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Saturday, March 13, 2010

Intensive Studies.

Striking

I haven't taken many new tea pictures lately, and I did not feel like recycling even more photo's, so I'm posting some of the nature photo's to liven up this post.

I have always advocated the focused approach to tea, as in focusing on a certain category or type, when first getting into tea or a new type of tea. I feel it helps you perfect brewing procedures for those teas, and lets you get better results quicker because you are seldom confusing your mindset with a different brewing process.

This past week, I have been brewing the same tea almost daily and it has been almost the only tea I have been drinking is a gyokuro from Ippodo. At first it was rather questionable, over powering with umami, but it was just that overpowering. With a weeks worth of repetitive brewing, I have managed to make it much better.

As such I feel my general Gyokuro brewing has improved drastically. I noticed my Wuyi brewing improved at the end of the summer when I was brewing Yancha nearly daily and by the time I basically ran out, I could do it in my sleep and it would be exactly how I liked it.

In essence I think the Chinese had the absolute right idea when they named the pratice Gong fu. In essence I feel every practice of brewing tea should have names equivalent to Gong fu, or skill.

So if you can stand the repetition, it might be a rather interesting practice to dedicate a 100g bag of tea to a week or so worth of brewing. Try to brew it 7 or so times in 10 days, and hopefully you will note how much better you came to understanding that tea, and getting the most out of it.

It is almost spring time, which on campus brings about one of my favorite times of years, with the oldest Magnolia tree I think I have ever seen, so enjoy these pictures, as I will hopefully be seeing something similar for an entire week or two depending on the weather shortly.

Sea of Pink Magnolias
Lehigh Magnolia

1 comment:

Marlena said...

Love the pics and will try the 7 in 10 way of tea, shoould be interesting. But not gyokuro, really don't like it.

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