A Tea Addict's Journal

Today was cold. I was craving for some older tea, so I drank my 30 years loose from the Best Tea House.

It’s too bad I don’t have 30 years old cakes around, sigh. I wish I do. This is sort of my old tea substitute. What can you do… I’m not even 30 yet.

Using my trusty new pot

I brewed this up

And after about 10 infusions

It got weaker.

I went with a few more, but then decided to stop. It’s nice, it’s not fantastic, but good enough, and quite pleasant. It was a bit on the weaker side today, as I didn’t add in a lot of leaves. It is somehow sweeter than I remembered. I wonder if having brewed a lot of sweeter puerh in my pot the past two weeks have done something to the taste. I don’t know.

Here are the brewed leaves, sorry the picture is a little redder than it really should be

Incidentally, I did an experiment today. I think I need to do a more scientific way of testing teas, at least new ones, for purchase and for taste. So, I am going to play around with parameters and also with different teas to see how they come out. Given that, I brewed up the crappy Longyuan Hao cake I bought (since it’s crap anyway). I used boiling water, rinse quickly, and then brewed it for 3 minutes straight.

Basically, the liquor came out orangy yellow, a bit opaque, the tea…. VERY bitter (takes some serious determination to drink it down), a little sour — this is something I didn’t notice before — and drying. The throat went dry on me. There was little huigan, and not a whole lot of salivation. No feelings of coolness in the mouth or the throat. Like I said, crap tea, but good for experimentation.

I drank a late infusion old puerh to recover from the dryness. Then I brewed it for 3 minutes a second time. Less colour — the tea’s getting weaker. Same taste…

Maybe I should give the two mystery cakes the same treatment and see what I get from them. It will be interesting.