Tag: pu-erh

  • The White Pu-Erh for the Right Time.

    At the end of June, Portland, Ore. was dealt one of its most severe heatwaves in recent memory. And I got the flu during it. A mere week ago, we were dealt another STRONGER heatwave . . . and I got the flu again. That’s eerily coincidental. Luckily, I caught this one in time and…

  • Old and Clean – A Pu-Erh Perplexion

    Okay, learning time. Everyone knows about black tea, green tea, oolong, and so on . . . but I’m sure there are some newbies passing by this article that don’t know what pu-erh is. Well, I’ll tell you, but I’ll keep it brief. In short, it’s heicha (dark tea). Or rather, tea that’s meant to…

  • Booze Teas for Boob Teapots

    Booze Tea for Boob Teapots – The Tea-Totaler Trilogy, Part 2 Around the year, 490 BCE, in the ancient Chinese kingdom of Yue, there was once a beautiful woman who was offered as tribute to an invading king. The woman was so marveled for her beauty, it was said that fish would forget how to…

  • A Saturday Evening with Friday Afternoon

    It was a Saturday, as the title suggests. Saturday, March 21, to be precise. It was a really shitty Saturday, in other words. The work shift was going frustratingly poorly. My student loan sharks announced they were tripling my monthly payment. And finally . . . a panic attack was looming. Not sure how that…

  • A Young Yiwu Pu-Erh Afternoon

    It’s an honest question. For years, I was taught that, sure, a young sheng (raw) pu-erh could be good, but it had yet to reach its full potential. After all, pu-erh was meant to be aged – to mature over time. Particularly the raw variety. However, I’m starting to rethink my stance on that. Sometimes,…

  • Tea and Tubas

    I picked a helluva month to quit drinkin’. Okay, not “quit”, per se, but definitely a self-imposed sabbatical toward beer. A beerbatical, if you will. Over the last couple of years, I’d naval-gazed my relationship with alcohol. Sure, I didn’t overdue it often, but questionable decisions had been made. That and it was no longer…

  • Prelude to a Tea Bar

    This all started back in the Spring…with Instagram. I was still fairly new to the site, and had one specific goal for it – make my blog pictures look prettier. I was a crappy photographer at best; a passable one at worst. Never did I expect to actually use it to network. Social or otherwise.…

  • Bada “Beeng”, Bada Boom

    Well…this is embarrassing. The day I finally got around to trying this – after whittling down my significant tea backlog – three revelations hit me square in the sack. Revelation #1: I had already written taster notes for this tea. Revelation #2: I had already taken pictures of the tasting experience. And Revelation #3: Said…

  • Three Roads to Fengqing

    Fengqing is a county located in Lincang Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. The Almighty Wiki listed at least four different ethnic groups indigenous to the region, two of which I recognized as pu-erh producers. In the early 1940s, the Fengqing Tea Factory came into existence and was instrumental in the development of Dian Hong (Yunnan black…

  • Nan Nuo Revisited – Still My Favorite Mountain

    Of all the tea blogs I’ve written, none have possessed the traction that my Nan Nuo Mountain coverage displayed. And I don’t mean in terms of viewership. (Let’s face it, what viewership?) But rather the enormity of vendors that specialize in single origin teas who’ve contacted me in its wake; I think the count is…