A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries from March 2008

The comforts of home

March 10, 2008 · 4 Comments

On this recent trip to Boston I made tea twice at somebody else’s place, and at both places I am reminded of how tied I am to my own tea setup, how my habits of tea making are determined by the teaware I use. It’s not the yixing pots or the cups or even the tea that really determined my tea making. It’s one specific thing of my kettle — the spout.

This might sound a little silly, but the spout of a kettle really determines how it pours, and that in turn greatly affects how I make tea. At the first tea meeting, I kept overshooting my pot (easily portable) when I tried to pour water into it. The spout on the water kettle there makes sure the water comes out at an angle that is not the same as the kettles I use, and thus I kept misjudging the first few times I poured. At the second place there was no such problem, although I am still reminded of how much I miss my kettle and my whole setup at home.

Kettle spouts come in all shapes and sizes. These are the ones I have at home

The one on my current tetsubin is the second, and not surprisingly, it gives me the most control in the speed of pouring. The last one is my electric kettle. It looks a little too wide, although it doesn’t drip at all, even though it seems like it might. It actually can pour a very fine pour, but it takes quite a bit of practice. The first is a spout on a simple stainless steel kettle. It does the job, but very hard to pour a fine pour of just a little water. The third is the flat tetsubin that I now have as a spare. It pours fine, except that it does drip a little (shorter spout and less tapering) and also is quirky because of the level of water vis-a-vis the level of the spout. Over time, I tihnk I am used to the higher levels of control that my kettles’ spout affords me, and also the perculiar ways they are shaped. The comforts of home, in this case, includes a familiarity with my teaware when I make my tea, and coming back to it makes me very happy.

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Stretching a tea

March 7, 2008 · 4 Comments

One question I sometimes get is — how do you drink 15 or 20 infusions of a tea?

On one level, that’s a volume question. How do I fit that much tea in my stomach?

If I give the impression that I drink them all in one go, I suppose I must revise that impression and point out that no, for the most part, anything after 6 or 7 infusions would normally be consumed over the course of a few, if not many, hours.

The other, bigger, problem, is that of the tea itself. I think in those cases, the first thing to note is that when I say 15 infusions, the last cup is usually much weaker than the first cup. Sometimes, the last cup is not much more than sweet water. However, even sweet water are not all created equal. Some are flavourful, full of character sweet water, sometimes even giving you some reaction along the throat when swalloing. Other times, it’s just flat, boring, sweet water. In some ways, I think these last cups tell you a lot about the tea you’re drinking — it puts certain information on display that might not be obvious early on. What separates a good tea from a great tea is partly its ability to be pushed very hard for very long — invariably, teas that will still come out with a meaningful cup 15 infusions later is likely to be the better one. In aged teas, those are the ones that are more prized because of their changing character throughout a session.

What I think sometimes is missing in many reviews I’ve seen is an indication of how far the tea was pushed. The 7th or 8th or 9th infusion can be 5, 10, 20 minutes, or half an hour…. or two hours, even. Whatever works for that particular tea in that particular volume/tea ratio. I think over time, one gets a better sense of what is appropriate. I’m not sure if people simply give up, or don’t want to talk about it anymore because it’s less interesting, or anything else. It helps that some forms of tea (such as the aged oolongs I drink these days) are devoid of any bitterness and so easier to experiment than others, but just like today in my session with DH here drinking some tea, when a tea is pushed hard with a long steep in boiling water, even after 10+ infusions, it can come back to life with something else, something that you never noticed was there in any of the earlier cups. Those are always good moments.

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Teabag gongfu

March 4, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Brewing with a teabag can actually be a little tricky, and I’m by no means good at it. I think what it requires is a certain sense of timing — knowing when to pull it out. Too many times I leave my tea in the cup too long. What happens, I think, is that I sort of want a cup of strong tea. Yet… that usually means nasty bitter tea that really isn’t very good to drink. What I need to do is to resist the temptation to make a strong cup, and instead let the teabag out of the cup quite soon — definitely sooner than the usual five minutes prescription. Today I went to Peet’s to get my caffeine fix, and got a (not very good) Lapsang Souchong. I took it out around to 3 minutes mark…. and thankfully, the person who did the teabag didn’t over stuff the bag with leaves, so it actually worked out pretty well, despite the not-so-great tea….

I should, however, just bring some leaves with me tomorrow and make a real cup….

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Enjoying tea

March 4, 2008 · 2 Comments

One of the great benefits of meeting somebody live for tea, rather than say just sharing samples through the mail, is that when you’re actually talking to the person, you know exactly what’s going on in the cup at the same time and can respond with meaningful comments, rather than having to guess what “fruit” or “astringent” means in any particular context. I always find tea meetings to be useful, even when it’s a tea you already know inside out, because somebody else’s tongue (and words) are always going to be different than yours. Today I had tea with dogma and the tea I made was an aged baozhong that I have had on many occasions, and which I find is great for traveling on the road. Among the qualities of the tea which I find are interesting are 1) the bitterness is nonexistent and, 2) it can taste a bit like hongcha. Both of which are confirmed without me needing to really say much of anything about it.

But of course, confirming what you know about a tea is not the main point of having tea with somebody. It’s just a side benefit. Like any addictions, I think this one’s best shared with others who truly enjoy in partaking in it.

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Travel day again

March 2, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Long day driving…. only high point was drinking my aged baozhong in a paper cup with hot water from a coffee joint.

But boy, the tea made me feel good.

This blog’s called A Tea Addict’s Journal for a reason 🙂

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Old yixing pot

March 1, 2008 · 8 Comments

Among my recent shipment came this pot

Which, after some careful looking, I think is quite old. The original reason I bought it was because it looked very much like a pot that I saw at Wisteria in Taipei. When I saw a picture of this pot it immediately reminded me of it — they’re not the same in shape or size, but they looked very similar. When I finally got it through the mail and examined it in my hand, it seems more similar than I originally thought — the texture of the clay feels very fine, yet there’s a certain coarseness to it. Sounds contradictory, but it’s not really.

The most interesting thing is the lid

It’s not that obvious here in either of the pictures, but the colour of the lid is a few shades lighter than the pot itself. I’m not sure why that is. One possibility is that the person using this pot didn’t care much to season the lid. Another is that the lid wasn’t used much — possible if the pot was not used as a teapot, but as a shudei (water dropper for ink stones). You can also see how the interior of the lid is very rough — again, looking like the pot from Wisteria. From what I understand, Qing period pots that were made prior to the Daoguang era or so (roughly 1850) usually did not have their interiors “fixed”, i.e. they were left as-is. It was only after that that they had their interiors beautified by smoothing out the joint lines, etc. There’s an obvious joint line in the pot as well, although it doesn’t really show up in pictures very well.

Of course, it is entirely possible for fakes to fake the joint line, and all those other things…. but I don’t think anybody making a fake will do it as an unsigned pot with no name and such obvious problems, such as an air-hole that is a tad too small. Fakes are, not surprisingly, usually a lot prettier.

None of these, of course, makes a convincing case that this is definitely an old pot, but the clay and the work makes me rather inclined to believe it. Either way though… it’s been making good tea for me the past few days, and in some ways, I suppose that’s enough.

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