A Tea Addict's Journal

T Ching samples revisited

August 8, 2007 · 1 Comment

I brewed the T Ching samples I drank a few days ago again. The oolong I brewed on the plane. The white tea I brewed here at home. Both were made in the “grandpa” style.

The oolong tastes, again, remarkably similar to a Yunnan black tea. Undertones of darjeeling-esque taste still there, but really, I can get something very similar by drinking a Yunnan tea, and perhaps a little less bitter when overbrewed (as this was, by accident). When brewed in a cup like this the initial sweetness is less obvious. On the other hand, the aftertaste is more present.

The white tea tastes more like a white this time with a little more oxidation note, which is a good thing for me. The tea is still a bit rough on the tongue though, for reasons unknown (I find buds to be generally less rough) since I used cooler water this time. There’s also a bit of bitterness that’s just slightly too much, and this one I didn’t overbrew. I wonder if this is a varietal issue — and what can be done to reduce the level of bitterness in these tea. Higher oxidation? But then you quickly leave the white tea territory that way.

I think these are probably good examples of these teas as they are made in the Indian subcontinent. However, I’m not sure if given a choice I’ll prefer either of these over selections from China. The price of the white tea is also a factor in this case, as it’s on the pricey side of things. The oolong is more reasonable, and its high oxidation is interesting — curiously, more interesting in a gongfu setting. I can’t complain about that 🙂

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Live from Japan

August 7, 2007 · 4 Comments

Here I am, sitting in Narita waiting for my connection to Taiwan. After having sat through a 13 ride from Chicago (itself a good hour from Columbus, plus transfer), I now have another hour before my flight leaves and I can have the pleasure of sitting through another 4 hours to get to Taipei. Fun.

We did actually see a little scenery on the way today, contrary to most such trips which can be just… boring

After getting here in Narita, the first order of business was to get a little ramen, which was nice enough. Nothing like a little warm soup plus some noodles to fix your belly. Then I decided to get some tea… some bottled Japanese green.

Made by, guess what, Coca Cola company.

No, it’s not sweetened. It’s 100% Japanese tea, as it advertises, with no natural or artificial flavours either. Just tea and water (and vitamin C — they always add a little of that). It also advertises that it uses some specially farmed tea, although it is really more just like “uses balanced soil and healthy inputs…” kind of advertisement. Besides, there’s only 10% of the leaves that uses this method. The other stuff… is probably just junk green tea.

Most of these bottled green teas taste quite nutty and I honestly can’t tell between one or the other, unless it’s got “flavourings” in them, in which case they taste odd and is noticeable right away. I suppose the fact that they advertise they use 100% Japanese green tea means that when a bottle doesn’t say so, it uses green tea from other places, most likely China. Even something form Shizuoka is probably too nice for such bottled tea. I can’t imagine it using other than the lowest grade possible, brewed in such a way as to avoid bitterness and getting as muc hof its natural sweetness and flavour as possible. I always wonder how such places look like — do they brew them in big vats? How hot is the water? How long? What happens in these factories?

The sweetened stuff is positively nasty, and unfortunately, in the States that’s pretty much the only ones available. Once in a while you’ll find the Itoen teas that are not sweetened, but only in major cities and usually in some expensive markets. This bottle is 150 yen — about $1.25. Not too bad for a quick fix.

Onward to Taiwan…

Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
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Kashanganj snow bud

August 5, 2007 · 4 Comments

Today’s tea is also another sample from T Ching, just as yesterday’s. This one is a white tea, rather than an oolong. The leaves looks somewhat similar to some yinzhen one might find.

I asked Mr. Lochan yesterday how I should make this tea — whether I should use hotter or colder water to make it. He said hotter, so hotter it is. The water used was off boil, probably somewhere in the 90-95 degrees vicinity, rather than a cooler temperature. The tea yields a yellowish green liquor

The taste is not too different from some of the other white teas I’ve had that look similar to this one, I must say. There’s a decent amount of qi in this one, although perhaps because of the higher temperature, it was a little rough on the tongue. There’s a bit more lingering aftertaste here, but not a whole lot more than yesterday. I think personally I prefer white teas that are a little redder with a little more oxidation — a baimudan suits my taste better. This one is a touch green, although I think, by sniffing the lid of the gaiwan, it was processed at a relatively low temperature. It is sweet, and in the undertones one can detect the Darjeeling region origins of this tea.

Wet leaves of a tea like this, as one would expect, doesn’t look very different from the dried leaves

It’s a fine tea, and I should probably experiment with it a little more as I was a little distracted today. After all, I’m flying out tomorrow morning to Taiwan for the next leg of my research, so today’s been spent (and still spending…) on packing.

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Meghma oolong from T Ching

August 5, 2007 · 4 Comments

This Meghma oolong is a sample I got courtesy of T Ching. It is a Nepalese oolong that has been mentioned on the whimsically named Another Tea Blog. Phyll’s blog also has an entry on his tea, although judging by the pictures, it’s not the same thing I got.

T Ching is quite generous with the amount given…with about 25g in the bag. It’s nice that way, because that allows me ample room for experimentation. Sometimes a 5 or 10g sample just won’t cut it because things can go horribly wrong on the first try, and with that little tea there isn’t enough to try again.

The tea, when dry, is tippy and a little cut up. One thing I’ve noticed about oolongs from the Indian subcontinent is that they generally do not have “one look”. What I mean by that is whereas a Chinese oolong often will look very uniform within a sample in terms of colour and processing, oolongs from the India and Nepal seem to often have a bit of variation in both the colour of the leaves and the shape. It’s not as obvious in the picture here, but when looking at the bag of the sample through the clear plastic, you can see how it varies a bit within the sample itself.

Much of the Indian oolongs I’ve had hailed from the Darjeeling area, which is in the same general vicinity as Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan, in the foothills of the Himalayas. What I’ve found so far is that what they do, they do quite well. There’s a penetrating aroma when first drinking it, and it could linger on the tongue and near the throat for quite a while after swallowing. The flavour doesn’t change that much throughout the different infusions, as I drink them using a gaiwan, and so it could be a little boring when the flavours weaken after a few infusions and they taste more or less the same. They also sometimes taste just like a lighter or a slightly different version of what we normally know as Darjeeling tea — first or second flush red tea (hongcha, black tea in English parlance), depending on the case, but as they are sometimes rather green anyway (at least the first flush) I have always wondered if they could be called red tea at all. In that sense, I wonder if the whole oolong process has really done much to the teas themselves, or if they are merely naming it according to what they do and what they have done all along? That, only a producer could tell me.

This tea in question is a little different from the above. To start, it has more up front sweetness than I’ve encountered so far. The first two infusions of this tea yields a sweet liquor, followed by a more familiar Darjeeling-esque flavour. The aftertaste in this case is weaker than what I’ve tried — less penetrating and not as strong. Since I used a good amount of leaves, I don’t think that’s the issue. Then, later on, a maltiness creeps in — what reminds me of a Yunnan Gold type of taste, which Alex on Another Tea Blog also noted. In fact, my last infusion, which I let steep for quite a while to see what the tea does when oversteeped, tastes remarkably like a Yunnan Gold of some sort – if sight unseen, that would have to be my guess.


This is when it’s still in the oolong phase.

Is it the high oxidation that caused this? I’m not sure. So, the tea starts out behaving like an oolong, and ends up like a Yunnan Gold. Pretty interesting, I’ll give you that. I will have to try it some more to see what happens to it if I use more or less leaves, but this is a curious tea, if nothing else.

The leaves are remarkably red. High oxidation, methinks. There’s a greenish tint, but it’s redder than most oolongs — closer to Oriental Beauty, perhaps.

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Banpo Laozhai maocha spring 2006

August 4, 2007 · 6 Comments

What I drank today is a tea that is given to me while I purchased some other samples from Hou De. He still has one unit on sale. I’ve been given this about three times already, but it’s hard refusing something free, no?

Since this is a maocha…. it’s loose and it’s whole, for the most part

I also found a big yellow leaf in my bag

Which I dumped.

The tea, as I have noted previously, tastes… a little oolong ish. It’s got almost too much fragrance, but this time it’s not as obvious as when I used a gaiwan to brew. I also used relatively less leaves, which might also account for the slightly weaker aromas. It does taste like other Nannuos I’ve tried, but it’s …. a little weak. It’s got qi, but I don’t feel particularly happy drinking this tea, and I’m not sure why. It just doesn’t really do it for me.

It looks nice enough though, both the liquor

And the wet leaves

But I don’t know why… something about this tea just doesn’t really agree with me. It’s not that it’s bad… but I just don’t particularly find it interesting or anything. Hmmm. I wonder if I should try the other two

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Xiaguan Baoyan FT 2006 Minicake

August 3, 2007 · 3 Comments

One of the last 2006 Tasteoff teas I haven’t tried — the 06 Xiaguan Baoyan FT minicake, from Estif. You can see a few other people’s here.

FT, or Feitai, is an interesting company. Aside from the obvious fact that they have mafia connection, FT basically specializes in custom order cakes, tuos, bricks, and that kind of thing from big factories, namely Menghai, Xiaguan, and more recently, Zhongcha. There are quite a few of them out there. The Gold and Silver dayi are among them, as well as some very recent, new cakes that I tasted in Beijing, pressed by Zhongcha, called Yunmei (Cloud Plum — actually a varietal of tea grown in Yunnan, mostly used for greens, traditionally anyway). The stuff they make, from the ones that I’ve tried, tend to fall in line with large factory taste — but better. How much better is up to individual taste. I don’t think they’re so far above and beyond regular factory stuff to deserve the high premium that some of them charge. The market disagrees, although I think that’s more because it has a collectible premium (i.e. every special order is a one of a kind cake) than anything else.

The tea in question is made under the Baoyan brand, which is, as some of you know, made largely for consumption in Tibet. Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia has really been shafted by the puerh craze. Prices of puerh of all kinds have shot up drastically, and for these people, tea is not only a luxury — it’s a necessity. In their diet there’s very little vegetables (if at all). It’s high in fat content as well. Tea therefore becomes very important as a source of vital nutrients, such as vitamin C, and also as a way to help digesting the fatty food. Prices being what they are though, the people in those regions are increasingly having to drink poorer and poorer tea. I have read stuff on Sanzui about how some farmers basically trade sheeps for tea. Imagine that… it’s that important to them.

So it is a little odd that FT would order bings being made to the Baoyan brand. It wouldn’t be particularly well known in Taiwan, where presumably this was headed, although Feitai also has a healthy presence in mainland China as well. A new store just opened a few months ago in Maliandao, for example, and the owner was giving out free cakes for people who were coming in the first day. I sadly missed it because I was out of town 🙁

The tea looks better than your usual Baoyan stuff, which is basically teabag material — fannings. This one has discernable leaves

It brews a darkish liquor, quite cloudy, and a little thick.

The taste…. well, suffice to say, this is low grade tea. It’s sour, bitter, not too aromatic. There’s not much smoke that I could taste, I suppose those notes, which were apparently prominent, are no longer around. However, it’s still a pretty unpleasant tea to drink. The one thing it does do is leave a long tail in the throat, but that’s perhaps the only redeeming feature of the tea, and even that tail only lasted a few infusions. There’s no qi to speak of, as far as I could tell, and not much of interest other than the notes I’ve listed above. It’s better warm. For one infusion I went and did something and came back to it with the tea having cooled significantly. I tried it… and wanted to spit it out. It’s quite horrific when cold.

Good endurance, however, since it lasted longer than me (I tried maybe 9-10 infusions?). Judging from other peopel’s notes, 9-10 infusions is already quite heroic.

Wet leaves is… chopped liver. Nothing too interesting to look at, honestly. Quite common factory type stuff. I do think this tea can age well given time and a suitable climate. I somehow don’t think this is tea that will do well in pure dry storage.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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T Salon Darjeeling – aged

August 2, 2007 · 4 Comments

Somebody’s response to my entry on Cha Dao (same as the one I posted here two days ago) mentioned how Darjeeling is rarely talked about, even though it is quite popular among tea drinkers. Indeed, I don’t know quite why it is that us tea bloggers tend to be drinkers of Chinese teas. So in response to that… I thought I could dig up a darjeeling.

Unfortunately, the only thing I have easily available is something that I bought many years ago… almost… 7 years now, I think? It was purchased at T Salon of New York City. They have a website, but it’s basically non-functional (everything is still “coming soon” except the chatty video) so I won’t bother linking you. I should also mention that the last time I went there was at least 4 years ago, and I remember buying some basically stale tieguanyin. That, and the snotty attitude of the owner (the other saleswoman was nice enough) was enough for me to not go back again.

But I still have this tea. It’s not drunk because I just really don’t drink that much Indian teas in general, and between all the teas I have I rarely get to this little tin, almost forgotten among everything I have. I can’t remember what they called it, but it’s a first flush darjeeling, one of those lighter ones with green and red mixed in the colour of the dry leaf.

Perhaps it was a good idea I bought a tin along with the tea, because otherwise it probably would’ve lost a lot of the flavour by now. As it is, however, when I opened up the tin it still smelled strongly of the fragrance of darjeeling, and when hot water first hit the gaiwan that scent of a darjeeling, first flush… you can smell it distinctly. I must say that while there are many darjeelings out there, I generally only find the differences between first and second flush to be really meaningful. The differences among the different estates are generally quite subtle, and given some of the very high prices they charge, I’m not sure if they’re worth all that much.

The tea is holding up well. The first infusion was brewed too strongly, even, and came out a little too bitter. I had to be quicker about it and poured water out of the gaiwan as fast as I could, basically. The tea then came out smoother and lighter, just right, with a long aftertaste that I like out of my darjeelings. I think when it comes to teas like this I’m rarely very picky… and they are usually pleasant enough. I still think, however, that indian reds are generally not meant to be brewed with a gaiwan, and when brewed that way it can get a little boring. Perhaps I should try this tea just in a mug tomorrow.

The wet leaves are typical…. chopped up, with a mixture of colours. It might’ve gotten a little redder since I got it, because I remember it being fairly green, but it’s really too long ago for me to remember.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Orange-in-orange 1996

August 1, 2007 · 7 Comments

Until I get to Taiwan in about a week’s time, you’ll have to bear with me, suffering through more boring tea reviews 🙂

Another old sample from last year, but not a newish tea. This is the Hou De 1996 Orange in orange 7532 sample that I got…. must’ve been a year and half ago now. I think I tried it once and then forgot about it, and here it is again…

There’s almost enough for two infusions, so I poured out some bits for one

I don’t know what the yellow stuff is, I think it’s some sort of grain hust, which seems pretty common. There’s a bit of mustiness in the dry aroma of the leaves, but generally speaking it’s not very remarkable. A little looser, and you’d think this is loose tea. No doubt the 1+ year of storage in a little bag, plus the initial breaking up of the cake, did that to the tea.

The initial infusion was quite nice, giving me a “meaty” feeling — not that it tastes like meat, but it has a sort of solidness that fills the mouth. It makes you salivate a little, and also hits the back of the throat. However…. the same dryness that I noticed of the tea two days ago is also very present in this tea. In fact, it might even be worse in this tea. I wonder why — is it the storage? I don’t know, but something is not right. The flavours are quite attractive, and will go on to change later to a more camphory taste, and then some woodiness, eventually fading to the sweet water that is typical. There was some bitterness, as well as a hint of sourness in the tea in the middle infusions. However, the dryness remained omnipresent — and unpleasantly so. Water was again necessary to continue my tasting, which is really not a good thing. My white tea or my dahongpao, which were stored together with these two puerh, do not suffer from the same problem. Nor is there such a problem for all the younger samples I’ve been drinking recently. So…. is this inherent in the tea?

The liquor is a medium brown.

Digression 1: Two days ago Lew and Davelcorp both remarked that the liquor of the tea looked really dark — almost pitch black. I checked again, and I think it’s a product of the camera’s way of presenting the picture. The one two days ago was untouched. Today’s was brightened. Brightness, I think, is the issue here. Where I sit to drink tea is fairly dark, and so the tea comes out looking quite dark whereas in person, when I’m staring at it, it is lighter in colour. So I brightened the picture to make it appear more like what I was seeing, colour wise (I don’t want to mess with colour balance, which in any case is fine). Which is why the picture today seems to be… whitewashed.

Anyway… if the dryness is not there, the tea today would’ve been quite nice. However, because of the dryness… I’m not entirely sure if I really liked it. It is, however, still on sale. So perhaps if somebody is adventurous enough to try it… we will know if it’s me, or if it’s the tea.

Digression 2: I just found my old notes here. Interesting lack of mention of any dryness. I wonder if it’s because it wasn’t there, or merely because I didn’t notice it — thanks to me not paying attention? Both are quite possible.

The leaves are, on the whole, small. The 3 of 7532 shows. There are some larger leaves, but even the largest I could find in my sample are no more than, say, a medium size (as far as leaves go). They are quite chopped up, which is fairly typical….

Now I really wonder if it’s the storage that did this to the tea. Since it’s been in a ziploc bag continuously since I last tried it… I can’t imagine it being dried out too much on its own.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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On tea blogs

July 31, 2007 · 8 Comments

It’s been almost a year and half since I started my blog. Initially I had no idea how many people would read it. Since according to some study an average blog gets 7 unique visitors a day, I figured if I get 10 a day I would be doing well. While this blog has certainly exceeded that expectation, the fact remains that it is merely a small project, comprising mostly of notes for myself and observations I have gathered along the way.

During this time, however, the online blogosphere has blossomed. When I first started, only four of the links on the blog existed — Babelcarp, Cha Dao, La Galette de The, and the LJ Puerh Community. The rest, as far as I am aware, were still in gestation. Now any visit to any of these sites will bring you to even more blogs and journals out there, composed by dedicated tea drinkers like you and me. Just keeping up the reading would mean visiting a dozen or so blogs every week, at least.

Visiting these blogs in quick succession, one will get the impression that much of the online blogosphere for tea is devoted to reviewing teas. In fact, many blogs do basically nothing but review teas. Is what we’re doing merely tea reviews, tea reviews, and more tea reviews? Is there a value for this, or is it mostly old news, uninteresting because of the relative lack of experience on the bloggers’ part in drinking tea compared to some grand tea masters out there? After all, my sister has likened the reading of my blog to reading knitting patterns for people who don’t knit — it’s really rather boring stuff. Why bother?

I think what’s beneath the surface of the blogs is what makes some of us come back, day after day, blogging about the rather mundane topic of “what tea we drank today” or “what we found”. It is the exchange of information, the interaction, and the joy in knowing that somebody else is interested in the same thing with the same keen interest that you do that keeps us interested in maintaining our respective blogs. I believe this is partly because of an acute lack of a culture of gongfu tea drinking in much of the blogging community’s own locale. Whereas when I was in Beijing there was always a ready-made group of tea drinkers who can share my interest in person, going out to a tea store or a teahouse to share a cup of our favourite beverage, in much of the English-speaking community, from which most of the online bloggers are drawn, oftentimes the only person who drinks tea seriously whom the blogger knows is the blogger him/herself. What the blogs, and the exchanges that take place both on and off sites, serve are the same needs that a tea drinker in China wants from a visit to a teahouse or teashop — an interaction with somebody else who is passionate about tea. (French blogs, curiously, have a very high “comment” rate unmatched in the English community — I’ve always wondered why)

Online interactions also turn into real life interactions. The LA Tea Drinkers were formed, I think, from exchanges online and now meet regularly in person for drinking sessions. There’s an active group of drinkers in New York centered around the Tea Gallery, and though they do not blog, by an large (except Toki, from time to time), others from other blogs or websites have found them through the internet. For a little while, a few of us in the Boston area tried our best to get together to drink some tea. The same has happened in the UK, and is going on in Hungary soon. Drinkers in Asia are luckier, but even then, on forums such as Sanzui, a large section is devoted to tea drinkers from various cities trying to organize tea tastings, sometimes on a weekly basis. In Beijing, for example, there’s a dedicated group of them who get together every so often, trying everything from white to black teas. All of these groupings consist of people who, by and large, would never have met in real life were it not for their love of tea — and their online activities which revealed themselves to each other.

These groupings remain small, however, and even in China, there are many cities where one sees users post something along the lines of “I’m the only person I know in the city who really likes tea — anybody else???” with nary a reply. The internet in general, and personal blogs in particular, become our outlet for the need for such exchanges. When we review the same tea, or teas of similar genre, or even drinking something random, we’re exchanging views in what is sort of a constant tea meeting. Photos and videos enhance that experience, but at the end of the day, I think it is the exchange of information and views that constitute the raison d’etre of the blogs out there. I, for one, have met many new friends both online and offline through my writing, and now I can count at least a dozen places where I have gotten to know new tea friends because one day in 2006, I decided to start keeping my tea notes online in a blog format. I’m sure I will only meet more in the future.

I think nobody is claiming any of this information in the blogs to be necessarily new, accurate, or thought provoking in and of themselves; however mundane and knitting pattern-like, they serve a purpose that is only possible thanks to the democratisation of the internet experience — as an ongoing virtual tea gathering of like minded individuals, each sharing their little slice of knowledge learned while drinking this marvelous beverage.

Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
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Old puerh of some kind

July 30, 2007 · 3 Comments

I had some of those traditionally stored, loose puerh so common in Hong Kong today. I’m no longer sure which particular one was the one I was having. I don’t clearly label these, and they’re not too easy to tell apart, as anybody who’s tried these things would know.

In Hong Kong these things are often not named specifically — usually only with very generic names to denote differentiation of grades, partly, I think, because they’re all blends, so it’ll be difficult to name them anything anyway, since they’re not specifically any one thing. Generally speaking, they are called “Old Puerh”, “Top Old Puerh”, “Aged-taste Puerh”, etc for cooked, and for raw, often they are named “Home-stored puerh”, “Carefully stored puerh”, “Old age puerh”, “Unknown year puerh”, etc. denoting different grades. Home-stored puerh from shop A is obviously not going to taste the same as the one from shop B, and prices can vary very considerably.

This one…. is probably something that might be called “carefully stored puerh”. It’s not great, it’s not too bad, or at least that’s what I remember of it, since last time I tried it was a year ago. This time, however, it presented a problem — the tea is drying. Very drying. After the first cup or two I had to drink some water to moisten my mouth. I don’t know why, but for some reason, it didn’t agree with me. The taste is mostly of an aged puerh variety, a bit bitter/medicinal, but pleasant enough. The drying factor, however, was new. I wouldn’t have missed it if that happened last time I tried.

The colour of the tea is quite dark.

I don’t exactly know why this is the case. Could it be that it was exposed to sunlight or some such? Something happened to it in the year that it sat in the container? I don’t know. I am thinking of airing it out a little before trying it again, to see what happens. Weather here’s been wettish, which is good for airing out problems like these. I hope to fix this, although I really don’t have much of it left.

The wet leaves are stiffish. They’re dark, and small. I don’t think this is Yunnan leaves. Vietnam, perhaps?

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