A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries categorized as ‘Old Xanga posts’

Zhizheng 2005 Xiangzi

August 19, 2009 · 3 Comments

Zhizheng is an outfit I’ve discussed before once.  I found that tea to be very good, though expensive.  In fact, nothing on that site is cheap, but are they all as good?  I bought three samples, and I tried another one out…

All green cakes look the same when you have it in small chunks, so leaves themselves don’t really tell much of a story.  This is the Xiangzhi cake that they have, 357g for a somewhat pricey $240 or thereabouts, especially considering that this is tea that is less than five years old.

I used my usual young puerh pot, and brewed this thing up, consuming much of the sample I got.  I must say that this tea is actually quite pleasant.  It’s soft but strong, without the intense bitterness that the Hongyue has.  It’s a bit sweeter than that.  The tea definitely shows its age of a few years, and it wasn’t stored in a very dry climate either.  It’s also quite thick, and you can see the bubbles on the surface of the tea – these things do a pretty good job of approximating the thickness of a tea.  It has legs, and will keep brewing.  All in all, a well rounded, well made, well stored puerh.  If only I can say the same about the price.  I personally find it hard to shell out that kind of money for a cake of tea.  I’m sure others will disagree and gladly gobble it up.  After all, somebody must be buying this to keep them in business.

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2002 Mingquan factory Bangwei

August 16, 2009 · 3 Comments

As many of you know, I am in the northeast corner of the United States.  This not being a very sunny territory to begin with, I live in a small, relatively old house, which means that it is cursed with poor lighting.  Until I finally get my act together to buy a decent tripod (any suggestions?) and moving my tea setup to somewhere closer to the window, my tea pictures will at best be sub-par, and at worst, unviewable.  So, no pictures for now.

It’s been ages since I actually posted anything about a specific tea.  This tea is something which I bought a sample of a while ago from YSLLC.  The wrapper says Menghai, but Scott says it’s Bangwai.  I’m thinking Bangwei mountain, but that’s in Lancang county, not Menghai.  As is typical though, wrappers really don’t mean much in the world of new puerh, and we shouldn’t put too much stock in them.  The proof is in the pudding, or in this case, tea.

The leaves of this tea is relatively finely chopped, with some young buds in the mix, seemingly indicating that this is some sort of spring tea.  The tea, when brewed, displays a nice brownish colour — fit for something that is around 7 years old, and not too dryly stored, which is good.  The tea is punchy, and a bit bitter, but not too much so.  In fact, it’s starting to change into that “second” phase, where the tastes become a little more pleasant.

There are better teas out there, certainly, but there are many worse.  It’s a bit of a smaller cake than 357g, so the pricing needs to be adjusted to make the comparison fair.  I do think it’s not a terrible cake though.

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New acquisition

August 13, 2009 · 7 Comments

I’m still not fully unpacked.  I don’t know where to put my tea.  The basement is obviously not a good place, and the attic has a funny smell — probably smelling like the insulation.  So, I don’t have a lot of places to put them, and the only cupboard suitable for teaware was previously occupied, as far as my nose can tell anyway, by candles of the scented variety.  Not good.

So I’ve been living on kyusu brewed aged oolong the past week, surviving but eager to get back to my normal routine of drinking properly made tea.

In the meantime though, I’ve managed to acquire a new piece that I’m pretty excited about.

This is a Qing period pewter wrapped yixing pot.  It’s really not terribly good for making tea, but it’s an interesting piece of work and I’ve been wanting to get one for a long time.  I happened to run into one in an antique shop around here for the right price, and now I own one of these.  If I want to use it to make tea I’d have to clean it pretty thoroughly — the interior is quite dirty.  But maybe that will never be necessary.

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Some things never change

August 7, 2009 · 3 Comments

From a broadsheet printed in 1664 on tea (spelling revised to modern standard as best I can)

The Peculiar Virtues are these:

It maketh the Body active and lusty, strengthening the Muscles and Sinews
It helpeth the Headache, Giddings and Heavings thereof
It removeth the Obstructions of the Spleen
Its very good against the Stone and Gravel, cleansing the Kidneys and Ureteries
It taketh away the difficulty of breathing, opening Obstructions
Its good against Lipitude, Distillations, and cleareth the Sight
It removeth Lassitude, and cleanseth and purifieth adult Humors, and Hot Liver
Its good against Crudities
It stregtheneth the weakness of the Ventricle or Stomach, and causeth a good Appetite and Digestion
It vanquisheth heavy Dreams, easeth the Brain, stregtheneth the Memory
It overcometh superfluous Sleep, and prevents Sleepiness in general, a draught of the Infusion being taken, so that without trouble Whole Nights may be spent in study, without hurt to the Body, in that it moderately heateth and bindeth the mouth of the Stomach.
It prevents Agues, Surfets, and Fevers, by infusing a fit quantity of the Leaf, thereby provoking a most gentle Vomit, and breathing of the Pores
It assuiageth the Pains of the Bowels
It cureth the Colds, Dropsies, and Scurvys, by a proper Infusion, purging the Blood by Sweat and Urine, and expellenth Infections
It purgeth safely the Gall

Now all we need is
It cureth the Cancer

And we’re good for an ad for the newest Snapple Peach flavoured iced white tea.

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Unpacking

August 5, 2009 · 1 Comment

If moving is hell, then unpacking all this tea and teaware must be the 9th level of hell.

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Moving

July 29, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Moving with all this teaware is hell.

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Drinking tea with no leaves

July 27, 2009 · 9 Comments

I’ve voiced this before, but it happened again over the past weekend, and it really mystifies me.

Why do teahouses in the United States serve tea without giving you the leaves?

What I mean is, when you go to one of these establishments, you order your tea (in this case, Keemun).  They take your order, and give you a pot with a cup.  It’s an English style pot.  Nothing’s wrong with that, except that there are no leaves in there — just pre-infused tea.  I know this is probably not going to bother most people, and in fact, may even be great for most of the casual visitors to such establishments, but it annoys me, especially because these places often also promote themselves as serious teahouses.

Without seeing the leaves, I have no way of really controlling how the tea is brewed.  Most of the time, the tea comes out weak, slightly understeeped, and most important of all, there is no chance for redemption — you cannot resteep the tea, you cannot add more hot water, and you have no way to look at the wet leaves, because they don’t give it to you.  Perhaps I can ask for it, and perhaps they will entertain me, but I don’t think this should be necessary.  The ability to resteep leaves multiple times is, in my opinion, a fundamental distinction between tea and coffee, and the nuances and changes that a tea undergoes from infusion to infusion is a great part of the enjoyment of any particular brew.  Taking the leaves away deprives me of all that.

I can think of some reasons why a store may decide to do such things, for example

1) Shorten visits — if you can reinfuse tea, you are more likely to sit there for longer.  Bad for business, obviously

2) Likewise, the possibility of reinfusing tea means you are less likely to order another pot, which of course means less money

3) Some people are clueless as to how to make tea, so doing it for them removes the possibility that they will screw it up, think it’s bad, and never come back again

While 3 is a legitimate concern (and I suppose 1 and 2 are too, for different reasons), I find it hard to swallow.  A serious tea place, IMHO, should probably at least offer the choice of leaves or no leaves.  A universal no leaves policy leaves something to be desired.  Or at least, for me, that’s a rather disappointing thing to see in shops and teahouses.  Maybe I’m being too much of a purist, but I still think that if I am buying tea to drink, I am buying the leaves, not the infused product — especially if I’m getting charged $4 for it.

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Back at home…

July 23, 2009 · 3 Comments

Finally, after about two weeks, I’m back at home, drinking tea properly for the first time.

A few things I noticed on the trip

1) Tap water in places like Utah and Arizona are very high in mineral content.  When I boil them, oftentimes there are precipitation.  I have no idea what’s in the water, but since a lot of them come from aquifers, I guess this is no surprise.

2) Driving many hours in the car with the bag of aged oolong in my backpack under the scorching summer sun means that the tea suffered some heat damage — I can tell that by the end of the two weeks, the tea has at least changed somewhat.  Detailed testing to follow to see if this is just placebo or if the change was real.

3) As long as you have tea that can easily be made in a paper cup and a proper way to heat water, you can enjoy some pretty decent tea without anything else.  The most problematic issue all along is to secure hot water — it’s really hard to find it on the road, especially hot water that isn’t contaminated by coffee taste.

4) The Grand Canyon is very big

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New neighbour

July 8, 2009 · 1 Comment

We have a new neighbour who just moved in a week or two ago, and they’ve already had a few kids since then

On another note, I’ll be off for a bit going on a little family vacation.  I’d imagine that when I come back in two weeks, these kids will have grown some feathers already.

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The Demon Revealing Mirror

June 30, 2009 · 12 Comments

The Demon Revealing Mirror is one of those somewhat mythical and fantastical items in Chinese lore that supposedly will show who (or what) is a demon and who is really a human.  You just shine the mirror on the object, and you’ll get your answer.

A friend of mine in China who presses his own cakes has likened a good silver kettle to one of these mirrors, and I must say I agree.  I’ve been experimenting with my kettle the past few days with different teas, and comparing to what I think of the teas using the tetsubin, and I think one thing is clear, and that is how different they taste with the two kettles.

The two teas I’ve tried recently are both 2006 Yiwu, one being a fall tea that this friend pressed, and another being the 2006 spring Douji Yiwu.  When I drank them with the tetsubin, the fall Yiwu tastes a bit flat and boring — rather unremarkable, in fact.  The Douji, on the other hand, was quite nice.

All changed, however, with the silver kettle.  The fall tea was very fragrant and strong.  The Douji, on the other hand, turned out a little bitter and rough.

What to make of this?

Well, I think the silver kettle does a good job of telling you what the tea is like and highlighting the fragrant notes, while tetsubins are often softening — they round out the rough edges of the teas, and adding to the body of the tea.  In this case, I think that’s exactly what happened — the Douji was rounded out by the tetsubin so that the bitterness and the roughness were subdued, leading to a rather pleasant drink, while the fall tea gets a little more subdued.  Since it has few low notes to speak of, it doesn’t get much benefit from the tetsubin.

I’d hesitate to say that the silver kettle is more honest — highlighting the fragrant notes is not any more honest than smoothing out rough edges — but it does present a very different side of the tea.  Here are some spent leaves for you to look at.

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