Moving with all this teaware is hell.
Entries tagged as ‘musings’
Moving
July 29, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Categories: Misc · Objects · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: musings, teaware
Drinking tea with no leaves
July 27, 2009 · 9 Comments
I’ve voiced this before, but it happened again over the past weekend, and it really mystifies me.
Why do teahouses in the United States serve tea without giving you the leaves?
What I mean is, when you go to one of these establishments, you order your tea (in this case, Keemun). They take your order, and give you a pot with a cup. It’s an English style pot. Nothing’s wrong with that, except that there are no leaves in there — just pre-infused tea. I know this is probably not going to bother most people, and in fact, may even be great for most of the casual visitors to such establishments, but it annoys me, especially because these places often also promote themselves as serious teahouses.
Without seeing the leaves, I have no way of really controlling how the tea is brewed. Most of the time, the tea comes out weak, slightly understeeped, and most important of all, there is no chance for redemption — you cannot resteep the tea, you cannot add more hot water, and you have no way to look at the wet leaves, because they don’t give it to you. Perhaps I can ask for it, and perhaps they will entertain me, but I don’t think this should be necessary. The ability to resteep leaves multiple times is, in my opinion, a fundamental distinction between tea and coffee, and the nuances and changes that a tea undergoes from infusion to infusion is a great part of the enjoyment of any particular brew. Taking the leaves away deprives me of all that.
I can think of some reasons why a store may decide to do such things, for example
1) Shorten visits — if you can reinfuse tea, you are more likely to sit there for longer. Bad for business, obviously
2) Likewise, the possibility of reinfusing tea means you are less likely to order another pot, which of course means less money
3) Some people are clueless as to how to make tea, so doing it for them removes the possibility that they will screw it up, think it’s bad, and never come back again
While 3 is a legitimate concern (and I suppose 1 and 2 are too, for different reasons), I find it hard to swallow. A serious tea place, IMHO, should probably at least offer the choice of leaves or no leaves. A universal no leaves policy leaves something to be desired. Or at least, for me, that’s a rather disappointing thing to see in shops and teahouses. Maybe I’m being too much of a purist, but I still think that if I am buying tea to drink, I am buying the leaves, not the infused product — especially if I’m getting charged $4 for it.
Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: musings, shopping, travel
New neighbour
July 8, 2009 · 1 Comment
We have a new neighbour who just moved in a week or two ago, and they’ve already had a few kids since then
On another note, I’ll be off for a bit going on a little family vacation. I’d imagine that when I come back in two weeks, these kids will have grown some feathers already.
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: musings
Cost effectiveness
April 24, 2009 · 9 Comments
I thought it might be interesting to list what I think are the best ways to improve the cup you drink, day in, day out, arranged in order of cost effectiveness
1) Skills — skills are free, unless you’re paying for lessons (which you shouldn’t). The thing that can most improve your tea in your cup everyday is how you make them, and that, unfortunately, only comes with lots of practice. Taking golf lessons with Tiger Woods won’t make you a better golfer, so similarly, taking tea lessons with some “tea master” won’t necessarily make your tea any better either. It’s all about practice, learning, investigation, understanding, and thinking. With enough time and effort, you can be your own tea master.
2) Water — how exactly you can improve your water depends on your circumstances and what teas you make, but in general, improvements to water is much cheaper than trying to improve the other things. As the only other ingredient in tea (aside from the leaves of course), it makes a huge difference in what comes out from the other end of your pot
3) Tea — yes, the leaves. I think this part is pretty obvious. Remember — good tea is rarely cheap, but cheap tea can be good, and most importantly, expensive teas are not guaranteed to be good at all.
4) Wares — kettles, pots, pans, dishes, cups, whatever. This is by far the least cost effective way to improve your cup. The benefits (if any) they offer are usually marginal, and not that obvious if you’re newer to tea. It also clouds other things and can mask problems in your brewing technique, etc, and so it’s better to get the basics down before trying to upgrade the wares. They are also expensive and unpredictable. To continue the golf analogy – using the best clubs won’t make you a good player. It can help a good player, but if you’re not good enough to use that help, it’s just wasted money
Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: musings, shopping
Simplicity
April 23, 2009 · 12 Comments
I was chatting with BBB today about teaware and things, and one of the points we agreed on was that both of us are moving towards simpler brewing. These days for me it’s a kettle, a pot, a cup, and that’s it. I don’t pour water over the pot. I don’t pour tea over the pot (usually). I don’t do anything fancy. Water in, water out.
If you watch those videos on youtube teaching you how to do gongfu brewing, they are usually full of pomp and circumstance — paraphrenalia galore, plus a lot of extra steps and movements that are, for all intents and purposes, completely unnecessary. In fact, very often they detract from the actual product that you care about — how the tea comes out and tastes. Oftentimes I’ve seen people getting too preoccupied with a certain step or two that other, important aspects of tea brewing gets ignored. They might take too long to pour, wait too long so the water is cold, brew too long because they have to clean something or move something, the list is endless. This is what we call literally “inverting the base and end” in Chinese (本末倒置), meaning that the emphasis is entirely on the wrong thing.
Brewing tea is really only about three variables, once you’re done with figuring out the inputs (tea + water). It’s temperature, time, and volume. How hot, how long, and how much water/tea. The rest is just motion. For me, temperature is almost not a concern, as I almost always use water that’s just off boil, no matter what it is. As long as you adjust the other two, anything, including greens, can come out just fine.
Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: musings, skills
First impressions are deceiving
March 25, 2009 · 4 Comments
I’ve said this before, but I’m reminded of this issue again today. I think one of the easy mistakes that newcomers to tea make is an over emphasis on the first few infusions. This is especially true of puerh, particularly the aged or wet stored type. I am reminded of that today as I drank some supposedly 30 years loose puerh from Hong Kong. It starts out a little bitter, wet stored, with a strong taste of some Vietnamese tea mixed in. After a while, however, it mellows out, turns sweeter, and gives a rounder body to the taste. Then, even later (we’re talking 10+ infusions) it turns very sweet, mellow, and still very fragrant, with an almost perfumy taste/smell.
It’s very clear that the best was at the end, not the beginning. My friend has told me how puerh drinking really only STARTS at the fifth infusion. Everything before can be discarded. This applies mostly to her stuff of 30 years old or so. While it’s certainly a waste to, say, dump five cups of Red Label down the drain, it is equally wasteful to stop too fast because of either a lack of immediate interest or a lack of stomach.
This is true also for the evaluation of newer teas. While it is not the sole criteria for determining the quality of a tea, how long it lasts and how fast it dies is an important indicator. I drank some younger puerh recently that will always yield an extra cup no matter how far I’ve gone, while some others completely give up after maybe 10 infusions and give you nothing but water. Longer lasting tea is always better than the ones that die. If it’s weak now, what does it have to give you after aging?
Which also brings into question the size of the vessel you use to make tea. If the pot you’re using is too big, for example, so that you can’t drink more than say 7 cups before feeling totally exhausted by the tea, then you should perhaps consider something smaller. This is a particularly acute problem in the non-Asian world, as the norm is to drink alone, not with company, making a long session of tea harder to achieve. If your pot is too big (say, 150ml) you might be drinking a litre or more of water and still be nowhere near the end of the tea if you’re on your own. It’s definitely something to consider.
Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: aged puerh, musings, traditional stored puerh
The evolution of a tea blogger
February 18, 2009 · 5 Comments
I remember when I first started this blog, it was mostly about me drinking new teas I haven’t tried before. There’s a certain excitement to it, and I was very happy to share my thoughts and experiences about those particular teas. It started as a way for me to keep track of what I’ve had, but also as a way to share my thoughts with others who are interested in the hobby. Over time, I have found a large number of people who are interested in this kind of esoteric thing, and have made many good friends through it.
Many of you witnessed the rather frenzied phase when I was in China and Taiwan, drinking my way through the country. It’s well documented on this blog.
I learned a lot through all that, not only because I did it, but because I wrote about it. Writing reinforces knowledge. That’s always true, and will probably always be true. It helps you organize the information you have gathered in a meaningful way, and I will always have a deposit of information in the form of this blog.
These days, I don’t sample anything anymore. I have lots of them sitting around, and I still get some offers to send me more, but over time, I find my appetite for samples diminishing. Partly it’s because you have to go through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff, and partly because, maybe, I no longer find the same feeling of excitement anymore, drinking new tea. Mind you, I think I will still drink my way through the city or whatever if I am in a place with a lot of tea — that hasn’t changed. Maybe what it is though is that I no longer feel the urge to document and to parse it with the intense interest I did before. They generally all fall into archetypes of teas that I have already tried.
I still drink tea every day, of course, but recently, most of the tea I’ve been drinking are wet stored puerh from Hong Kong or aged oolongs of some sort. I should probably talk about at least the wet stored stuff I’m drinking, as I actually think it’s quite good, especially for the price. At the same time, there’s probably no point in talking about the same tea over and over again. You’d be bored before I am.
Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: musings
Small time tea stores
February 7, 2009 · 3 Comments
I’m pretty convinced, after being an observer of the industry for so many years, that if you want to start a serious tea shop in anything other than a major city in the United States, you either need very, very deep pockets, a unique town that has a critical mass of people who will buy that kind of stuff, or you need to compromise.
Compromise can come in many forms. The most common is probably coffee, but it can also be bubble tea, or other tea “smoothie” drinks. Other than coffee, the rest are usually sugar laden high caloric vehicles. We’re genetically programmed to like things that are sweet and fat, whereas something bitter is usually an acquired taste. It’s no wonder tea is less popular when drunk straight.
I recently visited a small town that had a store like that, but are now going out of business. Even though it has a nice liberal arts college nearby and a population that’s generally considered the more tree-hugging, outdoor loving liberal type, a tea store still can’t make ends meet. I am guessing they didn’t sell tea online, and didn’t have enough operating income from their store to keep it going. I can see why — selling pounds of tea (if it comes to pounds at all) won’t get you all that much money. Brewing it on the spot is probably a much higher margin business, but at the end of the day, if you don’t have enough foot traffic, you’re doomed.
It’s too bad, really, but there’s probably nothing to be done. Even in big cities, such as Boston, tea-only stores struggle and generally don’t do much more than selling very generic teas. It’s a tough business, and the online competition is just very stiff. They have much lower overhead and can offer a wide variety of stuff, whereas a physical store is always going to cost more and be able to offer less. Serious tea drinkers tend to just go online, buy a bunch of samples, and then buy the few they like in bulk. Given population density, etc, I honestly don’t see that changing any time soon, no matter how much more tea Americans drink.
The most successful tea store I’ve seen in a smaller city in the US is one that I went to in Syracuse, NY, called Roji. They still did bubble tea, but had just enough for the tea addict (me) to feel comfortable. It seems like they’re still alive; I hope they will be for years to come.
Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: musings, travel
Public opinion on Teavana
February 7, 2009 · 2 Comments
It was an interesting experience to see that my post about Teavana has attracted the attention of those who either work for the company, or are in some ways closely related to it. In the last few days the post has gotten comments from some who are quite obviously aligned with the company. Some have self-identified as such, others merely claiming that they are customers or somehow sympathetic to the company in one way or another.
The timing was interesting, as it was quite a while after I initially posted about it. I’m guessing somehow because it quickly became the #9 hit to a google search of the term “Teavana”, it has gotten the attention of those who work there and they are eager to air their side of the story.
Some of the claims made by the commenters are that the tetsubins are 100% made in Japan only, with none from China. Others claim that they are doing a service to the community by making tea more mainstream, essentially getting people started on the slippery slope to tea addiction, which I, for one, am happy to indulge.
I don’t have problems with places that sell flavoured tea or sweetened tea per se. I think that’s fine, and in fact, very healthy. People don’t always like their tea bitter and esoteric. If it somehow makes it more palatable, sure. Lots of culture drink their teas flavoured and with lots of added sugar. That, in and of itself, does not a sin make.
What I do have problems with is the way they present their goods, and ultimately, the disparity between the claimed quality and benefits of the tea, and the actual utility that one might actually derive from them. Claiming that different teas have different health benefits has no scientific basis at all, as far as I am concerned, but that is extremely obvious from all the literature — that somehow different kinds of tea (black, white, oolong, etc) have different properties. A novice looking through their catalogue will think they need to buy all the different types to get all the benefits they claim they have. That’s about as fantastic a claim as I’ve ever heard when it comes to tea.
As for the teaware — there were definitely tetsubins I saw that day that were Chinese in origin, as far as I am able to tell. I do, however, allow for the possibility that I could be mistaken, and that it was simply a few Japanese tetsubins that somehow look extremely like the cheaper, less well made Chinese ones. Perhaps it’s the poor Yixing pots and expensive pricing that bothers me more. I can’t really tell once I’m in there.
Lastly, it seems that I am not alone, and that many others have a problem with Teavana as well.
This is my last post on the subject, as I don’t have any interest in furthering discussion on this. I turned off comments on my previous post on the subject, because the tone of the comments turned increasingly hostile and accusatory. Should it happen here, I will do the same.
Thanks for reading, and pardon the interruption.
Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: musings, shopping
Drinking storage
January 30, 2009 · 6 Comments
I remember when I first started out drinking tea and learning about it, a very knowledgeable friend told me that puerh (by which is meant aged puerh — new tea was not in the discussion) tastes best BEGINNING with the 5th infusions. Note that we are talking the BEGINNING of the good tasting part is the fifth infusion onward, going to 10th, 15th, etc. Everything before was not very good, and in fact, the friend rinses two or three times sometimes for older tea, and throwing those away or using them to help age pots.
I think most people, having been raised on the “infuse and throw” culture, will wonder how it could be that a tea can start to taste its best on the fifth infusion. Many I know don’t even necessarily get to the fifth before giving up on a tea.
I think what happens here and what bears repeating is that in the first few infusions, what’s really going into the liquid is what can be called the “storage” taste. Different storage facilities taste different — find two loose traditionally stored puerh, say, from two different stores, and they will taste vastly different. Find two traditionally stored puerhs from the same store, and as long as they have stored both, the first few cups will taste very similar. What happens afterwards is what’s really in the tea — the true taste of the tea, not the storage.
One of the reasons why some people hate traditionally stored tea is the storage taste — it’s not going to go away no matter what you do. If you drink enough infusions though, it does weaken it sufficiently so that you can get to the tea underneath it. The taste is obviously changed, but for better tea, there will be that perfume taste that can be quite obvious in a dry stored tea but less so in a traditionally stored one, but it should still be there.
These days I’ve been drinking my puerh for two days at a time — with the second day being a contiuation of the first. I am using a larger pot with a relatively careless way of brewing them, and they are all traditionally stored, loose or broken tea. While the taste is much stronger on the first day, the second day is often much sweeter and, sometimes, has that nice, sweet quality to it that is ultimately what you’re after.
I’m not saying that that’s the only way to appreciate puerh, but I do think that to focus too much on the first few cups can be very misleading sometimes, especially when it comes to puerh that has been aging for a bit. While it is true that for dry stored tea the effect of storage might be a bit lower, it is still a mitigating factor. What other teas are stored along the cake you’re drinking, for example, will affect the way it tastes/smells the first few cups. That, in turn, can affect your impression of the tea if the first few cups take too much precedence in the taster’s mind.
Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: musings, storage
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Interesting.... would 250C in my oven work?