A Tea Addict's Journal

As I posted on the LJ Community for puerh — a list of terms for puerh. Enjoy.

7542 (or 7582, 8582, 7532, etc etc etc) — recipe numbers of puerh cakes. The third digit is the grade of the tea leaves blend (not all are grade 4 in 7542), and the fourth digit is the factory number. The first two digits is the year when the recipe first got started. Just because two cakes have the same number though doesn’t mean they’ll taste the same, especially as factories revive old recipes.

beeng 餅(properly spelld bing, but beeng seems more common) — a beeng usually refers to a baked dough that is round and thin (think pizza without toppings), but can be used to refer to any number of “cakes” or baked goods in a variety of context. In puerh parlance, a beeng is a round compressed “cake” of puerh leaves. This is the most common form of compressed puerh, and range in size from 100g a piece to 3000g a piece (or more). The most common sizes are 357g or 400g. In the case of 357g, they are sometimes call qizi bing 七子餅(sometimes spelled chi-tsu).

cha qi 茶氣(or just qi) — literally the “qi” (or in some cases “chi) of the tea (cha). It’s a pretty elusive concept, and some will dispute whether such thing exists at all, but essentially, it is a quality that some people look for when buying puerh (or any tea in general) and can be most conveniently translated as the power of the tea. Immediate effects of a tea having strong qi is that it makes you sweat, usually in the back (especially lower back) and you feel a sort of rush/buzz that comes from the tea. It is independent of the caffeine and temperature of the water, or at least it should.

dapiao 大票 — the big piece of paper telling you the manufacturer, name of the tea, often year, and other vital information of the tea in question that usually comes with a jian of tea (although I think I’ve seen dapiaos on just each tong of tea?). Us non-vendors probably won’t see this too often.

jincha 緊茶 — literally “tight tea”, this is the mushroom shaped compressed tea that is so often associated with Tibet.

maocha 毛茶 — raw material of puerh, and refers to the processed but as yet uncompressed tea leaves. Some puerh, however, is left deliberately loose, and in Chinese it is called sancha 散茶. Most modern day (i.e. post 80s) sancha is in the form of shu puerh, but if you go to places like Hong Kong it is still possible to buy aged, sheng sancha.

money — qian 錢 in Chinese, also taking the form of renminbi 人民幣, xintaibi (New Taiwan Dollar) 新台幣, or meijin (US Dollar, literally American gold) 美金 — substance that begins to disappear from your wallet and bank account at an increasing velocity as you sink deeper into the habit of drinking puerh.

neifei 內飛 — “inside ticket”, literally, this is the little piece of paper, usually about an inch by an inch or so, that is stuck on the compressed puerh. It is usually only present on beengs on the front (convex) side. Sometimes though, a particular beeng can have two neifei, one on each side. Often that is because it is a more valuable cake. Neifeis are used to determine the authenticity of a cake, but can often be faked and is more of a guide than a proof.

neipiao 內票 — this refers to the larger piece of info ticket contained in the wrapper of a bing (or brick, or other teas), but is loose rather than embedded in the tea itself. Usually they tell you that they picked the best leaves, that the tea brews clearly with nice aromas, and it will cure your (fill in the blank) cancer while helping you to gain appetite and lose weight.

puerh 普洱(or puer) — why I’m wasting time typing this up in the first place.

sheng 生 — sometimes also referred to as qing 青, which means green, sheng is the term that denotes the lack of post-compression processing of the tea. This type of puerh is the ones that we rant and rave about — it is usually what people buy for further aging at home, and if it is originally of good quality and kept well, can become great in the future. Of course, whether they last 30 years or not is another matter. Younger sheng puerh will brew a yellow-green liquor, and will become increasingly darker over time. The leaves will also turn from green to brown. The taste differ radically depending on aging, quality, etc, and this variation is the primary reason why you see so many reviews here.

shu 熟 — literally “cooked”, it refers to puerh that has been post-fermented artificially before being compressed into their shape. Their aging potential is limited, and is usually best drunk now. The brews tend to be sweet, earthy, and very dark — almost pitch black a lot of times.

tuo 沱 — one of the shapes of compressed tea common for puerh. A tuo is usually 100g in weight, and is dome-like. Usually of high compression and hard to break, and the taste of younger tuo tend to be smoky.

wet-storage — a process where the sheng cakes are put into a storage space with artificially inflated humidity/temperature to encourage fermentation of the tea. If done well, they can taste all right. If done poorly, they taste like crap.

wild arbor — in Chinese it is yesheng qiaomu 野生喬木, this is often something that a tea maker advertises on their wrapper as something special about their cake — that the leaves are from wild arbor trees. Cultivated tea trees are usually bushes, and supposedly, wild arbor trees (and the street knowledge is the older the better) will provide superior aging potential and better flavours.

wrapper — the piece of paper used to wrap the puerh beeng/brick/tuo. It contains vital information such as the make of the tea, where it might be from, and can often give hints as to when it was made, depending on little details on the wrapper. Of course, since it’s just a piece of paper, it can be easily (and is often) faked.

zhuan 磚 — another form of compression for puerh, zhuan means brick, and are really brick like — usually rectangular shape, about 3/4 of an inch thick and weigh about 250g, but there are bigger ones too.

I called my dad today, hoping to talk to him since it is Father’s Day and all (even though we just talked yesterday) and somehow… he is out of town, apparently, with my mom. Upon talking to my grandfather, I foudn out that he went to — Wuyishan!!!

Now… why did he not tell me he was going yesterday? And Wuyishan, of all places!!! I could’ve asked him to get me some rarer rock teas, like baijiguan, but nooooooo…. 🙁

Oh well, at least I’m sure they’ll have a nice trip, and I’ll keep drinking my nongxiang tieguanyin.

I had the Baoyan 2001 mini cake that Davelcorp sent me today. I didn’t really know what to expect of this thing. Baoyan is a brand that is marketed to Xinjiang/Tibet, as far as I know, and so the tea is usually a little different from other puerh like Dayi brand.

It turned out to be a fairly aged cake, for a 5 year old, which is hard to explain, but nonetheless, that’s what it is. The leaves are quite broken. The brew itself is thick, and a solid brown. The taste, in the mouth, is quite flat, actually — not very flavourful. The flavours show up late, in the aftertaste. This is sort of true for all the infusions. The tea has that metallic taste of young puerh, but also there are some floral tones to the aftertaste. When smelled, you can smell smoked wood from the lid and the cup.

A bit of an oddball, in how aged it is and how it tastes, but quite an interesting tea. Not bad for the price, I think, and might turn out better in a few more years.

Thanks Davelcorp 🙂

I had a dancong from my tea friend Phyll today. It is very interesting because it is much, much lighter than the usual dancong I get from the Best Tea House. Mind you, Best Tea’s stuff tend to be higher fired, and the dancongs are no exception. Phyll’s, on the other hand, are green — they look sort of like how white tea would look if the leaves are big, and they taste a little like that too. The closest in taste though is actually a good, smooth and slightly astringent young puerh. The taste profiles are very similar, with slightly more fruity notes from the dancong. The aftertaste, however, are extremely alike, and quite surprisingly so.

I have some mao cha from Hou De that are from the Nannuo mountain, and I think I’ll taste that tomorrow to see. The dancong really struck me today as tasting like a young puerh, somehow.

Maybe the puerh I’ve been drinking are all using Guangdong leaves!!!

I did something very unorthodox today… and deserve to go to tea hell for it…

I brewed Chaozhou Gongfu tea in a gaiwan.

I suppose it’s not that bad a deal, although I think any Chaozhou native will give me the finger. Since it is basically a very high fire oolong, it is properly made in a fairly small Chaozhou pot, with lots of leaves (1/2 full, or more) and all. More importantly, you crush some leaves first and put it in the bottom of the pot, and then put whole leaves on top. This makes the flavours come out more.

I did that, but it’s not the same. With a pot the leaves don’t really move at all, but the way a gaiwan is shaped some of the crushed leaves moved a bit after my rinse. Maybe my gongfu isn’t good enough.

Anyway, the tea itself tasted great. It’s always a caffeine buzz, and today I found some really nice, subtle aromas in the tea. I can only describe it as 幽香. A slightly melancholic, reserved aroma that has strong character but not overpoweringly so.

Which is sort of the wrong flavour to get from this tea.

But whatever, I’m not a Chaozhou native.

I regret to announce that my favourite drinking cup suffered a fatal wound today during cleaning, and will no longer perform its noble function of letting me drink tea out of it.

Let us observe a moment of silence to remember its three years of service.

I decided to pull out some of the nongxiang tieguanyin from Kung Fung Yung again, and to my surprise, it’s not as sour as the last few times. I’ve left it in its jar for at least a month without touching it, and I’m wondering if perhaps leaving it alone, but letting it interact with a little air, has mellowed it a little and dissipated some of the sourness in the tea. It is still strong, and has that distinct fruity tartness that makes it rather different than your usual nongxiang tieguanyin, but the sourness is not quite there today.

Like I said a few days ago… high fired stuff need a lot more attention, but are also a lot more dynamic than your usual qingxiang fragrance.

Buying tea in China is a crapshoot. A friend of mine just asked me where to get tea in Shanghai. I am ashamed to say that even though I am technically a Shanghainese, I do not know. I’ve been to a few teashops in Shanghai, but none of them really stood out in quality. There was one that sold Fujianese tea, and the people there were nice, but I neither remember the name, not the exact location (I just know it’s near Old City God Temple, or Yuyuan as out-of-towners call it).

The problem with buying tea is not necessarily that there aren’t enough places. If anything, there are too many teashops, and for the most part, they sell the same stuff. In Shanghai, it’s going to be heavy on longjing and biluochun, and light on everything else. Shanghainese drink other teas, but longjing is our first love.

But for someone who’s not necessarily into tea, buying longjing (or anything else, really) is a real risk. Longjing can go from 100 RMB/jin to 5000 RMB/jin (one jin being 500g, silly mainland rationalization of Chinese weights). While even someone who knows nothing about longjing can probably tell that a 100 RMB longjing is no good, there’s no guarantee that they can tell that a 500 RMB longjing is not really worth 2000. Herein lies the danger — teashops are liable to scam you if they figured out that you don’t really know what you’re buying, whether you’re Chinese or foreign. With locals, it’s hard to scam since they figured you know the going rate, but if you look and act foreign, and especially if you look and act like you don’t know all that much about tea, you’re doomed.

Speaking Shanghainese helps, although it doesn’t always make a difference. Besides, many shopkeepers are from out of town, meaning they don’t know a word of Shanghainese, but if you start off with Shanghainese, they’d think you’re local (very few non-Shanghainese know the dialect) so they might be more on guard and less likely to give you ridiculous prices. The way I dress and look though sometimes give me away as a foreign student type, and unfortunately, recently I’ve had a number of people thinking I’m not Chinese at all. And when I’m in Beijing, all bets are off. I’m not much better off than the white guy who comes in speaking Mandarin.

In the end, I didn’t recommend a shop for my friend, since I don’t know any. Even if I do, I’d be afraid of recommending something that doesn’t turn out so well. The only defense against scammers and people trying to sell you overpriced stuff is education and knowledge… you can fake a tea’s brand, but you can’t fake a tea’s taste.

I’m having some 1999 Menghai Yiwu Wildgrowth tea from Hou De. 99 is a bit of an awkward age. It is sort of aged — in the sense that it is past the really green stage — but not really, so a lot of the younger flavours remain in the cake. The dry leaves are tightly compressed. The liquor when brewed is a light brown. There’s not a lot of immediate aroma coming off the tea, but the overall taste is mellow, and slightly astringent (not very much so). I put in a little too much leaves, because I misjudged the compression, so now I have a fairly strong tea on my hands. Given that though, it is still mellow. I think I need another shot with this before I can really tell what’s going on….

I went out for some fairly poor dimsum today. MSG lovefest. Then when we were on the way back, since it was a rainy day and it didn’t seem like anyone had anything to do, I invited the two friends who were still with me (the others dropped off at various points) to come over for some tea. They quickly agreed — lazy rainy early summer day, right after graduation, what could be better?

Since one of the persons in question just got his PhD and paraded around campus two days ago in his big crimson robe, I thought it might be somewhat fitting to brew up the dahongpao. I used my big gaiwan, and put in about 80% tea leaves. It was a strong brew, but like I said I always do when I have guests, I seem to make better tea when someone else other than me is drinking the stuff. I think I just pay more attention to timing, temperature, pouring, and all that stuff when someone is watching me.

Obviously, with three people one tea isn’t really enough, so after a short rest, I opened up my final bag of the Beijing qingxiang tieguanyin, since it’s my best light fire tieguanyin I have right now, and I didn’t want to make crap for them (that’s for when I’m by myself trying to burn off my tea supply). For that, I used the pot, and it was very fun having them here, chatting the afternoon away. I really should have a better set up, with proper chairs and a good tea table, but that’s for when I have a permanent abode. For now, my cheap Ikea coffee table will have to do.