a Global Pandemic

    This has easily been the weirdest year I’ve been alive. Living in a global pandemic has not just shifted our regular routines and status quo, it has completely destroyed them. Denny and I worked from home before the pandemic and on any sort of ranking of people impacted by the pandemic, we would both rank quite low.. Even still it is a very different world for us as well as our tea drinking has had a powerful impact. Here’s a few personal reflections on tea during this pandemic.

    (more…)

  • 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?

    (more…)

  • 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.

    (more…)