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Tea drawer, September 2017

This was my tea drawer last September, about four months after I first really got into tea drinking as a hobby. Taken just after receiving an order from What-Cha, my tea collection had taken over a large drawer in my kitchen. Today, a year since starting tea drinking, I have three large drawers full of tea, along with various bits and pieces of tea and teaware spread around my apartment.

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Gongfu and Western Brewing Guide

Here is a table I made describing how I brew tea. I generally follow these brewing parameters, but I also always adjust for the tea I’m drinking. I will also sometimes just use boiling water and flash infusions instead, especially with white teas, rolled oolongs, and sheng puerh. Happy brewing!

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“Accidentally Aged” Green Tea

Sometime last year, What-Cha was selling 2014/2015 “mystery” green tea for really cheap ($2.50/50g), so I thought I’d try some out. I received a 50g bag of green tea from the Choui Fong Tea Estate, Chiang Rai, Thailand. This tea was harvested in Spring 2014, from an unknown cultivar, at an elevation of 1200m above sea level. It’s not on What-Cha’s website, so I guess Alistair decided not to sell it. Luckily, it looks like this tea was also reviewed by Oolong Owl just last year (sold by a different vendor), so I can compare a “new” tea with my “accidentally aged” version.

This “Chinese style” green tea is pretty dark, looking much more oxidized than I’d normally expect from a green tea. You can see how dark the new tea is in the pictures in the Oolong Owl review. This “accidentally aged” tea, however, is a shade darker and seems to lack the “fuzzies” Oolong Owl mentions.

The aroma of the dry leaves is very fragrant – ripe fruit, malt, and cocoa – pretty much exactly what you would expect from an Assam black tea. Interestingly, Oolong Owl described her new version as “smelling like apples and nuts.” With three years age, the tea has gotten darker, malty, and the crisp notes have been replaced with something deeper and more robust.

I decided to steep this tea a little hotter than I normally would for a green tea. I used 5g of tea in my small 100ml glass teapot, 85C (185F) tap water, without a rinse. The first infusion was 15 seconds, followed by 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, and finally 90 seconds. After the eighth infusion, the tea was definitely done.

The wet leaves are lighter than before. You can some green leaves mixed among some very dark ones. The leaves look large, but broken. There are some twigs in there too. The wet leaves smell like baked bread, miscellaneous ripe fruit, and have a slight sourness that I cannot place.

The tea liquor is light amber, more yellow than red.

The first two infusions are round, with flavors of malt, bittersweet chocolate, and ripe fruit. There is a slight astringency on the inside of my cheeks.

I stacked infusions three and four, which elicited slightly more cocoa, some roasted notes (more like houjicha than a roasted oolong), but there is also more “green tea” leaf flavors. The astringency persists.

Infusions five and six were very similar to the last two, albeit with less malt and more of the leaf flavor. Despite its age, this is still definitely a green tea and I am starting to regret not brewing it at a lower temperature.

I also start to feel the tea effecting my stomach and have a slight pressure just behind my temples. For some reason, green teas tend to give me stomach and head aches – even despite having just eaten. I don’t drink green teas often.

The seventh infusion is lighter, somehow less astringent, and has a sweet vegital-“leafy” finish. There is an almost milky or nutty flavor at the very beginning of the sip, but this note dissipates quickly.

I can tell that the tea is almost done, but I give it another infusion.

The eighth infusion is much more astringent and has a leafy bitterness that I find unpleasant. I can still taste malt and cocoa, but it is masked by bitterness.

I would put this tea in the “more interesting than good” category.

Despite not finding the later infusions particularly pleasant, it was interesting to try this “accidentally aged” tea. With over three years in storage, the tea had clearly oxidized and developed a rounded, more robust, aroma and flavor. This is definitely not what you would find in a fresh green tea. Most interestingly, the earlier infusions were more like a black tea, while the later infusions were more like a green tea. Unfortunately, the flavor degraded quickly after the fourth infusion, so the “green” flavors were overshadowed by leafy bitterness and astringency. Had the order been swapped – crisp flavors first, then malty flavors second – it might have been easier to drink. In any case, it was an interesting experiment and a reminder to always try old teas before tossing them.

(Note: Even in my brightest room, the lighting in my house is terrible for taking pictures of my tea. So, I did edit these pictures to correct the white balance and slightly adjust the colors. Hopefully readers won’t think it dishonest.)

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19th Century Chinese Tea Processing

I found his article – Tea Processing in China, circa 1885: A Photographic Essay – while doing research for another post. These photographs (which are housed in the Baker Library at HBS), show Chinese black or oolong tea processing in 1885. The later few pictures show western buyers tasting tea and Chinese workers packaging tea for transport abroad.

Figure 1. Crudely or roughly processed tea leaves (maocha) from the countryside arriving at the tea-processing firm and being weighed and inspected.

Figure 2. A crew of workers engaged in rolling tea leaves in a large, shallow bamboo container, thus breaking the leaves to express their juices prior to fermentation or oxidation.

Figure 3. A team of skilled workmen pan-firing teas in large woks, a refining process that halted the fermentation or oxidation of the leaf.

Figure 4. Tea leaves undergoing charcoal drying in a tea-processing firm's premises.

Figure 5. A tea taster's room with three Chinese employees presiding over long rows of matched cups of brewed tea and dishes containing leaf tea-the tea taster's or "expectorator's" vessel (amounting to a glorified spittoon) is the hourglass-shaped device at lower left.

Figure 6. Western tea tasters (chashi or "charsees") exhibiting their hard-earned expertise; a minimum of five to six years of experience was necessary to acquire the palate and perception to evaluate Chinese teas for the export trade.

Figure 7. Packing finished tea into wooden chests, often lead lined. Here, the tight packing is ensured by the dark-clad worker at center who is stamping tea into a chest.

Figure 8. A train of porters with carrying poles lugging tea chests to the shipper; the colorfully decorated tea chests often became valued collectibles themselves after the tea reached its intended market.

Reference

Gardella, Robert, 2001. “Tea Processing in China, circa 1885: A Photographic Essay.” The Business History Review 75(4):807-812.

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Puerh Quality and Price, Part 1

After my last two posts on the price of puerh and age (Parts 1, 2) and then James’ subsequent posts (see 1, 2, and 3), I decided to investigate the concept of “quality” in the puerh market. In our articles, both James and I note that there is no good way for us to control for a tea’s quality in our analysis. Thus, we can’t answer important questions, such as how quality moderates the relationship between age and price. (E.g., Does boutique or factory tea appreciate fastest?) It is unfortunate that we do not measure quality, as it is one of the most common topics discussed in the tea community.

The problem is that quality is a difficult concept to operationalize, and even harder to capture empirically. The term “quality” itself is problematic because it denotes an objective standard that does not exist. At best, we can measure “subjective quality.” Taste is subjective and has a tendency to change over time. A tea that you loved just last year might not fair well if revisited today. Moreover, we also know that our impressions of quality are easily swayed by external factors, such as reputation or price. Thus, despite the fact that we spend a lot of time discussing quality, we don’t actually do a good job measuring it.

I want to address two questions here:

Has the “quality” of puerh changed over the past decade?

What is the relationship between price and quality?

To address these questions, I re-purposed my puerh sample with added controls for Steepster rating, a stand-in for “subjective quality.” I included a sample of puerh cakes sold by Yunnan Sourcing, as well as two samples of “private label” cakes produced by Yunnan Sourcing and White2Tea. You can read more about how the initial sample was constructed in this post.

For this article, I was less concerned with having a random sample than I was with having a representative sample. I think I accomplished this, but it is obviously never going to be perfect. By creating a sample of puerh sold by – but not produced by – Yunnan Sourcing, I have a pseudo-random baseline. I also included “private label” puerh from both Yunnan Sourcing and White2Tea, representing two distinct markets. YS is known in the online community for offering a good balance of quality and price. W2T is known for its tightly curated collection of high quality cakes. Both labels are consistently well reviewed. By focusing on these two vendors in particular, this sample offers good representation without being overly complicated.

Let’s look at the data.

Stable Prices

This first thing to note is that over the past decade, prices have remained relatively stable for both Yunnan Sourcing and White2Tea label productions. (Other producers were excluded.) As I noted in the last article, the price of YS label teas have decreased slightly, while W2T label teas have increased slightly. Neither trend, however, is statistically significant (p > 0.05) when controlling for other variables such as style (Sheng = 1) and shape (Cake = 1).

What has changed are the prices of the the highest priced teas offered each year. Among the W2T sample, the highest priced teas produced in 2014 and 2015 are both sold today at around $240 per (200g) cake, while the highest priced teas produced in 2016 and 2017 cost almost 50% more at $360 per cake. (While YS has also produced more expensive teas in recent years, these are not represented in this particular sample.) Thus, while the average price of puerh has not increased over time, there are more higher priced cakes available today than there had been in the past.

Subjective Quality

Using Steepster ratings as a proxy measure, we can also look at changes in “subjective quality” over time. Interestingly, there appears to be no change in the the average Steepster rating of YS and W2T label productions over the past eight years. Looking at the graph below, you can see that the regression lines for both YS and W2T are flat. OLS regression confirms that the relationship between “quality” and production year is not significant (p > 0.05).*

*All regressions included controls for puerh style and shape.

Now, it’s important to note that 43 of the 144 teas in the original sample were dropped from the analysis because they did not have Steepster ratings. Unsurprisingly, among these were some of the highest priced cakes W2T offers, as well as many of the new Spring 2017 productions. For example, neither W2T’s The Treachery of Storytelling series nor Last Thoughts were included in the sample. This has the effect of removing outliers and likely bringing down W2T’s average Steepster rating for 2016 and 2017.

Still, the trend also holds true for the “Other Labels” baseline, which you can see on the graph above. This indicates to me that the null relationship between  Steepster rating and production year is a global trend and not specific to recent YS and W2T productions. Puerh quality has remained fairly stable over time, mimicking the trend for price. That said, I want to be careful about what claims can be made with this data. After all, Steepster ratings only offer a snapshot of contemporary preferences, and thus do not reflect how tastes change.

Price by Quality

Finally, let’s look at the relationship between Steepster rating and price for YS and W2T label puerh. Interestingly, while there is no relationship between rating and price (per 100g) for Yunnan Sourcing, there is for White2Tea.

For every additional point in Steepster rating (e.g., 80 to 81), there is an increase of about $0.10 per 200g cake. This relationship is significant (p < 0.01). Granted, this is not a big difference, but it does indicate that there may be a relationship between the quality and price of White2Tea puerh.

I think that there are two interpretations of this finding:

If we take it at face value, then the analysis tells us that White2Tea prices their teas according to their relative quality, while Yunnan Sourcing doesn’t. Higher quality teas just cost more money, cut and dry. I do not think, however, that this is a good interpretation of the data. A better interpretation is that White2Tea’s customers have a slight bias toward higher prices teas, such that they expect that a higher price will indicate a higher quality. We have all heard about wine critics who rate the same bottle differently according to its supposed price. The same is true here, where a higher price tag makes us expect higher quality.

Perhaps that’s not quite right either. The truth is that – as I already noted – subjective quality is a hard concept to measure, and thus its relationship to other variables is hard to pin down. If I were to speculate, I’d say that there are both differences in the biases of YS and W2T costumers and differences in how Scott and Paul price their tea. These two factors both influence the relationship between quality and price, leading to what we see here.

Practically, this analysis highlights that there are many teas out there that are priced low relative to their quality. Deals can be had, if you look for them. According to the analysis, the best deals in the sample include 2015 Colbert Holland 1945 ($79, 88), 2015 2 Late ($55, 87), 2015 Poundcake ($49, 85), 2014 "Ai Lao Mountain” Wild Arbor Raw ($44, 83), 2016 "Big Snow Mountain" Wild Arbor Raw ($34, 82), and 2014 Autumn Jiu Tai Po Village Raw ($44, 81). Each of these cakes are priced slightly lower than average (controlling for vendor and production year), but have higher than average Steepster ratings.

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More white tea blending #whitetea #baicha #shoumei #bugbites #white2tea #w2t #茶 #차 #teh #чай #čaj #trà #ชา #té #tee #thé #tea

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White teas are my favorite; I’ll be excited to try this when it’s released.

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Tea Samples and “Paying Tuition”

One thing you read on tea blogs is that in order to educate yourself, you have to “pay tuition” by buying – and drinking – lots of tea. Clearly, the best way to learn about tea is to drink tea, but for new tea people it can be difficult to know where to start. I wrote this guide to provide an overview of my tea sampling strategy, as well as some tips for keeping “tuition” costs low.

If you have a limited tea budget – say $60 every other month – then there are a few things that you have to consider. First, you will want to place a large enough sample order to provide a variety of tea. The more samples you drink, the quicker you will learn what’s good and, importantly, what you enjoy. Second, you will want to buy enough tea to last until your next order. For me, that is about 5-6g per evening session or about 300g total. Third, you want to place a large enough order to receive free-shipping, or to justify paying for shipping.

Also keep in mind that because you want to limit shipping costs, it is probably best to find a single vendor who you can buy a range of samples from at reasonable prices. Moreover, you will want to strike a balance between price and quality and price per gram (preferably in that order).

Here are three examples:

For illustration purposes, I assume you want to maximize the number of samples, order at least 300g, and stay under $60 (including shipping).

Starting with the worst option for sampling, companies like Mei Leaf offer very small sample sizes (3-8g, avg. 5g) and relatively high prices. Consequently, a $50 order – not including shipping – from Mei Leaf might get you 15 samples, but only about 75g of tea ($0.67/g). At 5g per evening session, this will only last you two weeks. This is not a good “bang for your buck” and not worth the cost.

Alternatively, companies like Yunnan Sourcing are great because their teas are good quality and well priced. However, shipping isn’t free and “sample sizes” are much larger at 25g each (50g for the .us site). Thus, a $60 purchase of tea (from the .us site, with shipping) will get you 6 teas (50g each), or 300g of tea total (avg. $0.20/g). This is a great “price per gram,” but it will take a very long time to try all of the major tea types. Plus, if you don’t like a particular tea, you are stuck with 45g of tea you won’t be drinking.*

*This said, sampling teas from YS might be a good option for someone with a higher monthly tea budget. Assuming you want to focus on Chinese teas and will drink 50g samples (perhaps a couple), then YS is the better option.

If you did want to go this route, here is a sample cart:

Fancy Grade Dragon Well Green Tea - $8/50g

Yunnan Bi Luo Chun Green Tea - $6/50g

Fuding Bai Mu Dan White Tea - $8/50g

Imperial Grade Laoshan Black Tea -$10.50/50g

Pure Gold Jin Jun Mei Black Tea - $9.50/50g

Wild WuYi Da Hong Pao Oolong Tea - $10.80/50g

Total: $59.80 (including $7 shipping)

My personal preference is buying 10g samples, which is enough tea for one gongfu session (about 6g) and another session of either grandpa style (3g) or western style (4g) brewing. One of the best companies for this sort of sampling is What-Cha, who has both a wide variety of teas (120+ at last count) and 10-25g sample sizes. What-Cha also offers free shipping on orders over $45.

When I make an order from What-Cha, I usually buy between 10-15 teas at a time, usually between 10-25g each, which is about 250g ($0.24/g). I also try to order larger amounts (lower price/gram) on teas I know I will probably like.

For example, you might order the following:

Zhejiang Wild-Growing Dragon Well Green Tea - $4.28/10g

Fujian Bi Luo Chun Green Tea - $4.28/10g

Obubu Dark Roast Houjicha Green Tea - $7.89/50g

Guizhou Bai Mu Dan White Tea - $5.14/25g

Malawi Bvumbwe Peony White Tea - $6.04/25g

Shandong Laoshan Black Tea - $4.00/10g

Fujian Jin Jun Mei Black Tea - $4.76/10g

Vietnam 'Shan Tuyet' Black Tea - $6.59/50g

Fujian Anxi Tie Guan Yin Oolong Tea - $8.16/50g

Taiwan Four Seasons Oolong Tea - $4.55/50g

Taiwan Shui Xian Oolong Tea - $3.75/25g

Total: $59.44 (with free shipping)

That’s eleven teas for under $60, shipping included. Obviously you wouldn’t get more than a couple sessions with a few of the teas here, but you also get slightly more tea total (315g, or $0.19/g). This is what I’ve been doing and so far I have ordered about 32 teas from What-Cha (not including free samples). That’s about 25% of the teas offered on the site and over 500g total.

There are a couple downsides to this method of buying tea:

First, the biggest issue has to do with sample markup, which is going to be different for each vendor. Some quick multiplication shows that both What-Cha and Yunnan Sourcing markup their sample sizes about 2x higher (per gram) than the larger sizes (e.g., the price per gram at 10g is 2x that of the price per gram at 100g). That’s a lot of money, but it is the price you pay (”tuition”) for trying lots of different types of tea.

Second, once you start buying samples, you will start to figure out what you do and don’t like. (Oolongs, not greens; fruity, not floral.) At this point you’ll have to balance (1) having tea that you know you will enjoy on hand and (2) buying new samples to try. There is also a struggle between sampling (generalizing) and specializing. Next month should I buy random samples from What-Cha or do I make a special order of just puerh from White2Tea or Yunnan Sourcing?

For example, some months you may want to forgo your normal What-Cha sample order and instead try a bunch of puerh samples from White2Tea. I did the math and buying 25g samples of every White2Tea puerh cake priced under $50 would cost about $70 (including shipping) for 13 teas, or 325g total ($0.22/g). That’s a little more than you’d normally spend, but it still fulfills the other requirements. Making occasional orders like this can help you delve more deeply into categories you think that you’ll enjoy (or just want to learn about).

In the end, it’s up to you to decide how best to “pay tuition” in this hobby. Maybe you want to sample slowly, but buy enough of a tea to sample it multiple times. The upside is minimizing cost (lower price/gram); the downside is maximizing the time it takes to sample lots of teas. The opposite is true if you want to minimize time by sampling exclusively. I can easily pick 30 10g samples from What-Cha (or Mei Leaf), but that’s going to cost way, way more money. I chose something of a middle ground and it’s worked well for me.

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Mug collection, September 2017

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Sometimes it’s hard to decide what tea to order next...

I have a limited monthly tea budget, so I am always trying to balance (1) having tea that I know I will enjoy on hand versus (2) buying new samples to try. However, because free-shipping minimums are right around my absolute budget maximum, I often end up making just one significant order every other month.

Right now the struggle is between buying more samples from What-Cha to round out my tea knowledge (or just to stock up), make a big sample order of puerh from White2Tea or Yunnan Sourcing (pictured), or try some teas from vendors I’ve never bought from before. I’ve had my eye on some aged white and oolong teas for a while now, but who knows when I’ll get to ordering those.

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A Brief History of Gongfu Brewing • r/tea

I originally wrote this history of gongfu brewing for a blog post, but I thought that the r/tea community would appreciate seeing it too. I hope you found it interesting and that it serves as a useful reference.

This is a repost of an earlier blog post I did on the history of gongfu brewing and some of the misconceptions that arise online. This one is posted to r/tea.

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Age and Puerh Price, Part 2

I did some additional analysis on age and price of puerh:

First, I wanted to see whether the “quality” of puerh affects the relationship between age and price. To do so, I added Steepster ratings to the data set. Not every tea had a rating on Steepster, but 182 did (59.4%). I then reran the regressions using this new sample and added controls for average Steepster rating. I found that even when controlling for “subjective quality,” age is significantly related to price (p < 0.001).

Second, I was concerned that only having data on two vendors – Yunnan Sourcing and White2Tea – might sway my results. So, using Taobao I collected data on 12 years of Dayi 7542 Recipe cakes (N = 38). Using the search bar, I searched for the string “大益 7542 357克” and a date. I then recorded the prices of the cakes being sold. I only collected data for cakes where the number of prior sales was at least 1 and for cakes with “reasonable looking” prices (i.e., not the outliers). I also used pictures of the cakes’ wrappers to confirm that I was only recording cakes from the correct year. I do not read Chinese, so obviously the data collection was imperfect.

The analysis, however, did support my earlier claims. The correlation between price (per 100g) and age (years) is positive and actually quite high (0.83). In addition, OLS regression shows that this relationship is significant. For every year increase in age, the price of the 7542 cakes increases by an average of $0.89/100g (p < 0.001, Std Error = 0.10, Adj. R-Sq = 0.68). This indicates that my prior findings using data from Yunnan Sourcing are probably correct, though obviously vendors will differ in the amount that they increase their prices.

For more data-driven commentary on the western puerh market, take a look at this post by James over at TeaDB. He argues that western-facing vendors have shifted towards selling freshly pressed cakes, as opposed to sourcing older stuff. I don’t think this is too surprising. The vendors he is talking about – Bitter Leaf, Essence of Tea, Tea Urchin, W2T, and YS – probably make more money from their own label teas. Plus, it’s probably more fun to source maocha than someone else’s cakes. Still, it’s an interesting trend and he makes some good points about how it effects the tea community.

I think it’s really great that more tea bloggers are using data to address these types of questions. I hope to see more of that in the future. In the meantime, keep a look out for my next post: a discussion about how the “quality” of puerh has (or hasn’t) changed over the past decade.

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Tea Tribes

The first thing I did when I started getting into tea was read tea blogs. Lots and lots of tea blogs. I first found MarshalN (and read every post), who led me to TwoDog and Cwyn (and to a lesser extent Hobbes and MattCha), and more recently TheOolongDrunk and OolongOwl.

Then came Reddit. I created an account specifically to ask an (ill fated) question on r/tea and have since become a regular on the site. A number of bloggers also frequent r/tea – often to post their reviews – but there isn’t perfect overlap between the “Redditor” and “Blogger” tea tribes.

Similarly, there is a growing community on social media, including Facebook (Gong Fu Cha, Puerh Tea Club), Instagram, and Twitter. On YouTube, TeaDB has been posting review videos since 2013 and vendors like Yunnan Sourcing, Crimson Lotus Tea, and Mei Leaf have ongoing discussions with their customers. Finally, there is TeaChat and Steepster, both of which have vibrant forums. Global Tea Hut is a whole other world. Again, there is some overlap among the “tea tribes,” but their are many more people who frequent just one.

I think there are five major “tea tribes” out there: (1) Tea Blogs, (2) Reddit, (3) Facebook, (4) YouTube/Instagram/Twitter, and (5) TeaChat/Steepster. Each tribe has it’s own particularities, preferences, and norms.

There are actual consequences to this sequestering:

One example is how tries effect where “tea people” buy tea. When you compare the recommended vendors on r/tea versus groups/gongfucha, you will see that there are very few vendors that appear on both lists. The same is true for those vendors that come up frequently in community discussions. In real life, I met someone last month who mostly buys his tea from Mei Leaf and Tea Masters, whereas I mostly buy my tea from What-Cha, Yunnan Sourcing, and White2Tea. We both drink mostly sheng puerh and oolong tea, but I would bet that we frequent different online tea communities.

Another consequence of tribal nature of online tea culture is that we’ve moved away from what MarshalN described as a “constant tea meeting,” into a more fragmented community. No matter who you are, there is a tribe for you. And which tribe(s) you belong to determines the sort of lens you have about tea drinking and tea culture. Are you a “tea head”? Watch some Mei Leaf YouTube videos. Do you drink tea meditatively? Welcome to Global Tea Hut. Are you pragmatic? Reddit disallows health talk. Just want to talk about your favorite vendor? Join the Yunnan Sourcing fans Facebook group.

There are certainly benefits to having a strong, albeit fragmented, online tea culture. For one, it provides a way for “tea hermits” to come together despite spatial distance.  For two, it provides a way to bring new tea drinkers into the fold. It’s much easier to convert someone if you share the same space, online or IRL. On the other hand, tribes are not always the most welcoming to newcomers, nor do they always play well with others. They are also limiting, in that they tend to provide firm boundaries which define what is legitimate knowledge. Reddit (and I) will tell you that gongfucha is not a ceremony. Others will disagree.

I think it’s important to know which tea tribe you belong to and recognize that there are other perspectives out there too. That said, I will never join Global Tea Hut and I roll my eyes whenever Don Mei says “true tea.” (Though, admittedly, I do watch many Mei Leaf videos). These two tribes just don’t match my own tea practice, nor do they reflect my worldview. However, I am also cognizant that other people are part of these communities and that I should be less pretentious. A large part of this hobby is finding your place in the broader community, but it is also about striking a balance of tribalism.

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Age and Puerh Prices

I recently got really into puerh and spent some time thinking about the relationship between age and price. The common wisdom is that puerh tea will increase in price every year it ages, with a significant increase at 4-5 years. White2Tea even warns its customers of annual price increases. However, while there is a lot of folk wisdom about puerh prices, there is very little data. So, as I have done in the past, I decided to collect my own.*

*This post has some technical language, but I do my best to explain what I mean by technical terms. There is also a short appendix at the end.

Take a look at the following figure:

After collecting a random sample of 230 puerh teas offered by Yunnan Sourcing (as of August 2017), I graphed the relationship between price (y-axis) and age (x-axis) for sheng and shou puerh. First, notice that the relationship between price (per 100g) and age is positive (corr. = 0.37) and, if you run an OLS regression, significant. In fact, each additional year of age is associated with an average increase of $1.28/100g (p < 0.001), when controlling for style (Sheng = 1) and shape (Cake = 1) (Table 1). Second, looking at the graph, there is a noticeable increase in price around the tenth year. These trends are clearer still when you look only at sheng costing less than $50/100g:

In this subset of the sample, you can see a clear increase in puerh prices over the past 19 years (1999-2017). Moreover, at the lowest price range, there are obvious increases at years seven, nine, thirteen, and sixteen—or about every three years. (You can even see higher prices for 2008 puerh, perhaps a legacy of the bubble.) With a larger sample (and many more vendors), I bet that these trends would stand out more, though the trendline would smooth slightly. Another interesting trend is the small annual increase in sheng price for teas produced in 2013-2017. In those years, the relationship between price and age is actually negative. My guess is that puerh offerings (esp. the Yunnan Sourcing label) have become much higher quality since 2013. I think that’s probably a good thing.

The positive relationship between price and age also emerges when looking at regular productions. For example, the 2017 Menghai 7542 sheng costs $44, while the 2015 production costs $47. The Yunnan Sourcing label “Impressions” sheng costs $23 for the 2015 production, and $29 each for 2012 and 2014. At the higher end, the Yunnan Sourcing label “Mu Shu Cha Ancient Arbor“ sheng costs $120 for the 2017 production, $144 for 2014, $152 for 2012, and $154 for 2011. For shou, the 2017 Menghai 7572 shou costs $25, while the 2016 production costs $27, 2014 costs $29, 2012 costs $33, 2010 costs $35, and 2009 costs $38. For these four productions, the annual price increase is about $1.50-2.00 per cake at the lower end and $4-7 per cake at the higher end. 

Compare those trends with White2Tea:

White2Tea has the opposite relationship. The quality (and price) of high-end W2T teas have increased so much over the past few years that they’ve actually outpaced the price of age. Hence, the trendline on the figure above is negative, as is the price-age correlation (-0.20), though it’s not significant (Table 1).

What about YS and W2T “Label” teas?

Finally, looking only at YS Label and W2T Label puerh you can really see the differences in price and price/age. First, it’s worth noting that Yunnan Sourcing has been producing private label puerh since 2009. White2Tea, however, has only been producing since 2012. (I did not include W2T teas before 2014.) Second, the average price of W2T Label puerh is a little over two times higher than YS Label puerh ($47.89/100g versus $22.31/100g). Again, the association between price (per 100g) and age is positive (but not significant) for YS Label puerh and negative (but not significant) for W2T Label puerh.

These two companies provide a nice snapshot of the current (western-facing) puerh market more generally. Large-scale vendors like Yunnan Sourcing (perhaps especially Yunnan Sourcing) have a wider range of products (beyond their own label) at wider price points. On the other hand, there are smaller specialty vendors like White2Tea (or, for example, Crimson Lotus Tea) who primarily sell their private label teas and may have higher average quality. I think that this sort of bifurcation is actually good for consumers and is a necessary component of a robust puerh economy. However, if the price difference between “budget” and "specialty” vendors gets too large, then it will inevitably lead to a bifurcated customer base (and tea community). This has not happened yet, though the trends for W2T may foreshadow a future shift.

Here is how I did it:

To create the sample of Yunnan Sourcing puerh, I collected data on every puerh offered online by YS (sorted by age) produced 1990-2003 and then every third puerh thereafter. Teas that were “out of stock” were not included in the sample, unless they still had prices listed. Only pressings of 100g or higher were included. I collected data on price ($), weight (g), age (years), type, shape, and label. I did the same data collection for White2Tea puerh, except I included all puerh (over 100g) in their online store for which prices were listed. I do not include W2T “label” productions before 2012. Because the teas labeled 2012 and 2013 were both out of stock, the first production included was from 2014.

For analysis, raw prices (per cake) were converted into price per 100g and year was converted into age (2018-year). To check for robustness, analysis was repeated with price per cake and price per 100g. The latter was chosen for ease of interpretation. Controls for type of tea (Sheng = 1) and shape of pressing (Cake = 1) were also included in the multivariate regressions. While more data—both a larger N and more variables—would be useful for further analysis, it is not practical in this context. Moreover, limiting analysis to one large vendor (Yunnan Sourcing) and one specialty vendor (White2Tea) provides an interesting comparison, while limiting other effects (e.g., storage, shipping).

Below is a regression table showing the relationship between price (per 100g) and age (years), with controls for type of tea (Sheng = 1) and shape of pressing (Cake = 1). The analysis shows that among puerhs sold by Yunnan Sourcing, there is a positive and significant relationship between price and age (p < 0.001). Within that same sample, sheng puerh sells for about $8.80/100g more than shou (p < 0.01). There appears to be no effect of puerh shape, though that might be because sheng is unlikely to be pressed as anything but a cake.

Among YS Label puerh, there is no significant relationship between price and age, although that may be because the sample size is small (N = 82). The same applies for the two control variables. For W2T Label puerh (N = 61), the relationship between price and age is negative but not significant. Not surprisingly, there is a significant difference in the price of sheng versus shou, with W2T sheng costing about $37.98/100g more than W2T shou (p < 0.05).

(If you have any questions about the data analysis, or have suggestions for future data collection projects, please let me know.)

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Gongfu Brewing

Among internet tea people, gongfucha (功夫茶) is often represented as the best, most authentic method of brewing loose-leaf tea. New tea people tend to fetishize gongfu brewing and overemphasize its ritual. (On r/tea especially, posts asking about the gongfu “tea ceremony” are fairly common.) The more experienced you get, however, the more you start to think of gongfu as just one of many methods available to brew the best possible cup of tea. As a relative newcomer to gongfu tea, I’ve found it difficult to know what information is true and what can be safely ignored. To that end, I want to summarize the research on gongfu brewing and dispel some of the myths that I’ve encountered.

Gongfu is Old

Gongfucha (literally, “making tea with skill”) is often misrepresented as a traditional brewing style with ancient origins. In reality, however, the historical record suggests that gongfu brewing developed within the past 200 years.

There are two excellent academic sources on the history of gongfu brewing, both by Lawrence Zhang (2012, 2016). According to Zhang, contemporary gongfucha developed in 1970s Taiwan, though its origins are in an 18th century brewing style local to the Chaozhou region of China (bordering Fujian and Guangdong).

The earliest written mentions of gongfu brewing were by gastronome Yuan Mei in 1792 and bureaucrat Yu Jiao in 1801. Yuan, for example, described the practices of tea drinkers in the Wuyi Mountains who used (quoting Zhang) “pots that held no more than one ounce of water and drunk from cups no bigger than a walnut.” In 1937, translator Lin Yutang wrote that gongfu brewing was “an art generally unknown in North China” practiced only by “connoisseurs and not generally served among shopkeepers” (Lin 1940: 218). Zhang notes that prior to the 1960s, gongfu brewing was virtually unknown outside of Chaozhou.

In 1957, Weng Huidong wrote the “first dedicated treatise” on gongfu brewing, which, though never published, was meant to spread the local brewing style beyond southern China. Weng’s descriptions mirror what contemporary tea drinkers think of as gongfu brewing—high leaf to water ratios, whole-leaf tea brewed in small clay teapots, multiple quick infusions. Still, gongfu brewing was only a local custom and not well known (let alone practiced) outside of the Chaozhou region. Even as late as 1999, Chinese books on Chinese tea customs only mentioned gongfucha in passing. Again quoting Zhang (2016:55):

To the rest of China gongfucha was interesting, but no more so than any other regional tea culture; it was novel for its unique  procedures and implements. There were many other traditions in China for tea drinking.

The misconception that gongfucha has ancient origins derives from two sources. First, Lin’s writings on gongfu brewing include references to traditional Chinese tea culture (and philosophy) in an attempt to “emphasize that [gongfucha] was a part of the canon of traditional Chinese cultural practices“ (Zhang 2016:54). Still today, gongfucha is incorrectly associated with early writings on Chinese tea, such as Lu Yu’s The Classic of Tea. More recently, the confusion can be attributed to the introduction of chayi (“tea arts”) and chayiguan (“tea art houses”) in 20th century Taiwan. Zhang writes that Taiwanese tea house owners claimed that “they were recovering a lost tradition by means of emphasizing the pureness of tea drinking as an activity” (2016:56). Moreover, in the 1980s, Taiwan used chayi to lay its political claims as the legitimate China and keeper of authentic Chinese traditions (see also Kim and Zhang 2012).

Since the 1990s, many have tried to locate gongfucha in an historical narrative of Chinese tea drinking, despite the evidence of its newness. Contemporary gongfu brewing is represented as an extension of past practices “with one dynasty’s tea practice seen as building on practices of previous dynasties and culminating in modern tea arts” (Zhang 2016:60). It is, as Zhang argues, an “invented tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983).

Gongfu is Traditional

Similarly, gongfu brewing is often described as the traditional method of brewing tea in China. As noted above, this is not the case, with most tea in China being drunken either “grandpa style” or “western style,” using less leaf, more water, and longer infusions.* If anything, the history of gongfu brewing has proved that this brewing style is thoroughly not traditional:

Zhang (2016) points out that brewing with whole-leaf tea really only began in the Ming dynasty (1386-1644). Prior to then, in China tea would have been ground to a powder and whisked—like Japanese matcha—or “powdered and ground up, then boiled in water, with added fragrance such as spices and salt”—like Tibetan butter tea. In fact, the tea that Lu Yu described in The Classic of Tea would be unrecognizable to most tea drinkers today.

Moreover, as outlined above, contemporary gongfu brewing developed in 1970s Taiwan and was heavily influenced both by Japanese senchadō (“the way of steamed tea”) and Mainland tea culture (Kim and Zhang 2012; Zhang 2016). The development of gongfu brewing is a direct consequence of blending these various tea cultures. This fact, however, does not fit the mythology surrounding gongfucha, and is often left out of contemporary accounts. To this effect, Kim and Zhang (2012) write that:

Such omission is quite common among newer publications on tea, and reflects a growing sense that Chinese chayi, or as it is increasingly called, chadao, has always been in existence in China for over a thousand years. [...] Even Chinese works that discuss Chinese and Japanese transmission in tea culture tend to emphasize China as the source and Japan as the recipient and developer of tea knowledge, but rarely mention that the direction of transmission also occurred in reverse.

Ironically, those who practice gongfucha for its tradition (or aesthetics) are actually engaging a much younger practice; whereas an older, more authentic approach is to treat gongfu brewing simply as a means to an end.

* For western style, brew 5g tea/350ml water for 2-3 minutes in a mug or pot.

Gongfu is Complex

Calling gongfu brewing a “ceremony” has caused a lot of confusion among newer members of the tea community. Even Wikipedia gets it wrong. Often this misconception arises when people mistakenly equate gongfu brewing with Japanese chadō, which does have a ceremonial quality. Other times, I think it is simply the fetishization of Chinese tea culture.

This misconception has two parts, equipment and ceremony:

Though some gongfu enthusiasts do use large, complex tea sets—e.g., this one, which costs $300 and includes 40+ pieces—gongfu brewing can be done very simply. (See also MarshalN’s semi-sarcastic post on “essential teaware”.) For example, to brew gongfu at home for myself, I use only a gaiwan, a small mug, a tea towel, and a medium sized bowl for waste water. My tea set cost $20.

The “ceremony” of gongfu brewing need not be complicated either. While some people prefer to brew gongfu with large, flowing gestures and what appears to be significant difficulty, this is neither necessary nor particularly useful. Instead, it is best to brew quickly, carefully, and as efficiently as possible.

When I sit down for a solo gongfu session, I attempt to make the best tea that I can with as little fuss as possible. I start by preparing the table. I lay out a tea towel, on top of which goes a gaiwan, a small mug, and a bowl for waste water. The gaiwan holds 100ml of water and the mug holds about two infusions, so there is no need for a gongdaobei (“fairness pitcher”). I measure out my tea—using a gram scale—and heat my water—using a variable temperature electric kettle. I use water from the tap or, alternatively, from a filtered pitcher. Once all of my equipment is assembled, I start brewing.

Gongfu is Best

Lastly, it is a mistake to think that gongfu brewing will always be the best method of drinking a particular tea. In fact, for some teas, gongfu is a poor brewing method and returns substandard results. Imagine trying to gongfu a CTC-style Assam—chopped leaves will brew strong and bitter—or an Earl Grey—the first few infusions will taste heavily (almost chemically) of bergamot. On the other hand, some teas that I love to drink gongfu have fared poorly when I’ve tried brewing them western or grandpa style. Thus, if you only brew gongfu (or only western), you can end up with disappointing results. The trick is to match the tea with the right method, and then dial in on the specific parameters. For most tea people, figuring out how to brew our favorite teas is almost as important as sourcing those teas in the first place. 

One trick that I use when selecting a brewing method is matching it with the “traditional” origin of the tea that I'm drinking. So, Chinese greens like Longjing (”Dragon well”) or Taiwanese oolongs tend to get brewed gongfu with a ceramic gaiwan or grandpa style in a tall glass. Alternatively, CTC teas from India or Sri Lanka and traditional English flavored teas will always get brewed western style in a mug or pot. I almost always brew Japanese style green teas in a kyusu, which is a whole other process. Consequently, the style of tea matters more than where the tea was actually produced. So, Indonesian oolongs made in traditional Chinese or Taiwanese styles will still be brewed gongfu or grandpa style. Likewise, if your Taiwanese oolong gets severely broken (or if you are down to only fannings), it will be better brewed western style.

(Note: I cite MarshalN a lot in this post. He takes a very practical approach to gongfu brewing, which I tend to emulate in my own tea practice.)

[peterlista]

Good Teas, Cheap

Townsend’s Tea (Unknown) - $24.71/100g

David’s Tea (Zhejiang Province, Unknown harvest) - $28.20/100g

Rishi Tea (Hubei Province, Spring 2017) - $33.33/100g

Adagio Tea (Zhejiang Province, Unknown harvest) - $28.22/100g

Yunnan Sourcing (Zhejiang Province, Spring 2017) - $19.00/100g

Good tea doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact, if you do your research, good teas are often less expensive than bad teas. Take, for example, the five Longjing (”Dragon well”) teas above. I haven’t tried all of them, but I put them roughly in order of quality, from worst to best.

You can tell by the pictures how “good” these teas will be:

The Longjing from Townshend’s Tea (which is sold by a local tea shop) looks pretty terrible. The leaves are small, broken, and dark colored, which is indicative of poor quality green tea. (Also note how Townshend’s Tea doesn’t list harvest location or harvest date, so their tea may very well be a couple years old.) David’s Tea is slightly better, with less broken, more uniform leaves, and even a few buds. Still, the leaf is dark and not particularly vibrant in color.

In contrast, Rishi Tea and Adagio Tea both have relatively nice looking teas. The leaves are mostly unbroken, fairly uniform, and much brighter in color. You can also see plenty of buds and even some white fuzz (for viscosity), which is what you want in a good quality Longjing.

Finally, we have an “Imperial Grade” Longjing from Yunnan Sourcing. The tea has uniform, unbroken leaves, large buds with lots of white fuzz, and a bright green color. You can almost smell how vegital and nutty it will brew up. In terms of quality, this tea is heads and tails above Townshend’s Tea. In terms of price, it beats every other tea on the list. In fact, up to Yunnan Sourcing, the teas only get more expensive for each step up in quality.

There are many reasons why Yunnan Sourcing might have a better tea for a better price that other companies in the market. For one thing, YS is located in China and has more direct access to their tea than other “Western facing” companies. This likely (although not necessarily) means that tea from YS will have fewer stops along the supply chain, meaning a fresher, lower priced tea for the end consumer. YS is also smaller and less well-known than companies like Rishi or Adagio, and may very well have lower overhead.

My point here is simple: If you consider yourself a tea person, then do your research when buying tea online. There is literally no reason why you should pay 50% more at David’s Tea for a much lower quality product. I would also suggest not buying tea at most neighborhood tea shops. The prices at brick-and-mortar stores are always going to be higher than online vendors and it’s often harder to know exactly what you’re getting.

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How I Brew Gongfu

I have only been brewing gongfu style for a few months, but I have settled on a set of parameters that I think work well. These guidelines work for me, but should be adjusted according to your tastes. This is especially true of steeping times, which often need to be adjusted during a session.

Gongfu Brewing

Fill your gaiwan or pot 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 full with tea. Use enough leaf to cover the bottom of the vessel, but not so much that it restricts the tea from fully expanding. On average, lighter flavored teas need less leaf than do heavier flavored teas. Next, brew the leaves at an appropriate temperature for about 20 seconds for the first infusion. (Rolled oolongs should get a single brief rinse, while puerh teas should be rinsed twice.) For each additional infusion, steep for 5-10 seconds more. Some people also increase the temperature of their water (about 5F) for each new infusion, though I do not usually find this necessary.

Specific instructions

Green tea: Brew 4g tea/100ml water at 176F (80C) for 10 seconds, then add +5 seconds for each subsequent infusion.

White tea: Brew 4g tea/100ml water at 185F (85C) for 10 seconds, then add +10 seconds for each subsequent infusion.*

Oolong tea: Brew 6g tea/100ml water at 194F (90C), rinsed once, for 20 seconds, then add +5 seconds for each subsequent infusion. (Strip oolongs typically need slightly less leaf than rolled oolongs.)

Black tea: Brew 5g tea/100ml water at 203F (95C) for 15 seconds, then add +5 seconds for each subsequent infusion.

Puerh tea: Brew 6g tea/100ml water at 194F (90C), rinsed twice, for 10 seconds, then add +5 seconds for each subsequent infusion.**

Notes:

* Some people suggest brewing white tea at higher temperatures – even as high as 203F (95C). I find that you really need to adjust this to the specific tea.

** Others use more leaf when gongfu brewing puerh. For example, Glen at Crimson Lotus Tea, Paul at White2Tea, and tea blogger OolongOwl suggest using 1g/15ml or about 7g for a 100ml gaiwan.

EDITED 08/28/2017, 09/14/2017