A Tea Addict's Journal

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Adagio oolong #40

March 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Some of you may remember I bought my wedding favour from Adagio, which meant a lot of free credits for free tea, so I got a few things. Oolong 40 is one of them.

I find the naming scheme to be slightly annoying. Even though I understand that they have a music theme going on there, Oolong #40 really doesn’t tell me anything about the tea whatsoever. The product page says it’s “Formosa oolong”, which still doesn’t say much. Upon inspection, it’s some sort of Oriental Beauty type tea, highly oxidized stuff. I am personally not a huge fan of Oriental Beauty — I find them to be rather boring and expensive for what they are, but heck, this one’s free.

I’d normally brew such things in my black tea pot, since I consider them to be closer to black than a real oolong. I do have some fancy new teaware to use though

A nice gaiwan I got through Ebay, of all places, and which matches the cups I bought, also from Ebay, a while ago

The gaiwan is very wide, much wider than a normal one, and flat. If you have small hands it’s really not a very good one to use. These were made probably for sipping rather than brewing, as it comes with the base ring that works very well to hold it up. It’s not a saucer — there’s a hole in the center where the gaiwan itself sits. The shape of the lid makes it so that when you dip the lid into the gaiwan, it really pushes the leaves away. But anyway, enough about the wares.

The tea itself is pleasant enough, like any OB, with clean flavours and no astringency whatsoever, which to me is very important. It also isn’t bitter, which is good as well. Some throatiness, which in my experience is usually enhanced when I use my tetsubin to make water. I did use a healthy amount of leaves

All in all a pleasant enough tea even though it’s not something I would buy, but that’s probably my personal bias because OBs are really not my kind of thing. I’d take it if it’s free, but probably not if I have to pay for it.

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Solutions

March 21, 2009 · 7 Comments

I need some advice here. I know the chemists out there might say “lye” while others might say “scrub” and more will say “just ditch it”

Here is the pot in question

With my smaller pot (the one I showed last week) in tow for scale. Upon closer examination, the two pots have rather similar clay. They both fizz when I pour hot water over them, and the colour/texture of the clay are very similar. The smaller pot is a bit darker, but that is most likely a product of me having used it for a lot of tea.

This is by far the biggest pot I own. It has some issues

Minor damages, I think you can say. A chip here, a little crack there. I don’t intend to use this pot much, but I do hope that I will be able to use it occasionally for some black tea… some keemun, for instance. However, there’s one tiny problem

I can’t get rid of this stuff, whatever it is. The white is partially what’s left of the citric acid salt, which will eventually wash away, but underneath that is a very stubborn layer of black stuff that simply won’t disappear. I’ve bleached this pot before. It’s already much cleaner than it was, way back when. The darker shades seems to be some residue of whatever it is that was deposited at the bottom of the pot. I’ve tried scrubbing, with minimal results.

So….. how do I get rid of this rather nasty stuff? Thoughts?

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The power of acid

March 20, 2009 · 5 Comments

Yup…. same pot, soaked in much citric acid and after some scrubbing

Still not perfect — there are some black stuff stuck in the grooves on the inside of the pot, and it still smells a bit like a dirty old sock. However, the grim, dark matter that was stuck to much of the pot has been eliminated. I used cotton swabs to clean the inside — must’ve used at least a dozen to scrub it down, but it worked pretty well and most of it is gone.

For those who are not happy with the idea of using bleach to clean your pots, this might be a more palatable alternative. However, I think bleach is more effective at eliminating foul odors. Right now I am putting dried tea leaves in them (spent) to try to soak up some smell, but I don’t know how well that will work. I might try to soak it in tea and see what happens. If it still doesn’t work…. a bleach bath may be inevitable.

Tomorrow, I’ll post about another nasty cleaning job that I started a few months ago but stalled and have not finished. Stay tuned.

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Cleaning job

March 18, 2009 · 4 Comments

Another pot awaiting a big clean

Yes, it’s very dirty. The pot is covered in stains of some sort or another, and the inside of the pot is filthy

This is, supposedly anyway, a Tiehuaxuan pot from the Republican period. Is it authentic? I can’t say for sure (few things are “for sure” in the teapot world). I can say though the little lion on top of the lid is much better done than most of the other ones I’ve seen. I usually am no fan of this design, but this pot caught my eye.

For the cleaning this time, I’m going to try something new

Yup, you read that right. Let’s see how it turns out.

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The guts of a pot

March 12, 2009 · 2 Comments

Since the pot in the last post has generated some interest, I thought I should post some pictures of what’s inside. Let’s start with the lid

If you look at the third picture, you can see evidence of how the whole band of clay was wrapped around. For the entire pot, no effort was made to conceal any of these worksmanship edges — they are all there for you to see.

Same thing for the inside of the pot.

You can see how the edge is not smoothed out. Neither is the joint line

And of course, for a pot like this, only one hole will do

A knowledgable friend said that Yixing pots didn’t start concealing/smoothing out joint lines until the late Qing. Does that make my pot very old? Maybe. It was well used when I bought it (complete with lots of stains — it was very, very dirty). Whatever it is, you’re unlikely to find another pot that looks like this anywhere.

Taking pictures of the inside of a pot is always a difficult thing. You have to have good lights. I don’t have very good lights right now, but maybe I’ll try some more pictures later tomorrow or something.

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My young puerh pot

March 11, 2009 · 7 Comments

I don’t know why I like this pot, but I do.

It is very plain. It isn’t particularly well made — the lid is slightly uneven on the body. It looks muddy — as if the clay is still wet and is about to dissolve. It is very light, and obviously porous. It doesn’t pour particularly well.

It does, however, make nice young puerh.

I tried it against the other pot that I use (or rather, used to use). Something about this pot makes the tea softer and nicer, which, for making young puerh, is a fairly important quality.

Especially when you’re trying to cut down on the nasty surprises that bad samples can give you.

You can see the places where the craftsman who made this pot has made a mark — a little push on the clay here or a little nudge there. The piece is unsigned, but perhaps this serves as a good signature.

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Whistling kettle

March 8, 2009 · 4 Comments

I went to a tea store yesterday called Whistling Kettle, located in the little town of Ballston Spa. This is your typical small town tea store, I think, doing mostly tourist business as well as supplying the rich local folks. The place boasts of “over 90 teas” and the place actually is rather decently decorated. I didn’t go in expecting much, but I must say I was disappointed.

The place is more catered to food and tea, rather than just tea for tea’s sake. That’s fine — after all, they have to stay in business, and tea alone in upstate New York isn’t going to cut it. I flipped through the tea menu and plucked for the Borengajuli Assam. I like Assam in general, so I figured why not?

Well, it was a disaster. First of all, I cannot stand places that do not give you the leaves. If you claim to be serious about tea, with staffers all wearing t-shirts that say “Campaign for Real Tea” and all, then you should at the very least make tea the right way for people who are serious about tea. The teapots are fine, but where is my tea? I only have liquid. For all I know, this was brewed five hours ago and reheated in the microwave.

But I know it’s not, because it has another problem. As many of you will know, if you brewed tea using a bag or basket to hold the leaves, and then take the bag/basket out, what you get is more concentrated tea in the bottom and more watery tea up top in the pot. That’s why, for example, when you brew gongfu style, you need to distribute the tea evenly either through a fairness cup or by pouring alternately into the different cups. These teapots they gave me, however, are dark, dark blue, and there was no way that I could see how the tea is distributed in there. Unsuspectingly, I poured out my first cup. It was rather on the light side, and the Assam tasted like a regular Ceylon, which is always a bad sign. Ok. Then, the second cup comes out, and all of a sudden I have this much darker cup — then I knew there was a problem with the tea not being very well mixed, so to speak. Hmmm. The tea, however, was devoid of real fragrance and was rather rough on the tongue. The third (and last) cup was worse – when I emptied it my entire mouth felt rough. Even bad young puerh are not as harsh. I have no idea what this is, but high quality, estate produced Assam? I think not. Unless, of course, the tea has been sitting around for ages with nobody buying it. Michael of Tea Gallery told me before to buy cheap tea when I go to regular shops, because the expensive stuff sit on the shelves for ages with no customers. Maybe it applied here. However, my wife had a similarly bad experience, so it’s not as if I was the only victim.

I hate to give real, physical shops bad reviews, because they are doing a service to the tea community by bringing the drnk to others, but when it’s bad… it’s bad. I was not impressed by the Whistling Kettle. Sorry.

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2005 Yangqing Hao Yiwu

March 5, 2009 · 2 Comments

Haven’t done this for a while

I have a box of samples sitting around. I have, until very recently, forgotten about them. They serve no real purpose sitting there, and aging samples really isn’t an ideal way to go. So instead of letting them just rot in the box, I figured it’s time to dig some out and drink them.

There are still a few pieces in the bag, and juding from the bag I used, I haven’t touched this thing since Beijing, which means the last time I tried this was probably sometime in early 2007, if even. That’s two years ago. How did it change, if any?

The tea came out rather meek, a little tart, and somewhat boring. I must say right now, it’s not a very interesting thing to drink. It’s not really supposed to, as teas that are a few years old tend to be a little awkward, and this is certainly in that zone. However, I do wonder if it didn’t taste a little weak. I remember I was not a particularly big fan of the 2005 anyway. It seems like almost four years of aging hasn’t done a thing to change it.

The leaves are still rather green. It’s not as if the tea is bad. It’s just not that exciting at this point in time, especially considering the fact that it was not very cheap.

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A nice surprise

February 25, 2009 · 2 Comments

I was digging through my box of old samples and that sort of thing yesterday, and came across a bag of loose leaves that I have been holding on to for a while. It’s broken leaves from another cake that I had from China, and which I thought was quite interesting and bought a few. I figured I can try out the remaining sample and see how it might have aged since then.

The curious thing is that this cake is only about 4-5 years old

And it looks very dark. It’s certainly a lot darker than what I remembered it to be, and also less bitter. The tea is now relatively sweet, and still has a very strong taste. Good find, and I wish I had bought more. Too bad finding things like these are hard if you are only looking for one specific cake from a small producer.

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A fixed pot

February 19, 2009 · 9 Comments

I was always intrigued by the use of some sort of a gold looking bond to fix a pot. So, in an effort to figure out what it is, I bought one.

This pot is of an unknown make, but probably pretty old, as I don’t think they fix pots these days this way.

The pot was cracked on one side, but didn’t crack all the way, I think. Either the spout was broken off and caused a big crack along the pot, or, it’s one of those nasty “hot water in cold pot” kind of accident. Either way, the fix was some sort of liquidy looking thing that gelled. I have no idea what it is (chemist, anywhere?). The gold colour is a bit of a paint, it seems, used in all kinds of gilded goods and what not, I would imagine.

Here’s the other side and a closeup

Very cute little thing. I like it.

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