Well, after yesterday’s caffeine extravaganza, I decided to take it easy and went with a light tieguanyin from a tea friend of mine. It is supposed to be the 2006 pick, fresh from China.
The tea comes wrapped individually, so I opened the pack and emptied the contents into the pot. The tea itself looks remarkably like the other ones I’ve had recently — at least the greener ones. The tea leaves are small, green, and buttery smelling.
When I brewed it it comes out rather light, fragrant, with a good aftertaste. The “cha chi” is not terribly strong though. It seems to tastes fresher than my 2005 stuff, but it is really difficult for me to tell partly because I cannot compare them directly. The amount of tea I’ve used are different because of these annoying individual packs. While they are great for preserving the tea’s integrity over time, it does make tasting a bit more of a guessing game.
I think I need to try another tieguanyin again to compare…. hmmm
3 responses so far ↓
foniyo // May 1, 2006 at 9:24 am |
Should I get you some new TGY so you can compare them??
MANDARINstea // May 2, 2006 at 12:17 am |
Individual wrapping should not be a burden. The light TGI usually comes in 6g vacuum pallet.
Using a pack per brewing- for 200-300 ml vessel, try crab-eye broil / 30s. If vessel is larger then 300 ml, do a fish-eye broil / 20s.
Larger vessel require less time, since water temp. is higher and cooking radio is hotter compare to a smaller vessel. The difference is less brews, 3 max instead of 5+ from a small pot. Does that make sense?
MarshalN // May 3, 2006 at 12:49 am |
Well, I use the same pot for my qingxiang TGY when I try them, and I’ve seen packs that do not come in the 6g size. When brewing non-packed teas, I tend to put in slightly more.
Changing steeping time is going to affect the way it tastes no matter what, and it will ultimately come out different. Ideally, I should be weighing them all and trying them that way, but that’s too much work and since I only get one sample, it’s not really an option.