A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries from May 2006

Sunday May 21, 2006

May 21, 2006 · 3 Comments

I am revisiting my aged puerh today, after drinking some of the cakes. It is a nice change of pace, and mostly very medicinal than anything else. The raw edge is certainly off in this sample, but the spicyness and the lack of a sweet finish tells you this isn’t cooked stuff, either. The grade of the tea itself is very low — you can see in the pics, there are lots of twigs and stuff that would look terrible, but the end product is not that bad. It isn’t a great puerh — but a very drinkable, everyday kind of puerh. I think it was kept reasonably but not exceptionally well. It certainly tells you that 1) looks can be deceiving in puerh and 2) bad grade tea doesn’t make for bad grade aged puerh.

Categories: Uncategorized

Friday May 19, 2006

May 19, 2006 · 2 Comments

Nothing terribly exciting today, other than the fact that I drank some more of the Beijing qingxiang tieguanyin. After having had the Fook Ming Tong stuff for so long the past week during the water tests, I have to say the Beijing stuff is far superior in fragrance and body. The tea is simply better, with better, lighter notes and overall more cha chi. And, it’s probably cheaper (although the Fook Ming Tong is technically free, as it is a gift).

Just goes to show how you gotta go to China to get cheap, decent stuff — so long as you know what you’re buying. Can’t wait to go teashopping on Maliandao!!

Categories: Uncategorized

Thursday May 18, 2006

May 18, 2006 · 1 Comment

I’m a greedy person, which is why I had two teas today. Sometimes, one just isn’t enough, especially when your pot is small.

I’m extra greedy, because the two teas are both new. The first one I opened is a nongxiang tieguanyin I got from Beijing on the trip in March. I’ve already talked about the qingxiang tieguanyin I got, but not the nongxiang one. I got 150g of this stuff at a fairly reasonable price, and figured it’ll be a good addition to the varieties that I have already. The Kung Fung Yung nongxiang tieguanyin tends to be a bit heavy and slightly overfired. The Athelier one just isn’t very good, and I’ve tried to dispose of it. This one is on the lighter side, with the leaves still brewing slightly green, rather than brown.

The taste is fragrant, retaining some of the characters of a qingxiang tieguanyin. They said it is from 1999, if I remember correctly. The firing wasn’t too heavy handed, and it is probably a good thing. There’s no hint of sourness. In fact, it’s a rather pleasant brew with some character. Not the best, by any means, but not bad at all.

But I didn’t feel that was enough. After all, my nongxiang tieguanyin pot is small. So, since I’ve been drinking some of my young puerh, I decided I might as well taste another one.

The one I picked is a cheap puerh I got from the Best Tea House. They are small cakes that came in a dozen — Chinese zodiac signs, although really it’s just a way to package 12 small cakes for sale.


The case — yes, that’s Teachat in the back


The wrapper of the first one — as you can see, coming from the Fengqing factory.

They were one or two years old when I bought them, and they’ve been sitting here for two years now, so all in all, about 3-4 years in age. I haven’t really touched them much since I got them, and this is the first time I’m trying them since my purchase.


Cellphone used as a scale

The cakes are pretty small. I’m not sure how much they weigh exactly, but I’m guessing something like 50g? Like the Kung Fung Yung cake, this one is comprised of smaller leaves, although they’re not all buds (at least one of the leaves I brewed ended up being quite large — over an inch long). The compression is tighter than the Kung Fung Yung cake, but not overly so. I took bits and pieces off the first cake and made a cup of it.

The brew is slightly disappointing given the wonderful taste of the Kung Fung Yung cake I had two days ago. It is not nearly as fragrant, but still shares many of the general characteristics of the Kung Fung Yung cake. It is also a bit thinner, but then, I am not sure if it’s because there’s slightly less leaves in this cup than I used the other day.

It lacks a bit of cha chi and aroma, but again, it could be because I didn’t use enough leaves, not because it’s particularly bad. Of course, given the price differential, one would expect a difference in taste, and there certainly is that difference — anybody paying money would prefer the Kung Fung Yung cake over this one, hands down.
Since I have no idea how this one will age, we will just have to wait and see. Maybe when I come back from China, it will have progressed further and taste a bit better.

Categories: Uncategorized

Wednesday May 17, 2006

May 17, 2006 · 1 Comment

On Sunday I hosted a tea friend for a few drinks. We had my dancong first, which was, well, just like it usually is. Then, somewhat caffeine high already, I decided to break out something interesting — the cake I bought from Kung Fung Yung last summer in Taipei.

As you can see, the cake is made up of smaller leaves, although they’re not all exactly buds either. They claim it is wild growth tea. Since there’s no original wrapper, I will never know where they got it. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but I liked the way it taste, and tasting it again this time, I remember why that was the case. The tea is very sweet, with a nice fragrance that you can smell immediately when the leaves got wet (when I poured them into the gaiwan that is freshly warmed). The tea is mellow, sweet, fragrant, and generally befits a nice, young, smaller leaf puerh. There’s that typical young puerh bite to the tea — so familiar, but without the nasty, astringent, sour, smoky flavours. It lasted something like 10 infusions, from not much tea:

Which means, from conventional wisdom, that it isn’t ideal for aging.

How will it age? I have no way to tell, really. I do seem to remember it being a little greener when I tried it in Taiwan, but that can be memory playing a trick on me. The leaves do look a little redder, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into different taste. Is it worth the money? Probably not, but at the same time, it is a good refresher for me before I embark on my trip to China. I will need to store this up in my memory bank so that when I do go puerh shopping, I have this, among other things, to reference myself.

Categories: Uncategorized

Saturday May 13, 2006

May 13, 2006 · 2 Comments

Yesterday I brewed the tieguanyin with Poland Spring, and I have to say it didn’t taste like much — similar to my filtered water brew, actually, if not even a little worse. There’s no sense that this was a spring water (unlike all the other ones, where I tasted a difference in texture, etc). I don’t know if it’s my tongue starting to get bored of the repeated assults of tieguanyin, or if it’s really the water being inferior. Either way, I think it’s a sign I should at least stop the experiment for now.

So, what do I brew today?

I decided to break out my brick that I haven’t had for a long while. I think last time I drank it was more than a year ago. This is a brick of puerh that I bought 4-5 years ago, when I was just starting out in serious tea drinking and knew little of anything about puerh. I decided what the hell, I’ll buy a brick, and so I did.

The brick is very dense, and the tea is packed tightly. The outside (tea covering the surface of the cake) looks better than the inside, which looks mushed up. I broke off a few pieces, and put it into my puerh pot for brewing. When I bought it, I remember being told that this cake was about 10-15 years old. Drinking it now though, I have to say it ages very very slowly — perhaps due to the fact that it’s so tightly packed, and also simply because it’s an inferior tea.

The taste of the puerh still retains a bit of the green, raw puerh taste — a bit astringent, slightly sour sometimes, with that distinctive raw puerh flavour that you won’t find anywhere else. The first few brews were a little more complex, but it peters out after about 5-6 infusions. It feels as though the brick is refusing to mature — after all this time, still tasting a bit green and retains its cutting edge. This is not to say the tea tastes like those 3 year old bricks/cakes — not at all. There’s definitely a good amount of cha chi, but not enough pleasant flavours to compensate 🙁

I suppose as a tuition fee, it’s not bad. It’s still drinkable, although definitely not everyone’s drink.

This is my puerh pot, after I decided to give it a few rubs. It’s gotten shinier, but you might be able to see a ring or two on the lid, which is due to my mismanagement early on in my tea career. I suppose over time I will be able to compensate as I spend more time caring for the pots. Nevertheless, this pot’s served me well for puerh drinking (3 years now), and I think I will take it with me to Beijing.

Categories: Uncategorized

Friday May 12, 2006

May 12, 2006 · 1 Comment

I used Evian today, which, among other things, produced a lot of cloudy water in the boiler. I think the total dissolved solids is too high.

The tea itself doesn’t taste remarkable. It is slightly similar to what I had yesterday, but a little flatter. The tea definitely has a thicker feel to it, but I don’t think it is better than what I had yesterday. With the added problems of cloudiness in the water (looks like lots of goo in the water boiler) it really isn’t a good option. Scratch that one…

On an unrelated note though, I found this thread on a Chinese puerh website. It loads incredibly slowly, but wow, lots of pictures of lots of cakes, and some people have provided some comments as to how they taste. Very informative, if you have the patience to wait.

Categories: Uncategorized

Thursday May 11, 2006

May 11, 2006 · Leave a Comment

Continuing the experiment today, I used Fiji water to make my daily qingxiang tieguanyin.

And what a brew… it came out shockingly good, for some reason. I don’t think I handled the tea particularly better than the last two days, but somehow, the tea brewed a nice, even cup, with decent body and still many of the fragrant notes that were missing in the Volvic brew. The water was slightly sweet, and over all, it was very satisfying.

An interesting thing is that on the fourth infusion, the tea again changed drastically — with that same shift that took place during the Volvic cup, except that Fiji was much better before the cup. I’m not sure what exactly the transformation is, but somehow it happens. This is definitely something I don’t get from my usual filtered tap water, and is an interesting phenomenon. I’m not sure why it happens.

Tomorrow I’m going to procure more waters… we’ll see what happens then.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tuesday May 9, 2006

May 9, 2006 · Leave a Comment

So for the past two days I’ve been doing an experiment — using different waters to brew the same tea. I’ve done this before, but it’s been a while, and it was done with longjing last time. This time, I decided I’m going to cast a wide net with the waters, trying everything from Dasani to nice bottled waters from Europe somewhere that costs 10x the price of gasoline, and I am going to try it with my Fook Ming Tong qingxiang tieguanyin in my pot. It’s not the best tea around, but I have lots of it and I need a way to get rid of it. This will be a good excuse.

Yesterday I did it with Volvic, a pretty common French water. French waters tend to be heavy in minerals and full bodied, and Volvic is no exception. When I brewed the tea, the liquor came out a slightly dark yellow. I drank the first cup… and noticed that the fragrant notes of the tieguanyin is pretty much missing. The aftertaste, which is the hallmark of a good tieguanyin, is gone. I don’t know where it is, but it’s gone. The tea itself is full bodied — reflecting the character of the water. There’s a decent amount of chi in it. It’s very strange to taste something like that.

The next two infusions tasted similar. Then, on the fourth infusion, the taste suddenly changed to be much more clear and crisp, but still without the lasting aftertaste. I still don’t know what happened, but over all, it was not a very satisfying brew.

Today, I changed water to Iceland Spring and tried again. Iceland Spring, in contrast to Volvic, has an extremely low mineral content. The water, by itself, is crisp, clear, a little cool, and slightly sweet. It is almost like a distilled water in that it has a bit of that cutting note to it, but not quite, because it’s still got some minerals in it.

The tea this time came out rather interesting. It definitely has the fragrant notes and the aftertaste, which is made conspicuous because of its absence yesterday. The tea itself tastes crisp — just like the water, and there’s a certain coolness to it, even given the temperature of the tea. It is certainly thinner than the Volvic tea, but it is not inferior. In fact, in terms of fragrance, it is much better. The taste of crispness lasts throughout the infusions, and there’s no midway shift like with the Volvic.

I don’t know what water I’ll use tomorrow, but it’ll be something different. This is already rather interesting, and will only get more so when I have more waters under my belt. Maybe I’ll even give Evian a go. I’ve never used it to make tea before.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tuesday May 9, 2006

May 9, 2006 · 2 Comments

This is kind of funny

Now, if you read Chinese, you can see it says “Puerh tea brick, 1978” on the thing.

Except that the guy selling it claims it’s from 1949.

Hmmmm, duped, anyone? Or you’re showing the wrong pictures.

Either way, they need to fix the problem.

Categories: Uncategorized

Sunday May 7, 2006

May 7, 2006 · Leave a Comment

Well, I went to another tea store today — Itoen, the Japanese tea store. They are huge, and they make lots of (fairly reliable, in a pinch) bottled teas. I figured, why not, even though I’m no great fan of Japanese tea, I’ll go check it out.

Well, the experience was rather disappointing. I guess I’m picky, but when I go to a tea store, I expect some service, since you can’t see the tea unless they show it to you (and seeing age old, bland smelling tea samples in glass containers isn’t the same as seeing the real thing). Despite the fact that the store was not very big, that there was only one other customer than me and my friend, and that they had three people working, nobody bothered to come up and ask if I wanted anything. Perhaps they’re trained to be cool and non-intrusive, but I thought at least an acknowledgement that I existed would’ve been nice (something along the lines of “if you need any help…”). Since I was walking around their store, looking around, had eye contact with more than one sales person, and reading their menu rather closely, them not even nodding in my direction was rather rude.

Since I didn’t see anything in particular that looked interesting anyway, and since nobody bothered to ask what I wanted, I didn’t feel like asking them and just left. I guess I’m snobby that way, but I don’t like being treated poorly in teashops.

But the whole day is not completely lost. I went to East Village for dinner, and in the market there when I was buying my drinking water, I saw this bottle called Jana. Since I’m a sucker for trying new waters, and this wasn’t too exorbitant ($2.48 for a 1.5L), I bought it. They claim, on their label, that they are the Aqua-Expo, Paris 2005, 1st place winner, and the taste shows. The water is soft, with no obvious, overpowering mineral taste (hello Evian) and a little cool to taste. It would seem to be able to add a great deal of body to a tea, and give it a nice taste to it. I will need to try this water out in brewing tea.

The mineral contents state that it’s mostly bicarbontes, some Calcium, and some Magnesium. The water’s slightly alkaline. Unless the Iceland Springs, which is just cool and crisp (thanks to its low mineral content) this one has a lot of stuff in it, but the bicarbonates, I think, gives it the soft taste without a strong mineral tone. I think I will keep enough of it so I can make some tea with it when I get home tomorrow.

Categories: Uncategorized