TeaForum.org

It’s their signature product, so probably should be good. So tea growing in natural conditions (in the forests of TongMu), among other plants, without much intervention is labeled as yefang. I would think this would be very difficult to harvest with small yield, so very expensive and hard to get. I...

Wild has 2 meanings. The kind of tea that is of minimal intervention, grown in natural conditions, harvested once or every few years, is designed as 'yefang'. You can think of yefang as 'forest' tea. Qizhong means native variety, as opposed to the more commercialized varieties. They tend to be slowe...

Reporting back... I've had Voss and while its better than most other European water brands, it has a kind of weird plastic taste especially if its stored in warm warehouses. Water with especially high silica, that is sourced from underground volcanic rock or passed through layers of rock formation, ...

Continuing with my water experiments, now using Volvic water to brew sheng pu and yancha. I got to say that its disappointing. Muffles and mutes the sheng pu, while it performs better with yancha - it doesnt bring out the flavors of yancha. The only positive thing I see is that for those adverse to ...

I recently emailed Hojo about Mingqian tea and he had very strong opinions in his response: We do not carry Mingqian tea at our store. The reason is simple—Mingqian tea is of poor quality. While it is commonly believed to be high-quality, this is merely a marketing tactic to sell tea to uninformed ...

https://down-sg.img.susercontent.com/file/sg-11134207-7rent-m296osl1o4w0c7 Trying out Tibetan water. It's very soft and makes tea sweet and clean, however it does pull out more astringency and my teas tastes flatter with it, barely any "body" or texture from my brews. So far not impressed, will try...

I've been thinking about old trees yan cha recently. Recently I saw a video from a guy who was drinking an old tree yan cha and talking about it like old tree yan chas are better. This has been the opposiute of my personal expirence. When I go to Wuyi I often get shown old trees - Lao Cong- with a ...

I bought small samples of Hojo's Lapsang Souchong Hua Xiang and Lapsang Souchong Qi Zhong, but haven't tried them yet. Yesterday I had the 2015 Yanxun Xiaozhong from DXJD and it was super smokey, even after ten years of age. It wasn't tannic or bitter, just full of clean pine smoke. I couldn't real...

I've been finishing a few yancha samples, getting towards the end of a packet of some very nice ShuiXian from what I understand to be a higher part of HuiYuanKeng - FengShuKe (枫树窠) , and enjoying some heavily-roasted 2002 TieGuanYin from LiShan. I've also been finishing some of Ethan's teas when th...

I cant compare it to DXJD. but I its my favorite red tea that I've had.

No fancy pictures or anything... just sipping some good old 2017 TLH from Shuiliandong.

Vacuum sealing is too troublesome unless one sets aside a certain amount to store, while initially having a fixed amount to drink and enjoy over the years. I suspect HOJO recommends vacuum storing only if its feasible. However, I think airtight storage is sufficient and the results one gets is almo...

Minerality is highly sought after in wines especially burgundy chardonnay and german rieslings. I know scientific studies in wine indicate that theres little evidence to suggest higher concentration of minerals in soil would necessarily lead to higher concentration of biochemical compounds in the pl...

Vacuum sealing is too troublesome unless one sets aside a certain amount to store, while initially having a fixed amount to drink and enjoy over the years. I suspect HOJO recommends vacuum storing only if its feasible. However, I think airtight storage is sufficient and the results one gets is almos...

It was stored (not vacuum) inside a large foil bag and forgotten. If you're planning to age any oolong, its best to seal it as tight as possible which means either squeezing out as much air from bags or taping the lid and sides of your tin container. That way it won't acquire any storage notes while...