This has been an interesting thread. I have a few data points to add to the discussion. I live in Finland, which is due to the need to warm our houses most of the year in practice extremely arid for pu'er. I have been drinking tea from about 2008, and pu'er has been an interest from quite early on. ...
The list has gotten quite long! I wonder if we could highlight some books from it, clearly there are better books and worse books there. I just skimmed through the list and made a quick note of books I've read which I'd consider notable. In general, I have a rather strong interest for tea history an...
To continue more on this "neutrality", I have two zini pots from Wuxing Shanfang. One is what Chanting Pines calls "diamond grade", and one is "bronze grade". If drinking same tea from both pots, there are some brighter, lighter tastes which are present in the diamond pot, but I tend to miss them in...
I think "neutral" is entirely subjective. I'm used to having certain kinds of tea from certain teapots. If I'm sampling pu'er, I brew it in my pu'er pot. If I tried it with porcelain gaiwan instead, I would be introducing a new variable. My taste is "calibrated" to my teaware, my teaware is neutral ...
An interesting question. My first cakes, my first tong, my first yixing do all fall into the category of "tuition", but I have to say, I regret none of them. Each of those meant committing and daring more than I had dared before, and "be more bold, make more mistakes" would probably be my advice to ...
I also tried contacting him about an unfilfilled order - no reply. My impression is that HK was hit pretty badly in recent years, so the life for a small export business must have been rough. More communication would have been nice, still.
According to some articles cited in Tea: A Nerds Eye View, Yunnanese Assamica and Indian Assamica are actually rather distinct, and Yunnanese Assamice is genetically closer to Sinensis than to the Indian Assamica. Production matters too of course, but it seems that the underlying cause might be very...
My impression is that DHP can mean any of the following: 1: The original DHP bushes and their tea 2: Tea produced from the bushes grown from cuttings of original DHP bushes 3: Special blend 4: Blend of all leftovers roasted more 5: General name for any yancha Difference between #3 and #4 is interest...
This isn't necessarily during tea sessions for me, but in general, for my tea-life: craving for more tea. "Hmm, someone blogged about Farmer Leaf, it's been a while since I sampled them, maybe I should order some.." "Oh, this Lazycat Tea sounds like it might actually be a decent yancha vendor, I'd r...
Choosing only one was hard: why can't I say that I've been drinking tea for more than five years, and that I'm new to tea? Often I find that many of these qualities go together, I haven't really had teas which would make me say "The Qi here is fantastic, but the body is a bit lacking" or "this has s...
mbanu's point about rationing is interesting. Elsewhere in Global Tea Hut, Wude has often written that one of the rationales behind gfc is frugality, and he is of the opinion that trying to increase tea's patience, getting more tea out of the leaves is an old thing. He doesn't give any written sourc...
I've often wished there was more sources to the history of Gongfucha. I've wondered about the number of steepings as well. There was an interesting article by Tsai Yizhe on a quite recent GTH issue about the history of gfc. He seemed to be of the opinion that the fascination with number "3" was a la...
Technique: 1) Boil the water, add a bunch of leaves, boil a bit more, drink. 2) Add water, boil longer, drink. 3) repeat step 2 Heicha works really well, as does white tea. Surprisingly many teas boil well: Oriental Beauty oolong boils wonderfully. I'd recommend some caution when trying new teas: bo...