A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries from April 2007

HK Return commemoration brick

April 11, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I drank this today

Another view — USB for scale

Yes, this is tea. Very very very hard, compressed tea.

I was pretty proud when, after struggling with it for about five minutes, I finally was able to split it into two

It was the good, trusty puerh knife (the one with the faux-wood handle) that did the job.

This piece was given to me when I was visiting New York. I wasn’t told much about it other than what it was. I think this is supposed to be aged somewhat, although I’m not sure when. 1997, perhaps? I don’t know. I’ve seen some of those Hong Kong return commemoration bings that were made pretty recently…

The conventional wisdom on commemoration cakes/bricks, especially the ones that are so hard compressed, is that they are no good. They are more display pieces than for consumption, and you drink it at your own peril. There’s a term for this kind of tea, gongyi cha, which means “craft tea”. What it means, really, is that this is tea that is valued more for the way it looks than the way it tastes. However, I was told that this piece is not too bad, and that I ought to try it, so I did.

Smelling the dry leaves, you can detect some nice, slightly aged puerh smell. It’s of the sweet variety, and quite pleasant to smell. It seems promising.

I rinsed it twice — the first time to soften the piece up so I can peel it into pieces, and then the second time so that all the leaves actually touch water at least once before I start brewing. The aroma is the same as the dry leaves… smells nice!

The first infusion was a bit bland… with a slightly off taste in the back. It’s the first infusion after all.

The second was a little stronger

The first sip is quite nice…. with that sweet aroma coming through, and a bit of a sweet taste. Something still there that was sort of off, but not really obvious. I took a few more sips…. the tea is a little bland and a little weak in the taste department. It hits the back of the mouth with a bit of a cooling effect, which is nice, but somehow tastes a bit like water, which is not nice.

Then, in the next two infusions, I had more of the same thing, except that the off taste is becoming more prominent. By the fourth infusion it was clear that something is not quite right. While the first sip of each infusion was rather smooth and sweet, the next sip comes off as sour… there’s a puckery feeling on the sides of the tongue, and it becomes very unpleasant to drink. The colour of the brew is stronger

But the taste remains more or less the same, other than the more pronounced effect of the sourness of the tea. The tea is also a bit drying on the mouth… I feel my mouth dry up as I drink it, and it doesn’t really moisturize the mouth like some teas do. Instead, it sucks water out of it.

I tried the tea for two more infusions and gave up on it. It wasn’t really improving. It’s truly an odd tea. The initial impression is quite favourable, and I even thought that this might be a tea that is nice enough to defy the “commemoration cake is bad tea” rule. Then, as I go deeper into the tea, things change and the problems show up. The sourness is particularly unpleasant, but it is interesting how it only shows if I drink more than one small sip of the tea in each infusion. I even thought it’s something that’s a little denser than water that’s causing tihs… that somehow the stuff causing sourness settles, so I tried shaking the tea up before drinking, but the result is the same. When there’s no sourness, the tea is quite pleasant, though a bit bland. When the sourness is there, you just don’t want to drink this.

I used about 8g of tea, which is almost half my sample. I don’t think it was too much tea, as I did very fast infusions later on to try to reduce the effect of the unpleasant tastes, thinking that I may have overbrewed them. It didn’t work, and the sour feeling eventually got me to stop drinking the tea.

The leaves are a bit broken, and small, as one would expect in such a highly compressed sample. It almost feels like there are two kinds of leaves in there…. one that gives off that nice sweet aroma, the other that gives you that sour taste. The sour taste, unfortunately, wins out.

It was an interesting experience though, regardless, as I rarely drink this sort of thing.

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Two shuixians

April 10, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I tried the new shuixian I bought recently against an older one that I had.

One of them is 4x the price of the other. Any guesses?

I used 3.5g for each side to ensure consistency in the amount of leaves. The teas brewed a very similar colour — the right side being slightly, ever so slightly, darker. It’s difficult to tell.

First infusion

Third or fourth infusion? Something like that

This is how they look when wet and done

The left side is the newer one that I got, while the right is the older one that I already had (but I’m only opening the right side for the first time). The flavours… the left side clearly has a bit more roasted character than the right, and you can taste a bit of the roasted charcoal sort of flavour in the left sample, while the right one, though roasted some, doesn’t have that charcoal sort of taste. The left was clearly superior though, with a deeper character that penetrates down to the throat and leaving an obvious and immediate “rock aftertaste”. The right sample, while giving you some of that “rock aftertaste”, is weak in comparison. This was especially evident after around four infusions, where the left sample was still going strong while the right, tasted against the left, feels watery and bland.

The wet leaves show that the left side is somehow more rolled and maintains its rolled character, while the right side leaves unfurled more quickly. Upon closer inspection, the right sample seems to have mixed in it a few different kinds of teas, some more roasted, some less, and it’s the less roasted stuff that unfurl more easily. The more roasted ones, with those goosebump filled leaves, stay in their shape for longer. The left sample, being uniformly more roasted, stayed that way more or less over the infusions.

I don’t think the difference in taste is entirely attributable to roasting levels, and has instead something to do with the basic character and quality of the tea. The tea on the left was simply better, with that sort of aftertaste and depth that the right sample doesn’t match. Thankfully (or not…), it’s also the one that costs more.

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New Shuixian

April 9, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I tried my new shuixian today.

The first two or three infusions were great…. and then the dropoff was rather sudden. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if it’s the way I brewed them, the amount of leaves used (this tea takes up a lot of space so I couldn’t stuff as much tea in there), or what, but the tea somehow didn’t come out as good as I had hoped.

The tea is medium roasted, with very long leaves and looks pretty good when dry. The longer leaves you see in this picture are more than an inch long. I had to break a few of them to make them fit into the pot.

The first few infusions were great… with that roasted aroma, but also underneath it something very fragrant. It’s like an incense for some reason — smells like those Chinese incense, but I’m not sure what they’re called in English. It was an odd thing to detect in tea, but a pleasant one.

Then around infusion 4 something didn’t go quite right. The tea experienced a bit of a dropoff that was pretty obvious. The tea got more watery, etc. I wonder if it’s because I didn’t add enough leaves. Normally I would use more for this type of tea, but this one I couldn’t because of the way the leaves are. I might have to crush some to get more into my pot. Right now they just prop each other up and thus making the total tea/pot ratio to something like 1/3.

I’ll try it again soon and see what happens.

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Back to Beijing

April 8, 2007 · 3 Comments

Today was a lovely day, with warm temperature and great weather, and the sky was actually blue and not some shade of yellow. I am rather jet-lagged… feeling sleepy around 12pm. What better way to try to keep myself awake than to walk around on this sunny day while pumping myself full of caffeine?

Yes, I went to Maliandao. Surprised? Didn’t think so.

When I got there, I had this strange feeling that everything felt foreign, somehow. I know the place pretty well now, but somehow today, when I went there, I felt odd. Maybe not having been here for more than a month did the trick and made me feel a little odd.

In order to get myself into the mood, I went into Jingmin Chacheng to see what’s there, and if there’s anything new. I went into a store that I have never really went to previously, looked at some cakes, sat down to taste some, and I think I gradually got myself back into the mode of drinking tea with strangers while there.

I originally didn’t want to try anything there, but ended up trying three different kinds of tea. The first is a quite delightful Bulang cake, and quite reasonable too after hacking off more than 50% off the list price. I didn’t end up buying one, as the guy offered me those discounts without me asking for it (oddly enough). I told him I’ll probably go back and pick up a few. I think he’s basing on the assumption that I’ll buy a tong (he’s quoting me those prices) but I don’t know if I actually want a tong of tea….. it’s a little too much at this moment. At most I want two or three cakes.

The second was a Banzhang, which, while being about 5 times the Bulang at something like $50 USD, is not as good. It doesn’t strike me as a good tea, and is expensive merely by being Banzhang (everything Banzhang is astronomical these days). That’s why I don’t generally buy anything Banzhang…. price/quality wise, it’s not usually a good deal.

The third tea is a mixed cake of some sort, and the guy couldn’t tell me where it’s from. From the taste it’s from the Six Mountains, probably something like Manzhuan. It’s not too bad, but too pricey and not good enough.

I didn’t buy anything. I might go back for the Bulang… and to try their spring teas, which are coming down in a week or so.

I then proceeded to L’s store, where I sat down to have some dianhong. The girl who’s usually there, L’s business partner Xiaomei (L’s usually in Shanghai) is down in Yunnan with L and others to check things out for the first time. So only the assistant was there today. The dianhong is of the larger leaf variety, quite nice, but a little weak. I think they didn’t steep the tea long enough and were brewing it like young puerh, which is not the way to go. After drinking it, I thought to myself that I should really go check out redteas everywhere.

I ended up in a Wuyi tea store that is opened by a relative of one that I often go to. I tried perhaps half a dozen teas there, and bought 100g of one. It’s a heavily roasted Shuixian, quite nice, and good chaqi. It’s not that cheap, but I think it’s worth it for the price. I have, of course, more than enough Wuyi to handle, but not quite so much that I’ll have to worry about not finishing them. Part of my calculation is that I need “drink it now” teas more than “storage” teas, and this falls into the “drink it now” category. Young puerhs…. gotta really think about them before buying a bit lot of them at this point.

Some of the other teas I tried there were older dahongpaos, which were of varying degrees of interest (some were quite good!). One tea stood out as interesting… a variation on Zhengshan Xiaozhong. I didn’t like it, but it was interesting to look at the leaves and taste the tea… which was like ZSXZ, but not really….

I got pretty pumped up by caffeine, but that didn’t stop me from feeling extremely sleepy once I got home…. I think I am heading to bed.

P.S. Seems like all blog websites are down in China!

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New teapot

April 6, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This is a new teapot I got for my girlfriend. I got it in Beijing, and we’re doing the work to season it for the first time today.

This thing is destined for cooked puerh… so now it’s simmering in a slow cooker with a lot of cooked puerh smell going around the room….

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Black and white

April 5, 2007 · 2 Comments

Yesterday I had a black and a white tea, which made for an interesting contrast, I suppose, although really, they are all just shades of brown.

The black is an assam given to me by Mr. Lochan of Lochantea. It brews great in a cup, with nice caramel aromas and soft body. It gets a bit tannic after sitting in the cup for some time, but for the first few minutes the tea is quite drinkable, and great for a cold, snowy day, as we just had recently.

The white is a silver needles from Adagio. It’s being served in a cafe in our undergrad library’s cafe, and it’s the only non-adulterated tea in their offerings. They gave me probably what amounted to 1.5g of tea in a pretty big cup, which brewed a fairly flavourless cup of tea. On the bright side, it’s really not too bad, and serves up a good cup of sweet, flavoured water…. but not much of a tea. I needed more leaves.

I’m flying back tomorrow to Beijing, so not much is happening, tea wise, as I rush to do last minute things. There are only very few things I miss from Beijing, Maliandao being one of them.

I’ll report back once I get on the ground again 🙂

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Tea gathering

April 4, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Today I had two tea guests over, and together we drank four different teas. As is generally the case at these meetings, everybody has way more tea than we can possibly drink in one session, and we really only got to drink a fraction of the stuff that we actually had.

The first was a very light dancong, unroasted. The tea is quite nice, subtle, and sweet, although I think I probably could’ve made it a little stronger and make it better. I usually am not a big fan of light dancongs, although this one I could handle. Sometimes they are just too fragrant… taste almost fake.

The second was an oddball of a tea… the Eiabora King Tea Biscuit from Dadugang. Now, the name of the tea itself is a little odd, but in this case, the smell was even odder. It has been sitting in a plastic bag, as far as I can tell, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Instead, it seems as though something is happening with the tea. When I sniffed the dry leaves, it smelled funny with an undescribable smell. Then, when brewed, it somehow came out even stronger.. a nasty smell that is rather unpleasant. One of my guests commented that this is rather like that of a rotten fruit smell… which is probably pretty close to what it is. We had two infusions of this before deciding to give it up. There’s a possibility that this is just spoiling instead of aging — it’s turning into something bad. The tea just didn’t taste right at all and had some very odd flavours to it… entirely unpleasant.

Then, to wash it out a bit, I offered to make my Yiwu maocha, which I now increasingly think is a mixed Yiwu and Menghai area teas. While it has a hint of that Yiwu taste, it also has that smell that I seem to find in a lot of Menghai area teas. The tea is still nice… it’s just not exactly what it claims to be.

We didn’t have a lot of time today to drink a lot of tea, so we ended up with my broken Guangyungong bits as a finish. While it took only about an hour to drink the three previous teas, we spent probably just as much, if not more, time on this puerh. Before my guests left, it was at least at infusion 12 or 13. The tea keeps giving, and I can just let it drag out longer and longer in infusion time and still get a cup that, while losing the woody and thick aromas, retain just enough to make it much more interesting than drinking water. It is sweet and smooth, and leaves very little doubt that this is an aged tea — the longevity is not matched by your usual cooked puerh.

It’s too bad that I’m leaving soon, because otherwise we could have another such session. Alas, I must go back to China soon to keep doing my work there.

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Yummmmm

April 3, 2007 · 2 Comments

When I was looking for a tea to drink today, I found this mystery bag of young puerh. I have no idea what it is, having written nothing about this particular sample that I got. All I could tell is that it is rather young…

I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it. I opened the bag… smelled it. It smelled like smoke, which is all right. A lot of young puerhs smell like smoke.

I brewed it up as I normally would, taking pictures and all. The first infusion was rather bland…. the tea wasn’t opened up yet. You could tell it’s not very good tea already, but I figured I’d give it a few more infusions before making any judgments.

Well…. there have been reviews of other young puerhs where the reviewer likened the tea to bugspray. I have never tasted bugspray before, and I have no idea what that might actually be like. However, if bugspray means “something that smells and tastes really foul”….. well, I think I found it.

It was nasty. It was bitter. It tasted odd. It left a bad aftertaste in my mouth. It was terrible. I ate a few cookies to wash out the taste of the tea, and stopped after about 3 infusions. I’m not even going to bother with the one picture that I took. Whatever.

Thankfully this is only a sample. I feel sorry for whoever bought this tea.

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Pyramid teabags

April 1, 2007 · 3 Comments

Pyramid teabag is one of those things that we’ve been seeing more and more these few years. Many companies now make them, including I think Lipton, according to an article from, I think, the New York Times a while back. The theory behind them is that pyramid bags, by virtue of their shape, allows for more room for the leaves to be in. They also allow for the tea manufacturer to put whole leaves in them, rather than the fannings that you usually see in regular bags. This, supposedly, will yield a better cup and, of course, be more expensive.

But is it?

I had one today, made by Tea Forte. It was an English breakfast tea, which tasted like your typical Ceylon blend. By the end of the tea…. the bag was filled with the expanded leaves. I am not sure if it really achieved the goal of allowing for more room for the tea to move around.

Also, the amount of tea initially that was available was really tiny…. maybe 2g of tea? It’s quite expensive for what it is….

It might not be much more than a gimmick 🙁

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