How to spend a $600 stimulus check
Happy new year! I hope you have all been staying safe out there. Maybe staying in has allowed you more time to drink tea. In the US, the government has decided to send out one-time $600 stimulus checks to certain citizens to cover the economic strain of the past 8 months since the last (and…
Bitterness
Bitterness is typically regarded as an unpleasant element of food and drink, but it can become enjoyable or even desirable when it comes to tea. Discussing bitterness can be difficult as the word is used to describe what I see as multiple, separate topics. Sometimes, I really crave bitter teas for their dry and medicinal…
Tea & radical imagination
I haven’t kept up with my recent posting output and I didn’t get a Weekend Review out, but right now it feels a little ridiculous to spend time writing about tea at all. I hope you all are staying safe. I want to make it clear that this blog supports the abolition of police &…
Wudong Tea Manlouxiang Dancong – Weekend Review
Wudong Tea (chaozhouteagrower.com, @wudongtea on Instagram) is a direct-from-farm operation that sells dancong oolong to consumers and wholesale. Their IG account says they are a family operation that has been producing tea for 80 years. I’ve found them to be a great source for value dancong with their teas in the 10-15c per gram range.…
White2tea 2016 Diving Duck – Weekend Review
White2tea has started rolling out their spring selections for the year, so I decided to stick with one of their teas for this week’s Weekend Review. I’m going to refrain from ordering any new stuff for a few weeks due to the current shipping woes between China and the US, so please don’t buy everything…
A tea briefer, part one
I’d like to work on building up educational content on this blog over time. There is a wealth of information about Chinese tea online, but it is spread across innumerable blogs, forum threads and YouTube channels. It’s good to have many different sources of information to give a sense of the full range of opinions…
White2tea 2016 Heart of the City – Weekend Review
It’s time to start getting reviews going – for now my plan is to stick to doing at least one in-depth review per week. The ideal review for me combines a high level of detail along with broader discussion. This week, I drank White2tea’s 2016 Heart of the City sheng puer. Their website describes this…
“Chinese tea ceremony”
Gongfucha is often described as a “tea ceremony”. The most elaborate setups include aroma cups just for sniffing and warm every piece of teaware with hot water prior to the two or three rinses of the tea. After washing, rinsing, swishing and sniffing, it might be time to taste the tea. This process can be…
Puer theories
Depending on who you listen to, you may end up with all sorts of different theories about puer. There are the elite ‘old tea’ guard who refuse to drink sheng younger than 15 years or who meticulously track certain vintages of Chinese factory productions. For these folks, the theory of puer tends to lean toward…
How did I end up here?
I came into my tea habit gradually. I started drinking coffee relatively young partly due to my dad’s pot-a-day consumption (over the years I realized he brewed his coffee quite weak in order to allow for 6-8 cups a day. His consumption has slowed down a bit in recent years which is probably for the…
The Kettle 