TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
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TeaDB is your one-stop source of Tea information, reviews, and resources.
TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
3M ago
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 ..read more
TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
3y ago
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 h ..read more
TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
3y ago
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 h ..read more
TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
3y ago
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.
The Hobby Status Quo is Broken
I’ve heard of lots of people picking up different hobbies during this year. It wouldn ..read more
TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
3y ago
(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 ap ..read more
TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
3y ago
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.
The shipping situation is already having a pretty powerful impact on the tea scene and it is unclear if the old shipping situation will ever come back and what the new status quo will be. There are murmurings of shipping price hikes. Slower, more expensive ..read more
TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
3y ago
Occasionally I get asked what advice I’d give myself if I were starting over in tea. There’s a lot of things I could do. I’d undoubtedly point myself towards better sources and away from worst ones. I’d probably choose to travel sooner. One answer I might give to myself in this scenario is to tell myself to assume a default posture of skepticism.
An Ode to A Tea Addict’s Journal
One nice thing about tea instagram is that it tends to be very positive. This can be a reprieve and a nice break from either the real world or parts of the tea world that may be more negative or critical. I would not d ..read more
TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
3y ago
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, Banna. Banna contains two heavy-hitters 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 af ..read more
TeaDB | A Site about Tea.
3y ago
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 h ..read more