A Tea Addict's Journal

Since I boiled the new pot yesterday with tea, it’s now ready for use (I decided it probably wasn’t necessary with the other pot I got — the one for puerh. It is well seasoned already and hardly new). So I ended up brewing some of the 2006 rougui that I bought from Lao He.

Surprisingly, the tea came out almost not aromatic at all. Nothing. Now, I’m pretty sure they gave me the same tea that I tasted, because I watched them do it (unless there’s a secret lock in the cardboard box — unlikely). The leaves are also similar looking. I don’t think I added too little leaves. One possible explanation, as I’ve heard before, is that my new pot is soaking up flavours, leaving very little for me to taste. The tea still has strength, and there’s an aftertaste, but the initial aroma is not there. It’s somewhat of an odd feeling.

The best infusion, as is usual, was #3. There, you could taste the tea, the aftertaste was very present, the flavours were nice and sweet. After drinking, there’s a feeling of slight coolness down the throat, and this lingering taste in the mouth that is somewhat floral and fruity, as a rougui should have. But it’s still not very aromatic. There’s no sourness, and nothing really unpleasant in the way of charcoal taste either, both of which are good things…

If I were really scientific about it, I will make it again tomorrow with a gaiwan, and see if the tastes come out differently. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. If it does come out differently, then I think I can say with some confidence that it’s the pot, and that over time the pot will get better. If it’s not, then…. well, I don’t know. Lao He didn’t exactly brew it with a lot more skill than I did, I think. He also used less leaves. Maybe less leaves is the key? I don’t know.

Anyway, a shot of my new pot in action. I’m getting closer to realizing the goal of having a pot for basically every kind of tea that I drink, so that I don’t waste tea on gaiwans.

I tried the overpriced dancong I got yesterday. It’s not bad. I used slightly less leaves than I should, but since I didn’t want to overbrew it, I played it safe. It seems like I can stick a little more in. The tea is less aromatic than the stuff I usually get at the Best Tea House. However, the cha qi is quite strong. I could feel it going around my body as I drank the first cup.

I am now boiling my pot for wuyi tea. It’ll be ready soon so I can start feeding that too. Between all the pots, I think I’ve got almost everything covered — everything I will likely drink in Beijing anyway. I might need one more for very young puerh, but that’s about it.

Sigh, I’m a sucker. I walked by a teashop, couldn’t resist, walked in, asked if they have dancong. They do, at exorbitant prices. I bought 50g anyway, just to try it out….. sigh.

The most expensive is 1000 USD for 500g. Yes, you read that right. 1000 USD for 500g.

I didn’t get that. I got something that’s only a fraction of that, but even a fraction of 1000 is a lot.

Let’s see if this stuff is any good tomorrow. Then on Wednesday, I’m back to Maliandao to find more dancong.

Today I went to a place called Chamate, which is a chain of teahouses that got started, I think, in Shanghai. They are a franchise, and now have about 30 of them across China, mostly in coastal major cities. I went there once with my girlfriend in March when I visited, and decided to go again. I originally wanted to go somewhere with a little more atmosphere (rather than someplace in a mall), but the air quality is low today, and it’s really not very inspiring for going out.

There are a number of teas on offer at Chamate. They serve some teas gongfu style (costing the most). They also serve teas in more conventional pots, and those cost less. There are greens, floral, oolongs, and some cooked puerh. From the selection, you’d think this place is a Taiwanese joint, as they serve a number of Taiwan style teas. The market is obviously urban locals, and some tourists. They also have food…. but I didn’t have any.

Like last time, I ordered the Dongding Lao Chawang (Dongding Old Tea King). Supposedly 10 years in age.

This is a picture of the whole setup – I forgot to put something in there for scale, but the drinking cup is about an inch wide. Not small.

With the ubiquitous Kamjove water boiler in the back. Those guys are the most successful business coming out of the whole tea industry, I swear.

Anyway, it’s a big pot for one person, but since they also give you lots of tea, I filled it up about 1/3 and kept the rest. The tea is roasted, of course. The taste is a little interesting. The first impression is an overwhelming taste of charcoal — very heavily fired, with a strong charcoal taste and not a very strong aroma. Not the best. Then, however, something interesting happens — after I swallow there’s an incredible sense of sweetness that emerges from the back of the throat. This is not quite just the “gan” of a tea that you usually get, but it actually felt really, really sweet. Sugar sweet. I have to say I never experienced that drinking teas before. The sweetness sensation lasted about three infusions.

There is a hint of sourness in infusions 2 and 3, although it’s not strong at all, indicating decent storage. However, I think it’s not quite 10 years, as the charcoal taste should have subsided by now, or, it was reroasted recently and not been put away long enough before it got to my hands. I would’ve preferred it with a little less roasting and a little more aromatic.

The tea was always smooth, never quite rough or edgy. Typically Taiwan, in the sense that aftertaste, aside from the incredible sweetness, is mostly lacking. Decent cha qi, although that could just be an overdose of caffeine as I drank basically two people’s worth of tea.

I lasted about 7 infusions before deciding it was too much and I had to go. The price was not cheap — 90 RMB, about 11 USD, for a pot of tea. Then again, I knew it’s not cheap. I don’t think I’ll pay that much though for some of their other teas. It’s just not worth that much, since I can probably get them at Maliandao for at most 1/3 of the price. For a place to sit after a busy day shopping on Wangfujing though, I suppose it’s not so bad.

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….

I need tea canisters. I realized I should’ve bought like 6 of those cans, instead of one. Right now I have a few bags of tea I’d love to open and drink, but for lack of a container, I don’t want to mess them up by exposing them to air. So, they’ll have to stay in the bags until I get more cans.

Puerh, however, is immune to such silliness, so I am drinking puerh today. I decided to give my Keyixing brick a try — the ones that I bought for cheap in Hong Kong. Here’s a shot of it, after I knocked a piece out

Bricks tend to be made up of smaller broken leaves and fannings, and this one is no exception. The little pair of sharp scissors that I bought here for trimming my now shaven beard came in handy as a puerh knife. The brick is very, very solid, so it took some good prying to get it to open.

I remember when I tasted this tea, there was some initial odd flavours, probably absorbed from its surroundings wherever it was kept. I also remember when I first opened the pack at home, it smelled very strongly. There are also traces of mould and once in a while, a few little white bugs that run around the cakes. So I decided to not pack them up again, and instead have them in the plastic bag, very much open to air, in the hopes of airing the cakes out further so that they don’t smell.

I rinsed the tea twice, and it worked. The undesirable tastes didn’t really show up. The first infusion still had a hint of that, but by the second, it was gone. The tea is a bit interesting. There’s some hint of that minty/menthol taste that is very prominent in some of the cakes that are newer. It’s got that astringency. In infusions 2-4, there’s a bit of sourness, just a hint. The tea brews fairly dark, and even in the 6th infusion, it still looks fairly deep red

But the liquor was clear all the way through, so that’s a good sign, I suppose.

This is a shot of the leaves

Overall, I liked the tea, and I think for the price I paid ($30 USD per 250g brick) it was well worth the money. More, and I’m not so sure. It is after all not very well aged, and may have gone into some wet storage at some point. Bricks also tend to be of more questionable aging value. But at the end of the day, if you don’t try different things (and pay some tuition along the way) you never learn.

As I promised yesterday, I made my way back to Maliandao today.

I decided not to go to the same tea city as I did last two times, but rather, somewhere else. So I kept walking down the street, past the Carrefour. There were apparently a lot more stores down the street, and I passed this:

The Beijing Tea Leaves Company’s sales division, which looks like another tea mall. Across the street is this:

The Jingmin Chacheng. Jing refers to Beijing. Min is the short name for Fujian province. Chacheng is teacity. Since I decided that today I want, first and foremost, some Wuyi tea to feed my new pot, I went in there, hoping to find some Wuyi tea (which is, of course, from Fujian).

Inside, there are about 20 stores every floor. Most, however, are mixed stores, and everybody sells puerh. Some are puerh only. I went into one that is a Dayi (Menghai) specialty store, and saw a cake that had silvertips covering the cake, but inside is all grades 6-8 tea, I think. Not very appealing looking once you break it apart. I sort of prefer if the whole thing inside and out are just that. Selling a cake that is covered with tips while the inside is not seems a little dishonest — I know that Menghai cakes are usually by formula, so they are never “one tea” for the whole thing, but for those who do not know, it’s a trap.

Anyway, I walked around…. not seeing many stores that specialize in Wuyi. Most of the stores sell primarily tieguanyin, which in Beijing is usually strictly of the qingxiang variety. There are some green tea vendors too… but where’s my Wuyi?

Then I came across this store on the second floor called “Lao He Yan Cha”. Lao He is the guy’s nickname — old He (He is his last name). Yan Cha is rock tea, what you usually refer to when you want to say tea from Wuyishan. The wall was lined with boxes, the ubiquitous Dahongpao boxes you see everywhere (including Toki’s blog). In I went.

The owner is indeed older than your normal Maliandao set (people in their 30s or 40s) and is a guy who is probably around 50s/60s. The flavour of the day for me is that I’m Japanese (although at the Menghai store they did correctly identify me as a “nanfangren” or Southerner, but then she guessed maybe I could be from Malaysia…). I asked for Wuyi tea, and he said while he does have some stuff like Tieluohan or Suijingui, his Rougui is better, so Rougui it was…

The first two teas I tried. The one on the left is a lighter fired one, while the one on the right is darker. Both are quite decent, with good amounts of Wuyi rock tea taste. Rougui is a bit more delicate, I think, and it shows. I liked them both.

But then he pulled out another one, better quality, and instantly, you can taste the difference. I think on its own, I might not have noticed, but having just had two, and drinking another one, I could taste that the third one is better. Also higher fired, and nice tasting. He told me this is a 2005 tea. He also said he has some 2006 ones, so I tried that too… big difference. The 2006 tastes fresher, more lively. The 2005 is duller, but more subdued, not worse, just different.

I ended up getting both, 150g each, for a total cost of about 200 RMB (25 USD). Dirt cheap, really. The guy roasts his own tea, so I might go back again to try some other stuff he has. I know I haven’t tried them all.

I also bought an empty can

For a grand price of 30 cents USD.

There are a bunch of teaware stores too that I quickly browsed. The quality was higher than other places. I might go back there again to pick out a nicer gaiwan and accessories. A nice gaiwan was only $5 USD!

Having tasted four teas in quick succession, I was rather caffeine high. I went to the Maliandao Tea City to find the guy I met last time, but he wasn’t there. I thought I would show him the Xizihao Lao Banzhang and see what he thinks, but since he wasn’t there, and since I was already feeling pretty buzzed, I just left.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to lie down. Caffeine is hitting me…

Today I brewed up the cheapest aged tea from Best Tea House. These are basically mixed broken bits of cakes and loose tea. There is some cooked tea mixed in it as well, although it’s predominantly sheng. They have a few grades of this stuff. The cheapest and the best mixed cakes are decent, the middle one, for some reason, sucks.

So here are the leaves. They look pretty unremarkable. When you open the bag for the first time there’s that musty old puerh smell

I dumped about 1/3 tea leaves in the pot and brewed it up. Oh, I like my new pot 🙂

1st infusion

The first two infusions were weaker, with the tea still getting unfurled. There’s a bit of the raw puerh taste to it, although since most of the tea is aged, it’s not the green taste, but rather the puerh edge that a puer cooked puerh does not have.

3rd infusion

By the 3rd infusion, the liquor gets really dark. You can smell chinese medicine in the fairness cup, although the taste of the medicine is more subdued. Not sweet yet, with a slight hint of sour on the sides. It’s not the most complex of teas, but delivers what I wanted — a run of the mill, drinkable, aged puerh taste. It’s probably got stuff that’s been through wet storage, poorly stored, a little mouldy, some cooked puerh, all that. They blend it and make sure that the taste is fine, and the price is right. Useful for those of us who don’t have big budgets to blow on dozens of aged cakes, but still want some of that taste.

Then when you proceed to about 5th infusion, the tea gets a little sweeter. I am now on about the 10th. It’s still drinkable, although I should probably stop. The tea can go on some more yet, though, as the current infusions are still coming out rather brown and clear, and there’s still some taste to it other than mere sweetness. Drinking by yourself, however, means drinking lots, and lots, and lots of water.

A shot of the wet leaves.

I played around with some of the leaves. Mostly raw puerh leaves, as they do unfurl and they don’t simply crumble in your hands like cooked puerh would.

Tomorrow, I think I am going to treat myself and head back to Maliandao. I am going to try to look for some Wuyi tea to feed my new pot, and also some young puerh, maybe.

Well, the past few weeks this blog has been more like a tea travelogue, where I’ve recorded some of my visits to various places. I’ve sort of gotten away a bit from the tea tasting bit, but maybe it’s time to revisit some of them… as I can’t go to Maliandao everyday (too far) and it’s a lot of money to go to some closer-by teahouses. It’s just not the same with the free pouring policy at the Best Tea House.

So I went back to the puerh that sort of got me going again on a drinking binge — the Shui Lan Yin from Hou De. It got me to buy a lot of other samples from them, and also tasted a bunch of newer stuff. I remember I gave it a so-so review, so here I am again, a lot of puerh later, giving it another try. At that time, I was off drinking puerh for quite a while, so I didn’t have much of a reference point. After all this, I think I have a better sense of what I’m drinking, so I think I can give it a fairer shake.

And the result is a confirmation, more or less, of what I said last time — the tea comes out nicely in infusions 1-3, with a burst of flavours and promises of more, then it settles down a bit in infusions 4-6, and then sort of fades beginning from infusion 7 onwards. I used the remaining of my sample — I think maybe 5-7g? Not sure. I brewed it in my shiny new pot:

This was infusion 3.

The first burst of flavours is quite convincing, in many ways. Camphor, wood, a bit of I think what they call lotus fragrance, etc. It’s complex, and it’s nice. There’s a hint of sourness, just a hint. There is also the ever present bitterness — something that tea books seem to talk a lot about in reference to this cake. They apparently used a somewhat bitter based tea, resulting in a brew that will come off with a bitter undertone.

Then the infusions 4-6 the bitterness sort of takes over, while the flavours that initially seem so attractive go away a bit. The tea now tastes more metallic, and sharp. It’s a bit like a darjeeling going through a second brewing, but without the strong astringency. Then the tea becomes milder, softer.

Not bad, and I might even buy a cake if the price is right, if nothing else to observe how this thing changes.

However, I think for the price that it’s sold in the States, it’s not cheap. I can buy a much better tasting cake (overall) at this price. I remember I liked the 8582 better. I might try that tomorrow.

Speaking of which…

Not all water is created equal. Look at this:

Both Nestle, right?

Wrong. They’re both Nestle, that’s right, but the taste are very different. One, the big bottle with the navy blue label, is fairly heavy in minerals and tastes like it. The other, the light blue one, is very light in minerals and tastes like that too (sweeter, less body). I tend to favour the light blue one, although I was mixing the two today. These are both better than most of the bottled water in China, which are basically Dasani like — filtered water with minerals stuck back in, or distilled water, or something. Either way, I’m glad I found a place that sells the small bottle ones for a reasonable price (about 15 cents USD per bottle — beat that!).

I was bored this afternoon, so I went to a local teahouse (well, sort of local). It’s located across the street from the Guozijian, the old Imperial University. I found it by chance last year when I visited Beijing while touring the Guozijian and the Confucius Temple (under renovation — most likely for 2008).

The street this teahouse is on is very nice

And while walking down the street, I found this rather interesting banner:

Which roughly translates to “Develop democracy: Respect and protect the voters’ right to a demoratic election!”

Uh huh

Anyway, it’s a short walk from the corner of the street to the teahouse in question

I picked a nice seat to sit down. In fact, this is where my girlfriend and her sister and I sat last time we were here, except this time it’s just me.

Views from the seat:

And the all important tea setup

Not a bad place to relax and spend an afternoon.

The manager of the store (or the owner?) came to me, as I was the only visitor at the time, and asked what tea I’d like. Almost immediately, she asked if I were Korean. Do I really look that non-Chinese? Nobody in Beijing seems to recognize me as Chinese. What’s going on? Is my Han blood tainted? I know my Mandarin is not perfect, and certainly doesn’t sound local, but plenty of Cantonese speakers have worse Mandarin, but somehow I don’t think they’re ever mistaken for a foreigner. Sigh. Add Korean to the list of foreigners I’m mistaken for (the others are Japanese, Brazilian, Malaysian…)

I wanted to have their Dahongpao, and funny enough, it was the one tea that they do not have in stock. Bummer. So instead of the Dahongpao, I went for their “10 year old Yiwu” instead.

This is the Yiwu in question

Does it look like 10 years old to you? Not sure? How about this?

(1st brew)

(3rd brew)

Wet leaves

Somehow, I have my doubts about their 10 year claim. Looks more like 5-7 to me. It’s possible that the dry weather in Beijing has something to do with the lack of aging. But 10 years? Hmmm. The tea still retained some smokey flavour, which surprised me. It was generally pleasant, the best infusion was around 5, as usual, and it went for more than 10 infusions before really dropping off. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d buy it if I were tasting this for a purchase. At the end, when I was done with the tea, I sniffed it, and I think I could sense a hint of jasmine in there — I think there is some smell from the incense they use that seeped into the cake in question. They burn the incense quite near where they put the tea, so it’s entirely possible that the incense smoke made its way into the cake. This may also explain the lingering smoky flavour.

Another cake was also claimed to be 10 years. I really questioned the manager about that, and she relented — she admitted it was more like 7 or so. I still think that looks high, but I did not drink it, so whatever. The price of the tea was not cheap — 80 kuai (about 10 USD) plus 15 kuai for water and sundry (2 USD), so all in all, a 12 USD afternoon. I spent about an hour and half there. It’s really a nice little place, and somewhere good to bring a guest to drink some tea. The teas themselves are not as great. Then again, you don’t go to these places for fantastic tea, and you definitely don’t expect it to be a bargain.

They do, however, have some nice teaware. A problem with places like Maliandao is that the teaware for sale is generally of fairly low quality — mass produced stuff that’s destined for volume sale, rather than individual sale. This place had some nice new gaiwan and pots, at prices that are not exorbitant either. I definitely saw some gaiwan that I never saw on Maliandao (including one that my cousin might want). At 100 kuai each, they’re quite all right.

By the time I left, there were lots of people in the teahouse — almost entirely full. Most of them are foreigners, many knowing nothing about teas. Apparently, according to their website (the right hand link should be to the teahouse proper, but it’s broken) they were featured in the Time magazine last year. They also offer tea classes. I don’t know how good they are, but if I were to choose between this and Hong Kong, I’d do it in Hong Kong.

This is why one needs to travel — you never realize how good you have it until you go somewhere else. Hong Kong is indeed a tea capital 🙂