A Tea Addict's Journal

I spent the afternoon today first drinking the very cheap oolong that I got from Hong Kong. It’s a mix of heavily roasted shuixian with a little bit of qingxiang tieguanyin. I think having tasted it a little more, the reason for the odd mixture is so that the heavy roasted taste is balanced out a bit. I suspect that on its own, the shuixian will taste just like charcoal and not much else. That, unfortunately, isn’t very nice, so the qingxiang tieguanyin is there to lend it a little more aroma, to soften up the tea, if you will. The result is actually not too bad. It’s certainly no great tea, and doesn’t have much qi nor aftertaste, but it does work. There’s a bit of sourness, no doubt from the heavily fired shuixian as well.

I also drank a bit of Hou De’s free sample of maocha today. Compared to the one I bought here, I find the Hou De one to be a little more bitter, less sweet, and in fact, less tasty. I need to give them a fair shake by putting them side by side (maybe we can do that, bearsbearsbears).

While drinking all that, I passed the time by polishing my pots. They’re more shiny than ever. I used to not polish them at all, but I realized that it leads to somewhat uneven seasoning, and that polishing it really does make the pot look nicer. I looked at my qingxiang tieguanyin pot, and I realize that over the years (it’s been… 3 years now) it has gotten progressively better looking. The very ugly and obvious rings on the lid is also gone as well.

Bringing up the pots does remind me that I need to get a little qingxiang tieguanyin and also some dancong to feed my pots. However, I have a bad feeling that while qingxiang tieguanyin will be very, very easy to find (they’re everywhere) dancong will be considerably tougher, since I like the fired variety rather than the qingxiang type. I should’ve brought some from Hong Kong….