Lately I detect a downer note in the puer chatter, well more than one. Everybody western is whining about something, the tea they have, the tea they don't have. What they paid too much for, whatever their collection consists of is all wrong and needs to be something else. Some whines are worthy, like needing to buy tea aged in a restaurant basement and help translating the menu. Others, like "my…
You have seen this before. Right, so let us see the tea writer starting off the new year on a wrong foot. I killed a tea. Not much tea, but still, some, and cannot be replaced. Like all the mistakes I regularly make, I try to learn something even if doomed to repeat. So what happened? We have had winter and -25C temperatures for several weeks now, and I ventured onto my unheated porch to find I…
Dear Lew, Thanks for the email. I know this is Thanksgiving weekend, but not sure what year. The blasts from the past are blaring fast. Somehow I just remembered I have a tea blog. No joke, I been off tea for a little over a week after getting a tooth pulled, my first non-wisdom adult tooth, the kind when they pull it nothing grows back. "Your dental hygiene is perfect, why do you have a…
History repeats itself, and to find any progress I have to look darn close. I could subtitle the whole thing Mr. B, the Tree and oh yeah, the Tea. Storytelling is still Treacherous. I am completely re-experiencing a blog post from 2016 , and not of my own free will. To refresh the memory, Mr. B is a crazy friend of other crazy friends, and he's manic again. Oh yes, he's been in the blog before. He…
Here is a truth to let sink in. Your entire puerh tea collection is 10 days to 3 weeks away from being entirely fermented and done. This is all the time it takes to break down the cell walls of our tea leaves, release the juices and convert the sugars with bacteria and fungi. This is what we call composting, by adding heat and humidity in sufficient proportion to begin to rot the tea just enough…
Bonston BP-12 Automatic Brewer Tailspin over the tariff rollercoaster to decide whether I really need anything. The true answer is always a hard no, but I normally get past my inner no without issue. Then I logged into Yunnan Sourcing US and my account says my last purchase was February 2020... That can't be right. I know I bought that unnecessary Mojun Fucha brick, it was shipped from Texas…
8th May 2025 9 May 2025
Where is all the panic? Massive tariffs loom before us in buying tea direct from China. You'd think puerh heads in the US might take out a 3rd mortgage to buy up whatever last of the Lao Ban Zhang or the 2020 anything they can get their hands on, in shipping multiples of $800 orders or less to avoid the previous set of tariffs upon which the new 125% will apply. One expects the Yeeon aficionados…
Example of shelf stashing. This year my stash goal is to deal with the little bits and bobs of tea I have stored on my tea shelves, in every sort of container imaginable, including inside teapots and other teaware. These are mainly remainders of samples, the last bits of a beeng, or abused tea experiments. My stash behavior is a form of squirreling that I need to get in check. I am tired of the…
Nothing is worse than a well-endowed whinge. We are even more repulsed when such a whinge is a boring repeat of a topic covered ad nauseum on blogs and forums. The following has been said 10 million times already, but I'm now fed up and I am just saying it. For the most part, I have stayed away from discussing puerh factory blends and processing along the lines of so-called "modern" puerh teas.…
My thanks to Chen Sheng Hao for sending over their latest sampler pack, the 2022 Yi Pen box. 2022 Yi Pen Chen Sheng sampler Also, my apologies for the long delay in getting something posted about this box. I have been out of commission with sheng drinking again due to health issues. The Yi Pen Cheng Sheng sampler box is a fairly good deal considering you get 7 x 28g mini beengcha, ready to break…
November 3, 2023 Dear [Provincial] What a wonderful lunch we had on Sunday, I appreciate very much the time I spent with you and the others at the table. I hope such an event will not be the last; indeed, I have this thought each time I visit even if the next thought to myself is that I cannot count on it. Small point of business: I find myself still thinking of the question you asked about the…
Welcome to 2024, and the Year of the Dragon! I hope for an auspicious year for you of tea enjoyment, tea shopping, if you are doing any, and cooperative storage. The new year naturally turns our thoughts to our puerh tea blessings, and I for one have much to thank the tea gods, tea factories, tea vendors and the people of Yunnan for their hard work. Know that your tea is enjoyed around around the…
original map by chinatouristmaps.com A loose leaf tea fan eventually discovers puerh tea, this is inevitable. People who last past that first gongfu invariably start an online search to learn more about this type of tea, and eventually they fall headlong into the rabbit hole of the hobby. The rabbit holes are full of enthusiasts, elite gamers of paper wrapped camellia sinensis assamica x assamica…
Lately I don't really have a tea drinking strategy. I start with a ragged impulse coming from my core of tea neediness, a craving of whatever puerh caffeine buzz I can get, stumbling to shelves, crocks and boxes to find something. A random sampling of teas, a bit of new tea, a wtf is this tea, or nope, I just drank that a week ago. Or something closer to desperation, because I am unraveling, or…
I am still here in the asylum of tea madness and increasingly disorganized. Some of you are emailing, thank you for checking in. Overall, things are okay with me, though I am suffering more and more with don’t-give-a-flyingfuck-itis, which a privilege of retirement. Not gonna lie though, I fell off the blog wagon, and everything else mostly, as two years nursing an elderly cat along with its…
My primary relationship in life is my puerh tea collection, and the rest of the time I maintain an appropriate facade of caring about anything or anyone else. My dear tea and I endured the pandemic, and we have not yet had Covid. Far more real at the moment is the post-pandemic economy, and this is shifting my relationship with my tea somewhat. Just over a year ago, I was startled to read more…
Back in October 2022, I caught a tweet by Max Falkowitz saying a friend of his opened a new tea pop-up called Broken Cup Teahouse , please offer some support. I’m happy to try a new vendor once, so I ordered 30g of a “1993 Old Style Narcissus,” a Wuyi Yancha. Along with the order I got a free 5g of 2021 Dark Honey, a hongcha. I probably should have got round to drinking these teas sooner, because…
1. Someone brews you a teabag, and you taste the bag. 2. “What does it say on the box?” registers as, “what box?” 3. Do you like mushrooms? Means not pizza. 4. You would never brush your teeth before puerh, and depending upon what you drank maybe not after. 5. Still no room on any shelf, anywhere in the house. 6. In the event of severe supply chain issues, I’d still rather have all that tea than…
Charles Buell Anderson Photo findagrave.com This is one of those stories I have to get down. I am divesting myself of the shit that happens that you cannot make up. In this rather bewildering story, I managed to meet a worldwide cult leader and walked away mostly unawares. Wisconsin is full of cult-y people; actually the whole world is, and has ever been so since Adam said hello to the snake and…
By coincidence we are on the last day of 2022, but I have to get real. Plans have to be made for disposal of the tea collection. For a few years now I’ve been comforted by the plan I had of a tea vendor to pick up my tea etc in the event of my demise. Offer my son a few dollars, he will be glad to be rid of it all in one UHaul. But this is all starting to feel a bit personal hygiene. Nobody is…
The back facade windows all faced Lake Superior. One of the projects I always intended to get to in my life is doing something with a set of photos I took in high school. For more than 50 years, I have hauled around a set of film negatives that I took of Pure Air Sanitorium in Bayfield, Wisconsin. The building no longer exists, the moldering remains finally demolished in the early 1990s. I felt…
I just cannot say no to free tea. Nobody teaches a puerh tea lover this skill, and whatever about tea drinking is supposed to teach moderation, well this lesson has thus far escaped me. Really I am not planning to continue tea reviewing, but when CSH messaged me on Instagram asking if I want their new sample box, what I managed to type was "thank you for thinking of me." And left it at that. Next…
The end of the line on this blog is closer now. I am not quite there yet, but I can see the end of Old Cwyn and her tea insanity. Nature, and probably poor nuture combined, are having their way with me slowly but surely. While I have no immediate plans to end our tea writing, we are getting to where plans must be made going forward. At the beginning of this blog, in the very first entry, I wrote…