A Tea Addict's Journal

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Aged dancong

December 12, 2006 · 2 Comments

A few months ago I bought a very weird tea, something that I’ve never tried before. It was from a small little shop in one of the shabbiest tea malls in Maliandao — the Beijing Tea Corporation mall. It’s a husband and wife team, renting basically a corner of a much bigger store that sells mostly teaware (especially those big wooden tables). I went in there because I was looking for dancongs, and they only sell dancongs (a doomed business in Beijing, pretty much). I tried two things, neither of which I particularly liked because they were too light for my taste, but then the husband showed me one tea, brewed it up…. and it was weird enough for the weird factor for me to have bought 150g of it. The other reason I bought it is because I think they really don’t get much business and I felt a little bad.

That’s usually a recipe for disaster — it’s usually those moments when you buy the worst tea in your inventory. I left this tea on my shelf, unopened, for the past three months. After the aged Wuyi two days ago though, I thought I should try this weird tea out.

I say it is weird because it is a genre that I’ve never had before — aged dancong. I’ve seen aged Wuyis or aged tieguanyin, but never an aged dancong. I think mostly because dancongs tend to be lighter in flavour, and aging a lightly roasted tea is not a good idea — the flavours will deteriorate into nothing. When I tried it at the store though, an overwhelming sense of — get this — puerh hit me. It’s not quite puerh like, but smelling and tasting the tea, it definitely reminded me of some puerhs I’ve had.

The aroma is hard to describe. It’s… old. It smells most similar to the mixed, low grade old puerh from Best Tea House, but the old puerh has a musty old puerh smell that this dancong doesn’t. Instead, it just retains the clean, old smell. I don’t know what to call it….

I brewed it up… and the initial two infusions were rather bland. The tea is, shall we say, subtle, but not unpleasantly so. The colour is light:

I increased infusion times, and it became stronger, with more of the “chen” taste that I found in the old Wuyi I had two days ago. However, it is not sour at all, which is a testament to good storage.

There were notes of dry dates again, the taste I found in the old cooked puerh brick. It’s a very subtle note, almost a flash. In fact, drinking this tea makes you work really hard trying to find the various flavours, but it’s quite complex and changes a lot between infusions. This time I only used about 4g of tea. Next time I will add more to make it more punchy and accentuate the flavours a little more.

The wet leaves are very large….

A pretty fun tea to drink, and it’s really quite cheap…..

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Rougui

December 11, 2006 · 4 Comments

I didn’t get around to drinking tea today until about 8:30pm. Amazingly enough, no caffeine headaches, yet. I was quite surprised.

I think last week’s parade of 06 Yiwu teas really made its mark by doing some serious damage to my stomach. So I opted for a mild Wuyi again, this time the old favourite — the rougui I got when I first came to Beijing.

The lack of the “aged” flavour is obvious, as is the more up front aroma of the slight charcoal taste — from the roasting process. The tea’s still very nice and drinkable though. I sent a small sample to Phyll, who seemed to have liked it. This is not, by the way, from the usual store I’ve been going to for Wuyi teas. Rather, it’s from a store called Runhe Yancha. I should really go back there again to seek out what else they’ve got on offer. However, I’ve really got too much tea on my hands already….

Therein lies the danger of puerh. You can always justify another purchase by saying “Oh, I’ll just let it age”. You taste it once, and dump it in the corner of your storage space, and there it lies for weeks, months….. until you discover it again. Hopefully, it hasn’t gone mouldy by then, and hopefully, it has aged into something a little better. With some teas, like the Yangqing Hao 2004, you can already see promise of greatness. With others… you can tell that either nothing has happened, or in the case of some buds only tea, that it has in fact gotten worse by being simply bitter and nasty.

Just because the tea is good now doesn’t mean it will age well. But, I am increasingly thinking that a tea that isn’t good now (I do not mean taste — there are lots of other factors) is almost certainly not going to be good in the future.

Why’s puerh so hard?

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Aged Wuyi Tea

December 10, 2006 · 1 Comment

Now that we have the 10,000 hits thing out of the way… back to the teas 🙂

Yesterday, along with the scale and the bags of Wuyi tea I got, I was given a small sample of an aged Wuyi tea from the store. Since it’s a small bag, I figured I’ll brew it.

Since I got my new electric scale, I figured I’ll see how much tea they gave me.

It turns out it was 10g, almost to the dot. 10g of tea… that sounds like a lot.

So I warmed my pot, and started putting leaves in it. When I filled it to about what I normally would use… I realized that about 3/4 of the tea I got from the sample is already in the pot. What do I do with the rest? Keep it? It’s too little to do anything with it. Throw it? It’s a waste… so…. I “turned my heart sideways” (a rough translation of a Chinese phrase meaning “to do something with determination”) and threw the rest of the dry tea in there. It just fit in the pot, with a bit of space to spare… 10g of tea in this pot, and the pot is almost filled to the brim with dry leaves.

Yes, yes, tea addict.

In my excitement I forgot to take pictures of the dry leaves. I can say they are rather small and broken, and quite dark — black. It’s broken because it’s obviously been roasted fairly heavily (for storage) and perhaps re-roasted after some years of storage. Anyway, as I remaked yesterday, Wuyi teas are hard to tell apart when dry anyway.

The first infusion brewed a very promising looking liquor — doesn’t this look like aged puerh? This is what happens when you put 90% dry leaves in a pot….

The taste… overwhelmingly the first few infusions has a taste of chenpi (dried mandarin peel). This is what they would call the “chen” taste in tea, usually applying to oolong, as the “chen” taste in puerh is different. The first infusion came out a bit sour. It wasn’t terribly unpleasant in its sourness, but a little sour. Of course, with that much leaves in a small pot…. it’s hard to control. I then decided faster infusions will help, and indeed, the sourness subsided in the second infusion onwards, giving way to more of the “chen” taste. There’s a nice, soft, supple feel to the tea that is usually more obvious in aged Wuyi teas (or aged teas in general). Younger teas tend to be harsher, no matter what you do. Poorly stored aged teas, of course, can also turn bad on you.

Then after about 4-5 infusions, the chen taste subsided, giving way to a lot of sweetness. The brew also got considerably lighter. I increased the infusion time, but the chen taste didn’t come back. Instead, the sweetness persisted. I drank about 10-12 infusions of this. Needless to say, I was pretty worked up by the tea, despite its age and the fact that it’s a roasted Wuyi. It’s a comfortable feeling, not the nervous energy that you get from a young, qingxiang tieguanyin.

I might get more of this…. but I really, really have too much tea already. Then again, it’s hard to come by decent aged oolongs that are not sour or bland. This tea is neither. I should at least go back to the store and try it with less leaves.

The wet leaves…. don’t reveal much.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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10,000th hit

December 10, 2006 · 9 Comments

One of you reading this post today will be the 10,000th visitor of this blog. Not a large number, I know, but given that the average blog has 7 readers a day (according to The Economist), I feel like I’m not doing too poorly.

This blog began on January 28th, 2006, as a sort of record-keeping method for all the teas I drink. I wanted to be more systematic in my tea drinking and record keeping. I found that I was mixing different teas up in terms of what I think of them, and thus writing down a record, with pictures and what not, could well be the best way of keeping track. A blog format made sense. That’s also why I called it by the somewhat silly name of “A Tea Addict’s Journal”.

The blog changed over time. I have taken to taking more pictures. I have also started commenting less on tea-related things, for some reason. I suppose partly because I think that what drives you all here is not what I think about certain issues related to tea, but the tea itself. Since I am in China, and I have access to teas that are rarely seen in the West (where most of you are), the best I could do is at least write about them.

In many ways, I am merely a commentator, sometimes a picky, inquisitive, and opinionated one, but a commentator whose job is to talk about teas that I come across. I don’t claim to always know what I’m talking about. If I sound authoritative when I write, that’s because too many caveats will make this blog unreadable. I think I am learning, just like everybody who reads this blog, everytime I drink a new tea. It reveals new things to me, and adds one more reference point for evaluating future teas that I drink, whether it be a green, an oolong, a puerh, or a red. I think I have developed my taste in tea more in the past few months in Beijing than the previous four or five years combined, and I think the act of blogging about what I drink has benefited me because it makes me more critical of and pay more attention to what I drink. By sharing these observations, I hope that others can somehow benefit from what I’ve learned.

At first only myself and maybe a few people close to me were reading this thing, for obvious reasons. Then, gradually, readership grew bit by bit. I discovered other sites, such as Teachat, LJ Puerh Community, Cha Dao, RFTD, etc, and also made new friends like Toki, Phyll, bearsbearsbears, among many others, some of whom I have now met in real life. It is encouraging to see that other people are reading this blog, some on a very regular basis, and that, in turn, is a motivation to keep writing, because I know that there will be people who are at least interested enough to check back here. Some I can tell who they are by where they’re located, etc, but others I have no idea, but somehow found their way to my blog and decided it worth their time to look once in a while. I have romantic notions that one day, I will open a teahouse somewhere where I can share this wonderful drink with people in person, sipping each cup, talking about it, exchanging views, ideas, thoughts about it. Tea is, after all, partly a communal experience that is best enjoyed with a few friends. Alas, that’s not possible, not yet anyway, so for now, a blog will have to do.

I know Xanga isn’t very comment friendly, and I wish I could change that, but since I can’t… if you feel like announcing yourself, please drop me a line at marshaln (the at sign goes here) gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you. But regardless — thank you all for reading along.

P.S. I wish I have a way to reciprocate all the links that others have put on their sites to this blog. I still haven’t figured out if there’s a way to post permanent links on the front page of this one. If anybody knows where/how, please let me know.

Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
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Weekend Maliandao excursion

December 9, 2006 · 2 Comments

I was originally not going to go today, but then I remembered I promised a vendor there to bring her some of the old loose puerh from the Best Tea House to try, so … I went. This is the same person who sold me the Quan Ji puerh a few weeks ago. I enjoyed talking to her, and I think it’s probably rare for her to get a customer who likes the stuff she sells. A lot of times people just come in, browse, and then leave. Since none of her teas are name brand, it’s difficult business, I think (and as far as I can tell, her livelihood does not depend on it).

After drinking that supposedly 30 years old loose puerh, I tried two of her teas. One is a cake of Lincang puerh, using old maocha (2-3 years old) but pressed this year. It’s not bad, tasting like Lincang tea — a bit like the Mengku stuff, with its odd aroma that is rather unique. It’s bitter, but Lincang tea tends to be that way.

The second one is a Jingmai tea. Her store, interestingly enough, has LOTS of Jingmai teas of various kinds. She said it’s because she likes the taste and aroma of Jingmai teas, so she keeps a lot of them around, and will in fact go to Jingmai next spring to press some cakes. She has at least four or five different big tee Jingmai cakes, a few Jingmai bricks, Jingmai tuo… you name it.

The cake I tried was actually pretty good. Very nice aroma, mellow, not bitter, got some nice cooling sensation in the throat. Not bad, and I might consider it, but… the Quan Ji is better, I think. I’m still debating if I should get a second tong of them…

By then, I was feeling the tea. It’s been a long parade of young puerhs the past few days, so I think my tolerance has been lowered. Also, the Jingmai tea was brewed with an incredible tea-water ratio (i.e. very high), so …. it was strong.

I excused myself from their store, not having bought anything. I’m sure I’ll go back there again. The owner is nice (unlike the manager).

I then thought I should stop by the Wuyi rock tea store before heading home (as it was already 6pm). It’s nice, and I thought I should buy some other kinds…

I went there, and they were, just as I was walking by, ready to go out for dinner. I ended up eating with them at a local shop that specializes lamb shoulders, stewed. It’s quite good, and did a good job of restoring my stomach, although one of the guys eating with them kept pressing beer on me, which I really wasn’t in the mood of (especially just bland Tsingtao)….. but I obliged.

After dinner we went back to the teashop, and had three different teas. We also had a nice long chat about different kinds of Wuyi, how to differentiate them (basically, you can’t tell by looks unless you’re in the tea making business, and even then, it’s not easy), and some of the processes that they do to make the tea. I find my education in Wuyi tea pretty lacking. Although I can, on a whole, appreciate what is a good and what is a bad Wuyi tea, I cannot, for example, tell apart some of the more similar varietals by taste. The spectrum of possible tastes that a Wuyi tea possesses is quite wide, and I’m afraid I’ve only scratched the surface of it. Sadly, I can tell puerh apart better than I can Wuyi teas. That’s a shame.

So I need to fix that.

An interesting side note… while the first two months I was here I was always asked the “where are you from?” question, nowadays, I get more the “do you sell tea?” question. I’m not sure why it is that people started asking me this all of a sudden, but there have been at least a dozen different people who asked the same thing — if I sell tea one way or another, and when I tell them no, I only drink for myself, it’s usually met with some skepticism. I suppose someone who asks a lot of questions is going to prompt that comment….

Lastly, I got an electronic scale. No more caffeine overdose when I do a double-tasting 🙂

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Two 2006 Spring Yiwu Big Tree Teas

December 8, 2006 · Leave a Comment

Two more Yiwus today, spring 2006 production. The one on the left

Is this:

The same guy who made the fall 06 production that I tasted, also on the left, two days ago.

The other is the 12 gents Yiwu 06 that I’ve tasted before.

It will turn out that I put far too much leaves in, and it’s making me a little uncomfortable.

Anyway, some pictures of the tea, starting from infusion 1 and each subsequent one:




I think you get the idea.

The leaves on the left are quite complete — I broke them from the cake

While the ones on the right are more broken. Some, no doubt, due to poor breaking by whoever broke the sample for me. However, since I mostly broke this piece from a much bigger piece, I think as a whole the tea is also just a little more broken as the compression is harder, and perhaps during the processing more leaves were crushed.

So…. how does it taste?

You can see the tea is lighter in colour on the left. The amount of leaves are similar, so it’s not a matter of that. I think the left sample brews up a milder brew as well. It is less tannic, less bitter, less astringent, and sweeter. The right side, especially in infusion 2 (60 seconds), was VERY bitter. VERY bitter. I mean, VERY bitter. This, somehow, does not jive with the notion that it is an arbor big tree tea. The bitterness, moreover, did not really turn into a huigan/sweetness. It lingered on and on as just plain bitterness. Last time I tried this tea I thought it has green tea mixed in it. This time, I think I am maintaining the same stance — that some of the leaves (not all) of this cake were processed at a much higher temperature than normal and thus produces this bitterness that won’t go away. There is also a hint of sourness on the side of the tongue in the first 3-4 infusions for sample R, again, something that shouldn’t be present in a proper young puerh, but would happen if you have high temperature processed tea mixed in it. The broken nature of the leaves didn’t help matters, I’m sure, but it’s not the sole reason, I think.

At first I thought it was just that the quality of the leaves in sample R is less old/good compared with sample L, but I have noticed by now that among the puerhs that have suspicion of “green tea” in them, one common factor is that the bitterness lingers and will not go away (unless you wash it down with something else). While some of these initially tastes quite good — sweet, mellow, fragrant, smooth — after a while that taste will turn to bitterness, or the bitterness, at least, will increase. It’s most obvious when you brew them for a longer period, instead of very short infusions. That’s what happens with green tea too — if you overbrew a longjing, it will get very bitter on you. Same idea, and it seems to make sense.

The leaves of the L sample also generally looked better, this is one sample

Since they are about the same price, if I were to buy one, I’d buy the one on the left. No doubt about it.

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Two Dancongs from Beijing

December 7, 2006 · Leave a Comment

I thought about continuing the Yiwu parade with two 2006 spring Yiwus, but then….. my senses got the better of me. I will probably die of overdose if I tried that today.

So instead, I did two dancongs.

These are both purchased in Beijing. One’s the overpriced one, the other is the cheapo one. The price differential is about…. 5x.

As you can see, the L sample has smaller leaves. The colour is also a little more uniform. The R sample has bigger leaves, but if you look closely there are some leaves that are quite green, while others are quite dark.

The first two infusions:

L brews a slightly darker tea than R, although the difference is quite small and is a little more obvious to the naked eye than to the camera. Either way though, in effect the colours are the same.

But tea’s not for looking. Tea’s for drinking. L tastes… smooth. It’s quite fragrant, a little sweet, and not bitter. R is a little more bitter, less sweet, a little rougher. I tried long and short infusions, and the smoothness of L is always a little more evident when compared directly with R. In terms of fragrance… they are quite similar, with slight variations, but neither is exactly better. A close call, actually.

Given the price however…. it’s hard to justify buying the more expensive one (L) than the cheap one (R). The differences aren’t great enough.

The leaves, when wet, actually look quite different

L:

R:

L’s leaves unfurled easily, without any sort of human intervention, whereas R doesn’t really unfurl and is more tightly rolled. As I’ve mentioned before, I was told that this means that L was machine rolled, while R was hand rolled. I don’t know if this is true, but the guy who told me this doesn’t even sell dancong (a puerh guy), so he has no reason to lie to me. The extra rolling might also account for some of the bitterness. Extra rolling, in puerh at least, is supposed to make it a little more bitter. Maybe the same is true here.

L is still the better tea, but it is not anywhere near 5x better. Oh well. At least I only bought 50g of it.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Two Fall 2006 Yiwu Big Tree Teas

December 6, 2006 · 6 Comments

A long entry today…. be warned.

As promised, I decided to taste two teas today using my new supplies. The two cakes are:

Both Yiwu fall production tea. The one on the left, funny enough, is the one that BBB tried to buy but had problems with. The one on the right is the one I got from the Yiwu girl, and unfortunately, I think it’s not on the market at all.

The front of the cake on the left (let’s call it the L cake) is in yesterday’s post. This is a shot of the back

And the R cake’s back — you’ve seen this before long time ago when I first tried this.

Lacking a scale, I tried to eyeball it

I brewed them with basically the same parameters — pouring water in one first, then the other, and then pouring them out in the same order. There are, of course, tiny variations, but that’s about the best you can do. The dry leaves of the L cake smell a little smokey. The R cake is more fragrant and lacking any smoke — mostly just floral notes.

This is what turned out first

The one on the right is a little darker, as you can see. It would remain darker for the rest of the brewings. At first, it’s probably because it ended up that a little more leaves were on the R cup than the L cup. I took some leaves out of the R cup after two or three infusions, but the colour differential (which isn’t going to be noticeable if I brewed them separately) remained. I think it can be partly explained by the slightly smaller and more broken leaves in the R sample — the cake is more compressed, so when I took pieces out the tea was a little more broken.

The taste…

L tastes a little smokey at first. The smoke would stay for about 7-8 infusions, under the 30/60/perpetual 30 rule (although later on I just brewed however long I wanted). It’s less sweet. The huigan is less obvious. R tastes more intense, the tea is probably a little stronger, with a sweeter taste and a much more obvious huigan. There was cooling in the throat, although since that is often a delayed reaction, I’m not sure which one was responsible.

In some ways, R is more immediately appealing, although I wonder if L might be longer lasting, and will taste just as good in the long run. It’s almost flavourless, in a way. The undertones are quite similar, both having that Yiwu taste, with R, again, being more up front about it. They are from different villages, so that might also account for some of the minor differences in taste. L is slightly more bitter. R is a little less, and the sweetness comes on almost immediately. Both are hardly bitter by normal standards.

A little later:

And even later (this one looks darker than the last because I left the water in for quite a while):

Finally:

The last picture is probably around infusion 15. Both still tastes like tea, although getting rather weak. I gave up and decided to take pics of the wet leaves.

L:

R:

L has more sticks, R has more leaves. This might also explain why L was more bitter than R, and R tasted a little more intense. R’s leaves also contained more buds, whereas L is mostly big leaves. Could this also have an effect on taste? It seems like it might. Maybe R is a mix of spring and fall leaves, instead of pure fall leaves. There are just a little too many small buds for it to be a creditable fall only cake, I think…

Some exemplary leaves — again comparing L and R:

All in all, a pretty interesting experiment. I think at least in terms of rebrewability, they are about equal. In terms of strength, intensity of flavour, and that kind of thing, R comes out a bit ahead of L. I think some of the answers might be supplied by the sort of leaves present in the sample. That, and the tiny regional variation, as well as whatever other factors (processing, etc).

Was it useful to have done this? I think so. Was it a little tough on the body? Yes. At one point, I was sweating a lot (this was after 3-4 cups). Even with the tiny gaiwan, I’m still drinking a lot of tea, and big tree tea is going to be strong.

I sort of want to get more of both, and see how they taste say 5 years down the line. It will be very valuable to have that sort of comparative experience to know exactly what sort of thing will age well. Unfortunately, it might be difficult to get my hands on more of either of them. This is intensely frustrating.

It’s sort of stiffening my resolve a bit to go to Yunnan next spring to find my own tea.

Meanwhile… I stuffed the leaves (almost all of them) back into a single gaiwan and trying to get more cups out of them. Shouldn’t let good tea go to waste. 🙂

Edit: I’m drinking some water right now, and somehow…. when I was breathing with the cup in “drinking” position, I could sort of smell the Yiwu….. ahhhhggg, I think it’s withdrawal.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Cooked!!! puerh

December 5, 2006 · 2 Comments

I thought about using my new teaset to do a tasting that I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I decided to wait, because I want to try my new cooked puerh first.

Cooked puerh, for those who are not familiar with the genre, is basically a form of processed puerh, and is generally considered the opposite of raw puerh. Raw puerh is essentially compressed, sun dried Yunnan tea, processed only with a few steps, namely picking, frying, rolling, and then drying (under the sun, ideally). Then you steam the tea and compress it, and you get something that looks like this:


(This, by the way, is a tea I have yet to write about on my blog and is the first candidate for the two-gaiwan tasting)

Which will then age over time into a browner, looser version of the same tea. The fermentation that occurs takes place on its own, and you just have to wait and keep it away from nasty smells and extra dampness (but too dry is no good either). So raw puerh is, really, quite simple. If you know how to pick tea, fry it, and press it, you’re basically in business. There are subtle points of interest and technique in this, of course, and a misstep can cause the tea to be less desirable, but on the whole, the level of technology is quite low.

Cooked puerh, on the other hand, involves something extra — a manually triggered/encouraged fermentation process before the compression into cakes/tuos/bricks. Basically what happens is you have leaves that are left in big piles, with water sprayed on, temperature turned up, etc (I’m not sure exactly how it’s done, and I suspect different factories have different specifications as well, down to the size of each “pile”, the depth, the temperature, the amount of water, etc). As you can imagine, a lot of wet leaves in a pile…. will lead to decomposition. That’s sort of what happens, and the tea basically ages very quickly into something that tastes very, very roughly approximately like aged puerh (but really, not the same at all). This process was developed in the early 70s, so cooked puerh hasn’t been around for that long, relatively speaking. It provides a kind of tea that is easy to drink now. On the other hand, aging potential is much more limited, as the leaves are exhausted of materials that can be aged into something else. Some factories, like Menghai, are famous for their cooked stuff. They have done it for so long that they know exactly what they’re doing, and will mix and match different grades and different levels of fermentation to bring together a cake that is complex, interesting, and tasty. Newer factories tend to have more problems with the cooked stuff. Shuangjiang Mengku, for example, kept making cooked puerh that’s sour (I haven’t tried enough to judge). They have upgraded their facilities, brought in water from far away (with a new pipe guiding water from miles and miles away, apparently) etc, trying to make their cooked pu taste good. It’s big business.

I usually don’t like cooked puerh (in case that’s not obvious by now). It’s usually thick, but with a flat taste, sometimes unpleasant aromas, little aftertaste, etc. I don’t feel too comfortable after drinking it. Yesterday’s purchase, however, is one of a very few exceptions that I’ve encountered. I liked it at the store, so I bought one, figuring that 1kg of tea will last me a long time.

A closeup of the brick reveals what looks like something you can find in your yard on an autumn day, after some rain and a few days of rotting:

I broke a corner of the brick, which includes this mysterious looking thing…. the big black round thing in the middle. I don’t know what it is. There’s also a human hair you can’t see here, but you didn’t need to know that.

Infusion 2, looking a little intimidating:

Less intimidating in the fairness cup:

How does it taste? Thick, silky smooth, sweet, aromatic…. without the ricey or the pondy taste that I don’t like in cooked. After some infusions you can feel a bit of the cooling effect on the throat, something that happens sometimes with cooked puerh, but only usually with the better stuff. No sourness, which is a big no no. The owner of the store claims this is aged a bit, and I think i agree. It doesn’t taste like those fresh off the factory floor cooked, which are generally a little harsher and a little uglier in taste. Instead, it’s mellowed out a bit, and quite comfortable to drink on a very cold winter day.

The leaves of this brick are also quite large, more so than your normal cooked puerh (but not unheard of)

I unfurled some leaves that came unfolded easily… still retaining some flexibility and texture

And then there’s the really black, charcoal like stuff. The thing on the left is the black round thing, which I broke into half. There are two seeds in there. The colour of the inside is reddish. I still don’t know what I drank.

Not the most appetizing images, when you think about it…. but it tastes quite decent, and I don’t mind drinking it, which is more than what I can say for most cooked puerh….

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Gaiwan purchase

December 4, 2006 · 2 Comments

I went back to Maliandao today, mainly to get this

Two sets of idential teaware, tiny gaiwans with cups that are big enough to take one infusion. This is so that I can conduct taste tests of two things against each other without overdosing myself on tea. Ideally, I should also have an electronic scale, but I didn’t get one today :(. It’s good enough anyway…. for now. I also got the puerh knife on the right. I never had one.

Then I stopped at a puerh store, and got stuck there.

The owner is quite a character, a Northeast China guy who went to Yunnan some years ago (probably got sent there during the Cultural Revolution) and stayed there for quite a while, and started dabbling in the tea business more than a decade ago, so he claims. A chain smoker who probably goes through at least two packs a day, he was pretty excited to have someone to babble to, i.e. me, and I stayed there for something like three hours.

When I walked in, there were already two customers there. They bought 1200 RMB worth of goods (two cooked bricks, and two raw cakes), which will come out to…. something like 300 RMB a piece. I honestly don’t think any of those things are worth that much. They got screwed, especially on the raw cakes which are worth at best 100 RMB a piece. But these are the people keeping all the businesses on Maliandao alive, I suppose.

The raw cake they had, I also tried ,and I thought it was not very good. It claims to be Yiwu, but it can’t be. I then tried another much better looking (and tasting) cake, but it’s also not pure Yiwu. I didn’t even ask for a quote — it’s not bad, but not that great. I can find much better stuff, so why bother with this?

The cooked brick, however…. is quite interesting. I ended up with one at home. I think I paid a little too much, but it’s 1kg, and per gram, it’s very cheap for what it’s worth. Since I never buy cooked puerh, I think it says something about this brick 🙂

It’s got none of the nasty cooked taste. Instead, the taste is an overwhelmingly sweet, mellow, and with a dry date aroma that I really liked. I figured it’s not a bad thing to drink when I feel like something more mellow. It looks quite nasty in appearance, but what the heck…..

So that was my afternoon at Maliandao. I didn’t even make it to one store that I wanted to go. Oh well, there’s always next time.

Categories: Objects · Old Xanga posts
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