A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘aged oolong’

Aged 1990 Winter Dongding oolong

October 17, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This is one of those that actually has a claim to be something specific, instead of just “something aged”. I got this tea from Yetang on one of my visits to the Yongkang area, and I was rather impressed when I tried it there. It’s been a month already, and it’s a good time to break it out now.

It comes in a simple box

With these filled inside (within a bag, of course). The dry leaves smell a little different — it has a slight affinity to an aged puerh in smell. No wet storage, of course. Rather, it has a sort of “old” taste, if I can call it that. Something different, not the slightly plummy aged oolong smell you usually get.

You can’t really say much about an aged oolong just judging by its colour

It is slightly numbing on the tongue, with a full yet interesting flavour — again, not the sweet plummy taste you often expect from an aged oolong, but rather, a slightly puerh-ish taste comes out rather strongly. More interestingly, there’s a hint of some high floral notes that I didn’t notice when I tried this tea at the store. The floral notes I think give it away — this tea wasn’t highly roasted at all at any point, I think, but was aged in probably a reasonably sealed container for some years without further roasting. The floral note persists throughout the session. There’s also a green Taiwan oolong finish to the tea that you don’t get with the more roasted varieties. Only near the end, maybe 15 or 20 cups later, did the tea turn to a more generic aged oolong plummy taste — not that it was never there, but rather, I think it was always overshadowed by something else in the foreground.

There’s a misconception that aged oolongs must be re-roasted every year or every few years. I know for a fact that this doens’t always happen, since I know private collectors who definitely don’t roast their teas. They just keep it in a well sealed jar and take some out every once in a while, and some of these teas are 20 years or older. As long as one is careful about storage (mostly by avoiding moisture) roasting is not really necessary. I’ve tried some of that stuff before, and they can be quite delightful.

You can see how the wet leaves are more like a dark green.

I think this tea is quite good. Not too cheap, but perhaps I should get another bag and let it age some more while I drink off this one…

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Cheaper aged oolong

October 16, 2007 · 4 Comments

One problem with these teas is that they have no names — and most of the time, there isn’t even a region name to go by, so unfortunately, price is the only real distinction 🙂

This is a tea that I got along with the more expensive, but sour, tea. I got this one because it’s cheap… it’s under $50 for 600g (600g is a jin, or Chinese pound with 16 taels, and prices are often quoted in these, but do not confuse this with a mainland jin, which is 500g and has 10 taels).

The leaves are a bit mixed looking when you inspect them closely, and has a few shades — darker and lighter brown. Sniffing it, it smells a little aged, and roasty.

The tea looks very roasty

And tastes so too. There’s definitely some aged-ness to it, but the aged character is not particularly obvious. The roasted flavour is more prominent, and probably needs a bit of time for that to go away. The first few infusions are actually quite good — with a solid coating of aroma in the back of the mouth. There’s a slight sourness in there, but it’s not obvious enough to be unpleasant. When they sold it to me they said this is 10 years. Is it? I don’t know, I’m not sure. It’s probably a few years old, but there’s really no telling exactly how old. One of the problems is that the aged-ness of an oolong can vary very greatly. If aged in a sealed package, the aging can progress very slowly, whereas sometimes they’re aged in more open air, and the aged character show up much faster, but I think at higher risk of sourness and that sort of thing. Almost every time I go to a tea shop around here I ask if they have aged oolongs, and they really run the gamut, both in quality and price.

Would I drink this again? Sure, it’s not offensive, and the first few cups are nice. Again, if brewed a little lighter, there should be no sourness and perhaps even a bit more aromatic.

I really need to use a pot for this sort of tea. Brewing them in a gaiwan is almost a waste.

The wet leaves show this tea to be more broken in nature — not too obvious when dry, but really obvious when wet

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60s baozhong

October 14, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I went back to the Fuxing store today. It’s hard to resist a store that’s only 10 minutes walk away.

I was looking more at pots today, and nothing too interesting happened. I did, however, ask them how they season their pots — since they do it. The answer was “nothing special”. In fact, they don’t do anything other than just clean it of the debris that’s left in the pot, and after that, they just brew tea in them. The pots clean themselves out, basically. Obviously they rub the pots dry afterwards, but that’s really about it. As I was there, she was filling out the pot with some leaves, pouring water into it, and just letting the tea sit in the pot (with the leaves) to stew…. and the leaves were still in it as I left. I guess that works. I also suppose it’s because they have so many pots, it’s impossible to do anything else with them.

While there, I drank an aged oolong from 1983. Pretty interesting stuff, although much weaker than the one I had yesterday. The tea is, as she said, slightly sour if brewed too strongly (due to poor storage), so she deliberately made it slightly weaker. It does, however, have pretty decent qi, and I felt very relaxed after drinking it. Compared to younger teas, such as young oolongs or puerh….

Anyway, that’s all for today.

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A failure

October 13, 2007 · 9 Comments

This is a purported 60s baozhong

The dry leaves smell faintly of agedness, but as I sniffed it hard, comparing it with the tea yesterday, I noticed that there’s a sour note in the smell in yesterday’s that is absent in today’s. Hmmm. Food for thought.

It brews a dark tea

And tastes wonderfully aged, full bodied, good qi, huigan, etc. There’s a hint of sourness in the first three infusions or so, but it doesn’t cross the line into the “unpleasant” category. This is what somebody might call a “fruity tartness”. The tea’s plummy, and very enjoyable. No bitterness at all, but it numbs the tongue a little — I actually enjoy that in these teas. Interestingly, there are some aftertastes in this tea that reminds me of some aged puerhs I’ve had. It obviously doesn’t share the earthy or woody taste of an aged puerh, nor the spicy notes that someitmes you get from them, but the aftertaste — it definitely reminds me of some puerh I’ve tried, mostly drier stored stuff. What’s better yet — these teas are impossible to exhaust. About 25 cups later

It still goes. Aged teas (oolongs, puerh, you name it) has one common characteristic — the longer they’re aged (presumably no serious wet storage in the case of the puerh) the longer they last in a drinking session. Even when the colour of the tea fades while brewing, the taste continues. Now I’m drinking probably the 35th or even 40th cup of this tea, and the colour of the tea is very faintly yellow, but when I drink it — it still tastes like tea, not water, and it still stimulates the senses in a positive way. That is not something you can fake, no matter what you do.

It’s still brewing as I type

Yum. I like this tea.

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Another aged oolong

September 20, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Before I go on about today’s tea…. here’s the one from two days ago

Recognize these leaves?

Probably not, but they’re the same leaves (minutes the yellow leaf on the right) as the ones I posted two days ago for the mystery cake. I often keep the wet leaves around for a day or two and let them dry to see what they look like when dried — this way I can relate back to how they looked originally (or at least closer to it) and thus be better able to gauge the leaves when I first see them. All the leaves are quite hairy. That’s not always true for puerh, and sometimes there’s very little hair. Re-drying also leaves an interesting aroma — almost vanilla like. Try it sometime.

Just don’t sell it as new leaves :p

Anyway, today I drank a sample I got from Fuxing, the shop I visited on Sunday. The owner gave me a bit of an aged oolong to try, because when I was leaving I told her that I am looking for that stuff. This tea is quite cheap, which is always a plus. It also looks aged — especially since it is a non-ball rolled tea, indicating that it’s been around for some time now. She warned me that this particular sample is a bit sour, because she just left it out and it got damp. Ok, forewarned.

Looks and smells legitimately aged

I think I’ve mentioned before that in Cantonese we call the taste of aged oolongs “chen”, which literally just means “aged”, “old”. “Chenpi”, dried tangerine peels, literally means “old skin”, and has a slightly similar taste to teas like this. Some people will age their oolong with some old chenpi thrown into the jar and sealed together. When you pull them out, they will taste like chenpi and is supposed to be somewhat medicinal in properties.

This tea has a lot of that kind of flavour. I actually only detected a hint of sourness. I think the sourness is light, and is only noticeable when infusions are long. Since I used the whole sample in my small gaiwan, a short infusion was enough and it avoided any serious sourness — in the silghtly longer steepings I could taste it, but then it went away very late in the tea. I like stuff like this. In fact, I might even like this stuff more than aged puerh sometimes. They’re just very pleasant and easy to drink, no thoughts required, little worry about fake tea (it will be obvious), and not much concern about poor storage (it shows in the taste). They’re also way cheaper. I wonder why I bother with puerh sometimes.

The wet leaves seem to tell me it wasn’t very heavily roasted at all. I like this tea, and better if the rest of it is packed well and not sour (which she seemed to indicate it’s not)

I should go buy the rest. I think they have a kilo left.

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Aged shuixian

July 24, 2007 · 2 Comments

This is a tea of unclear origins. I think I picked it up somewhere along the way in Beijing…

It’s an aged shuixian of sorts. Emphasis, I think, on the aged part. It does a few funny things. It isn’t bitter — until you overbrew it. It’s very fruity, almost oddly so. It’s got that nice aged Wuyi tea taste to it, but not sour. It’s not high fired. It’s light in taste, but very long lasting (many infusions later, it will still come out bitter if you overbrew it). It’s refreshing in taste, but dries out your mouth a little. It doesn’t possess obvious qi, but along the way, maybe during infusions 4-6, I felt a warmth buzzing in the lower back. The colour is a pleasant orange

But the colour belies the taste — which would normally be accompanied by a darker hue. It’s a bit of a strange tea, really, and I don’t really know what happened to it. I think I bought this bag partly out of curiosity — to see what’s going on here. It’s a tea full of contradictions. I don’t think it’s a very good one — it’s merely ok, but quite entertaining, and will definitely last a whole afternoon no matter what you do. I think I could’ve gone further with the tea, even after a good 10+ infusions. In that way, it’s like a good aged puerh — as long as you let it stew a little longer in the water, something will come out and it won’t taste bland.

The leaves are quite complete, and some are even greenish.

Fun tea, and worth every penny of it.

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Jabbok loose tea redux

June 4, 2007 · 1 Comment

My girlfriend arrived today, so I pulled out something a little different from the parade of young teas to drink. It’s a loose puerh from Jabbok Tea House in Hong Kong, which I last blogged about here.

The dry leaves look normal, if a bit broken (bottom of the pile stuff)

I said it tasted bitter. I have to say that it is still quite bitter, but at some point, the tea sort of turns a corner and turns sweeter. The aroma is still quite alluring. My girlfriend described it as “sweet potato”, which I suppose is not a bad smell to have in a tea. There’s also a bit of talcum in it. I definitely still don’t think it’s 30 years. It’s at most… 10-15? It’s dry stored though, for sure, given the colour of the tea and the leaves, as well as the flexibility of the leaves and the aroma given out. There’s no “storage” smell to it, which is not a bad thing. Somehow, I can’t recapture the nice aroma I got the first time I drank it.

One little thing I noticed is that because this little bag has been stored next to the Mengku cakes… it has taken on a little bit of the Mengku taste/smell in the early infusions. Interesting how that happens.

The colour of the liquor is a nice orangy/brown colour.

And the wet leaves look good

Compare this to the somewhat mouldy, supposedly 1998 tea from a few days ago

You can see the differences easily. The Jabbok teas open up a lot more, and look more lively. The stems also look softer (and are indeed softer).

The cups I used are actually what the owner of Jabbok recommends for older puerh — flat cups with a big surface.

I’m not exactly sure why he thinks they’re good for older puerh. Other than allowing you to gulp them in big gulps… I can’t think of a good reason. One test I can do at some point, I suppose, is to try the same tea from the same infusion in two different cups and see. Somehow, my suspicion is that I won’t see much of a difference…

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Aged dancong

December 12, 2006 · 2 Comments

A few months ago I bought a very weird tea, something that I’ve never tried before. It was from a small little shop in one of the shabbiest tea malls in Maliandao — the Beijing Tea Corporation mall. It’s a husband and wife team, renting basically a corner of a much bigger store that sells mostly teaware (especially those big wooden tables). I went in there because I was looking for dancongs, and they only sell dancongs (a doomed business in Beijing, pretty much). I tried two things, neither of which I particularly liked because they were too light for my taste, but then the husband showed me one tea, brewed it up…. and it was weird enough for the weird factor for me to have bought 150g of it. The other reason I bought it is because I think they really don’t get much business and I felt a little bad.

That’s usually a recipe for disaster — it’s usually those moments when you buy the worst tea in your inventory. I left this tea on my shelf, unopened, for the past three months. After the aged Wuyi two days ago though, I thought I should try this weird tea out.

I say it is weird because it is a genre that I’ve never had before — aged dancong. I’ve seen aged Wuyis or aged tieguanyin, but never an aged dancong. I think mostly because dancongs tend to be lighter in flavour, and aging a lightly roasted tea is not a good idea — the flavours will deteriorate into nothing. When I tried it at the store though, an overwhelming sense of — get this — puerh hit me. It’s not quite puerh like, but smelling and tasting the tea, it definitely reminded me of some puerhs I’ve had.

The aroma is hard to describe. It’s… old. It smells most similar to the mixed, low grade old puerh from Best Tea House, but the old puerh has a musty old puerh smell that this dancong doesn’t. Instead, it just retains the clean, old smell. I don’t know what to call it….

I brewed it up… and the initial two infusions were rather bland. The tea is, shall we say, subtle, but not unpleasantly so. The colour is light:

I increased infusion times, and it became stronger, with more of the “chen” taste that I found in the old Wuyi I had two days ago. However, it is not sour at all, which is a testament to good storage.

There were notes of dry dates again, the taste I found in the old cooked puerh brick. It’s a very subtle note, almost a flash. In fact, drinking this tea makes you work really hard trying to find the various flavours, but it’s quite complex and changes a lot between infusions. This time I only used about 4g of tea. Next time I will add more to make it more punchy and accentuate the flavours a little more.

The wet leaves are very large….

A pretty fun tea to drink, and it’s really quite cheap…..

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Aged Wuyi Tea

December 10, 2006 · 1 Comment

Now that we have the 10,000 hits thing out of the way… back to the teas 🙂

Yesterday, along with the scale and the bags of Wuyi tea I got, I was given a small sample of an aged Wuyi tea from the store. Since it’s a small bag, I figured I’ll brew it.

Since I got my new electric scale, I figured I’ll see how much tea they gave me.

It turns out it was 10g, almost to the dot. 10g of tea… that sounds like a lot.

So I warmed my pot, and started putting leaves in it. When I filled it to about what I normally would use… I realized that about 3/4 of the tea I got from the sample is already in the pot. What do I do with the rest? Keep it? It’s too little to do anything with it. Throw it? It’s a waste… so…. I “turned my heart sideways” (a rough translation of a Chinese phrase meaning “to do something with determination”) and threw the rest of the dry tea in there. It just fit in the pot, with a bit of space to spare… 10g of tea in this pot, and the pot is almost filled to the brim with dry leaves.

Yes, yes, tea addict.

In my excitement I forgot to take pictures of the dry leaves. I can say they are rather small and broken, and quite dark — black. It’s broken because it’s obviously been roasted fairly heavily (for storage) and perhaps re-roasted after some years of storage. Anyway, as I remaked yesterday, Wuyi teas are hard to tell apart when dry anyway.

The first infusion brewed a very promising looking liquor — doesn’t this look like aged puerh? This is what happens when you put 90% dry leaves in a pot….

The taste… overwhelmingly the first few infusions has a taste of chenpi (dried mandarin peel). This is what they would call the “chen” taste in tea, usually applying to oolong, as the “chen” taste in puerh is different. The first infusion came out a bit sour. It wasn’t terribly unpleasant in its sourness, but a little sour. Of course, with that much leaves in a small pot…. it’s hard to control. I then decided faster infusions will help, and indeed, the sourness subsided in the second infusion onwards, giving way to more of the “chen” taste. There’s a nice, soft, supple feel to the tea that is usually more obvious in aged Wuyi teas (or aged teas in general). Younger teas tend to be harsher, no matter what you do. Poorly stored aged teas, of course, can also turn bad on you.

Then after about 4-5 infusions, the chen taste subsided, giving way to a lot of sweetness. The brew also got considerably lighter. I increased the infusion time, but the chen taste didn’t come back. Instead, the sweetness persisted. I drank about 10-12 infusions of this. Needless to say, I was pretty worked up by the tea, despite its age and the fact that it’s a roasted Wuyi. It’s a comfortable feeling, not the nervous energy that you get from a young, qingxiang tieguanyin.

I might get more of this…. but I really, really have too much tea already. Then again, it’s hard to come by decent aged oolongs that are not sour or bland. This tea is neither. I should at least go back to the store and try it with less leaves.

The wet leaves…. don’t reveal much.

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Sour aged tieguanyin

November 6, 2006 · 2 Comments

I realized I’ve had puerh for many days in a row now, so today I opted for something else. I got a small packet of tieguanyin from the guy who sold me two cakes of those ok Yiwu. He claimed they are from 1992, aged, but selling for a ridiculously cheap price. I asked for a sample to bring home to brew myself, and he gave me some (along with the maocha I brewed up yesterday).

The dried leaves… look like medium to low grade tea from way back when, lightly rolled, not tight like they make them now (thanks to those Taiwanese). Looks good enough. Let’s see how it brews up.

Yum

Sip….. wow…… it’s sour. It’s really sour. It’s so sour. Wow. Hmmm

Another infusion…. still really sour.

One more, with me having taken some leaves out….. still sour.

The rest got thrown into the garbage, but not before I took some pics

The leaves felt a bit rough and stiff, almost plasticky. Other than sourness, the tea did have a nice aged taste to it that I recognize from other well aged oolongs, but the sourness was all pervasive. It was really, really sour. Tasted like Chenpi, the aged Chinese mandarin skin. You’re supposed to get that taste in an old oolong … but only the aroma and not the sourness. Sourness is a no no.

I drank my usual tieguanyin (the medium fired one) to wash out the taste after this.

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