This is an extremely overdue tea drinking report. It was conceived for two reasons. (1) I recently reconfigured my storage into a larger setup. (2) I have a yearly tradition of picking some teas out of deep storage to retry and note their progression (or lack thereof). The latter allows me to get a better feel for my storage and pick out anything going wrong with the teas. This year I picked eight teas from my own storage as well as a couple extras from tea friends, all of which have been stored for a significant chunk of their lifespan in Washington state. (more…)
Tag: Yunnan Sourcing
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2012 YS Purple Spring Yiwu Raw Pu’erh [Inbetweenisode 192]
This episode as a part of the larger 2019 progress report I drink a tea that has been in my stash for five years, the 2012 Yunnan Sourcing Purple Yiwu Raw Pu’erh. This tea is just turning the corner as a slightly aged raw pu’erh and is much more focused than when I had it now.
Rating: 6.0.
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2017 YS Crimson Rooster Ripe Pu’erh [Inbetweenisode 191]
This episode, I finish off another ripe cake, the Yunnan Sourcing Crimson Rooster. This is a light-mid fermented ripe pu’erh fermented by the same guy who did the Green Miracle. A good, textured, well-above average ripe.
Rating: 6.6.
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Shop Like It’s 2012. One Way to Think About and Find Value.
I got into tea in 2012. One of the first things I did was read everything I could in the western tea scene. This included old forum posts, new forum posts, blogs like Marshaln, Half-Dipper and the Chadao Blogspot. One constant I found was the constant bemoaning the ever-rising price of pu’erh, as long as there’s been dialogue about it on the internet. It didn’t matter if the post was written in 2008 or 2012… Since 2012, the situation hasn’t exactly improved. The most dramatic rises have been in maocha and current year productions. The majority of the highest-priced tea being peddled from popular online sources definitely isn’t old vintage tea, it’s something made in 2018 (OK, maybe 2017)!! Notably not everything has gone up equally. Things like YQH Qizhong, while never cheap in the first place have been fairly stable in price even since my initial foray into pu’erh. For the value-minded, this has made some of these semi-aged teas the target for people like myself. (more…)
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Datapost: 2018 Pu’erh Prices are More of the Same
About a year ago, I used the Way Back Machine/Archive.org to go back and examine the prices at conception of tea from western vendors since 2011. This was a valuable exercise and produced some interesting findings on a range of things, from price fluctuation, to the specific market each vendor aims for, etc. Crunching the numbers also statistically confirmed what many have long known. Fresh/young pu’erh prices have gone up in price by a whole lot in this decade.. I decided to update that post with teas that were added since. I added 55 spring productions in total, 51 productions from 2018 and 4 from Chawangshop’s 2017 (they were slow to add them to their site in 2017). (more…)
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2015 YS Huirun Ripe Pu’erh [Inbetweenisode 187]
This episode, I drink a ripe pu’erh from Scott’s Huirun series. it’s a tea I’ve brought onto the show before, but now I’ve gotten through nearly an entire cake of it! This tea is textured, elegant, and well-balanced. A quality ripe pu’erh.
6.4 Rating.
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Mystery Ripe (1997 CNNP 7581) [Episode 295]
This episode, Denny and I drink an aged mystery ripe, unlabeled in Denny’s stash. In the episode, we’re not totally sure what the tea is. Given the profile, after the episode we compared the wrapping and neifei to a brick I have we were able to get a pretty good guess on what the tea actually is, an old ripe 7581 brick.
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2018 YS Year of the Dog Blue Label Ripe Pu’erh [Inbetweenisode 185]
This episode I drink a tea from Scott’s 2018 ripe line. Bought blind, this has been a regular tea in my rotation for the past few weeks. An enjoyable tea that is very clean, smooth, and a great daily drink.
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2014 YS Man Tang Hong 3 Ripe Pu’erh [Inbetweenisode 184]
This episode, I finish up a ripe pu’erh cake I bought a while ago from Scott. The cake is part of Yunnan Sourcing‘s Man Tang Hong line, a series of teas I’ve had decent experiences with. The tea is brewed in a fashion that I normally drink my ripe pue’rh, in a big pot fairly casually.
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Yunnan Sourcing’s Mengku Assamica Black (Red) Tea [Episode 292]
This episode, Denny and I drink another tasty Hongcha from Scott. This one is from Yunnan and stands out for its engaging texture and taste. We actually unknowingly drank this Mengku Hongcha earlier this year for an episode.