Congratulations to my Brother

Today, finally feeling better from my cold, and finally with some down time that wasn't after 8 pm at night due to exam grading,  I decided to crack open a sample of 1960s Shui Xian, in celebration of my brother getting his Doctorate in Biomedical Engineering. 

*** Warning Science Zone ***

I do have to say even though I consider myself somewhat science savvy in the short conversations that always seemed to happen around holidays and dinner tables when we happened to be together, it was quite hard to get the big picture idea of what he really did.  I will say it is quite exciting stuff, with the wonderful opportunity to potentially improve on his already substantial achievements to enable every person to have their proteins mapped, and with the development of a large number of bio-markers for various diseases to enable quick and accurate diagnoses.


*** Regularly scheduled tea talk will resume now ***

I find it incredible how aged teas develop certain flavours, while I come to call them aged sheng flavours, honestly I feel it is mostly due to flavours generated while the leaves break down slowly.  But while the 60s Shui Xian had some of those musty, and earthy almost compost like flavours, it was still distinctively a Wuyi Yancha. 

I have had a few aged teas, though I do not have experience ageing them personally much beyond a few short run experiments, but I honestly think a surprising amount of the original tea works its way into the finished product.  (Especially when you are not considered the near open environment ageing of puerh.)  With oolongs and other teas aged with minimal exposure to air, I get the impression their essence stays preserved in the tea much longer.  For instance I have some aged Miao Li  oolong, which I swear is almost like candy, and I imagine the initial tea was rather sweet and light tasting, as such while more flavours developed with age, while others are lost, but it stayed rather light an sweet.


Does anyone have similar experiences?  Or better yet, a completely contradictory experience?

300 posts, over 100k views, and nearly 4 years

Its getting cold again, that means its been about another year since I first stumbled down the rabbit hole.  While I have fond memories of drinking tea going back at least 10 years if not more, and I started to wise up to how amazing tea could be 6 years ago with my first regular purchases of loose leaf tea, I did not really hit the rabbit hole until I started this blog.

So thinking back the last 4 years, I have amassed a large collection of teaware, which I am very fond of, and is often a talking point with visitors to my place.  More amazingly is I still have at least 60% if not 75% of all the puerh I have ever bought,  even though I have not bought puerh in the past 2 years ( besides a few small aged puerh samples), despite a few regular pushes to try and work on my puerh collection.  The falling down the rabbit hole even lead me to  start pottery classes, in hopes that I could eventually make some useful pieces to use with guests.

What I still can not believe is how popular this blog has become, and for that I owe my thanks to all of you, who are regular viewers of this blog. It has been a little rough at times, more so in these past 2 years, when Graduate studies and teaching can kill just about all free time, and push tea time to the fringes of the day, often enjoyed while working on some other task that needs to get done.

I almost wish I kept very detailed notes, on how many different teas that I have tried in these past 4 years even.  I am willing to bet it far exceeds the 300 posts.   What I can not possibly fathom would be how many tea sessions I have had these past 4 years.  I would be willing to bet it is rather close to if not over 1,500 sessions, as I have no problem believing I averaged a little over 1 tea session a day since I started this blog.