; Cwyn's Death By Tea: 2025 ;

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

A New Old Shou

Bonston BP-12 Automatic Brewer

Tailspin over the tariff rollercoaster to decide whether I really need anything. The true answer is always a hard no, but I normally get past my inner no without issue. Then I logged into Yunnan Sourcing US and my account says my last purchase was February 2020...

That can't be right. I know I bought that unnecessary Mojun Fucha brick, it was shipped from Texas because Scott imported a bunch of them. But I might have bought it on the dot com site, and it got shipped from Texas anyway. Have I really purchased NOTHING from Yunnan Sourcing US for 5 whole years?

No, no, no. I feel like I just woke up by looking at my account. The answer is my Son is drugging me. He put a mickey in something for the past 5 years, probably because he saw most of his inheritance turned into tea and thought, yeah enough of that. So I may be surfacing or the tariffs are screaming through all the drugs.

Sometimes a person needs stuff. I have to throw out the plastic Kamjove gravity steeper. Why I needed and used a plastic teapot when I have the best ceramics in the world, I will never know. Plus it had a black plastic top, black plastic which is recycled PC wires containing forever chemicals that turn progeny into two-prongfoot abominations, and then I proceeded to drink boiling water from the thing??? It HAS to go.

(to be fair, this is just my age-related dementia because the Kamjove says it has food-grade PC material.)

Luckily, Scott thought ahead to when I finally reach peak paranoia conclusions by stocking an all-glass gravity steeper. This is the Bonston BP-12 Automatic Brewer. What a beautiful piece it is, the lines evoke something-something-EU mid-century moderne, with the wood handle and lid. At $54 of course this is more costly than the plastic Kamjove TP-160 ($19.25 US), but you will easily save that discrepancy down the line by passing along less in the family tree. 


My session photo is brewing hong.

The wood lid contains a magnet, so the lid snaps onto the pot, the mate is the metal rod. After filling with water, just snapping the lid on will drain the liquid down. But then you turn the lid a little and lift the top off, this locks the steeper again for the next brew. The drainage is instantaneous. 


2009 Plum Blossom Shou cake

I added this little shou cake to my YS order, 2009 Plum Blossom Mini 100g because it's too cute, shaped like a mooncake. On the flip side of it is embossed the tea character. At $18.75 for 100g, this is a bit expensive for shou, somewhat justified by the purported age. I told myself that I can drink it up in 3 sessions in the Bonston because of the 200 ml brewing chamber and 800 ml total capacity. 



The tea opens with dusty shelf/closet note, confirming dry storage, because the tea has to sit some years to get this opening. It's the reason to drink shou old, you don't get slammed by funk, instead just an old tea cupboard and a bit of fruit. But sadly the tea is just pedestrian after the opening, some nice juiciness in steeps 4 and 5. Color-wise, the tea was just getting started at steep 8, but I could not coax out any more flavor. The fact that I broke up the tea completely, with no chunks to open more slowly and stretch out the session is one user factor, still it just tasted like water. Probably the best way to drink this is brew the entire thing in one go and drink it over a week so it opens real slow. It's not worth it, really.


Beautiful aged brown.

What this tea can be is a super cute mooncake gift you can give to a newbie puerh person. A gift of older puerh tea for $18.75? Yes and yes, and the tea is so basic shou, inoffensive to almost anyone new to puerh. Nothing off, not much funk, and yet nothing to explore for a seasoned drinker. A gift-er.


The magnetic lid snaps onto the metal rod
to drain the tea.

The Bonston brewer is a winner, and I tossed my Kamjove into the landfill to leech into the groundwater in the county next door for generations to come. Mea culpa.


Friday, May 9, 2025

Sunday, April 20, 2025

We Are Screwed


Where is all the panic? Massive tariffs loom before us in buying tea direct from China. You'd think puerh heads in the US might take out a 3rd mortgage to buy up whatever last of the Lao Ban Zhang or the 2020 anything they can get their hands on, in shipping multiples of $800 orders or less to avoid the previous set of tariffs upon which the new 125% will apply. One expects the Yeeon aficionados to order extra boxes of basement dirt from Hong Kong to flavor their own stashes extra dank, all before slow-boat shipping is officially halted and before the private courier just isn't worth the expense, never mind the bother. Even though the latest memes give every indication of the dire need for the slimming effects of shou in the west.



I don't hear any complaining. Not seriously. 

Well, students always complain their tight budgets prohibit full indulgence of their puerh habit, but more on that in a minute while Old Cwyn sorts out this mess.

On the top end of tea, no one really cares. In fact, at the top end, tea buyers can think of the savings on tariffs as a beautiful justification to fly to Guangzhou and buy in person, or a lesser excuse like my ex getting a nice hotel in Huizhou while stalking an old girlfriend. Once in China, just courier everything back. Dirty tea tourism.



The top tier buyer probably doesn't sweat an extra $200 or $2000 tea premium and they got courier all along and first name basis with their tea pimps. If they don't like the tea, it's expensive compost. Although I am certain whole offices are dedicated to crunching numbers to see how much the buyer can tolerate on price increases or whether the blends will be sprinkled with a bit more Myanmar leaf than before which is probably cheaper although one hopes not. Or whether the warehouse in Canada is now a bad idea with double tariffs to consider. In any case, the actual buyer at the end of this chain worries about precisely none of this because they have multiple tea sources and multiple couriers ready to deliver. It's a business matter on the factory end to figure out how to sell to rich buyers.

Same deal for the mid tier junk tea buyers on Taobao. By now the lesser endowed but still fluid guys have at least 3 agents who no doubt quickly pivot to cover any customer situation with private courier, and to mark Gift and Happy Birthday Uncle all over the box. Is it really a problem?

I feel pretty sure Uncle John Kingteamall and Uncle Scott at Yunnan Sourcing will sort things out in western retail for our middle wallet tea basketeers. These guys are one fewer middleman cheaper than your other favorite curators. 

Buuttt, then again, don't most middle tea basketeers already have all the tea they really want? I don't see the panic here, instead I see these people trying to sell. Some perhaps overbought in the early throes of puerh enthusiasm. Others are holding tongs that well, they no longer like so much. Their palates changed, maybe. Did they get bored of the hobby? Annoyed with the storage issues...I have heard that often enough. Or do they view the incoming tariffs as a boon to make a "huge" profit selling tea at a good margin, but still far less than new + tariff? That is not completely outlandish. Remember when a certain online company (let's nickname as "Foggy Mountaintop") offered to buy back their tea when the price at the tea farm went up? Can't complain about a real opportunity for resale and trade. We still have threads on Steepster! 



Now we arrive at the budget buyer whose dusty little tuos just got more pricey, and aspirational tea even further out of reach. We are a little bit screwed, at least in retail,  and words like fu brick are not comforting. But in the after market, with middle buyers starting to sell off tea, we might find tea otherwise long sold-out. Or sample bags destined for the bin given a new life in tea trading. Eh, budget buyers might be surprised that the best market is more local, with stateside vendors selling stock on hand. At the very least, we can comfort ourselves that coffee drinkers have it far worse. At least tea is not scarce.

If wallets really do pinch out, what will happen to all that tea, especially if folks in Asia tighten their wallets too? I sorta see companies storing for 4 years, if they have to, to stave off any major price drops. Make premium product even more at a premium just to find. What was it Herodotus said, the money never stays in one place for very long. The taps will again flow. 

But now is a time of dribbles and drips. If a US Dad is sitting on a nice tea collection, this 4/20 day he may enjoy what he has, justified and ancient with fat knowledge of riches acquired long ago, in the "before times." Knowing that at least 50% of his neighbors don't give a shit. One less thing to worry about.