EverydayTeas, a vendor for bulk buyers

Some puerh drinkers like to have every-day teas on hand to consume whilst saving their very special teas for quiet moments. Weekends are often quieter with time to reflect and pay more attention to tea. Other folks need budget teas, and hopefully a new website everydayteas.net will fit the bill. A big complaint I get from tea folks in the US is the cost of shipping from China for drinker teas, and tongs especially. Luckily, everydayteas.net is located in the US with a variety of payment and shipping options available. Right now the site is offering a 10% sale on their inventory to celebrate their opening (code: everydayopen). Their headline "Fresh out of Coconut Oolong" might be an attempt at humor, or maybe serious, I just don't know.

Everyday Teas is a new vendor carrying the puerh line from Royal Tea New York, a wholesale enterprise in New Jersey I wrote about last month. RTNY has plans for 2017 puerh teas so keep an eye out for more options later this year on the Everyday Teas site. In addition to puerh tea, ET has a selection of yancha, oolong and other teas. I think most people can get on board with the stated mission of ET, which is “everyday drinking teas without breaking the bank.”

2016 Year of the Monkey teas by RTNY 

I received the three 100g beengs pressed by Royal Tea New York that I saw at the World Tea Expo but did not taste then. These teas are priced around $.20/g, but the most interesting aspect of these cakes and the other teas as well is that you can buy in bulk. In the case of the puerh teas, a tong is 10 cakes. That's a full kilo! Other teas can be purchased by the pound. Their Shui Xian looks rather nice and is $57/lb. Imagine buying a pound of that and only needing to pay a 1 lb postal rate in the US! With a heavier order, the company offers UPS and FedEx as well. Everyday Teas is serious about drinker quality teas, no longer do you need to order from overseas to get something in larger bulk sizes.

2016 Nannuo cake

I chose to try the 2016 Nannuo tea. I was surprised to see a Nannuo sell out very quickly this year from another vendor. I’m sure Nannuo varies a great deal in quality from the drinker level to the premium. Here is a drinker version that definitely doesn’t “break the bank.”

No chop here.

The leaves are easily separated from the beeng, the tea is actually more of a “tippy” tea with lots of buds. I sessioned 8g in 80-100 ml of water, increasing the water as the tea opened up.

Easy to break drinker.

I rinsed the tea three times for no reason except that I didn’t want a thin first brew. The first steep was surprisingly plummy and so was the nose on the wet tea. I dug around in the gaiwan for the reason, and found some larger red tipped leaves. It appears this cake is a mix of buds, bud/leaf combos and a few large leave that are “oolonged,” that is, they are allowed to oxidize slightly and kill off the enzymes. The reason this is done is to produce a cake of tea that is drinkable new, but the buds and leaf combos are left alone in their bitter state and processed normally. The entire cake will then taste smooth and slightly sweeter now, but those reddish large leaves will fade over time as the buds and other leaf combos ferment. If the entire cake was processed in the “oolong” fashion, I would be very disappointed, but I think this kind of compromise is common today to produce a “drinker” style tea.

Bud mix with redder large leaves intended to drink
and also age. I've brightened the photo a little to try and match
my view outdoors.

The buds and leaf combos are certainly bitter, and definitely so with the heavy leaf ratio I used. The plumminess of the tea changes over to a fruity bitterness around steep six or seven. Then I had to increase steep time around steep eight. At that point I went to do some housework and forgot about the tea in the gaiwan, and returned to an impossibly bitter brew.

The leaves do not pass the finger test and come apart when wet rubbed, but I expect that at this price point. Whether this tea will interest many long time puerh drinkers is probably doubtful, but maybe it will if you require an easy drinking young sheng and don’t want to pay a whole lot for it. The Bulang cake is described as bitter and for more long term aging, and I anticipate the Ai Lao to be on the sweet side similar to Yunnan Sourcing Ai Lao teas.

Full natural light in this photo shows the tippy mix.

The petite size of the beeng is a tiny commitment for new puerh drinkers, and quite honestly anyone new to puerh and other loose leaf teas, especially people in the US should consider this line of teas because of the small initial investment and local shipping. You can get a single cake of tea for under $30 including the shipping, or a package of another loose leaf tea shipped for under $15 total cost. This small amount of money is an excellent way to up your tea game, and the option is there to place a bulk order if you find something you enjoy. The site offers several payment types including ApplePay, which I am seeing more and more in stores. With a 10% off coupon, hard to argue with the prices here.

I think many of us long term tea drinkers are looking at prices this year with some trepidation. When the Great Benefits 7542 nearly doubles in price, we have reason to worry. This drought year may be a good time to buy a few things, but many of us might look to less expensive options this year and dip lightly at first into the pricey stuff to make sure we are getting the best teas. Much yet about this season has yet to sort itself out. In the meantime, keeping the pennies tight and sticking to our favorite drinkers sounds like a wise plan to me.