the path less taken

puerhuk, sold out

also from today, allegedly 80s Liuan - very, very intense effect on the body. incredibly heating from the chest outwards, energising, slowly builds until it strikes all at once. profile is clean, lively, and slightly oaky. a bit too intense on the body though.

#teasky #gongfucha #heicha

a blue-white porcelain teacup on top of a wooden tray, with a tan round teapot next to it.

2016 Gold Coins by @onerivertea.bsky.social: yellow tea, yellow clay. works better than it has done previously! muting let me push this tea a bit further, highlighting sweetness and clarifying notes. i can finally tell you the stonefruit that lingers on the palate: peach. good yellow tea

#teasky

good earl grey exists!!

porcelain teacup next to red clay teapot atop loofah in bowl

today i drank my first possible laobanzhang, from 2005. at a very low ratio (i used 2.6g) it still proved very interesting, with a pleasant bitterness that quickly transformed into sweetness, reasonable longevity, interesting notes and a light hint of plum at the very end. #teasky #puerh

is slipstich jonia or is this a mistake?

yabao in a pot is interesting, i figured it'd get pretty muted

drinking what i thought was "03 Fountain of Youth" and remarked 'wow, this tastes a lot like "18 Double Shot"' and then i looked at the bag and it was in fact "18 Double Shot"

probably a bit too expensive though..

as usual, guangyungong is weird stuff, today from EoT and the 80s. previous GYG I had was cold in profile and distinctly mineral, today is warming and forwardly woody and spicy, with more (distinct) woody undertones, as well as an odd resemblance to fernet branca

#tea #teasky

biluochun isnt a yunnan tea, so a yunnan blc is a lower priced replica. yunnan and sichuan often make replicas of other region's green teas. afaik the sweetest dew is well regarded for BLC: sweetestdew.com/products/pre...

looks to be the only listing left

i'm a person who insists on knowing as much about tea as possible, and even then, i seem to learn about at least one new style a week

you always on that damn liubao

yea, definitely

I've forgotten about a steep maybe 5 times in the last year, and today I forgot two of them....

There's a general attitude in tea, that "good tea can take whatever you throw at it". This is often in the context of green tea and boiling water, but today, it certainly applied for this yancha

today i drank Mikazuki Tea's Yan Ru, among other things. despite my brewing being beyond unforgiveable, this tea was delicious. you won't get more notes, because I don't have any, other than that it was good. happy belated year of the horse

oriental beauty, darjeeling first flush and white tea produce really refreshing coldbrews

bitterleaf and ort both released samplers recently that cover a lot of atypical styles between them!

totally unique*

really gaining an appreciation for the true breadth of the genre of liubao, had several liubaos recently that showed off totally aspects and probably qualify as their own subtype, but are so heavily underrepresented

XKCD 2501 edited to say Person one: PUERH IS SECOND NATURE TO US TEA DRINKERS, SO IT'S EASY TO FORGET THAT THE AVERAGE PERSON PROBABLY ONLY KNOWS A COUPLE DAYIS AND MAYBE A XIAGUAN OR TWO. Person two: AND YANGQINGHAO, OF COURSE Person one: OF COURSE. Caption: EVEN WHEN THEY'RE TRYING TO COMPENSATE FOR IT, EXPERTS IN ANYTHING WILDLY OVERESTIMATE THE AVERAGE PERSON'S FAMILIARITY WITH THEIR FIELD.

It appears to have gained a particular air. Puerh is the thing "serious tea drinkers" drink, and "serious tea drinkers" have storage, and to be a "serious tea drinker" one needs to do all the things a "serious tea drinker" does

a piece of bamboo basket was in my liubao today

really polishes off a session and makes for a nice contrast to the hot and much thinner steep at the end

for a while my favourite yancha pot gave that rinse a really wine-like quality, was awesome

Who needs chocolate when you have the yancha rinse you set aside to cool before the sesh? #teasky

Hong Kong Traditional storage tea is very, very, very aggressive, earthy and offputting to most people, but has good digestive properties and was served alongside greasy food (yum cha) to help things along. Shou makes it easier to get a tea with the same properties!

I think this observation holds up a bit better when you compare Hong Kong Traditional storage examples of both. As far as I've found, Shou was developed as a process to economise the production of drinkable puerh, which took at least 5 years of cellar storage, and reduced it to a few months

a double walled larger pot is something you could do a lot of cool stuff with, i think. if you preheat it well you could get a really long and sustained high heat brew, which is gonna be pretty well suited for aged white, brick tea, ripe teas, etc. i hope you have fun with it!!

but, if you don't find it disagreeable, you don't need to worry about changing anything! the best guide for your taste and preferences is you. all that matters in the end is that you like it