A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘travel’

Coffee maker tea

January 22, 2008 · 1 Comment

I am on the road again. I brought my survival kit pot, but…. no hot water.

Hot water in this hotel, unfortunately, only comes through the coffee machine. They won’t bring up hot water for me, and even if they do, I know that they will bring it up in a carafe that doubles as a coffee carafe. What that means is that I will be drinking watered down coffee — not ideal for making tea, I think.

So…. I will have to use the coffee machine. One run of cold water through the coffee machine, though, is not enough. The water’s not very hot coming out, and not good for teas like the oldish dahongpao that I want to drink (in my mug). So…. you have to run the cold water from the tap through the coffee maker TWICE (the frontdesk person suggested using hot tap water — I think that’s lunacy). I find that the water comes out hot enough that way.

There are two problems using a drip coffee maker for just water — one is that you have to open the drip part so that water doesn’t actually go through it. If it does, you will, again, be drinking watered down coffee. The second is that the water, when going through the coffee maker the second time, will spray all over — there’s a warning about not using hot water in the coffee maker after all. It will make everything wet and burn your hand, should your hand be nearby. User beware.

It’s a lot of trouble, and the tea that comes out is far from ideal… but I’ll manage. It beats going downstairs to get Tazo teabags from the lobby Starbucks.

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Teazone

January 12, 2008 · 4 Comments

Today I was in the Pearl District here, and ran into a place called Teazone. Why not walk in and check it out?

It’s not a big place, and there’s a section where they serve alcoholic drinks in the back.  There are some standard racks with teaware on it — ok teaware for those who don’t have much in the way of teaware, but not too useful for those who do have a collection of something.  A few gaiwans, a few other things, not cheap…. but these are never cheap in a store like this.

The tea menu is actually fairly extensive, and thankfully, most are actually teas and not some strange concoction.  I wanted to try this tea from Georgia (the country), but…. they ran out, so instead, I opted for a supposedly pretty good Sri Lanka.  Unfortunately, I should’ve remembered that even the best Sri Lanka tea are often not terribly great…. at least that’s what I’ve found from my experience.  I find them a bit rough and without enough of an interesting character — there are better blacks in different ways, whether aroma, body, aftertaste, etc, so that they’re rarely worth the trouble.

I think this place is actually fairly typical of teashops in the US — you can drink tea there, you can buy some teaware, and you can buy some tea there.  The teas they serve are not glamourous.  It’s not terribly interesting, if you’ve got a fair amount of tea experience, but the shop does try to serve interesting teas.  Bread and butter teashops, basically.  They do one important thing though that are absolutely essential though — they provide that gathering place for people who are interested in tea, should the shop be sufficiently good.  It’d be a better location if, say, the shop didn’t smell like cooking oil the whole time I was there (ventilation problems with their kitchen…).  Still, I wish every neighbourhood would have at least one or two of these places.  It’d make tea drinking more interesting in the States.

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Pot warming

January 10, 2008 · 4 Comments

I was in Peet’s today, waiting for a guy to make me a pot of (too much leaves) keemun.  When he was preparing the pot, I noticed something — he actually warmed the pot.

That was a surprise for me.  I didn’t expect to see it.  Perhaps Peet’s is more meticulous, or perhaps because this guy drinks tea, or perhaps because this is Portland?  Pot warming, methinks, does help you up the temperature of the water you use to eventually brew the tea significantly, especially if the pot is initially quite cold, as it could prone to be in colder climates.  I don’t know how much heat it will require to heat up a ceramic pot of that sort of thickness to close to the temperature of boiling water, but I’d imagine it’s enough to drop the temperature of the water by a few degrees if the pot started out cold.

I’m purely guessing here, but I’d think that it will matter the most for English style brewing, because there, you only get one, maybe two shots at making the tea, and a lower temperature will change the way the tea comes out.  For a short, multiple infusions brewing style, a lower temperatured first infusion might not be horrific (although I sometimes wonder if too low a temperature in the initial rinse will mess up the tea for the session — as I sometimes feel is the case).  I couldn’t even get more than one cup today, as there was simply too much leaves in the pot and I couldn’t drink another without feeling queasy from the caffeine because I already had an earlier session with my survival kit and aged oolong.  Mainly I was just impressed that the staff at Peet’s bothered to heat the pot at all.  I wonder how long it will take them to start rinsing the leaves….

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Travel day

January 9, 2008 · 2 Comments

Another travel day today, this time to what Davelcorp has aptly termed “Rainland”.  It’s cold, nasty, and rainy — just like how Pacific Northwest is supposed to be in the winter.

Rainland (i.e. Portland OR) has decent tap water.  This is, I think, largely true of this region, where they get plenty of rainfall plus a good dose of glacial water coming down stream.  I remember living in Vancouver BC where the water was always crisp and clean, even in the relative heat of summer.  The only problem, it seems, is that tap water will always have a bit of chlorine in it, no matter what you do, because they need to process the water to make it potable.  Even after they run it through the plant which usually tries to dissipate the chlorine taste, there’s still a bit of it left by the time it reaches your faucet.  If nothing else, a water filter will get rid of the chlorine taste.  Boiling it seems to take care of most of it, but sometimes if the water hasn’t reached full boil the chlorine taste doesn’t quite go away.

Meanwhile…. I have to survive a few more days on my survival kit with random aged oolongs.  I can’t complain too much, I suppose.

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Survival kit

January 6, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This is what I’m surviving on while away from home

It does the job. They have a fancy Cuisinart coffee machine with Lavazza coffee, but the only tea the hotel can muster up is some Celestial Seasoning Chamomile. Hasn’t anybody told them that chamomile isn’t even really tea?

Good thing I decided to bring my pot, and my electric kettle, because otherwise, I won’t have anything to drink tea with. Now, some hot water, a mug, and some aged baozhongs, and we’re in business.

Incidentally, because I’m relying on bottled water (boiled tap water in DC tastes awful — I tried) I got to test out two different waters for this baozhong. There’s Fiji, which worked really, really well. There’s also Poland Springs, which is so obviously inferior I wonder why anybody should pay money for it. It’s actually similar to the conclusion I reached almost two years ago in the early days of my blog — Fiji is a pretty good tea water, in that case a qingxiang tieguanyin. The aged baozhong is much heavier, but it also benefits from the Fiji water. It’s definitely better than my usual mix of filtered tap water plus some mineral water. It worked really well, actually.

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Teaism

January 4, 2008 · 2 Comments

There are a few places in Washington DC where one can have tea. I don’t have that much time to check them all out, but since one of them — a place called Teaism — is nearby, I figured it won’t hurt.

The store I went to is near Dupont Circle, and it’s located next to the local branch of the Evil Caffeine Empire

What my fiance remembered of the place and its current incarnation are actually a little different. Supposedly, they used to be more tea focused, but this time, when we went, it seems to be more of a lunch place that sells some tea on the side. The tea menu is quite undistinguished, and consist mostly of regular stuff you can find in any self-respecting tea store. My guess is that they discovered selling tea alone does not pay rent, as I suspect is the case in the USA for independent stores.

We did get some lunch though

A bento with (cold) salmon, and ochazuke — basically leftover rice with bad sencha. In this case, the sencha wasn’t so bad (I tried a little of it independently) — it was sweet and not grassy. The other pot of tea was something we ordered – a “Golden Monkey”, which is actually quite disappointing, considering they serve a pot of tea without actually giving you any leaves. The tea is underbrewed, and rather boring, and not having the leaves, I couldn’t even tell if they brewed it from teabags. For $3.75 a pot, I expected a little more.

There’s a store called Ching Ching Cha which seems a little more interesting, but it’s a little farther out, and I have a feeling I won’t have time to go… oh well

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Delayed

December 24, 2007 · 7 Comments

Lovely day to be delayed, Christmas Eve, and my flight from SFO to IAD has an air conditioning problem, jeopardizing my connection to CMH from IAD. Yay

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Trip to Pinglin

December 19, 2007 · 5 Comments

I have a distant relative who lives in Taipei who helped me a lot to find a place, settle down, etc, and she asked me a few days ago “hey, have you gone to Pinglin yet?” because I told her, when I first got here, that I thought about going. No, I haven’t. So today, we went to Pinglin.

Now, for those of you who are not into Taiwanese geography, Pinglin is actually really close to Taipei. From where I live, it’s less than 30 minutes drive to Pinglin, door to door. Yes, it’s that close. While some place like Nantou is actually kind of out of the way, driving to Pinglin is actually faster than me riding my subway to where I’ve been going to work the past few months — and that’s in Taipei.

You can already see farms on the way there

The first place we hit was the tea museum there

It doesn’t have a whole lot, and for anybody who knows something more than the very basic about tea, it’s not really worth a visit. Nor is their gift shop any good. If you’re on a time crunch, best to skip this place, unless you’re into reproductions like these

Song dynasty tea scene, apparently. Now all they need is a dance floor and some music.

Not too long ago, a new highway opened near Pinglin which passes by Pinglin to Yilan on the east coast of Taiwan. However, before that, you had to take a longer and more mountainous route to the eastern coast, and Pinglin was one of the places where you could stop for some food, bathroom, and tea

So this is like any American town where a state route cuts across it – except every single place sells tea. Some, though, are more food oriented than anything else. As you can see

Tea store on the right, food stall on the left. Since the new highway opened though, the old business died – so this area is really struggling because people no longer stop by on their way, and even though we were there around noon time, nobody was eating in those places and you could tell business was depressed.

We went to a store that focused on selling tea (rather than food), sat down, and I did my usual “do you have old tea” routine. They did, of course (everybody does, at least they claim so). The tea she brought out smelled a little sour, but not bad enough so I’d skip it right away. We tried it… roasted, but not very good. Thin, weak, sour, but not terribly so, but…. no good. And it was expensive to boot, as I found out after asking about the price. 28 years old? Sure, whatever.

We left, had lunch, and then wandered over to the old town part of Pinglin.

A much more charming little street than the ugly highway, I must say. We wandered around — most stores are closed, and the place looked almost as dead as the highway. Given that it is a weekday, but still… it’s kinda depressing.

Eventually we settled into a store. An old woman was picking tea (separating yellow leaves and stalks from the good leaves). She said the yellow leaves sell for 100 NT/jin (600g) — that’s $3 per 600g. The good leaves? $10/600g. Cheap tea. And yes, people do buy the yellowed leaves to brew, usually factory workers and that sort of thing — they just want a tea to drink during work.

Almost all self-respecting tea stores will have a few of these plaques

These are the “first prize” or “special prize” plaques you get in tea competitions. It usually says “congratulations to xxx for achieving Top Prize in the xx year Pinglin tea competition, given by xxx”. This one’s more elaborate than the usual ones (which are just plain words). However, since every store has at least a few of these (although some decidedly more than others) it makes you wonder if the competition teas really mean much of anything. Is it just a rotating championship so everybody gets their turn to charge astronomical prices for their teas?

The tea setup here is also decidedly simple

I again asked for old oolongs. We got an old baozhong which she claims is from 1968. Ok. It doesn’t smell sour. Looks good enough

We tried it… and it’s indeed pretty good. It’s one of the better aged baozhongs I’ve had. Alas, I’ve already bought something quite similar from Taipei for only slightly more money (about $10 more per 600g) so I’m not exactly crying for more. I did buy my relative some tea though, because I feel like I owe her a lot for helping me out during the past few months, and I think she liked this stuff too.

Interesting day. Pinglin, as you can see, really isn’t very mysterious. The farms I saw along the way were mostly machine-harvested. I know there are good, organic, well kept farms out there in Pinglin, but rest assured, most of them are probably not.

I did, however, discover that my relatives here (she’s my cousin-in-law’s eldest sister, complicated enough?) actually used to be tea farmers. What’s more…. the farm’s still there, but no longer harvested/managed and hasn’t been for some years. I drool at the prospect of coming back to Taiwan and going there to check out the untended trees.

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Treasure troves

November 30, 2007 · 6 Comments

I had some extra time today, so I went back to the same tea shop that I visited last weekend today. Specifically, that was the one with the big tea canisters (picture in the bottom of the post) and where I picked up a few aged oolongs.

I wanted to get some of the tieguanyin which was so good, and hopefully, to find more stuff there that’s hidden in those big canisters.

The laobanniang (literally owner’s wife, or female owner, of a shop) was pretty happy to see me coming back, and when I asked for the tieguanyin, she promptly went to it. I also asked if she has other stuff — stuff that is more like this and less like the qizhong, which I told her is a bit too sour. She said there are lots of different stuff in her store, but she might need to spend some time looking for them. I think she could sense that if she finds anything good, I’ll be willing to buy them. I also venture to guess that she doesn’t sell much of this stuff normally.

Now, to give you an idea of what we’re talking about…. this is a closeup of one of those tea cans. This is the smaller sized ones (the ones you see lining up on the left in the last entry about this shop)

On one can it says “Pu’er Cha”, the other “Ridong Hongcha”, a type of Japanese red (black) tea (here’s a link to Nittoh Black Tea, their proper name). What’s in the can has nothing to do with the words on them, and this is true for pretty much all of them in the store — about 4-5 dozens of them.

Inside each of them are bags

Like this (this is a picture of one of the bigger cans on the right hand side). In each of these bags are kilos of tea — some more, some less. The little slip of paper indicates what it is, and how much it should be. Some of these bags probably haven’t been opened for years, and I suspect many of them are simply leftovers from stock they had years ago — half a kilo here, two kilos there, etc. Tea that is valuable enough to keep, but after a certain time passes, not easy to sell. How do you tell a regular customer that you have some three year old oolong you can sell them? They’d think you’re a crook. So in the bags they sit. Year in, year out, and the older bags probably sink to the bottom. The opened bag is the one with the tieguanyin that I want. The other two unopened bags? Other kinds of aged oolongs that I haven’t even tried. She opened one bag for me and got me a sample. The piece of paper says “ROC Year 77 (1988), Spring, 2400”, 2400 being the price of the tea. It’s a lightly rolled oolong. Not sure exactly what it is, but it sure looks old and doesn’t smell sour. Let’s hope it’s good. If I could, I’d spend a whole day at the store, opening each can, and looking through them, trying teas. I’ll be like a little kid.

She said she will prepare some more samples for me when I go next time. I told her I’d like to try anything she has and decide what I want. I know that other than Taiwan, buying aged oolongs is difficult, and so I should take advantage of the fact that I’m here to snap up enough for at least a year or two’s worth of consumption.

Not only do they have old tea… they also have old neglected teaware

Too bad teapots don’t age the way teas do. Most of the teapots are pretty mediocre anyway.

So…. I made off with some of the tieguanyin, and two samples. One’s that 1988 tea, the other is also an old tea that was recently re-roasted. I want to compare them and see. I think, though, that given what I’ve tried so far, I prefer stuff that haven’t been re-roasted.

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The hermit store

November 28, 2007 · 3 Comments

I was running an errand today that took me somewhere very near a store that was recommended to me. I had some extra time, and it was tea time anyway…. so why not?

I found the place after walking a little bit. The store can be best described as… shabby. On a scale of 1-10 for decor, it rates a 0. It is dark, with an old table, some old teaware, old tea (lots of it), a broken display case with some old cakes in it, and after some time drinking tea there, an old cockroach running around that the owner killed with bugspray.

If nobody recommended this place, I don’t think I would’ve spent much time in it.

But, the guy said this store has a lot of old tea, so, heck, why not.

When I walked in a woman was chanting Buddhish sutra loudly. She didn’t even notice me, and it was only after I (deliberately) made some noise fumbling the (some broken) teaware that she realized somebody’s in the store. After some talking, she called the owner back. He’s her husband, and probably in his 60s. An interesting looking guy, who, after sizing me up, asked me what I want to try. 80s? 90s? 00s? Sheng? Shu? I tentatively suggested 90s sheng, and then he asked “do you want the strong ones or the smooth ones?”. Strong. So… he reached back into a little canister, pulled out some tea, and started making it.

It’s some early 90s 7542. Not bad at all. Sweet, a bit mellow now, not too rough…. quite right, actually, and definitely dry stored. Then we had an early 90s 8653 (Traditional Character) that was stronger, lasts more infusion, but also a little rougher. Very good tea, both. I wonder if either of them might be worth the asking price.

Here’s the dilemma… it’s a cake that isn’t quite yet good for drinking, but is obviously much closer than anything newish. I suppose the price is affordable, but is it worth that much?

Food for thought. For now though, he’s said if I want to I can come back and drink tea with him. I’ll probably go back at some point.

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