A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘musings’

Slowness

July 9, 2008 · 9 Comments

As some of you might have noticed (or all of you, really), things are a little slower here these days.

Partly it’s because I’m still refusing to climb out of all the boxes from the move, which means a relative lack of variety in tea, but also because I don’t think it’s very productive for me to tell you about how I drink, yet again, another aged oolong I got from here or there. I have a feeling it’s really not very interesting.

But also, because I don’t think I find it very interesting to talk about a tea I’ve had anymore. Not that I won’t do it from time to time, especially when other people send me a tea for my two cents. But it’s not particularly interesting, most of the time.

For example, I had some cheap reroasted slightly aged oolong today, stuff I brought back from Taiwan. It’s not particularly good, and needs time socked away to lose the roasted taste in order to get a little better. Right now it’s just some charcoal plus fruit plus “tea” flavour.

But isn’t that just like most other teas? Sort of like how most young puerhs are a bit bitter, maybe fruity, and perhaps minty? It’s worse in this case, because I can’t attach a name or label to it. It’s not something that you, my reader, can go buy and then say “oh, right” or “no, not really”. In essence, I’m talking in a vacuum, and since these days I’m drinking mostly these things that are otherwise unavailable to most of my readers (those of you who have regular access to Asia or from Asia are excepted). In that case, is there a point in me telling you about it in all the gory details?

Maybe that’s why I drifted to talking more about teaware these days, it feels more concrete, more tangible. A black teapot is still a black teapot no matter how you look at it. There’s some certainty out there that teas don’t generally have.

This is not to say I will forsake writing any sort of tea drinking notes from now on. In fact, I just got a cake of puerh today in the mail that I will probably break open tomorrow to try. This tea you can actually still get from online sources. This is a rarity these days, isn’t it?

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Expensive playthings

July 1, 2008 · 3 Comments

When teaware gets expensive, the temptation is to be more careful with it, but sometimes, the more careful you are with things, the more likely you’re going to break them, because you are naturally nervous handling it.

No, I didn’t melt down the silver kettle or anything, fun though that may be. It does, however, remind me that when using expensive teaware, sometimes one’s enjoyment is slightly less than if it were replaced with something cheap, something that is cheap enough so that whether it breaks or not, it doesn’t matter much. In many ways, it does not detract from the joys of tea making — perhaps even enhances it. Generally speaking, my teaware are not very expensive, and I have learned through a few painful lessons that it is often not a good idea to be too invested in any particular piece of teaware — those are the ones you tend to break.

Using the silver kettle does get me a little nervous. Of course, it is partly because the item’s not mine — I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to it, whether it be a ding or dent or whatever. Silver not being particularly hard, I didn’t want to risk anything, so I was extra careful.

And I think it showed in the tea making I was doing — I was too concerned with not getting the kettle into anything bad that I wasn’t concentrating as much on the tea itself or the tea making process. I’m sure once I get used to the kettle, I will be more comfortable wth it, but until then, it’s like driving a new car — you have to be more careful because you don’t know how it reacts to the things you do.

But anyway, the kettle is going to go on its merry way to its rightful owner. It was fun playing with the thing, and to try my hand at using one for making tea. I can say it certainly does something to the water, and the resulting tea tastes different. Whether or not it’s worth the amount of money, or whether or not it is a desirable change in taste, that, I think, will always depend on the individual.

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Storage issues

June 23, 2008 · 5 Comments

Moving with a lot of tea to a new place means having to worry about where to store them. Oolongs are simple — you just keep them out of light and air tight, and it’s good. All you need are shelves (which I need to acquire). Puerh, on the other hand, is a trickier matter — right now I have all of them in a cardboard box, the same way they came during the move. I have not moved them at all.

The question is whether or not to take them out at all, or if I should store all of them as is. When it comes to storing tea, everybody has a different take on how puerh should be stored. The various theories I’ve heard range from absolutely closed environment, where little air is exchanged and teas should be “kept” so that they retain much of their qi (so the theory goes), to leaving them out in open air and let them air out. The most extreme, as I’ve related on this blog a long time ago, was a lady who bought a whole bunch of cakes from Hong Kong (all suitably wet stored, of course), took them to the desert weather in Xinjiang, put them in a big warehouse with all the doors/windows open and letting the desert wind blow through the cakes in an attempt to “tuicang”, literally “let the storage (flavour) fade”. I was unlucky enough to get to try the end result of this attempt, and it was, well, nasty. It seems like in addition to getting rid of the “storage” smell, much of the tea’s flavours and especially the smoothness also went out the window, carried out, no doubt, by the desert wind.

Ever since having tried that tea I’ve been more inclined to store my teas in relatively closed environments, or at least in places where they don’t see much air circulation. My teas in Hong Kong are stashed on the top shelves of a bookcase, in a corner where little air is exchanged while still being open to the room. In humid environments like Hong Kong or Taiwan, it’s probably best to leave the teas off the floor or even anywhere close to the floor, because moisture seems to be higher there — a cake of mine that I left in the open air in Taiwan on a low coffee table started growing stuff on it after a week of rain…. and I was living on the 8th floor.

What I haven’t decided is whether or not to keep the cakes in the box. I used to think that cardboard boxes probably give off a bit of a cardboard smell, which is no good, but then, most tea merchants keep their teas in cardboard boxes… so does it really matter? Will we notice? I think it’s probably more noticeable in a dry stored tea, because off notes will be more obvious here. Wet stored teas are so dominated by the storage taste that subtle aromatics like cardboard smell probably won’t be very obvious — or who knows, maybe even add to the enjoyment of the tea.

When I was in Ohio I had no need whatsoever of adding moisture — living basically in the woods, I found the soil and flora nearby kept the apartment suitably humid without excessive moisture. After rains it would get wet for a few days, but will slowly dry out. I think the soil, grass, and tress around acted as a sort of buffer that kept humidity more constant within the house. In a more city-like environment though, I think the dynamics are a little different, especially since I now live on the second floor. It’s been raining a lot, but I think in the winter it won’t be too humid, at least not with the heater on all the time. That’s something I have to consider.

I have, however, been able to smell the tea recently just sitting at my desk. Smell, I’ve found, is probably a decent indicator of whether or not a cake is too dry. When I bought new cakes in Beijing they were almost all invariably odorless — you can hardly smell anything. After a few days in my tea closet in Beijing, they would start giving off some aroma. The difference was obvious, and since in places like Hong Kong a puerh cake is readily detectable by a human nose, I take that as a good sign.

So, lots of unknowns…. but I think I am going to stick my cakes on the top shelf in the closet, and possibly leave them in the cardboard box this time to see if anything happens.

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The (not so) bitter end

May 28, 2008 · 14 Comments

I remember when I first started out drinking puerh, mostly by way of friends who had much better stuff and who made it for me, I was often told that the best infusions for an older puerh starts with infusion 5.

Yes, it begins with infusion 5 or so. Everything before is full of mixed flavours and merely a build up. In the words of one, you can pretty much toss everything up to that point.

Contrast that view with many bloggers, who generally think that by infusion 5, a tea is ending or close to its end. Anything above and beyond is, in American parlance, gravy. I think at the heart of this difference is a fundamentally different style of making tea, but just as important, a fundamentally different conception of what one should get from a tea.

Of course, when I say something like this I’m probably overgeneralizing a little. Yet, I do think that from what I can gather from many blogs out there, the largest focus is on the initial flavour of a tea, the strong feeling one gets from the first two or three cups and how the tea performs in the mouth in those fleeting moments. Is it apricot or is it peach? Or, maybe straw? Grapes? Mud? The list goes on.

I don’t think we often see a lot of discussion of how a tea reacts in the mouth after the initial impressions. That, I think, is partly because teas are about flavours in the West — what does it taste like? That, in turn, is something that I think a product of drinking a lot of greens, low oxidation oolongs, and that sort of thing. For those things, flavour is indeed often very important. They also tend to die faster.

But even in these teas, what the tea does to you and how long it does the same thing to you are very important, but I rarely see this sort of thing mentioned in reviews online. Discussions of infusions of tea after maybe 4 or 5 is usually an afterthought.

Are my impressions remotely correct? I often feel the best kinds of teas are the ones that keep giving after 10, 15, 20 infusions. But I don’t tihnk I ever really see anybody talk about brewing a tea out that far, aside from a very few individuals. Are these not mentioned because they’re deemed unimportant? Or is this simply not done? I’d like to know.

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On contradictions among Tea People

May 19, 2008 · 7 Comments

I remember when I was a kid, puerh was some nasty, bitter stuff that nobody sane should drink. Going to eat dim sum and having puerh…. I’d skip the puerh and just eat the dim sum.

Now, of course, things have changed, and puerh is no longer so bitter. I had some traditionally stored stuff from Hong Kong today, and it was smooth, sweet, and quite good for an afternoon (and evening) of tea.

Very often such teas are described as musty, but I tend to think that the properly aged ones, especially if given suitable time in a dry environment, should not be musty at all. Earthy, of course, but not musty. It is often difficult to resist the temptation to drink such things right away when one has acquired them, because, well, they are purchased with money and nobody really wants to sit on things they bought and not touch them. Yet, I think sometimes anyway, such things should indeed be left alone even after purchase. The tea I had today was, I think, more musty when I first got it — coming straight out of a very traditional storage condition where the teas had plenty of time to rot. Two years later, drinking it now, I think it is much better — smoother without the strong storage taste. Traditionally stored taste will never leave the tea, but smooth, aged puerh taste doesn’t have to be musty.

That, in fact, is what I worry about when I read pages after pages of talk, both in English and Chinese, about how traditional storage is no good and how one can’t stand such musty taste (very common among Chinese drinkers from drier climes, such as Beijing and Kunming) and how teas must be “clean”. When given a truly old tea, traditionally stored, to drink, they often think it is cooked. Therein lies the irony — cooked tea was, in many ways, an attempt by man to approximate the taste of aged puerh. Yet, now, aged puerh is mistaken as cooked.

The other more obvious irony is, of course, how cooked tea is just as, if not more, unsanitary as traditionally stored tea, especially if it’s coming from a smaller factory with unknown procedures for doing these things. I was just talking with my friend L from Beijing today, and he said after his visit to a puerh factory’s cooked tea section, he will never ever drink a small factory cooked cake again — it’s just too disgusting. Yet, out of sight and out of mind, I never hear any of these tea drinkers who demand “clean” tea telling me that cooked tea is dirty. Instead, cooked tea is wonderful — rich, smooth, good for your stomach — everything a raw tea is not (and there’s really no need for me to go through the usual arguments for raw tea, is there?).

The usual retort from those who don’t subscribe to such heretical views that traditionally stored tea is bad is that they are usually espoused by people who don’t own any old, traditionally stored teas. If you only sell cakes that are 5 years old or less, all stored in a dry climate, then why would you promote a tea that you don’t have access to and that can’t be produced in your location? Indeed, it’s like a longjing seller telling you that longjing is really not that good — you should drink sencha instead. Doesn’t happen. Of course, the same people who criticize are also the ones who do the exact opposite — dry stored teas or young teas, so I have been told, are no good. They are bad for your body (that’s actually true), and they taste awful (taste depends on individuals, as everybody discovers at some point). Therefore, only what they have is good.

While it is not as common in the online world, but I know some cases of “tea master”s out there who have, over time, changed positions on a number of things that they used to hold true. A case I’ve heard was actually regarding storage of oolongs — first, tea master said, only high fired oolongs can be stored. Then, after a while, tea master said low fired oolongs can also be stored. The person who told me about this noted that the change in position somehow coincided with a change in the composition of the oolongs on sale at said tea master’s store. You probably don’t need me to tell you how the composition of the teas on sale changed.

I know I often seem (ok, am) quite skeptical with any sort of claims made by almost anybody regarding tea. I do have long held beliefs, but am not completely closed to changing of my mind given enough evidence. I do think, however, that it is very easy, especially when one’s source of information is only the internet, to buy too much into one side of the story without hearing another, or to treat information given by some authoritative individuals as somehow better, especially if said individual happens to sell some teas that fit right into the description of whatever is being taught. I remember being trapped that way before, and perhaps it is a case of once bitten, twice shy. I’m not saying the internet is full of snakes, but snakes can come in all forms — sometimes involuntary ones who are merely passing on bad information from others. Challenges to claims being made is generally a good thing — after all, that’s how we advance our knowledge on any given subject. If I ever make grandiose claims you think is hot air, please let me know. It’ll help keep me honest.

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How much tea to use?

May 14, 2008 · 2 Comments

One of the most basic things you learn when you first try to brew tea is … one spoonful for the pot, and then one for every person.

Somehow, the size of the vessel doesn’t matter for that one.

Over time, I’ve noticed that one of the most consistent question that comes up for brewing tea — any kind of tea, but especially gongfu Chinese tea, is “how much tea did you use?”

Which of course should also go with “how big is your pot/gaiwan?” if you’re making it gongfu style.

As my longtime readers would know, I eschew a scale. I judge how much tea I’m using only relative to the pot size and the kind of tea. Pot size it’s easy — whether it’s 2/3, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5…. so on. But when do I use 2/3, 1/3, etc?

That’s when the tea part comes in… the amount changes depending on the tea. It also depends on individual teas, but in general, it depends on the style. So, for example, Wuyi teas generally get the most, as well as some high roasted oolongs, especially if I’m trying to make them Chaozhou style. Then you have stuff like aged puerh and aged oolong, young puerh, light oolongs…. roughly in that order (from high to low).

Within each genre, of course, there are also variations. Some Wuyi need more leaves than others. Some need less. In most cases, however, those general principles hold — at least for me.

One thing I’ve found repeated over many times by various people is that somehow, a tea that requires more leaves to be good is necessarily not as high quality as one that requires less leaves. Even assuming that there’s a universal “good”, I am not sure why this should be true. Would anybody dispute that a Red Label, aged 50+ years now, is no good? Yet, when Cloud described drinking it with his friend, they used a whooping 14.1 grams of tea for one pot. Does that make it worse than some other aged puerh that require only 10g?

Therein lies the problem, I think, for there are other variables involved that do not factor into the equation of weight/volume. For example, a certain tea might be particularly interesting because of, say, a unique fragrance it gives off when you brew it right. However, brewing it right might involve using more leaves than usual. You can brew that tea using normal parameters for a particular genre, and not get anything interesting from that tea. It is possible to simply discard it and decide it’s not worth the trouble. Or, one can try again, varying the parameters a little, and see what happens… and sometimes good things happen, sometimes it’s more than merely good — results can be amazing, revealing a totally different tea that was previously undiscovered. All it takes is more (or less) leaves.

Therefore, in some ways, I think any and all tasting of limited sized samples are, in and of themselves, rather meaningless. They’re sort of like a random walk — you can get all kinds of result from that one sitting. As each drinker develop more expeirence with teas in general and perhaps a certain genre in particular, it is possible to take less time in figuring out what an optimal brewing parameter is for a particular tea. The aggregate of tastings, preferably by one person, but sometimes by many (as in the case of the blogosphere), can be meaningful. I know I sometimes dismiss a tea as “bad”. That’s just bad for me for that particular sitting – sometimes. Sometimes it’s because I’ve had things like it before, and they simply don’t do it. Sometimes it’s because I have no clue what I’m doing and screwing everything up. So, take this post as a long caveat — and also as an apology for the rather difficult medium of the internet as the only way for us to have our tea meetings.

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Unwanted teas

May 12, 2008 · 9 Comments

What do you do with teas that you no longer want, but is a waste to throw away?

I was going through my tea closet, and found this one sealed and unopened canister of longjing. It was a pretty good grade longjing that was given to me, but since I almost never drink green tea, I never opened it. It’s been almost two years now, I think. I’m sure it’s still good, because recently I opened some other can that is basically a two or three year old green tea. Still tastes rather ok.

It’s a waste to throw away the tea. If I open the can, then I know it’ll be spoiled sooner or later because I just won’t drink it fast enough. If I don’t open it, it will languish….

Iced tea, I suppose, is one way to dispose of the tea, but I can only drink so much iced tea….

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Different aging for different oolongs

May 6, 2008 · 6 Comments

What I’m about to say I have no basis other than my own drinking experience — a mere conjecture, more than anything else.

I think Taiwanese oolong age faster than mainland ones.

To clarify, I should say that Taiwanese oolongs age more markedly than mainland ones.

What I mean is that I think there’s a larger discernable difference between an older and a younger Taiwanese oolong. The difference is not only more obvious, but more qualitative. Mainland oolongs, by comparison, age slower — they retain more of their original character despite long age. I have yet to taste an aged Taiwanese oolong that really remind me of their original taste, but with mainland oolongs (and here I mostly have tieguanyin in mind) I find that I can easily tell it was not only an original tieguanyin, but have some basic idea of how the tea was, back in the day.

I have a feeling this might have to do with processing. I currently have no idea if this is indeed true, or if it’s just my small sample size playing tricks on me. I also don’t know if it’s because of the type of tea that I have found so far leading me down this road, but things like storage condition and such have large parts to play in this process.

Anyway, food for thought. Meanwhile, I take one last sip from my aged tieguanyin (mainland) before I go to bed 🙂

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Throatiness

April 21, 2008 · 5 Comments

I borrowed the term throatiness from Lew, who was the first person I remember using this particular term. What it is supposed to mean is a sort of feeling in the throat when you drink a tea — some sort of coolness or tingly sensation. This is the kind of thing that usually only puerh has, but some other teas sometimes will have them too. Generally speaking, only good tea will have it and the longer and stronger it is, the better the tea is.

That is until I got my tetsubin. Now, oddly enough, almost all teas give off this sensation. Mind you, better teas still do better with longer/stronger feeling, but instead of just having that feeling once in a while, now I get it all the time, or at least most of the time. Of course, it might have to do with the fact that I’ve upgraded my tea drinking. I didn’t use to imbibe 20 years old oolongs regularly. In Beijing, and to a lesser extent Taipei, I was often drinking stuff that is no good for the sake of learning or experimenting. So obviously there is a bit of a sampling bias there. On the other hand, I have found that with teas that I know well, using the tetsubin will give me a stronger sensation of throatiness.

Is it some sort of chemical reaction, or the extraction/release of certain compounds through the addition of whatever it is that the tetsubin adds? I have no idea what it is, but it’s further proof that one can’t use only one or two criteria to judge a tea’s quality. So much depends on what you use to brew that tea, it is almost impossible to tell for certain what is causing the tea to taste a particular way.

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Caffeine problem

April 13, 2008 · 10 Comments

I don’t know what all the things in tea which make it bitter, but I know that one important component of that is caffeine, which is supposedly quite bitter on its own.

When I make aged oolongs (and to a lesser extent, well aged puerhs) no matter how long you brew it, it’s hard to get any sort of bitterness out of the tea.

If I put one and one together, does that mean that these teas contain very little caffeine? That the caffeine, over time, broke down into some other things? What happens to that stuff? What else makes tea bitter? Obviously, none of those things are present in their original form anymore in these aged teas. New oolongs can be quite bitter if overbrewed, but aged ones don’t. Roasted oolongs tend to be less bitter, and I guess the heat has a lot to do with it.

Does that mean that when I drink a tea a day, and I’m only drinking aged oolong, I am actually drinking very little caffeine?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions in any conclusive manner. They are mere speculations. But it’s something worth thinking about…. any knowledge welcomed!

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