A Tea Addict's Journal

I came down with a fever today. 38 Celcius, yuck. The fever hasn’t broke yet, and so I’m sitting in my bed typing this. Obviously, nothing elaborate for tea today, but my caffeine headache was getting a little unbearable, so I decided to drink some dragonwell in a cup. Yes, the “dump the leaves into a cup and pour water” method. It works when you’re in a pinch.

Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow 🙁

The nice thing about crappy teas is that you can experiment with them with impunity. You can play with your brewing technique (or just brew them without too much concentration) and you can play with the amount of tea you put in. You can also play with the water you use.

Today I brewed some more of that Athelier tea I got, and I tried putting in a little more tea leaves and also used a different water. The result was not particularly good. The tea came out a bit sour. I think all teas are inherently sour (unless it’s really good), and the key is to figure out the point where it turns sour — and not to go beyond that. It’s hard to figuring it out, and underbrewing is safer, although sometimes you’re not getting hte maximum effect from the tea that way. Today I added in too much leaves, but compensating by brewing it a little faster helped and avoided the sourness from the 3rd brew onwards.

Speaking of water though — this is the only other ingredient in the making of tea, aside from the leaves themselves. Generally speaking, I use filtered water that went through my Pur filter (I think it tastes better than Brita). Sometimes, I add in mineral water. The kind of mineral water I use differ depending on the tea. My experience thus far is that a heavier tea requires a heavier water, while a lighter tea (like green or white tea) should be supplemented with a light water. There is, however, no real concensus on this point and I have seen people do all sorts of things with their water. I am by no means an expert on this and am still trying to figure it out.

That water makes a big difference though is definitely true. I have tried brewing a dragonwell with regular filtered tap water, and a water called Iceland Spring which has a low mineral content. On its own, the water tastes sweet and crisp — a hallmark of waters that are light on minerals. Iceland waters tend to be that way (I’ve tried three different ones, and this one’s the most readily available around here). When I tried it with the dragonwell, the one with tap water tastes ok, but the one with the mineral water had a crispness and fragrance that was simply superior. I was drinking that every day, and I thought to myself “wow, why on Earth didn’t I use bottled water earlier???”

For the teas that are heavier in taste, I think using a heavier water adds body to the tea that is brewed. Vittel or Volvic works well, whereas Evian is a little too much. You can try out different kinds of water and see what you like best.

I got into the habit of trying new kinds of water everywhere I go. When I am in Hong Kong, for example, and I want a bottle of water to drink, I try to buy a new one that I’ve never tried before if I see one. Sometimes they are rather expensive, but trying different kinds of water really alerts you to the differences in taste of the water themselves, and gives you a good sense of how they are like. The best way to achieve this is simply to buy a few different brands of bottled water, and do a blind (or not so blind) taste test. The differences should be very obvious if you slosh the water around your mouth rather than simply gulping it down. The test should be, I think, done in room temperature. Too cold, and the tastes are masked. Too hot, and it’s hard to drink a lot of the water to really get a feel for its body and taste.

The reason I don’t use bottled water for all brewing is because it’s rather expensive to do, and for teas that are not that great, the difference is not really worth the price. For the better teas, however, I do tend to use bottled water. Varying it for a tea that you have been drinking also alerts you to the contribution that a water can make to the tea.

One thing though — NEVER USE DISTILLED WATER. It really destroys the taste of the tea, as natural water is never meant to be without minerals. There’s a reason people liked to use spring water for brewing teas, and there are famous springs in China that are good for that. No, distilled water is a bad thing and should be avoided.

Despite all my complaints about take-out tea, it’s really not that bad here in this corner of the US of A. When I have to make a choice about where to buy take-out tea, I can think of at least 3-4 different places where I can get a semi-reasonable cup of loose-leaf (no teabags!) tea that tastes actually acceptable. We have Tealuxe, which I suppose was the original tea-only store, we have stuff at Peet’s, we have Toscanini serving up teas from Mem Tea, and there’s this place called Dado Tea, opened by some Koreans.

Tealuxe has gone down in quality over the years — at least over the years I’ve been visiting/living in Boston. I remember when I first discovered this shop, they had probably more than a hundred different kinds of tea that were actually all rather decent. Some were better than others, but all were pretty acceptable. They also had some very interesting varieties that are hard to find elsewhere in the States, and certainly unavailable as a take out. Bilochun comes to mind, but that was only one of many. Their tieguanyin was also much, much better than the one that exists now (or maybe I just got a lot more picky…??). Either way, over the years you can tell they began cutting some corners by cutting down the varieties of tea that they sold as well as some of the quality in the tea leaves they carried, due in no small part to their overzealous expansion after their initial success. I even remember them having a mirage like store that existed near Columbia U in NYC and a store in Copley, 5 minutes from their Newbury shop. So much for that.

I’ve already commented on Peet’s before — solid choices, decent selection, predictable, somewhat boring, but at least realiable. It’s a nice change of pace from the other stores, and good to have around as another variety. The impossible-to-ignore whiff of coffee beans in the store makes sitting there and drinking their stuff a bit unbearable, but otherwise, it does what it’s supposed to do.

Toscanini’s, which is really an ice-cream joint, serves tea from Mem Tea. Mem Tea is really a trading company that buys and sells tea, and their head office is, I believe, in Somerville. I’ve met their owner once at a Dudley House tea tasting thing (which was geared towards people with zero prior knowledge). The owner used to buy and sell coffee, but I guess he saw the light. Anyway, Mem Tea is a blessing, because what they do is they provide decent loose leaf teas to a variety of stores around Harvard Sq and beyond. The grad student cafe, Gato Rojo, for example, also serves tea from Mem Tea. What they do is they enable smaller operations that would otherwise sell you Twinings (or worse, Lipton) teabags to sell you real loose leaf tea instead. That is credit enough. Thanks to them, and thanks to Toscanini carrying a rather respectable selection of their teas, I have been able to vary the kinds of take-out stuff I drink more often than I would have otherwise. That, and they are closer to Lamont.

Lastly, there’s Dado. Dado used to be just a store on Mass Ave. between Harvard and Central Square. It’s really in no-man’s land, but I suppose rent is cheap there and it was still close enough for the type of clients they are after, which is your somewhat affluent NE well-educated liberal, to walk over and enjoy their selection. The teas they have are, first of all, rather expensive. For a take-out cup to cost me anything more than $3.00, it better be good, but alas, good it usually is not.

I’ve tried a few different kinds of teas there, and I don’t go very often, but from what I remember, their teas are really not all that great. Their Puerh, for example, is a raw Puerh, which is a good thing, except it’s a raw Puerh with less than 10 years of age, which makes it a really bad thing. It’s not ready for drinking yet.

Worst of all though, Dado usually serves your take-out tea with FAR TOO LITTLE TEA LEAVES. This is the first sin of take-out tea — a teatender who does not give you enough leaves. It makes for an insipid, tasteless, and overpriced cup of warm water. There’s absolutely nothing worse than a cup that is simply too big for the amount of tea you’re going to give me. Maybe I should go again and see if they improved, for I have not gone for a long time. I will report back on that.

They also serve tea within their establishment and let you use Korean tea ware to brew tea. However, Koreans are not exactly a tea-drinking people anymore. I suppose that’s material for another day.

So, even though I complain all the time, I should at least count my blessings. When I was at Oberlin, the only option was Stash teabags sold through a coffee joint. This is, at the very least, tea leaves that are in a recognizable form.

Today I drank another kind of Puerh today. The Sunsing Puerh ran out, and having no other types of Puerh open for consumption, this clearly was not a state of affairs that can be long tolerated. As such, I opened a bag of Puerh that I got over the summer in Hong Kong from a teashop called Jabbok. It is loose leaf Puerh, aged, and brews a medium brown brew that has strong medicinal flavour. It’s not the best loose leaf Puerh around, but I remember it being fairly cheap. The tea itself is not really made of high quality leaves, but I think it has been kept well and thus tastes pretty good anyway. I have lots of it, and it will probably suffice as a supply for the next little while…

Good things happen when you wait. It was 3:30pm, I had a meeting to go to at 4pm, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. Tea began calling me. I was in the Square. I was tempted — very tempted — to go and buy something and drink it down. Then, I thought “maybe we’ll end and nobody will want to go for dinner and I can go home and drink tea”. Lo and behold, that’s what happened!

Ok, I sound a little sad.

This is what I made today — another day of the Upton tieguanyin. I decided I should take more pics, so to give it some comaprison, although this is taken after dark, so I had to use the flash and the colour is a bit off. However, I think you can tell that the leaves are a bit greener than the stuff I brewed yesterday. Aged oolong of all kinds tend to become a dark green, and this is clearly not. Although today I think I messed up the brew and it’s not tasting quite so good.

I had another go at the aged Taiwan qingxiang oolong today. I am quite sure it’s aged, because it has a character that your regular Taiwan oolong does not. However, it does leave you hanging a little — while the tea is good, it’s somewhat unsatisfying. There’s no punch to the tea. It doesn’t knock you out with a “wow”. I suppose that’s partly the result of it being aged — it does mellow out a bit, since it’s not like Puerh. Then again, it has some nice undertones not usually found in Taiwan oolongs…

The tea leaves are somewhat darker than your typical qingxiang oolong, which is often quite green. If you just look at the dry leaves though there is really no way to tell what on Earth it may be specifically, other than some generic oolong of some sort.

Well, I ended up choosing to drink the “Yunnan Fancy” at Peet’s. Peet’s, for what it’s worth, has reasonable tea especially since they’re primarily a coffee joint (as is the case of almost all American caffeine drinks establishments, with a few exceptions like Tealuxe).

I’ve tried this Yunnan Fancy three times now, and it’s not a bad red tea (I don’t call it black tea because it confuses me — in Chinese classification this is a red tea). The Yunnan Fancy is a mellow, slightly smokey red tea with a reasonable “bite” to it. The first time I tried it, I wasn’t sure if I were drinking some weird tasting Puerh, or if I were drinking some funny red tea. I asked to see the tea leaves today to confirm, and it is indeed a red tea. A red tea is one that does not ferment beyond the time it was made, but a black tea, to which Puerh belongs, does. The tastes are distinctly different, and nowadays the better places and more discerning companies are beginning to distinguish between the two, often classifying Puerh as a “Puerh” tea instead of just your generic “black” tea. This is a welcomed change.

Speaking of caffeine drinks establishment… the worst of all is Starbucks. I don’t care how their coffee is like, since I don’t drink coffee, but their “tea” selection is atrocious. They only have Tazo teabags, which is already a bit of a sin since Tazo makes funny “teas”. The only real tea among the usual selection at Starbucks is the “Awake”, which is some sort of breakfast blend, and Earl Grey. The China Green, I suppose, is also a real tea, although to be honest green tea in a bag always tastes nasty. Starbucks can’t even have the decency to put Tazo’s acceptable Darjeeling into their tea lineup, which really disappoints me. I will put up with it more often if they have the Darjeeling there. Tazo sucks, and Starbucks sucks for not offering the one thing decent from Tazo.

Haven’t had tea today yet… busy, shitty day, no tea, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrg. I’m doomed to another day of take out tea. Why, oh why, must my life be such misery?

So what is Kung Fu tea?

There are two answers to this. The first is the actual kind of tea that is usually called Kung Fu tea, and the second is the style of making tea that generally gets referred to as Kung Fu style.

1) The Tea. Kung Fu tea, from what I know, is specifically tea that they drink in Chaozhou area that is near the border between the Guangdong province and Fujian province. It is a heavy fire oolong, often not of the highest grade of leaf, but brews a fairly bitter and strong liquor. More or less like what I had yesterday (I ought to take more pictures)

2) The style. Kung Fu style tea making is what I normally do, and is usually the way people who care about tea use to brew their own drinks. I believe this is adopted from the Chaozhou area, thus its synonymous name as the tea itself. It does also mean “skill tea” in this sense of the word.

The key steps to this kind of tea making is the following:

i) you use a small vessel, just big enough to serve the number of people who are drinking. So no big pots for one person — if it’s one person drinking, your vessel should serve at most 3-4 small cups of tea. The cups are about the size of your usual sake cups. So, a pot like this should be under 100ml in volume.

ii) you use a relatively high amount of tea leaves for the vessel. Instead of the British way of “one spoonful for each person and one for the pot”, you put in the proper amount of tea leaves in proportion to the volume of the vessel. The actual amount of tea leaves needed depends on the type of tea. Generally speaking, for green tea that is about 1/10 of the vessel, for a light oolong or tieguanyin, about 1/4 to 1/5, and for a heavier oolong/tieguanyin, anything up to 2/3 or so. For Puerh, I’d say 1/4, although tastes varies. Whatever floats your boat, really. This is the other reason why you want a small vessel for smaller parties, because if you have an overly big pot you end up either drinking LOTS of caffeine, or you are wasting the tea because you can’t drink all the infusions (or you can get very sick trying).

iii) you wash your leaves. This is done by pouring hot water over the leaves like you would normally brew it, but quickly pour it out again, leaving no liquid behind. When I say quickly, I mean under 5 seconds. This is especially important for oolong and puerh. For oolong, it opens up the leaves — if it’s tightly rolled into a ball, the first brew is going to be very light because the tea is still dry and needs time to open up and brew properly. For Puerh, it’s mostly because the stuff is dirty — if it’s old Puerh, it can have 20 years worth of dust on top of it. You don’t want to drink that. That, incidentally, is also why people sometimes say Puerh tastes like mud.

iv) you then pour water into it and brew for real. The amount of time you need for the tea varies by type. A green tea might take a minute or so for the first brew, a Puerh 10 seconds. It really depends, and is again subject to taste. When time’s up, you pour it out again into the serving vessel and serve (or if you’re drinking by yourself, you can just dump it into a large cup and drink away). The important thing here, as with the washing, is that NO WATER SHOULD BE LEFT BEHIND. This is mainly to avoid “stewing” the tea. Now, with a British tea, which is mostly crappy red tea, it is fairly ok to stew the stuff and it will still taste all right. With a lot of this stuff, however, especially the oolong and the green teas, overbrewing will produce a nasty, bitter, sour liquor that can be totally different from the divine, heavenly, fragrant taste. Ok, I digress.

v) you brew the tea leaves repeatedly. So, the tea leaves are not done after the first brew. Instead, once you’re done with the first brew (which shouldn’t take more than a few sips if you used a properly small pot) you pour hot water in again (reheated if it cooled a bit) and brew the tea again. As the number of brewing increase, the time you need for the infusion also increases. This is done mostly by experience, and again, by taste. Some people like it strong, some people like it light. It’s up to you, really. Once ready, you pour it out again, serve, and drink. Repeat. Properly done, you should notice that the taste of the tea actually varies a bit over the different brewings. This is more pronounced in teas like oolongs and Puerh, which are heavier in flavour and endure more infusions. Green teas last maybe 3-4 times, oolongs about 7, and Puerh…. depends on the type of Puerh. But you should notice change.

vi) this is somewhat optional, but when you are done drinking one infusion, smell the fragrance left in the dry cup you’re holding in your hand. Stick the cup up to your nose and inhale — you should smell something very fragrant, something that doesn’t seem possible coming out of tea, especially non-flower tea, but often it is a fairly floral and pleasant smell. Taiwanese make this a formal step in their tea-making process, but I tend to skip their step and leave it till after drinking, since to me (and I think most tea drinkers from Hong Kong) taste is more important than smell. Regardless, it should be done, and the smell should pleasantly surprise you.

Those are about it for the steps. The real point of this all, of course, is to make good tasting tea. This is not a ceremony like the Japanese one — the Japanese ceremony is very formalistic, and having sat through one, I feel like the actual tea itself is only a minor consideration. The Chinese tea-making method is more about the taste. Minor details can be overlooked, adjusted, and substituted as one sees fit. This is simply a way to make better tasting tea, and to be able to differentiate the different kinds of teas that are out there.

Today I tried what the Best Tea House calls “Supreme Ku Fu Oolong (Heavy)”. I think they meant Kung Fu, since in Chinese it is 重火功夫茶王 (zhonghuo gongfu chawang). What it is … is a very heavily fired oolong, brewing a very dark, strong, somewhat bitter cup of tea. The folks at the tea house recommend a 70% tea leaves brew, meaning that 70% of the vessel should be filled with dried tea leaves. I tend to think that’s a little heavy, and go with something along the lines of about 50-60%. It makes a nice, fragrant, and yet not overpowering brew. Sometimes the folks at the tea house crush the leaves at the bottom before adding the tea leaves on the top. It makes for an even stronger cup, rivaling that of espresso, but it gives a bit too much of a caffeine boost. Even though I did enjoy it I try to limit my caffeine intake to something a little more reasonable.

Speaking of which, I should perhaps say a word about Kung Fu brewing… but maybe I’ll leave that for tomorrow. It’s going to be long and it’s getting late 🙂