A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries categorized as ‘Teas’

Lots of young puerh

February 3, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I had a lot of young puerh today while shopping at Maliandao. I think I need a week to recover.

I first stopped at a Keyixing distributor, and tried two of their Yiwu cakes. One is an attratively priced cake at around 70 RMB. It’s slightly high, and slightly on the bitter side for a Yiwu, but something about the tea made me think it’ll be good for aging. It’s got strength and it’s got smoothness. Gotta think about it. The other tea, from 2003, was lacklustre, and really not worth the price they were asking.

Then I walked over to the Ruirong store, but on the way there, a cake caught my attention… and I tried it. It’s a store that sells mostly Biluochun and Tieguanyin, which means that puerh is, at best, a side business, and that prices are likely to be high. It’s a Mengsong cake that I haven’t noticed before, so I gave it a try… not bad, not great. It’s bitter, and a little rough. Price… 180RMB. Wah. I then noticed that there’s a small Ruirong sign on the wrapper… which…. means I should be able to find it at the Ruirong store.

Which I did, although I went there for another Mengsong cake, a smaller cake that I saw elsewhere and which is reasonably priced. I tried it… and I liked it enough to buy 6 of them. These are 200g cakes, so 6 isn’t as many as it sounds. It also comes in a tong of 5 like this

While each individual cake look like this:

I also tried a Bulang cake there that was decent, as well as a Youle cake that was ok. The Youle cake was slightly expensive, but the Bulang cake is quite tempting. I might go back and buy some of that. The Mengsong cake I saw elsewhere was selling at this store too… for 20RMB, which is 1/9 of the price being quoted at the other store, and they are literally 50m away!!!! Lesson learned — always buy from the factory store if I can help it (although, sometimes, factory stores actually cost more, because they update the prices quickly whereas retailers sometimes bought their stock a long time ago so they can still sell at the lower price).

I then went to L’s store, just to drink some tea and have some conversation. ZH also showed up, and so we drank and chatted. Among the topics — how Zhongcha’s recent production of Banzhang was all snapped up. They are selling for quite a bit of money…. and so I took some pictures

Compared to my “Banzhang” that I bought last week…. the 3 tongs of stuff I bought could buy about 1 cake of the above

Is it really 20 times as good?

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Lightly roasted tieguanyin

February 2, 2007 · Leave a Comment

To those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you would’ve noticed that I haven’t had a tieguanyin for a long, long time.

Well, I decided to finally drink one today. As you might recall, I’ve self imposed a “no young puerh” rule recently (although I must say that if I go to Maliandao young puerh will be unavoidable), so it is a great opportunity for me to get away from those young puerh tastings, which isn’t always enjoyable anyway, and back to the stuff that got me started.

On the menu today is a lightly roasted tieguanyin I got in Beijing when I first arrived, some five months ago now, from the store Chadefang on Maliandao, which, incidentally, I have never been back since.

I stored this tea poorly in a papier-marche box. There were two teas that I put in those boxes. One was this, the other was a Maocha. The maocha suffered horribly, tasting like paper. I thought the same fate might befall this one, but oddly enough, it hasn’t. Nevertheless, since I haven’t had this tea for so long (3 months now, I think), I figured I will use the gaiwan today to taste its condition, so to speak.

The first two infusions were light, a bit thin, and you could almost say it was watery. I was a little disappointed initially, but then I was probably out of practice in brewing them. I also decided to add a little of the 5100 leftover from yesterday to my kettle of my usual water, to give it a little kick. Remembering the experiment yesterday, I figured it might give me more from the tea.

The result was as expected — it did. The tea started tasting sweeter, softer, peaking at around infusion 4, and then starting on a gradual descent, but lasting me about a total of 15 infusions or so, which is quite decent for a tieguanyin.

Infusion 5:

Infusion 6:

Infusion 8:

Meanwhile, I kept my tieguanyin pot around to season it with leftover tea. I didn’t want to drink too much, so about 1/3 of each infusion went to the pot, instead of me. When I opened the lid, a film of tea stayed and I took a shot of it

That’s some serious surface tension.

I was pretty satisfied with myself today, mostly for not messing up the tea, but also in rediscovering why I liked roasted tieguanyins in the first place. In a way, drinking young puerh, which is interesting and exciting because of its sense of discovery, is not quite the same as drinking a nice, mellow oolong just for enjoyment. Today I was just enjoying my tea instead of trying to figure out where it’s from, what kind of leaves were used, etc

Although, now that I’ve said that I wasn’t trying to figure out what kind of teas were used, I do wonder if this is tieguanyin at all, or if perhaps this is a benshan. I’m not very good at spotting the difference. The price would suggest a benshan, or a tieguanyin from an outlying region. But whatever… it was nice drinking it. I will probably brew it up again fairly soon, instead of waiting another two or three months.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Jabbok loose puerh

January 31, 2007 · 3 Comments

I drank some of the Jabbok loose puerh today. The claim, when I bought it, was that it is 30 years. It didn’t really look 30 years, nor did it really taste like what I normally thought of as a 30 years tea, but since it was cheap, and it was the last little bit they had left, I snapped it up anyway.

Last time I tried it, I thought the aroma was quite impressive, even though the tea itself was not particularly stunning. This time though, I noticed something else, namely bitterness. The tea has a bitter base to it in the taste that I couldn’t quite explain and I couldn’t really get rid of despite the many infusions I had of the tea. I probably drank a total of 15-20 infusions of this thing, and the bitterness persisted to the end. It wasn’t a nasty, overwhelming bitterness, but it was there and it was obvious. At some points, I wondered if I were tasting red tea (aka black in English usage). Something in the taste and the aftertaste reminded me of that. Mostly, it tasted like puerh, but there are notes in the tea that makes me think twice.

The sheer number of infusions that the tea lasted would say that this is not a typical red tea, because otherwise it wouldn’t last so long. Then again, I did use a good amount of tea….

If you look at the wet leaves, the colour looks fine

And some of the leaves still exhibited a green tint

One possibility is that red tea was purposefully mixed in. The other is that maybe somehow the tea’s kill-green process wasn’t complete or thorough enough, and oxidation kept taking place (is this even possible?). If it were only stored poorly (say, next to a big bag of red tea) I don’t think the tea would’ve gotten the bitterness from that stuff, but it is rather bitter. Or, perhaps, the age is simply not nearly as high as claimed. I never did really believe the age anyway, especially given the light colour of the brew and the way the leaves look.

I’m not sure what to make of this tea. I still have a few samples worth of it, so I can give it a try again. Maybe next time I should brew it in a gaiwan and see what shows up. Better yet, I should probably drink a dianhong tomorrow to compare it against, and see what I can find in the taste….

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No tea today

January 30, 2007 · 3 Comments

Yes, you heard that right.

So to feed my caffeine addiction, I decided to take some pictures of a cake that I got with the 3 tongs of “Banzhang Zhengshan” (which, by the way, I think only has a small % of actuall Banzhang leaves in there, but the price makes that irrelevant). Not that it will cure any headache that might be incoming, but it provides for blogging material, if nothing else.

This is a cake that I basically got as a freebie along with the 3 tongs.

“Jiangcheng Thousand Year Wild Growth Old Tree Cake”. Right….. Jiangcheng tea, as some of you know, is often used to make fake Yiwu cakes. Supposedly, the leaves look similar, although I’m not sure about the taste profile. When I opened up the wrapper it smelled fruity. I couldn’t pinpoint which fruit, but fruity is not a bad description of what I was smelling. Trying it for taste and seeing what a real Jiangcheng tea tastes like is the primary objective of getting this cake. It will give me some basis for comparing against other teas. After all, there’s very little reason to fake a Jiangcheng.

Looks good enough, and if someone else told me this is a Yiwu cake selling for $20 USD, I might believe you. Except that it’s not… it’s only $4.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Immune to bitterness

January 30, 2007 · 6 Comments

Among the many side effects of tea drinking, especially young puerh drinking, is that I don’t really taste bitterness as acutely as before. It was obvious when I tried the Banzhang Zhengshan that I bought recently, when I thought it was only mildly bitter while my girlfriend was screaming bloody murder. More obvious though is my recent taking of some cough syrup… I didn’t even need a chaser. It went down smoothly enough, with just a hint of bitterness and a rather mild nastiness from the fake cherry and whatever else flavour there is in there. I didn’t exactly squint. In fact, I don’t think it’s much bitter at all. I’m sure two or three years ago I would’ve thought differently, but I think now my tongue is more numb to the bitter taste…

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It would seem to me that this is a bad thing, since it means I’m missing out on some flavours in a particular tea. What can one do to restore one’s sense of taste?

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Dahongpao

January 29, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I drank some dahongpao today. It’s the supposed tea that is used for the national assembly when they entertain foreign guests. It’s really not bad, although tasting it again, I feel like it changed a little and is not as great as before. I wonder what happened. Storing it in a plastic bag may have done it in.

Since I am not going to be drinking much young puerh these days, it’ll be a good opportunity to test out various kinds of Wuyi teas. However, I just chipped the lid of my pot today :(. It’s not a big damage, but now my otherwise round lid for the pot has a little dent 🙁 🙁

At least I bought it for cheap….

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Switching teas

January 28, 2007 · 1 Comment

My body seems to be protesting my drinking of young raw puerh. Today for dinner there was some (crappy) longjing that I drank, and I felt really unwell. I think until my body gets better and the weather gets warmer, it’ll be mostly Wuyi teas and high fired oolongs, plus a bit of cooked puerh for me for now.

In the spirit of that, I had some cooked puerh today, along with a Hong Kong style milk tea, which is basically super-boiled black tea plus some heavy evaporated milk. Good stuff.

Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts · Teas
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60s Guangyun Gong

January 27, 2007 · 5 Comments

On the menu today:

This is a piece of an alleged 60s Guangyun Gong from a tea friend in Hong Kong. He bought it as broken pieces, and the guy who sold it to him wasn’t sure what it was either. After some repeated tastings and research and trying to put the pieces together, he thought that this is probably a 60s GYG. As you can see, the cake is rather tightly compressed, and the edge of the cake is a bit tapered. The shape looks plausible…

The first three infusions:

It took a little while before the leaves fully opened up. The storage condition of this piece is somewhat wet, with some white stuff inside the piece as well as on the surface. The leaves are mostly buds, with some stalks and bigger leaves. The taste…. is sweet and mellow. It’s obvious and immediate, with a gentle sweetness coating my whole mouth. There’s not a hint of bitterness, but also no hint of poor storage either in a way that a poorly wet stored cake from, say, the 80s will. The tea is extremely smooth.

I added some splash of high mineral water for the 4th infusion, and the tea became rougher. I turned back the water to a lighter mineral content with a few splahes of very light mineral water (super expensive… from Japan….) and the mouthfeel immediately improved. It’s really quite interesting how water mineral content can really change the way a tea feels in the mouth.

The 15th infusion:

The tea was still going strong. It looks weak, but it doesn’t taste weak. We got more than 20 infusions out of it before I called it quits. It could keep going.

The wet leaves look a bit carbonated

Black, with some brown bits, and you can use cooked puerh to fake this tea, but not the taste…. I don’t know for sure if it’s a 60s GYG, but I’m quite sure this is a tea with at least 30-40 years of age. Younger teas just don’t taste like this.

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Lots of tea

January 26, 2007 · 5 Comments

I went tea shopping today with my girlfriend, mostly to buy stuff for somebody in Hong Kong, and to also show her around where I hang out so much. Let me not bore you with the details…. but let me show you what I bought

Yes, a lot of tea. There was also 500g of Shuixian.

Most of the puerh and all of the Shuixian is for that HK friend. I just bought myself one tong of the puerh. The tea is supposedly “Banzhang Zhengshan”.

The friend’s request was simple. She wanted a bitter and strong tea, for a cheap price. That’s not too hard to do, although it was harder than I thought. Mostly because to meet the price criteria it was not that easy, and to find a tea at the right price bracket that was bitter and strong enough was also tough. I found a cake today for 20 RMB (2.5 USD) but it was just weak. This one, however, is good enough, and still under 4 USD. So I bought a tong for myself, and 2 for the friend as requested.

There was also a bunch of teaware that we got, among which was a puerh plate — those bamboo things that you open cakes on.

During dinner, I brewed tea this way:

Using the Yiwu maocha that I got. It was nice and sweet, no bitterness despite long brewing times. You should all try it 🙂

Some tea leaves

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Back to Beijing

January 24, 2007 · 4 Comments

And what do I drink when I come back to my tea stash? Funny enough, it’s my cooked puerh, that 1kg monster brick.

I haven’t had it since the first time I tried it right after I purchased this brick. Tasting it now, after having had a few other cooked puerhs with L, I think I paid a pretty reasonable price for what it is. It’s not great, and it isn’t anywhere near a nice raw puerh, but it gets the job done… and I think is ultimately better for me in these cold winter days. After drinking young raw puerh sometimes I feel cold, but after this I don’t feel that way at all. It’s also easier on the stomach…

There are a whole bunch of stuff that I bought when I first got to Beijing that are now half a year older, such as the Mengku cakes that I haven’t tasted for at least a few months. Since I got some Mengku sample from Shanghai, I might test it against what I’ve got and see how they compare. That will be my next project.

But the next few days, my girlfriend will be visiting. 🙂

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