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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…
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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…
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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..…
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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,…
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Tea Q&A, Best Time to Drink Tea, Mixing Steeps, Drinking Aged Pu’erh on a Budget & More! [IBS 227]
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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.
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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…
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Storage Methodology & Odor-Free Storage. Things to Watch Out For in a few Popular Western Storage Methods.
One pumidor-related topic I contemplate is the correct way to think about the chosen container. Given we store a tea at identical temperature and humidity (say 70F/65RH), if we store the same tea for five years in two different ways, a food-grade plastic box versus an old wine cooler, how much will they differ? What…
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Pu’erh Storage Explainer [Inbetweenisode 212]
The history of storing pu’erh. Pu’erh storage terminology. Storing pu’erh in the US or Europe. Pu’erh is a tea grown in Yunnan for export to Hong Kong and other parts of southern China and southeast Asia. Here it was stored by vendors for consumption. For many decades, this was done in a process that is…
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Sample Upwards! Why You Should Consider Trying Teas You Have No Intention in Buying
When I’m buying cakes of tea I tend to gravitate towards certain price ranges and have a mental ceiling of how much I’m willing to spend on tea. It’s not really based off of anything well reasoned or rationalized and I’ll occasionally break it, but more of an innate psychological barrier. This $/g line ends…