A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘Chinese oolong’

Revisiting Best Tea House dancong

March 23, 2007 · 1 Comment

I haven’t had this tea in almost a year. Last time I had it was probably sometime in May 2006 or so.

This is actually the last bit of the tea I have left. I probably should’ve bought some in Hong Kong, but then, I can always go back and buy some more. This is their second most expensive selection. In terms of price/quality ratio, I find this to be a better deal than the Song Zhong Dancong, which is slightly too expensive for my tastes. This is half the price for more than half the quality. I’ll take it.

With this tea… it’s the same honey like fragrance, without the nasty greeness of an unroasted dancong that I find a little unattractive. The roasting gives it a good balance between the sweetness of the tea and the fragrance, without feeling like it’s been tempered with by the addition of artificial flavours. When drinking those non-roasted dancongs, I always feel like they are somehow unnatural…. too fragrant.

The only downside to this tea is that it doesn’t last too many infusions. After about 4-5 it starts dying, and since dancong tend to have a slightly bitter edge to them, it decreases the appeal of the tea significantly after that. Of course, today’s was especially bad because there were lots of broken bits of leaves in the tea — what always happens when it’s down to the last brew. As you can see….

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: ,

Tea meeting in Cambridge

March 8, 2007 · 2 Comments

I went and met up with Dogma and D today at Royal East. Dogma has already written about his previous experience at Royal East with Corax here. A scholar from my school who goes by the net name of Indra also joined us.

We met over lunch and chatted, with Dogma brewing up some darjeeling in those typical big pots of Chinese restaurants. It was rather strange drinking darjeeling at a Chinese restaurant, but it was good darjeeling.

When we were about done with dinner… we all started motioning for our teas. I pulled out one of the teas I bought from Hong Kong… the loose, broken cake that is well aged and rather smooth. It is a Guangyungong cake, vintage unknown. I suspect we have 30 years old pieces mixed in it, but also stuff of more recent vintage in there. Wet stored, I think, but mellow and sweet. Dogma commented on the clarity of the liquor despite the dark colour, and indeed, the colour of the tea is rather attractive. We drank it from the big pots in big cups, sort of like how you’re supposed to drink puerh. Puerh is better when you’re drinking in big gulps rather than tiny sips.

A few rounds after, Indra pulled out his traveling set, which includes a gaiwan, 6 small cups, and a small fairness cup. It’s quite handy, actually. He then pulled out the tea he was going to make — a rougui, medium roasted. He brews it in a rather unique way, one I haven’t seen before. The gaiwan is filled with tea leaves — I’d say 90% full. He pours the water in carefully, and waits…. for a long time. Whereas I would generally pour out the tea within 5-10 seconds, he waited at least half a minute with the first infusion, and subsequent infusions were even longer.

The resulting quality of the tea is rather darker than I imagined, mostly because of the long steeping time. It’s a bit rough from the tannins that got released, but full of the roasted flavour. The tea itself would’ve yielded a much weaker brew if brewed quickly. It was definitely interesting to see somebody make tea in a way that is very different from your own.

Meanwhile, we were still gulping down the puerh while getting the occasional rounds of rougui. We chatted about teas and other things, and the owner of the place, Otto, joined us. Dogma had to leave early, and we stayed on for another hour or so before heading out our respective ways.

It was definitely a fun time, and I wish we had more free time to drink teas. Oh well, that will probably have to wait till next time.

When we were leaving the table — requisite fortune cookies plus a lot of used teapots 🙂

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: , , , , ,

Rougui

March 4, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I stayed at home today, and had a rougui given to me free by one of the tea vendors on Maliandao.

The leaves are a little green, and indeed, this is a relatively light roasted rougui.

The tea is…. quite nice. Thick, with a deep aftertaste, and a nice up front aroma. The tea is not particularly complex, but it lasts many infusions. Then again, I’m not a huge fan of lightly roasted oolongs. Even though the tea is still relatively pleasant to drink, it doesn’t really cut it for me. I think for Wuyi teas, I still prefer stronger stuff that is more heavily roasted. It got slightly boring at the end.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: ,

Diagnosing strange teas

March 2, 2007 · Leave a Comment

When drinking a large variety of teas, one ends up encountering a lot of stuff that is surprising, and most of them are not pleasantly surprising. Since teas are unlabeled, with unknown source and unknown provenance, what the vendor tells you is all you really know about it until you’ve tried it. Even then, it’s not always obvious what happened to the tea to cause it to be the way it is.

I had two teas today, both of which were a bit off.

The first was a puerh sample I have from somebody. I no longer remember who gave it to me, what it was, or really anything about it. I brewed it up at the BTH, hoping to try it and see if I can remember anything from it. The tea tasted like a Menghai tea. What struck me, however, was the extreme cloudiness of the tea. It looked like a chicken soup with the chicken meat ground up in it. The tea was really, really cloudy…. I was a little afraid of drinking it, even (and that’s a rare thing). Cloudiness is supposed to be a product of high moisture content in the tea, but this was just a little too high. Rosa said that apparently some tea makers, at least she heard anyway, made teas that were mixed or coated with a sort of rice liquid. This gives the tea more body when you drink it, but of course, it clouds up the tea. I seriously wonder if this was done to this particular tea. The cloudiness didn’t improve until maybe the 6th infusion. The taste of the tea was fine… not too bad, in fact. I could feel the power of the tea, although it’s a little unstable. Overall though, I don’t think I’d buy something like this.

The second thing was a special grade Tieluohan, a Wuyi tea from the BTH. I brewed it like I normally would… and it was sour. The second infusion was so sour, I was tempted to stop drinking the tea right then and there. I persisted. The third infusion, with really just a flash infusion, was better. Then the sourness dissipated into a sort of fruity tartness. There’s a strong note of fruity taste throughout the tea, but the sourness was just…. not really acceptable.

It’s only been opened for two months at most, so I’m not sure where the sourness is coming from, but I suppose moisture could’ve done it. However, sourness is really quite nasty in any sort of tea, and I would not buy sour teas from now on. That was just sour. What happened?

Diagnosing teas can also be fun though.

Categories: Information · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: , , ,

Passing the year

February 17, 2007 · 3 Comments

Today’s the final day of the year of the dog, and tomorrow (in about an hour) we usher in the year of the pig. In China people would be lighting firecrackers like crazy at midnight, and sleeping might be difficult for a few hours. In Hong Kong, no such things are allowed (all firecrackers/fireworks are outlawed — too dangerous in a place with such a high concentration of population). Nevertheless, people celebrate, mostly by eating dinner at home or outside, but definitely with family. This is about the equivilent of the Thanksgiving Dinner in the US, where families try their best to gather together and have a long dinner. We just finished ours.

During the day today, as you can imagine, it was rather quiet outside, but a little gathering was going on in the Best Tea House. It was, surprisingly, an exceptionally busy day for them. I stopped there earlier with my cousin, but it was so crowded with (mostly Japanese) tourists that we had to take a walk. When we came back, I saw somebody unexpected — sjschen of the LJ Community. He is in town visiting, and by chance found the Best Tea House a few days ago. We ended up chatting a good bit about the teas they had, and started brewing some.

Among the teas we drank was a somewhat wet stored cake, which tasted like a 10-15 years old tea and was still a little sour/green in the undertones, but generally starting to taste like aged teas. Then it was a loose tea from, supposedly, the Menghai area. It’s starting to taste like a real old tea, with a shadow of the Red Labels I’ve had. It’s not quite as strong in the qi, but the taste is very similar. It’s sometimes quite interesting to see these changes in puerh.

Then we tried the puerh I bought for Rosa, which I personally now think is good value for the money. It’s not a great tea now, but it has some signs of a good one to come. The chaqi is strong and the tea is generally good. Rosa was happy with the purchase.

We finished with a high fired tieguanyin. Always nice to drink such things after a bunch of puerh. We didn’t get to the one cake I recommended sjschen to try, but oh well, what can you do. Maybe they went back to the store after dinner? I’m not sure. Either way, we had to leave and so we all left. It was nice meeting another tea friend in person, and it reminds me again of the real benefits I get from this blog — I get to meet all sorts of people from all over the world, people who I would have never met otherwise, all because we share one common interest.

I wish you all xinnian kuaile (Happy New Year), gongxi facai (wishing you to be prosperous – standard Cantonese new year’s greeting), and most importantly, xinnian he haocha (drink good tea in the New Year!)

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: , , , ,

Back to the rougui

February 9, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I went back today to the first Wuyi tea I bought in Beijing, the rougui. The leaves are quite broken, mostly as a product of roasting (where you have to move the leaves). They’re dark, and when sniffed, they exude that roasted aroma.

The tea is still just as pleasant as before, although I detect a hint of sourness in the first two infusions that I didn’t before. I’m not sure why. Perhaps after having been in the open tin for half a year, it has gotten a little moisture from my opening/closing of the tin, and thus gotten slightly sour. Perhaps it’s my brewing today. I’m not sure. It’s only a hint, and it went away by the 3rd infusion. I probably also added slightly too much leaves. With a little less, it might’ve been nicer.

Since I’m heading back to Hong Kong in a few days, I need to do some last minute shopping at Maliandao and elsewhere. I think I might also go buy a set of tools for brewing tea in Hong Kong, so I don’t need to bring teaware back and forth again…. especially since I broke half of the stuff I brought over last time, which was decidedly not pleasant.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: ,

Impulse buy…

February 4, 2007 · 2 Comments

I drank my very expensive dancong today that I really bought as a mistake when I first got to Beijing. It was an impulse buy, and today, drinking it, I am reminded why it was such a bad idea.

The tea, while ok, was somewhat thin, weak, and just not that exciting. It’s got some cha qi, but…. it just wasn’t that good, especially given the price. Thankfully I only have 50g of it, most of which is already gone…

But still…. what a waste.

I guess I can use it to season the pot, if nothing else. I ought to just drink this up so that it’s gone, so I can free up a canister for some other tea.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: ,

Lightly roasted tieguanyin

February 2, 2007 · Leave a Comment

To those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you would’ve noticed that I haven’t had a tieguanyin for a long, long time.

Well, I decided to finally drink one today. As you might recall, I’ve self imposed a “no young puerh” rule recently (although I must say that if I go to Maliandao young puerh will be unavoidable), so it is a great opportunity for me to get away from those young puerh tastings, which isn’t always enjoyable anyway, and back to the stuff that got me started.

On the menu today is a lightly roasted tieguanyin I got in Beijing when I first arrived, some five months ago now, from the store Chadefang on Maliandao, which, incidentally, I have never been back since.

I stored this tea poorly in a papier-marche box. There were two teas that I put in those boxes. One was this, the other was a Maocha. The maocha suffered horribly, tasting like paper. I thought the same fate might befall this one, but oddly enough, it hasn’t. Nevertheless, since I haven’t had this tea for so long (3 months now, I think), I figured I will use the gaiwan today to taste its condition, so to speak.

The first two infusions were light, a bit thin, and you could almost say it was watery. I was a little disappointed initially, but then I was probably out of practice in brewing them. I also decided to add a little of the 5100 leftover from yesterday to my kettle of my usual water, to give it a little kick. Remembering the experiment yesterday, I figured it might give me more from the tea.

The result was as expected — it did. The tea started tasting sweeter, softer, peaking at around infusion 4, and then starting on a gradual descent, but lasting me about a total of 15 infusions or so, which is quite decent for a tieguanyin.

Infusion 5:

Infusion 6:

Infusion 8:

Meanwhile, I kept my tieguanyin pot around to season it with leftover tea. I didn’t want to drink too much, so about 1/3 of each infusion went to the pot, instead of me. When I opened the lid, a film of tea stayed and I took a shot of it

That’s some serious surface tension.

I was pretty satisfied with myself today, mostly for not messing up the tea, but also in rediscovering why I liked roasted tieguanyins in the first place. In a way, drinking young puerh, which is interesting and exciting because of its sense of discovery, is not quite the same as drinking a nice, mellow oolong just for enjoyment. Today I was just enjoying my tea instead of trying to figure out where it’s from, what kind of leaves were used, etc

Although, now that I’ve said that I wasn’t trying to figure out what kind of teas were used, I do wonder if this is tieguanyin at all, or if perhaps this is a benshan. I’m not very good at spotting the difference. The price would suggest a benshan, or a tieguanyin from an outlying region. But whatever… it was nice drinking it. I will probably brew it up again fairly soon, instead of waiting another two or three months.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: ,

Dahongpao

January 29, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I drank some dahongpao today. It’s the supposed tea that is used for the national assembly when they entertain foreign guests. It’s really not bad, although tasting it again, I feel like it changed a little and is not as great as before. I wonder what happened. Storing it in a plastic bag may have done it in.

Since I am not going to be drinking much young puerh these days, it’ll be a good opportunity to test out various kinds of Wuyi teas. However, I just chipped the lid of my pot today :(. It’s not a big damage, but now my otherwise round lid for the pot has a little dent 🙁 🙁

At least I bought it for cheap….

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: ,

Rougui

December 11, 2006 · 4 Comments

I didn’t get around to drinking tea today until about 8:30pm. Amazingly enough, no caffeine headaches, yet. I was quite surprised.

I think last week’s parade of 06 Yiwu teas really made its mark by doing some serious damage to my stomach. So I opted for a mild Wuyi again, this time the old favourite — the rougui I got when I first came to Beijing.

The lack of the “aged” flavour is obvious, as is the more up front aroma of the slight charcoal taste — from the roasting process. The tea’s still very nice and drinkable though. I sent a small sample to Phyll, who seemed to have liked it. This is not, by the way, from the usual store I’ve been going to for Wuyi teas. Rather, it’s from a store called Runhe Yancha. I should really go back there again to seek out what else they’ve got on offer. However, I’ve really got too much tea on my hands already….

Therein lies the danger of puerh. You can always justify another purchase by saying “Oh, I’ll just let it age”. You taste it once, and dump it in the corner of your storage space, and there it lies for weeks, months….. until you discover it again. Hopefully, it hasn’t gone mouldy by then, and hopefully, it has aged into something a little better. With some teas, like the Yangqing Hao 2004, you can already see promise of greatness. With others… you can tell that either nothing has happened, or in the case of some buds only tea, that it has in fact gotten worse by being simply bitter and nasty.

Just because the tea is good now doesn’t mean it will age well. But, I am increasingly thinking that a tea that isn’t good now (I do not mean taste — there are lots of other factors) is almost certainly not going to be good in the future.

Why’s puerh so hard?

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: ,