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It's All About Tea — hei cha

How To Store Pu-erh At Home For Aging

Posted by Boyka Mihaylova on

Ever since pu-erh tea became popular, pu-erh aficionados ask the same question again and again: How to age pu-erh at home? What are the best storage conditions? 

You don’t need a fancy cabinet or tropical weather. You need clean storage, stable humidity and temperature, protection from smells and light, and patience. – That’s the practical side. The other side is understanding what’s happening inside the leaf, so your choices are not guesswork. 

Sheng Pu-erh (aka Raw Pu-erh, 生普洱) keeps changing over the years because its chemistry and micro-ecology are still active enough to evolve. Shou Pu-erh (aka Ripe or Cooked Pu-erh, 熟普洱) has already undergone a fast fermentation (渥堆, Wo Dui – Wet Pilling), but it continues to settle over a long period of time. In both cases, the pace and direction of change depend on moisture and temperature. Below, we’ll dig into the transformations to see why dry and cool rooms slow aging to a crawl, how relative humidity and temperature control the tea’s moisture and reaction rates, and how to set up a simple home storage that works. (Read more)

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Liu Bao with Tiffany. Interview with an expert on Hei Cha

Posted by Misha Gulko on

During our last visit to China, while in Shenzhen, we visited Tiffany Lau. Tiffany is Liu Bao tea collector, editor-in-chief of "Liubao Tea Microjournal", national tea evaluator and identification expert of Liu Bao Tea. She served as a judge for Liu Bao Tea Battle Competition sessions. Over the years, Tiffany promoted Liubao Tea Culture to tea enthusiasts both domestically and internationally through many articles, videos, and offline tea gatherings. We had many teas and a long conversation about all things tea. This blog post is a compilation of our friendly talk over numerous cups of Hei Cha, put in the form of an interview for the convenience of reading. We hope you'll find it insightful. (Read More)

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Discovering Delights: A Tea Tasting Experience at a Tea Market

Posted by Boyka Mihaylova on

Today, we continue our tea tasting experience, climbing up to the third floor of the tea market's dedicated building. This place is reserved for private tea places. Here, tea owners often invite friends and customers and organize thematic events.

We enter a place with a charming atmosphere imbued with old-times charm. A collection of antique tea items, including various Zisha and Nixing teapots, graces the glass window, and the heaps of medicine-flavored tea promise a memorable experience for a tea lover's palate. This is a company dedicated to the exclusive sales of Liubao - a fermented tea from China. The owner greets us and starts preparing one of the exclusive teas we will try in today's tea tasting experience (Read More)

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On Tibetan Tea: Interview With a Tea Master And Brewing Tips

Posted by Boyka Mihaylova on

Today, we invite He Jin – a local producer of Tibetan black tea, and our proud supplier – for a chat. She will teach us on the various types of this Chinese fermented tea, and will share tips and tricks on storage and brewing methods in order to get the most out of this artisan tea.

He Jin lives in Ya'an city, where she's been engaged in Tibetan tea production for quite a few years now. She creates fine-quality Yaxi Tibetan tea in loose-leaf form and the region's signature Tibetan Jasmine tea. (Read more)

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Hei Cha: Tibetan Black Tea – a Thousand Year Old Treasure

Posted by Boyka Mihaylova on

 

Today, we'll discuss in detail a real treasure in the world of tea – Tibetan tea. It has a thousand-year-long story, dating back to the times of the Tang dynasty. Tibetan black tea started the history and culture of tea drinking in Tibet and the border area of the Chinese empire. It was the main reason for setting up what we know today as "The Southern Silk Road" and left a legacy that remains uninterrupted today, even after over a thousand years.. (Read more)

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