I believe I have mentioned a few times before how it is natural for tea tastes to change with the seasons. While most people agree, I oddly have been craving hong cha somewhat regularly this summer, even on some of the hottest days. Though I still find just about all yancha exceedingly heavy and oppressive in this heat.
Oddly it's August, and I have yet to finish a full bag of shincha. In part because I spent a good part of early summer even after my shincha has arrived I was working on finishing off sencha from the previous year. ( I still have 100g from 2011, but am working on shincha almost exclusively now). But in addition to this, through the wonderful Teachat and the Official Teachat Tasting Initiatives (OTTIs) organized by Chip, I have been able to sample more shincha than I other wise would have.
Speaking of samples, I am becoming more and more and more in favor of samples. Its amazing how getting 6 or so teas with only 7-10 grams each, can just add that much more variety to the list of available teas. These samples by adding variety also slow down the rate at which the other teas get consumed, making your favorite teas last longer.
I would say my tastes have strayed from sencha somewhat based on my consumption, but then I recall that earlier this summer I got a teeny tiny 140ml kyusu, so while I am having the same amount or slightly less sencha sessions, quite a few of them that I do have are now about 1/4th the size of my next smallest kyusu. While everyone always says small teapots make your teas last through more sessions, because they use less leaf, but I have never noticed it so obviously until I got this teapot. Though that could be because with my other small teapots, I mostly went with smaller teapots so I could stuff them more, without feeling bad about how much leaf I was using.
Has anyone else had interesting summer realizations?
2 comments:
Biggest realization so far has been that I really know sod bloody all about tea :D
/sri
I love the variety brought about by samples, but 7 grams is getting towards the very low end for me. I regularly receive samples that small, and I feel like I don't really get to know the tea well enough to say much intelligent about it, because that only really allows for 3 western-style brewings or 1-2 gongfu style brewing.
It also makes it virtually impossible to give the tea a thorough review AND share it with someone else to review it, which I think leads the tea companies sending the sample to miss out--when I like a tea, I frequently share it with others who often share reviews on RateTea.
In terms of summer realizations? I've had a lot of them, but they haven't been as much related to tea, at least, the deeper ones I think.
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