January « 2008 « A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries from January 2008

Survival kit

January 6, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This is what I’m surviving on while away from home

It does the job. They have a fancy Cuisinart coffee machine with Lavazza coffee, but the only tea the hotel can muster up is some Celestial Seasoning Chamomile. Hasn’t anybody told them that chamomile isn’t even really tea?

Good thing I decided to bring my pot, and my electric kettle, because otherwise, I won’t have anything to drink tea with. Now, some hot water, a mug, and some aged baozhongs, and we’re in business.

Incidentally, because I’m relying on bottled water (boiled tap water in DC tastes awful — I tried) I got to test out two different waters for this baozhong. There’s Fiji, which worked really, really well. There’s also Poland Springs, which is so obviously inferior I wonder why anybody should pay money for it. It’s actually similar to the conclusion I reached almost two years ago in the early days of my blog — Fiji is a pretty good tea water, in that case a qingxiang tieguanyin. The aged baozhong is much heavier, but it also benefits from the Fiji water. It’s definitely better than my usual mix of filtered tap water plus some mineral water. It worked really well, actually.

Categories: Objects · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: teaware, travel

Teaism

January 4, 2008 · 2 Comments

There are a few places in Washington DC where one can have tea. I don’t have that much time to check them all out, but since one of them — a place called Teaism — is nearby, I figured it won’t hurt.

The store I went to is near Dupont Circle, and it’s located next to the local branch of the Evil Caffeine Empire

What my fiance remembered of the place and its current incarnation are actually a little different. Supposedly, they used to be more tea focused, but this time, when we went, it seems to be more of a lunch place that sells some tea on the side. The tea menu is quite undistinguished, and consist mostly of regular stuff you can find in any self-respecting tea store. My guess is that they discovered selling tea alone does not pay rent, as I suspect is the case in the USA for independent stores.

We did get some lunch though

A bento with (cold) salmon, and ochazuke — basically leftover rice with bad sencha. In this case, the sencha wasn’t so bad (I tried a little of it independently) — it was sweet and not grassy. The other pot of tea was something we ordered – a “Golden Monkey”, which is actually quite disappointing, considering they serve a pot of tea without actually giving you any leaves. The tea is underbrewed, and rather boring, and not having the leaves, I couldn’t even tell if they brewed it from teabags. For $3.75 a pot, I expected a little more.

There’s a store called Ching Ching Cha which seems a little more interesting, but it’s a little farther out, and I have a feeling I won’t have time to go… oh well

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: travel

Heavy teas, light teas, and the water they drink

January 3, 2008 · 5 Comments

Food for thought while driving 6 hours to go to Washington DC for a conference and sipping bad teabag teas — there are, I think, two types of teas out there, heavy and light. Heavy teas are things like cooked or aged puerh, roasted oolongs (and some aged oolongs), black tea, and that sort of thing. Light teas are green, white, light fermentation oolongs, etc.

That’s probably pretty obvious. I think though that generally speaking, in terms of tea preparation, there are one set of requirements that will work for heavy teas, and one set that will work for light teas. This is of course not accurate, because they each vary individually and each batch of tea will perform differently. However, I think that over time, I’ve noticed things are different waters and different teas that seem to play out consistently roughly within the heavy/light classification. So, for example, a water heavy in mineral content does not work very well with the light teas — the water is often too strong in taste or texture and destroys the beauty in the light teas. A really light water with a heavy tea, on the other hand, can make an otherwise thick and luscious tea seem thin, even though the tea will gain a bit of crispness and perhaps freshness not common in those types. This is not a science, and it is certainly not precise, but it is a beginning of a thought.

Has anybody else noticed this, or is this just induced by drinking Nestle “100% real leaf tea” teabags?

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: water

Tea gallery aged tieguanyin

January 3, 2008 · 1 Comment

As I think I’ve stated before — the first law of a tea blogger is that the rate at which samples are sent to the blogger is always going to be higher than the rate at which the samples are consumed.

It gets harder when you get gift tea along with it, as I did recently from Toki.

These are two packs of 1991 tieguanyin from, I think, the Tea Gallery in New York.

The leaves are highly rolled, and smells a little roasted. The smell is more obvious when it hits the warmed teapot. The tea brews a rich brown liquor

It’s obviously thick. The tea is surprisingly still a bit bitter, and the roasty taste is quite present. Tastes a bit like a Best Tea House tieguanyin…. the tea is rounder and smoother than a new tieguanyin, but I think this was probably stored in more air-tight conditions (I know the Best Tea House usually stores theirs in extremely well sealed containers). The character that develops under this sort of condition is not the same as those that I found in Taiwan when they were more exposed to the elements. It’s obvious that this was a good tea when it was first made — all the right characteristics are there. My fiance had a lot of fun drinking this tea while eating chocolates. She said it went really well together, perhaps because of the strong roasty flavour plus the heavy body combining to bring out the best in the chocolates. I wouldn’t know, since I didn’t try.

There’s something funny about the wet leaves though — notice the difference in tones in the leaves? While most of them are dark brown/green, a few are a very light yellowish brown. How come?

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: aged oolong, Chinese oolong, tieguanyin

Twin flowers

January 2, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Yesterday was New Year’s, so I figured it’s an excuse to drink something nice.

So I pulled out this little container with about 2-3g of tea in it. It’s from my last visit to Wisteria with Aaron Fisher, when we met with a documentary producer. There, you have to order tea based on the amount of people you have in your party, so for the four of us, we have to order a medium sized pot of stuff. However, we used one of Zhou Yu’s antique pots — the one that Aaron said is the best for puerh. It was too small though, so we didn’t use all of the tea, and this is the leftover — and they let me take it home.

So what is this? This is what is called Shuang Hua, or Twin Flowers, supposedly a Yiwu from the 1930s. This isn’t nearly as famous as Tongqing, Tongxing, or some of the other antique teas, but still, it’s old. One advantage of it being not as famous is that it’s cheaper, but still by no means an afforadable everyday tea, unless your budget is huge.

I put it in my much inferior puerh pot and made tea

Older puerhs tend not to have a long lasting intense colour. This seems to be true from Red Label onwards — the colour fades very quickly, although flavour stays even when a cup of tea looks very weak. This tea is extremely mellow, with a soft aged puerh taste, turning into a mushroomy brew that is reminicent of water you use to soak mushrooms before you cook them. The qi is obviously there, but it’s very subdued and isn’t overpowering. I think drinking this you can see how it is an inferior tea compared with some of the more famous brands from that era.

The wet leaves are quite broken, and pretty unremarkable. I know if I bring something like this to, say, Beijing, they’ll think this is cooked puerh. Oh, the joy.