A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries from July 2008

Small world

July 10, 2008 · 2 Comments

I got some mail two days ago, and among the contents of the bag was a sample with a familiar neifei.

Wasn’t expecting to see this… and whose handwriting is that? I’m sure my readers can figure that out.

This tea, incidentally, was recommended by me to Hobbes, and then, I suppose, Hobbes sent a sample to this person, who then sent the rest of the sample to me…. it’s a small world after all. There are two versions of this cake, one with two words inside the red circle, the other with one. I bought the one with one word, having tried both, and they’re currently sitting in Hong Kong waiting to get better.

I should hasten to add, this is the same company that makes the Douji cakes now. They were having branding issues and couldn’t quite decide on what to call themselves. At that time, the brand was Yisheng, and nowadays I think they’re reviving that brand for cooked puerh.

It’s a nice tea — not too nasty to drink now, and I think has enough to go the distance. I wonder how my cakes are doing in Hong Kong.

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Slowness

July 9, 2008 · 9 Comments

As some of you might have noticed (or all of you, really), things are a little slower here these days.

Partly it’s because I’m still refusing to climb out of all the boxes from the move, which means a relative lack of variety in tea, but also because I don’t think it’s very productive for me to tell you about how I drink, yet again, another aged oolong I got from here or there. I have a feeling it’s really not very interesting.

But also, because I don’t think I find it very interesting to talk about a tea I’ve had anymore. Not that I won’t do it from time to time, especially when other people send me a tea for my two cents. But it’s not particularly interesting, most of the time.

For example, I had some cheap reroasted slightly aged oolong today, stuff I brought back from Taiwan. It’s not particularly good, and needs time socked away to lose the roasted taste in order to get a little better. Right now it’s just some charcoal plus fruit plus “tea” flavour.

But isn’t that just like most other teas? Sort of like how most young puerhs are a bit bitter, maybe fruity, and perhaps minty? It’s worse in this case, because I can’t attach a name or label to it. It’s not something that you, my reader, can go buy and then say “oh, right” or “no, not really”. In essence, I’m talking in a vacuum, and since these days I’m drinking mostly these things that are otherwise unavailable to most of my readers (those of you who have regular access to Asia or from Asia are excepted). In that case, is there a point in me telling you about it in all the gory details?

Maybe that’s why I drifted to talking more about teaware these days, it feels more concrete, more tangible. A black teapot is still a black teapot no matter how you look at it. There’s some certainty out there that teas don’t generally have.

This is not to say I will forsake writing any sort of tea drinking notes from now on. In fact, I just got a cake of puerh today in the mail that I will probably break open tomorrow to try. This tea you can actually still get from online sources. This is a rarity these days, isn’t it?

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Caring for a tetsubin

July 7, 2008 · 3 Comments

One of the tetsubins I have came with its original box, and inside the box are two inserts. One is a list of the artist’s achievements — awards, shows, etc that he has been in (among which was apparently a purchase by the emperor!). The other, though, is rather interesting and which I neglected to read when I got it — it’s about caring for the tetsubin.

The first part of it is rather simple and not worth mentioning, but the last part has four points, which are rather interesting

1) Use pure water, rather than tap water. If you have to use tap water, then you should let it sit for a night before using it — and only skim off the top, not the whole container. The bad stuff, such as whatever chlorine or anything else they use, will sink to the bottom, so they say
2) Use a mild heat to dry the thing out thoroughly after use, and let it sit uncovered for the night so that it doesn’t trap moisture inside. That’s sensible.
3) Use a cotton cloth that’s slightly damp to wipe the outside of the kettle after use, while it’s still warm. That I didn’t think about at all
4) Never use it on a gas stove, it’ll crack the damn thing.

I wonder what the damp cloth will do. Maybe I should try doing that from now on.

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Dahongpao

July 5, 2008 · 5 Comments

I got this as a sample from Danica when I was in LA

It comes in a nice little box, two packs to each box. There’s actually no real need to package good Wuyi tea this way — they keep quite well on their own and doing this can actually only stop it from potentially aging. There’s also my usual complaint — packing teas in small packs means that I cannot actually adjust the amount of tea I use for my brewing. You have to adjust to its amount, and change your teaware, instead of the other way around. Mighty inconvenient, if you ask me.

This is the entire contents of the bag

Which translates to this much in the pot

And made tea that is coloured thus

The tea is a light to medium roast yancha, unfortunately made a little weak because I didn’t quite have enough. It took two infusions to get a decent “rock aftertaste” to come out from the cup, and then after a few more, it faded… I don’t think it was a fair session with this tea, as I think it would be better if I had more (or a smaller pot I can use). Alas, I didn’t. I learned the “stuff the pot” way of making Wuyi tea from friends in Hong Kong, and have found it to be generally true — if you don’t stuff the pot, it won’t come out right. I don’t know if it’s just me being used to that amount of tea, but in general, if too little tea is used, the flavour tends to be thin and a bit elusive. It works better with less tea if it’s a low roast tea, but I just don’t like low roast yancha….

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Another pot

July 4, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This one some of you might remember

It’s the pot that I talked about a few months ago as having a lid and body that are different in colour. It’s funny, because over time, I think the difference has become a little less obvious. There’s still a difference in tone, and you can probably see it in the picture, but if I didn’t tell you, it might have been easily overlooked.

One of the problems with buying old teapots is that sometimes they can come poorly seasoned or unevenly done. Not seasoned is not a problem, but when it’s uneven, it can be annoying and difficult to fix. Another common problem are things like mineral deposits on a pot, which can actually be extremely hard to remove. I have another pot that has some strange patches where the surface is almost oily. I don’t know what’s going on there.

Which, I suppose, is part of the fun. Seasoning new pots can be so boring 🙂

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Patience

July 3, 2008 · 5 Comments

I remember when I first bought this teapot, I was quite excited. It had a nice patina on it already, as it was used, and it was the perfect size for me. As you can see, I’m still using it for puerh, as I have since the day of the purchase. It’s been….. about two years since I got it. During this time, it went through some changes, and I remember, to my dismay, that the patina started peeling off a little. The original patina, it turns out, was somehow more like a little film of shine on top of the pot itself. When I rubbed the pot, it would rub off a little. Gradually, there was a little ring near the bottom of the pot as well as some lines forming underneath the spout. The patina was cracking, so to speak.

So I decided to rub off all of the patina, which I did.

That happened in Beijing. I remember I spent probably half an hour doing it, and when it was done, the pot became a lot duller. I wondered to myself if I did the right thing.

Now, after another year of use, the pot has gradually taken on a bit of a shine again, but the type of shine is different. It’s no longer the rather glossy shine that it used to have, but instead has a slightly dull surface, but you can sort of tell it is not quite “dull” when you look at the pot.

I don’t usually rub my pots when I use them, and don’t really do anything these days to actively try to season them. I just use them. Over time, I’ve discovered that that’s probably the best way to let them season — regular and repeated (and careful) use will, eventually, give the pots a nice sheen. It just takes time and patience.

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Expensive playthings

July 1, 2008 · 3 Comments

When teaware gets expensive, the temptation is to be more careful with it, but sometimes, the more careful you are with things, the more likely you’re going to break them, because you are naturally nervous handling it.

No, I didn’t melt down the silver kettle or anything, fun though that may be. It does, however, remind me that when using expensive teaware, sometimes one’s enjoyment is slightly less than if it were replaced with something cheap, something that is cheap enough so that whether it breaks or not, it doesn’t matter much. In many ways, it does not detract from the joys of tea making — perhaps even enhances it. Generally speaking, my teaware are not very expensive, and I have learned through a few painful lessons that it is often not a good idea to be too invested in any particular piece of teaware — those are the ones you tend to break.

Using the silver kettle does get me a little nervous. Of course, it is partly because the item’s not mine — I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to it, whether it be a ding or dent or whatever. Silver not being particularly hard, I didn’t want to risk anything, so I was extra careful.

And I think it showed in the tea making I was doing — I was too concerned with not getting the kettle into anything bad that I wasn’t concentrating as much on the tea itself or the tea making process. I’m sure once I get used to the kettle, I will be more comfortable wth it, but until then, it’s like driving a new car — you have to be more careful because you don’t know how it reacts to the things you do.

But anyway, the kettle is going to go on its merry way to its rightful owner. It was fun playing with the thing, and to try my hand at using one for making tea. I can say it certainly does something to the water, and the resulting tea tastes different. Whether or not it’s worth the amount of money, or whether or not it is a desirable change in taste, that, I think, will always depend on the individual.

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