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Outdoor & Indoor Pu’erh Storage in the West. Why Climate Data Only Tells a Partial Picture for Home Storage.
A while back I crunched the numbers for climates in some eastern and western cities and compared them to Kunming. One of the takeaways from that article is that despite its reputation, Kunming’s humidity is not that much lower than places with a more humid reputation, i.e. Hong Kong or Taipei. The more significant difference…
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Famous Tea: 1988 Qing Bing
The 1988 Qing Bing is a very famous cakes from the 1980s and early 1990s. Like the 1999 BGT I thought I would share my experiences with it. Phyll Sheng lays out the criteria for 1988 QB in this informative post. They are Menghai Factory-produced 7542 tea cakes from 1989-1992, and They are dry-and-naturally stored. A sample…
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2017 Chenyuan Hao Dragon Ball via LiquidProust [Episode 250]
This episode, Denny & James drink a boutique raw pu’erh pressed into a ball, by Chenyuan Hao (a well known Taiwanese boutique). Thank you to Liquid Proust for providing the tea. https://www.liquidproust.com/
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EPSILON, GAMMA. 2017 YS QMS, 2017 YS YB Yunnan Sourcing Raw Pu’erh Blind Tasting [Episode 247]
This episode, Denny and James complete the raw pu’erh portion of the Yunnan Sourcing blind tasting. Tasting has been coordinated by Matt of http://mattchasblog.blogspot.com/ and Yunnan Sourcing https://yunnansourcing.com/ . Big thank you to Matt and Scott! The tea covered in this episode are Epsilon & Gamma, which are Yunnan Sourcing’s 2017 Qingmeishan & 2017 Yibang…
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Western Brands are Very Different from Big Factory Tea
The data from this original post was originally taken from puer.cn, and isn’t totally complete (it’s probably missing some productions). The information is intended as a proxy to look at some trends. Here’s the dataset of White2Tea, Yunnan Sourcing, Dayi, and Xiaguan. Dayi and Xiaguan we looked at 2004-2006 and 2014-2016. For W2T/YS we just…
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DELTA, 2017 YS Jingmai Yunnan Sourcing Raw Pu’erh Blind Tasting [Episode 246]
This episode Denny and James do part 2 in their Yunnan Sourcing blind tasting.Tasting has been coordinated by Matt of http://mattchasblog.blogspot.com/ and Yunnan Sourcing https://yunnansourcing.com/ . Big thank you to Matt and Scott! The tea covered in this episode is Delta, which is Yunnan Sourcing’s 2017 Jingmai cake.
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Zhang Jinghong’s Ancient Caravans & Urban Chic, a Conversation w/Garrett [Inbetweenisode 155]
This is not a review.. In this episode, James and Garrett have a very long discussion on (IMO) the best English-language book on pu’erh around. They discuss what they like about the book and dive deeper into some of the topics brought up by Zhang (the author). https://www.amazon.com/Puer-Tea-Ancient-Caravans-Culture/dp/0295993235/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1516079452&sr=8-1&keywords=pu%27er+chic
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ALPHA, BETA, Yunnan Sourcing Raw Pu’erh Blind Tasting [Episode 245]
This episode Denny and James start a three episode series on some Yunnan Sourcing teas, tasted blind. Tasting has been coordinated by Matt of http://mattchasblog.blogspot.com/ and Yunnan Sourcing https://yunnansourcing.com/ . Big thank you to Matt and Scott! The teas covered in this episode are Alpha and Beta. Alpha is the 2017 YS Mushucha. Beta is…
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You Can Buy Young Pu’erh From All Over Yunnan
The custom private label pu’erh has really thrived in the western market – with vendors increasingly sourcing their own pressings directly from Yunnan. This was a new thing for westerners back in 2009 when just Yunnan Sourcing and Essence of Tea pressed tea. Now it is almost a rite of passage for a pu’erh-centric vendor,…
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1997 Loose Dry-Stored Raw Pu’erh via Varat [Episode 244]
This week’s tea is a ~20 year old dry-stored raw pu’erh. Aged in loose form, this is a rarity and a treat that makes an interesting foil to the more humidly stored tea from the prior episode. http://theguidetopuerhtea.blogspot.com/2017/10/educational-series-20-year-old-puerh.html