TeaChat

Hi, friends with good personaliteas!

I'd love to have your ideas and suggestions of Pu's (and other teas if you feel like) for $30 or less per month, since that's all a poor brazillian student can afford right now Suggestions from a seller like dragonteahouse or some stores that give free or very low shipping cost are even better

Now, I know that at this price range one will probably not find anything amazing, but I'm okay with something decent/drinkable.

I'm starting to feel that at this price range I'll be able to buy some decent teas like Oolongs and Longjing (~100g), but not Pu cakes...


Thanks a lot for your help!

I think it would be helpful if you tell us how often do you have tea i.e. everyday? once every few days? once every week? once every month? And how much leaves you would use per session, 2g? 5g? over 10g?

Hi Keiki,

I think good Long Jing and wulong teas are much more expensive than good Pu-erh tea. Try to get tea from lesser known areas, or small factories, I think Yongde tea, in general, is a good price for value.

Tea from Western China (Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou,Hunan) are often cheaper than tea from Eastern China (Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang...) because they are less famous and/or grow on much larger areas.

If you drink 7 grams of tea a day th at would make a 400 gram or 357 gram bing last you two months so I would research and pick a good $60 bing instead of a thirty dollar one. But depending on your taste the xiaguan ft jincha (mushroom) is a good inexpensive tea. Essence Of teas manHai is a good tea for everyday drinking if you figure $600 for two months.

apache wrote:I think it would be helpful if you tell us how often do you have tea i.e. everyday?

Apache-san, everyday, around 2 pu sessions and 1 green session + 1 green cold tea to bring to classes . ~5g per session. Will the caffeine kill me in the long run? lol

bannacha wrote:I think good Long Jing and wulong teas are much more expensive than good Pu-erh tea. Try to get tea from lesser known areas, or small factories, I think Yongde tea, in general, is a good price for value.

Thanks for the great tips, bannacha! I will try to get some info on Yongde teas.

gasninja wrote:If you drink 7 grams of tea a day th at would make a 400 gram or 357 gram bing last you two months so I would research and pick a good $60 bing instead of a thirty dollar one.

gasninja, it's more like 20g a day I blame mostly teachat for introducing me to the tea addiction Thanks for the xianguan and $60 cake suggestion!

Someone recommended the Mengku Wild Arbor King... $30 for a 500g decent cake. What do you guys think?

It helps to work out how much per g you are prepare to pay for tea. Let say $1 per day and 5 g you use. With that, you are talking about 20 cent per g. Of cause, you have to factor into shipping cost, bank charges etc. so let say take 30% off, that will give you 14 cent per g. For a 357 g cake, this would be $50. This would be 300 RMB cake you are looking for. With 300 RMB cake, there is a lot of choices for young sheng or shu, but won't be enough for single mountain, gushu, LBZ, Yiwu or aged sheng etc.

Keiki wrote:
Someone recommended the Mengku Wild Arbor King... $30 for a 500g decent cake. What do you guys think?

the early ones where supposedly decent stuff for the price. Never tried it
Myself.

Up your budget and buy samples.

Shipping alone should cost more than $5 to Brazil, which is rather high when compared to the amount that you plan to spend.

What kind of teas / taste do you like / are you looking for?

Do you have a gaiwan, cups etc. already?

Check out http://www.white2tea.com/ or http://www.yunnansourcing.com/store/cat ... 1711641099 and buy some samples.

Samples start from $1 per 25g.

Both ship from China, which offers reasonable shipping rates to Brazil, but it'll be still rather high when compared to your total budget.

Mengku Wild Arbor King
http://www.yunnansourcing.com/store/pro ... oduct=2243

I think the most famous one is 2006. I got a 2009 and I still got about a quarter left and I haven't touch it for ages. Taste wise, it's ok and it's a little bit more drinkable than a lot of recent Dayi standard recipe cakes. What more, you don't need any tools to take off a chunk for brewing, you can just do it with your bare hands.

I was curious about the WAK too. I figured 2006 would be the better one out of YS selection since it was the year that it won and was first introduced.

http://www.yunnansourcing.com/store/pro ... roduct=220

$89 for 1000g brick. That's cheap coming out to 31 bucks/357g cake. Anyone enjoy the 2006 from YS?

I've got some cakes of the 2006 WAK, and I'm not sure 6 years of Kunming Cryostasis has done wonders for this tea. I'd love to lay hands on some Hong Kong (or Jing Hong) dry stored samples of this one.

ChengduCha wrote:Samples start from $1 per 25g.

Both ship from China, which offers reasonable shipping rates to Brazil, but it'll be still rather high when compared to your total budget.

Hey Cheng, thanks for the tips!
The YS shipping for 100g worth of samples was $19 tho... YS and Chawangshop have great cake prices but the most expensive shipping that I've seen

So the 2006 WAK it is... are the 2011 or 2012 versions any good? Those are the only ones really close to $30, cake + shipping.

The 1000g brick is awesome

If you go for the 1kg brick, make sure you really like it before you part with your cash, or it would be a very 'useful' paper weight!

Speak from my own experience with other cakes.

Keiki wrote: The YS shipping for 100g worth of samples was $19 tho...

Are you sure? There is no way the shipping costs that much.

The real shipping rate is shown at checkout, when you have entered your shipping address, never mind what you see before it.

Sad but true, my friend...