A Tea Addict's Journal

I am continuing my caffeine-lowering regimen, which means less tea. So I decided to drink a packet of the Xuefeng tieguanyin. It’s less than what I normally would use for qingxiang tieguanyin.

Brewing it today though, I found it to come out a bit sour. I don’t know what happened, but the first two infusions were sour. I tried a slightly shorter steeping time with slightly lower temperature, and that got rid of most of the sourness, but there was still a slight hint of it left. It also tasted a bit different after I’ve had days of the Fook Ming Tong stuff and a bit of the Beijing stuff. It is somewhere in between the two — less grassy than the Beijing one, and more fragrant than the Fook Ming Tong stuff, but in a strange way. It is a winter picked tea, so perhaps that explains most of it. The tea is also a little coarser in taste. Either way, it’s a curiousity.

While I didn’t overdose last night, I was rather buzzed and didn’t sleep till fairly late. Considering that, I decided today I’m going to go easy on myself… and drink some long-forgotten white tea. This is a White Peony from the Best Tea house. Cheap stuff, nothing to write home about, but a smooth, mellow tea.

It’s basically dried tea leaves, mostly buds, but you can see how it’s not all buds here, and there are some broken leaves. Better grades are things like Baihao Yinzheng, but I honestly don’t think the difference in taste justifies the prices that they command. I’m ok with the regular stuff, especially since I rarely drink it.

White tea is now quite the rage, it seems, and everyone and their mom wants to sell you white tea, telling you it’s more healthy, blah blah blah. It’s only healthy if it doesn’t come with 40g of sugar per serving (and there being two servings in a bottle) and devoid of all sorts of “natural” and artificial flavouring. If people think drinking snapple white tea can make them healthier…. ugh

Had a little tea party with my students from my tutorial today (note: tutorial is Harvard-speak for a small, seminar like class, in this case with 6 students). We had a jolly good time, sharing three oolongs (a qingxiang tieguanyin, a jinxuan cha, and a dancong). Some liked the first, some liked the second, but I think the dacong came out the real winner. It is really quite an alluring tea, with nice, fruity fragrance and good body, while not being overpowering in the way a nongxiang tieguanyin can be.

I’m glad to have done it, and I will probably miss teaching this class, which has been fun. Smaller classes are better than large ones, but even then, a good mix of students is very important.

More puerh tasting today.

Yisen Yiwu Thousand Year Old Tea Tree cake… (yeah, right).

According to this info ticket in the cake:

It does everything except resurrect the dead.

On the back of the ticket they also conveniently stamped the date — which says 2003, April. So, this cake is slightly older than 3 years.

You can see the leaves are fairly big, as it should be given the claim that this is from old tea trees. The compression is not too tight — loose on the edges, although the center and the back are tighter. The colour is already turning from green to brown. The degree of fermentation varies. The dry cake smells… like green puerh. I took bits and pieces from the edges and brewed that. It is possible that this way I am tasting the slightly more fermented stuff than whatever may be in the middle of the cake.

Onto the brewing. I used my gaiwan, and didn’t use a whole lot of tea:

As I normally don’t when tasting a cake of puerh. Adding too much tea may just make it really bitter without any real effect, and masking the other flavours that are in the tea.

The first infusion:

Came out a little insipid. Little taste. Hmmm

Then it got better with the 2nd infusion onwards. I could definitely feel some chaqi coming from the cake. It is, after all, from older trees, and the bigger leaves do impart some qi. Smelling the lid of the gaiwan, I can sense the smoky flavours, but it’s not very present in the tea. The liquor is darker than I’d expect from a 3 year old, and is rather mellow in the sense that there are no sharp flavours that are sometimes present in cakes that are younger than 5 years. I do, however, have the feeling that it hasn’t been kept wonderfully well so far — and the price indicates that might be the case, as is the existence of little bits of white dots on a few leaves that may be mould.

The flavours early on are a bit of the smokiness, plus the typical woody puerh taste and maybe hints of Chinese medicine. Then on about the 6th infusion, I started getting something a little more fruity when smelling the tea, and the liquor also comes out slightly sweeter.

I never know what to make of the black leaves among the greener ones though. Is it just a particularly well fermented leaf? A mix of cooked stuff? It is not quite pitch black, but deep, dark brown.

It tastes a little like a less aged version of the brick my friend sent me. If it turns out that way, I’m fine with it. It’s not that expensive, so whatever — I’ll drink it up.

I am revisiting my aged puerh today, after drinking some of the cakes. It is a nice change of pace, and mostly very medicinal than anything else. The raw edge is certainly off in this sample, but the spicyness and the lack of a sweet finish tells you this isn’t cooked stuff, either. The grade of the tea itself is very low — you can see in the pics, there are lots of twigs and stuff that would look terrible, but the end product is not that bad. It isn’t a great puerh — but a very drinkable, everyday kind of puerh. I think it was kept reasonably but not exceptionally well. It certainly tells you that 1) looks can be deceiving in puerh and 2) bad grade tea doesn’t make for bad grade aged puerh.

Nothing terribly exciting today, other than the fact that I drank some more of the Beijing qingxiang tieguanyin. After having had the Fook Ming Tong stuff for so long the past week during the water tests, I have to say the Beijing stuff is far superior in fragrance and body. The tea is simply better, with better, lighter notes and overall more cha chi. And, it’s probably cheaper (although the Fook Ming Tong is technically free, as it is a gift).

Just goes to show how you gotta go to China to get cheap, decent stuff — so long as you know what you’re buying. Can’t wait to go teashopping on Maliandao!!

I’m a greedy person, which is why I had two teas today. Sometimes, one just isn’t enough, especially when your pot is small.

I’m extra greedy, because the two teas are both new. The first one I opened is a nongxiang tieguanyin I got from Beijing on the trip in March. I’ve already talked about the qingxiang tieguanyin I got, but not the nongxiang one. I got 150g of this stuff at a fairly reasonable price, and figured it’ll be a good addition to the varieties that I have already. The Kung Fung Yung nongxiang tieguanyin tends to be a bit heavy and slightly overfired. The Athelier one just isn’t very good, and I’ve tried to dispose of it. This one is on the lighter side, with the leaves still brewing slightly green, rather than brown.

The taste is fragrant, retaining some of the characters of a qingxiang tieguanyin. They said it is from 1999, if I remember correctly. The firing wasn’t too heavy handed, and it is probably a good thing. There’s no hint of sourness. In fact, it’s a rather pleasant brew with some character. Not the best, by any means, but not bad at all.

But I didn’t feel that was enough. After all, my nongxiang tieguanyin pot is small. So, since I’ve been drinking some of my young puerh, I decided I might as well taste another one.

The one I picked is a cheap puerh I got from the Best Tea House. They are small cakes that came in a dozen — Chinese zodiac signs, although really it’s just a way to package 12 small cakes for sale.

The case — yes, that’s Teachat in the back

The wrapper of the first one — as you can see, coming from the Fengqing factory.

They were one or two years old when I bought them, and they’ve been sitting here for two years now, so all in all, about 3-4 years in age. I haven’t really touched them much since I got them, and this is the first time I’m trying them since my purchase.

Cellphone used as a scale

The cakes are pretty small. I’m not sure how much they weigh exactly, but I’m guessing something like 50g? Like the Kung Fung Yung cake, this one is comprised of smaller leaves, although they’re not all buds (at least one of the leaves I brewed ended up being quite large — over an inch long). The compression is tighter than the Kung Fung Yung cake, but not overly so. I took bits and pieces off the first cake and made a cup of it.

The brew is slightly disappointing given the wonderful taste of the Kung Fung Yung cake I had two days ago. It is not nearly as fragrant, but still shares many of the general characteristics of the Kung Fung Yung cake. It is also a bit thinner, but then, I am not sure if it’s because there’s slightly less leaves in this cup than I used the other day.

It lacks a bit of cha chi and aroma, but again, it could be because I didn’t use enough leaves, not because it’s particularly bad. Of course, given the price differential, one would expect a difference in taste, and there certainly is that difference — anybody paying money would prefer the Kung Fung Yung cake over this one, hands down.
Since I have no idea how this one will age, we will just have to wait and see. Maybe when I come back from China, it will have progressed further and taste a bit better.

On Sunday I hosted a tea friend for a few drinks. We had my dancong first, which was, well, just like it usually is. Then, somewhat caffeine high already, I decided to break out something interesting — the cake I bought from Kung Fung Yung last summer in Taipei.

As you can see, the cake is made up of smaller leaves, although they’re not all exactly buds either. They claim it is wild growth tea. Since there’s no original wrapper, I will never know where they got it. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but I liked the way it taste, and tasting it again this time, I remember why that was the case. The tea is very sweet, with a nice fragrance that you can smell immediately when the leaves got wet (when I poured them into the gaiwan that is freshly warmed). The tea is mellow, sweet, fragrant, and generally befits a nice, young, smaller leaf puerh. There’s that typical young puerh bite to the tea — so familiar, but without the nasty, astringent, sour, smoky flavours. It lasted something like 10 infusions, from not much tea:

Which means, from conventional wisdom, that it isn’t ideal for aging.

How will it age? I have no way to tell, really. I do seem to remember it being a little greener when I tried it in Taiwan, but that can be memory playing a trick on me. The leaves do look a little redder, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into different taste. Is it worth the money? Probably not, but at the same time, it is a good refresher for me before I embark on my trip to China. I will need to store this up in my memory bank so that when I do go puerh shopping, I have this, among other things, to reference myself.

Yesterday I brewed the tieguanyin with Poland Spring, and I have to say it didn’t taste like much — similar to my filtered water brew, actually, if not even a little worse. There’s no sense that this was a spring water (unlike all the other ones, where I tasted a difference in texture, etc). I don’t know if it’s my tongue starting to get bored of the repeated assults of tieguanyin, or if it’s really the water being inferior. Either way, I think it’s a sign I should at least stop the experiment for now.

So, what do I brew today?

I decided to break out my brick that I haven’t had for a long while. I think last time I drank it was more than a year ago. This is a brick of puerh that I bought 4-5 years ago, when I was just starting out in serious tea drinking and knew little of anything about puerh. I decided what the hell, I’ll buy a brick, and so I did.

The brick is very dense, and the tea is packed tightly. The outside (tea covering the surface of the cake) looks better than the inside, which looks mushed up. I broke off a few pieces, and put it into my puerh pot for brewing. When I bought it, I remember being told that this cake was about 10-15 years old. Drinking it now though, I have to say it ages very very slowly — perhaps due to the fact that it’s so tightly packed, and also simply because it’s an inferior tea.

The taste of the puerh still retains a bit of the green, raw puerh taste — a bit astringent, slightly sour sometimes, with that distinctive raw puerh flavour that you won’t find anywhere else. The first few brews were a little more complex, but it peters out after about 5-6 infusions. It feels as though the brick is refusing to mature — after all this time, still tasting a bit green and retains its cutting edge. This is not to say the tea tastes like those 3 year old bricks/cakes — not at all. There’s definitely a good amount of cha chi, but not enough pleasant flavours to compensate 🙁

I suppose as a tuition fee, it’s not bad. It’s still drinkable, although definitely not everyone’s drink.

This is my puerh pot, after I decided to give it a few rubs. It’s gotten shinier, but you might be able to see a ring or two on the lid, which is due to my mismanagement early on in my tea career. I suppose over time I will be able to compensate as I spend more time caring for the pots. Nevertheless, this pot’s served me well for puerh drinking (3 years now), and I think I will take it with me to Beijing.

I used Evian today, which, among other things, produced a lot of cloudy water in the boiler. I think the total dissolved solids is too high.

The tea itself doesn’t taste remarkable. It is slightly similar to what I had yesterday, but a little flatter. The tea definitely has a thicker feel to it, but I don’t think it is better than what I had yesterday. With the added problems of cloudiness in the water (looks like lots of goo in the water boiler) it really isn’t a good option. Scratch that one…

On an unrelated note though, I found this thread on a Chinese puerh website. It loads incredibly slowly, but wow, lots of pictures of lots of cakes, and some people have provided some comments as to how they taste. Very informative, if you have the patience to wait.