A Tea Addict's Journal

I am a bad boy. I drank tea twice today.

It’s rare for me to do so, since I normally drink by myself and drinking two rounds means a significant consumption of caffeine. I usually get pretty buzzed when I do that, and I certainly was buzzed when I headed out for dinner tonight.

I had a white tea — as they’re all called White Peony, the name doens’t tell you much. The tea is not the broken leaves kind, but rather close to the Yinzhen style white tea. The great thing about white tea is that as long as it’s of ok quality, it’s fairly consistent (so long as you drink it fast) and they’re rarely expensive. The bad thing is that they are also rather boring and can get very stale after a while — they always taste the same.

It’s also a rather warm tea, as it is actually processed by a slower method than green tea, which gets dried in a very hot pan. White tea is always a little warming, which is nice.

One more thing — white tea is great when you go to a Chinese restaurant. The reason is this — if you order something like Puerh, you really have no clue how long and, most importantly, WHERE that Puerh has been. The Puerh can be sitting on the kitchen floor with rats running over it, and it’ll still taste ok. The white tea, however, will taste like absolute crap if it’s been maltreated. So they tend to keep it well, and you are assured of a cleaner tea. Something to keep in mind!

Today’s a nasty day with rain outside, and I had to get up early to show a video to my class (and I realized that it’s a silly idea to show a video at 9am, won’t do it again).

To reward myself, I came home early to brew some tea. I couldn’t really decide on what to brew, but I thought since I got some new qingxiang tieguanyin, I should finish off my old stash, which is getting close to a year old now and still not done. I got this stuff in San Francisco’s Chinatown (no, not at the Imperial Tea Court). It’s not too bad for the price I paid, which was fairly reasonable. Qingxiang tieguanyin is actually a favourite of mine, but it’s hard to get good ones and it does get boring after a while.

Anyway, here are some pics

The tea itself

My qingxiang tieguanyin pot, and this is definitely my favourite pot 🙂

The finished product

The tea I got from Upton is actually somewhat better, I think, although since it’s fresher, that should really come as no surprise. This one is now a little flat and losing some flavour. Oh well, that’s what happens when you put it away too long and not finish it quickly. With a lighter flavoured tea like this, you really have to consume them fast or the flavour goes away. That’s one great thing about Puerh — no expiration date.

Well, today was filled with things to do outside the house (first day of classes) so … I didn’t have time to make tea at home. Sigh, the beginning of the semester means that I won’t have nearly as much chance to drink tea at home as I did during reading period/finals/intersession. Oh well.

I ended up buying a cup of tea at Peet’s. It was their Darjeeling Extra Fancy Kalimpong. I don’t know where Kalimpong is, so I presume it’s some tea estate or another. It IS loose leaf, and it IS, as is usually the case when you buy tea from these places, expensive and somewhat mediocre.

A really good Darjeeling, in my personal opinion anyway, should be astringent but brews a golden brown colour, not too dark (and not too much tea leaves) with a little of what we call a “return sweetness” in the end. I like first flush more than second flush, but nowadays they come out with all sorts of weird Darjeelings that imitate green or white teas, which can produce varying results. This Darjeeling is not bad, but then, it’s not great either. I’ve had better than are both more fragrant and more flavourful.

The problem with buying a cup of tea at these places is usually that the amount of tea they put in can vary very considerably. Not only that, if you buy a Puerh from them they will never wash the tea, if you buy a white tea they will almost always brew it with water that’s too hot, and if you buy an oolong/tieguanyin they are very likely to put an insufficient amount of leaves in. It is annoying, and once in a while they even give you the wrong tea (I’ve been given a Chinese green tea before when I asked for a Darjeeling, go figure). Generally the people who work at these places, even at Tealuxe, have very little idea of the kind of tea they are actually selling. I’ve once heard from a guy at Tealuxe saying that their Genmai Cha is Dragonwell based. Well, what kind of Dragonwell? Not to mention that Dragonwell is unlikely to be used in any real Genmai Cha since Genmai Cha is, well, Japanese. Who knows, maybe they really do, but given how terrible their Dragonwell is, I don’t know about that Genmai Cha…

Another day, another cup (last night I got home late and ended up doing the leaves-in-a-cup thing, yes, I deserve to die for that). Today, another Puerh. This one though is something I got from Hong Kong. It is from a teashop called Sunsing. They’re not the best tea shop in Hong Kong, and the guy who served me was actually rather dismissive (another rant for another day). However, they do sell decent Puerh there, and this one I got is a loose leave Puerh

No flash, pretty close to actual colour I’m seeing

This is my Puerh pot

Anyway, so this is what I’m having today. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but when I saw it in the teashop it looked really good, and I had a taste of a leftover brew (something like 7-th brew, perhaps) and it tasted quite nice even then. I decided to get an ounce, most of which is what you see in the first pic.

The tea leaves smell like nothing, as one would expect of an old aged Puerh that’s well kept (it really shouldn’t smell very strong of anything at all). The tea brews a dark brown, almost black, but not pitch black like the other one I had from Upton.

Taste — very nice, slightly biting entrance, with a decent astringency and a good aroma coming from it. The lingering smell in the cup is that of spices — at least for the first 3 brews or so, that’s the case. Now that I’m on my 5th brew, it changed a bit into a more mellow smell, but still there. You can definitely taste the “raw” character of the tea, telling you that it is definitely an aged Puerh, rather than a “cooked” Puerh that is aged artificially and thus has no real character. The tea leaves, when brewed, is a medium to dark brown. While not cheap, it was well worth the money, I think, and good for variety sake.

The great thing about buying loose leaf Puerh, rather than cake Puerh, is that 1) they are cheaper in comaprison and 2) they are easier to deal with. I have a few cakes, but it’s a pain to have them around and breaking them apart to drink always feels like a waste no matter what, whereas with loose leaf I feel no qualms.

Back to my tea…

So, yesterday was the Puerh day from Upton, which wasn’t so good. Today, I’m trying the new Tieguanyin I got.

Packaging — the thing comes in a small, round tin can. Inside is about 10 packs of tea, each individually sealed and is vacuumed. One bag, however, seems to have the vacuum seal broken. Since one pack is not really big enough, I decided to open two packs at the same time, and picked out one of the regular ones and the one that has its seal broken.

I opened the pack, stuff comes out, green, little beads of tea leaves. The colour is a nice fresh green, at lesat for the pack that is sealed properly. For the pack that isn’t sealed, it is obvious that a little oxidation took place and the colour is a little darker. For the sake of testing, I’m using a gaiwan today, as opposed to my qingxiang Tieguanyin teapot, so that the taste of the tea is coming from the leaves and not the pot.

Taste — hmmm, it is rather interesting. The tea is slightly bitter, but that might be because I used two packs, which is a little too heavy for the small gaiwan I use. Also, the fact that one pack oxidized might have made a difference. The taste is mellow, but it has the proper Tieguanyin finish — a very long aftertaste that lingers in the mouth/throat for a long time. Nice! I don’t think I’ve had Tieguanyin bought in this country that has this taste, so this is a nice change. Taiwan teas don’t do this and it’s a major drawback of their style.

The tea smells like nothing. The lingering smell in the cup, however, is a fairly nice fragrance. For $20, this is not too bad, actually. Like I said, I can probably get this in China for half the price, but alas, you pay for convenience. I might get more of this in the future when I run out. I need some qingxiang tieguanyin to feed my teapot, and it is actually one of my favourite styles of tea. This will be a useful, everyday drinking type of tea for that purpose.

So, maybe I’ll start a blog about tea.

Yes, tea, that magical plant that gives me (and millions others) so much satisfaction. Yes, caffeine has something to do with it, but that’s not the only thing. It’s wonderful. The varieties are endless, and the quest for that great cup of tea never ending. Everyday I drink something different, and everyday it refreshes me.

Today I tried something from Upton Tea Imports for the first time. I bought a sample of their best Puerh, as well as a tin of their best Tieguanyin. The price, of course, means that it’s probably not all that good, but I decided to try it out anyway, since I need a source in the US.

Well, I gave the Puerh a go. The tea is loose, not cake, and it looks suitably aged, although with some white bits on it, which means it’s probably slightly moulded. The smell is very strong, another not-so-good sign. It does look well aged, and the leaves are brown, not black, so it’s probably well post-fermented.

The brew turned out to be almost pitch black, but very mellow. There’s very little bite to the tea, and it comes out a little sweet initially with a slight aftertaste in the end that lingers a bit, but not much variation. I brewed it about 7 times, and it stayed rather constant, which seems to suggest that it was actually “cooked” rather than “raw”. Or worse, it got wet (literally) during storage and thus is eternally messed up. That’s actually more likely.

Not worth trying again, I think I’ll stick to the stuff I get from Hong Kong. We’ll see how the Tieguanyin fares. It is obviously from China and I can probably buy it for half the price in Fujian.