A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries from May 2008

Unwanted teas

May 12, 2008 · 9 Comments

What do you do with teas that you no longer want, but is a waste to throw away?

I was going through my tea closet, and found this one sealed and unopened canister of longjing. It was a pretty good grade longjing that was given to me, but since I almost never drink green tea, I never opened it. It’s been almost two years now, I think. I’m sure it’s still good, because recently I opened some other can that is basically a two or three year old green tea. Still tastes rather ok.

It’s a waste to throw away the tea. If I open the can, then I know it’ll be spoiled sooner or later because I just won’t drink it fast enough. If I don’t open it, it will languish….

Iced tea, I suppose, is one way to dispose of the tea, but I can only drink so much iced tea….

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I can’t drink gaoshan oolongs

May 12, 2008 · 2 Comments

One of the biggest changes in the 2+ years I’ve been blogging is that I no longer drink any Taiwanese gaoshan oolong.

Of course, with any statement like this, I am bound to break it — like today — but generally speaking, whereas I used to drink a fair amount of this stuff on a regular basis, I think today is the first time I actively made it myself since returning from Taiwan.

Mostly this can be chalked up to a phisiological change — I find myself much less able to handle this stuff than I used to. If it is dongding, with a suitable level of firing, I can still drink it, but if it’s say, Lishan oolong (which today’s tea is) then chances are I’ll feel pretty unwell afterwards. I either feel tired, or dizzy, or have a stomach ache… or all of the above. I was going through my tea stash today, and wanted to compare my tea with the two we had yesterday. Mine’s a little less harsh, but that could be because I didn’t stuff my pot, and it’s slightly higher roasted than the ones we had yesterday. Yet, after a few infusions, I could feel myself not really liking it, physically. The main attraction of gaoshan oolong, which is its aroma, is not something I find particularly alluring these days. Instead, I feel it’s mostly just something in the mouth that doesn’t last. If I want aroma, I can drink jasmine. If you want depth, qi, body, etc…. gaoshan oolong, in its easily obtainable form, usually doesn’t cut it. Not to mention that much of that stuff could be Vietnamese fakes.

Remind me not to drink these things again….

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Tea meeting

May 10, 2008 · 4 Comments

I had tea today with the owner of the blog Mount Awakening Aroma in Columbus, OH, a rather unlikely location for a meeting of two Chinese men drinking some tea.

The two Chinese men were not alone, as there were others who joined in the drinking. We went outdoors, to a park nearby, and sat down and had tea in a picnic area, complete with a shade and a usable (but unused today) barbeque.

Making tea for a lot of people pose unique challenges. There were a total of 13 people at the meeting today. I thought we were getting maybe 5, so I brought with me my black pot, which would work well with 5-6 people using small cups. 13 people, however, completely changed that.

The Hermit of Mount Awakening, however, was better prepared, and brought along one of those 300 ml pots that are well suited for such large gatherings. We first had a Taiwanese gaoshan oolong, from Nantou. Those teas work well in these circumstances, pleasing all at the table and being rather easy to appreciate. The pot performed admirably, although the table was so long as to require passing of the fairness cup from one to another, because it was impossible to pour otherwise (these are basically park benches, you see…)

I tried to make tea using my black pot, with the biyuzhu that I brought along. It worked out better than I imagined, since the tea rebrews very well, so I was able to get three combo steeps of three infusions (i.e. pour infusions 1, 2, 3 into fairness cup, distribute, repeat). Then we had to move on to something else, and I was using my pot more for my personal drinking and for my neighbours while we had a lull in the tea making – mostly between water boiling for use.

Two more teas were made — a rather nice competition tea from Dongding, fired appropriately and thus removed of any trace of grassy notes, and then another Taiwanese gaoshan oolong, not fired as much and thus, in contrast, has much grassy character. There’s a reason, I think, why oolongs used to be much higher fired than they are generally today. I think I like it the way it was.

It’s always nice drinking tea out. I should learn how to better make tea for a larger crowd. I think being mostly a solitary drinker recently has really made me less adept at doing it for many people — it was ok when I was getting lots of practice at Maliandao, but not so much now. Sigh, even these things can get rusty.

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Thanks

May 10, 2008 · 8 Comments

According to sitemeter, this blog has gotten its 70,000 visitor sometime yesterday. Those of you who use RSS, you don’t count 🙂

I guess that’s a large number, since when I first started it was really merely a way for me to keep track of my tea drinking, not expecting more than maybe the average 7 daily readers for your average blog. Over time, it grew into something else. I’ve gotten to know people who I otherwise would never have met. I have also learned more about myself, and my tea drinking.

So, a thank you to all of you who read this daily ramble, and to all those of you whose comments and correspondences make all this more enjoyable.

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Drinking cold tea

May 9, 2008 · 1 Comment

It’s funny sometimes when you drink a cup of half cold tea, and notice something that’s entirely different from the cup of hot tea you had a few minutes ago. Sure, one infusion apart, but I think in such cases, much can be chalked up to the temperature of the tea (and what that means for your tongue) rather than the actual tea changing.

I was drinking my biyuzhu today, and one cup, when drunk almost cold, tasted somewhere between a hongcha and an odd green tea. It’s a strange combination of tastes, and certainly not something that I would find if I had drank that cup hot.

I know people who, when drinking old puerh, will drink half a cup hot, and then let the other half cool down a bit and drink that. YP, among others, does that sometimes. It enhances certain aspect of the tea and can actually make you more aware of the aromatics of a certain tea. When it’s too hot, many such things go unnoticed. It’s the same thing as when one drinks a cup of iced tea (no dilution — only fridge treatment) versus a cup of the hot thing at the same strength, only this way it’s a little more subtle.

Yes, throw in yet one more variable to the never ending series of things you have to look out for when you brew tea.

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Stomach problems

May 8, 2008 · 14 Comments

I had a maocha from Beijing today. It’s been almost two years since I bought it, and it’s showing the first signs of age. However, it’s still very young, and in case the taste wasn’t obvious enough, my stomach protested.

My stomach doesn’t like young puerh very much. It never really has. These days, however, I can’t drink it more than two days in a row, or in some cases, even one day, without it protesting that I’m doing it eternal harm.

The tea people I associate with in Hong Kong (and pretty much any other Chinese tea drinker in Southern China) believe that young puerh isn’t very good for you. It’s harsh, and it can damage your stomach, at the very least. It’s also supposed to be bad for your kidney, but I think that’s more a Chinese medicine thing and longer term. You don’t always see the immediate consequences for that, but you definitely see immediate consequences for drinking too much young puerh. Tiffany, of Best Tea House, has long complained of having a weak stomach, especially after so many years of drinking too much tea. These days if you give her a cup of young puerh or green oolong, she’ll sip it very slowly, trying to basically not drink any of it (or at most, for a taste to see how the tea is). The same problem doesn’t really apply when it’s heavy roasted tea or an aged tea.

I find myself more or less in the same boat these days. I didn’t drink a young puerh yesterday, but the day before I did. It shows immediately. It’s just a mild stomach discomfort today, but it can become a full blown stomach ache if, say, I drink more young stuff tomorrow. It doesn’t really matter what kind of young puerh it is — the result is more or less the same.

These things are obviously also affected by your diet, etc, but that’s why you don’t see me talking much about young puerh these days, and if you’ve sent me a sample of something (especially those under 5 years of age) and I haven’t gotten to it yet — please forgive me for being slow 🙂

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Mystery aged oolong

May 7, 2008 · 2 Comments

The tea I had today is something nobody has been able to identify definitively

This tea I got in Beijing, from a store that only sold dancong. The guy is from the Fenghuang shan area. He said this tea is something that was sitting in his home (or a neighbour’s) for years, and he took it out and tried to sell it. Didn’t really move very fast, since this isn’t stuff that Beijingers have any real interest in.

The tea is odd. The first few cups taste a bit puerh-esque. It doesn’t have the same bite that the “wet stored” tieguanyin has. Instead, it is a more subtle spicy flavour that lingers. Today the tea actually came out better than previous renditions. Maybe it’s the pot. Maybe it’s the water, but it came out full bodied, whereas usually it is rather thin and bland.

I am inclined to think it’s something they really produced locally, perhaps a lower grade shuixian from the area. It does have that green kick to it, near the end of the session, but it’s very subtle and hard to pinpoint. Toki thought this could be a liu’an, but I’m not sure what kind of liu’an looks like tihs (liu’an guapian?). The stuff was rather cheap, and I probably should’ve bought a little more. As it is, however, it provides a nice diversion and is always a good tea to use to stump people 🙂

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Different aging for different oolongs

May 6, 2008 · 6 Comments

What I’m about to say I have no basis other than my own drinking experience — a mere conjecture, more than anything else.

I think Taiwanese oolong age faster than mainland ones.

To clarify, I should say that Taiwanese oolongs age more markedly than mainland ones.

What I mean is that I think there’s a larger discernable difference between an older and a younger Taiwanese oolong. The difference is not only more obvious, but more qualitative. Mainland oolongs, by comparison, age slower — they retain more of their original character despite long age. I have yet to taste an aged Taiwanese oolong that really remind me of their original taste, but with mainland oolongs (and here I mostly have tieguanyin in mind) I find that I can easily tell it was not only an original tieguanyin, but have some basic idea of how the tea was, back in the day.

I have a feeling this might have to do with processing. I currently have no idea if this is indeed true, or if it’s just my small sample size playing tricks on me. I also don’t know if it’s because of the type of tea that I have found so far leading me down this road, but things like storage condition and such have large parts to play in this process.

Anyway, food for thought. Meanwhile, I take one last sip from my aged tieguanyin (mainland) before I go to bed 🙂

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Wet stored tieguanyin

May 5, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This is a tea that I’ve talked about a few times before, a “wet stored” tieguanyin from my favourite candy store in Taipei. I believe it is around 25 years, from what I was told, but it’s hard to say for sure, for there’s no real proof of anything.

It is, I think, one of my better finds. I’ve sent a few samples to various people, with varying comments. The usual one, however, is that it tastes like aged puerh.

I don’t really know how the aged puerh taste got in there. I theorize it is the fact that the tea got slightly mouldy (you can smell it a little when it’s in its original big bag — a musty smell). The mould helped change the taste of the tea so that it has acquired a bit of that uerh taste.

It looks the part too, at least to the untrained eye.

Yet the tea is not puerh if you drink it carefully, because there are floral notes you’ll never find in a puerh. If puerh tastes earthy, this tea is more of a punchy floral note. It’s not fruity like the non-reroasted aged oolongs. They’re very different beasts.

The tea will last longer than you have the stomach for it. It might get boring in a way, but personally, I like teas that keep giving me many infusions of sweet water, hours after I first started. My requirements for a good tea isn’t very high.

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Aging takes… time

May 4, 2008 · 7 Comments

I pulled out a sample from a long time ago today — late 2006, when I first got to Beijing. I bought three samples of an up and coming brand back in the day called 12 Gentlemen. I remember I was only mildly impressed by their tea. Today I took out the 12 Gents “Arbour old tree” to try again, since I have a lot of it left. Wonder what a year and half has done to the tea?

Quick answer is… not much.

I’m sure something changed, but it still largely tastes like some very young puerh, with a greenish taste and some early promise of goodness. However, as the tea wore on it became very mediocre…. merely ok. Arbour tree? Maybe, maybe not. One thing worthy of note though is that the tea is very tightly compressed (despite claims of stone-mould pressed). I don’t know how one person stepping on a stone mould can get tea to come out like an iron cake.

Which leads me to the point of… it takes a lot of time to age a tea. I think anything under 10 years for aging a tea is really not much time at all, and just because old teas are not common this side of the Pacific doesn’t mean a tea is somehow more mature by being here. Unfortunately, I think puerhs are really not very good for drinking (if dry stored) until they’ve got maybe 15-20 years of age. Young puerh have their charms, of course, but those charms are really an accident and a bit of an acquired taste. It’s a tea that’s meant to be aged and drunk after some fermentation.

I’ve seen change in some of my teas, but not too many of them. Some have aged faster than others. This sample, having sat mostly in a plastic bag in Beijing and later Taiwan, has barely changed. I’ve had 15 or even 20 years old puerh stored in Taiwan that are only now beginning to be really drinkable, losing the harshness and the roughness that make young puerh difficult to down sometimes (not to mention bad for your body). I sometimes wonder if all this investment into cakes for furture consumption is really worth it, especially when it’s with cakes that are produced in large quantities and will still be available in large quantities in the future. Is it really worth bothering? It’s a lot of kilograms of tea to haul around for 20 years. Wouldn’t it be wiser just to stick the money in an index fund and harvest it 20 years later to buy tea?

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