Another musing about Puerh

(one of my older stock photo's, I would love for the grass to be that green right now, and the trees to be full of leaves)

So I recently sent a package to someone who is getting into puerh, in part to thank him for a piece of teaware that he sent. It was while sending him a bunch of different puerh samples, that I realized a rather nice part about puerh.

I guess part of this should be taken with a bit of reservation, as I am also at the same time trying to thin out my puerh collection. The fact that most of the puerh I had puerh comes in 350-400 gram cakes, and as I have documented my young puerh drinking habits here in the past, but for a refresher it seems for one to two weeks a year I go on a bender and drink young puerh at least every other day sometimes every day, but hardly touch it the rest of the year. It struck me that I have no problem not sticking to the typical customs that people seem to have when sending samples, which is enough tea to manage to have 2 or 3 sessions with the tea.

In all honesty I am not sure I have ever had 70 sessions of the same tea, and certainly not 70 sessions in a single year. But that would be roughly what is needed to finish off a single cake of puerh in a timely fashion (assuming a 5 grams of tea per session). For those of you that just want a reference we have 52 weeks in a year, so we would have to have over one session or bump up the amount of leaf you use to a little under grams. While depending on your brewing habits and which teas you tend to drink and in what quantities it may be feasible for some of the "puerh" addicts to polish off a few cakes in a year.

Though in my position, I am looking at a box full of puerh most of it looks like something has been nibbling on the edges where I have chipped off enough for a few different brewings. But as my puerh was not disappearing fast enough, especially since I am no longer that interested in puerh. I still think it is a good tea, just the flavor profile does not match what I would prefer. I realized when sending these samples I could be overly generous and still leave myself quite an excess of puerh.

But I will say should I ever by another puerh cake again, stone pressed will certainly be a prerequisite. Breaking up Dayi recipe cakes are by far some of the most annoying things I have ever had to do with tea, right up there with breaking up some Compressed Wuyi Yancha.

To sample or not to sample?

There are many good arguments both for and against sampling, in the tea world. No where does the debate seem more heated than when dealing with Young Puerh, which many people in the puerh forum on teachat used to say " A cake is a sample" which is understandable because with certain big factory productions a 1 ounce sample would in some instances cost nearly as much as half the price of a cake. But the down side to that is if you then buy an entire cake and then hate the tea, well now you have several hundred grams of that tea with no desire to drink it.

In short I will say I am pro sampling in general, and I feel MarshalN gave good reasons in this post. I almost feel like I should have a footnote anytime I say I am pro samples. The following exceptions a centered around familiarity of the type of tea in the samples. I mean if you know very little about the tea you are making, it is like driving to somewhere you have never been before in an area with which you are unfamiliar. Basically you have directions or guidelines on how to get to the end result, but you are so focused on the details such as turn left on Vine street, that you tend to overlook the scenery for blocks leading up to Vine street because you are so focused on doing the directions precisely.

If I could stretch my driving metaphor a bit more, it may be that the person who gave you directions is a bit unfamiliar with exactly where you are coming from so it could be that the directions were slightly inefficient, or that you had a way that is much better for you to get to the end result of good tea. Consider the problems with the other route things such as construction or excessive number of traffic lights, which would translate into tea as something like excessive worry over leaf/water ratio, and water temperature. Though I do know some people that like to worry about those details in excess, which brings up a Tea Brewing Art vs. Science discussion, but in reality everyone has to find their own way, and I personally when it comes to tea I like to feel at ease, and in a sense let the moment judge certain steps.

The teas that are the main inspiration for this post are Dao Tea's Balhyochas. Which if you have been following along with some of the discussion associated with the tasting sponsored by Mattcha's blog. It honestly boils down to while trying the two Balhyochas were an eyeopener as a completely different type of tea than I have ever tried. Honestly it is a tea that is somewhat paradoxical the more and more I think about it, it is not quite a black tea, yet not quite an oolong. The most baffling part about this tea is the best sessions of it I have gotten the first infusion is a light amber color much like a mid to light roasted TGY. While that first infusion was good, the best infusions seem to come later where when given hotter water and longer steeps out comes a nice dark ruby color which is absolutely delicious. Though as with most teas the first infusion or two are often the best in a somewhat undebatable sense. So my first inclination was I have been messing up the first infusion or two of this tea, I should try and get the dark ruby color sooner, but as resistant and resilient as these Balhyochas are, if I should try and get more out in the first infusion it is always slightly too strong in certain senses, and then the whole tea fades to quickly.

So while I am in favor of sampling many different teas especially when exploring a category, I have a hard time believing that until you are rather familiar with that category of tea it may be a bit of an effort in futility.

The Sadness that is Stale Tea

I am sure we all have had the problem of stale tea, at some time or another. And we all have ways to deal with it, such as some people place a lot of small orders but rather regularly to avoid developing a backlog of tea. Others stick to teas that are less likely to go stale, or at least when they do it is a lot less noticeable.

While I do a little bit of both, most large orders I place, focus primarily on teas that are less likely to become stale. These being Roasted oolongs, Black Teas, and of course Puerh Tea. While I say less likely to become stale, I do not mean you can abuse them with storage, I mean sunlight is still an enemy to tea, and so are strong aroma's.

But I did have the unfortunate happening of having roughly 40 grams of a Korean Green going bad. But due to the large amount of work I've had to do recently, I have been brewing tea a lot more in the lazy fashion. But I do not want to use premium leaf for this, I realized lazy brewed stale tea can sometimes be an improvement over brewing the stale tea in my typical fashion, ( a bit higher leaf to water ratio). While I still view this as a bit of a waste of tea, it certainly is much less of a waste than not drinking the tea at all.

So it seems sometimes a stale tea can have a bit of a second chance, as a tea to be consumed when you are busy doing other things and

What is Teadrunk?

I am not sure I have used the term teadrunk on my blog much, and I have no clue who actually coined the term, and I feel it means different things to different people. But I feel the term teadrunk is amazingly appropriate for several reasons I will list.

One it is an altered state of mind, which can be taken several different ways. When in a peaceful or familiar setting, being teadrunk will raise your awareness while calming you at the same time. Its really a great feeling and time seems to slow down. I also feel emotions get enhanced, so if you are happy you will be happier than you really have any reason to be (besides of course, the obvious fact that you just drank good tea).

Though the enhanced emotions can have a down side, as I tend to be a little anxious in public when I am alone or not with people I know, and should I venture out somewhere after having a lot of good tea, it can be a mess, in the sense that I know what I need to get done, and I want to get it done quickly. But when nervous and anxious it can lead to me almost being counter productive.

Two, it happens through drinking, and as the name implies drinking tea, so literally you are drunk on tea.

Three, tea can have different strengths, the term used to describe a teas strength at getting yourself teadrunk is in my mind the equivalent to often used, though hard to understand term Cha qi, or rather the life energy of the tea.

Four, Somedays it can take very little to put you over the edge, while other days it can take quite a bit.

So how does one get teadrunk? To everyone that brews western style, I am not sure it will be possible for you to experience, at least not without drinking 6 or 8 cups of very good tea. But the sure fire way is to brew good quality tea, and brew it strong. I sometimes note that a single session of Koicha can be enough to put me over the edge, and it often is. A general rule of thumb is aged teas tend to put forth more qi, than new teas, and High mountain or Old tree more than standard plantation, but really you drink enough of any tea and in my mind you should be able to get to some level of teadrunken-ness .

So I'll leave you with these parting words.

If you must get drunk, get teadrunk.

The Price of Tea

Is it worth it?

I have been toying with the idea of writing this post for quite some time, which I have been thinking about more and more lately. But tea is a commodity, and I may not have done spectacular in my basic economics class, but I learned that if there is a large enough group of people buying and selling in a market, the prices tend to stabilize to certain value, a perceived worth. Its in my opinion that in most realms of Tea and Teaware those values are pretty accurate when judging the piece of teaware or the tea.

This brings us to the fun part for us avid enthusiasts. We try and find those amazing deals, perhaps they may only be amazing for us, but we search for a tea that we absolutely love, for a price that seems like a bargain. Though that could be very challenging depending on tastes.

I've been drinking and ordering tea long enough that I know the oolongs I like tend to be on the expensive side, which is bad for my wallet, but I also know that without Chinese language skills it is a lot harder to find deals on Oolong tea's especially since they are a rather "in" type of tea right now.

But on the reverse side of the coin, I seem to have a different opinion of what I want to see in Sencha than the people determining quality. As at a larger traditional Japanese tea store, I can get a tea from them that I absolutely enjoy for 11 cents per gram. Which is doubly amazing as Sencha as a much smaller leaf to water ratio then I prefer with Oolongs.

What originally got me thinking of the whole price vs quality debate was actually teaware. I was always buying teaware within a certain price range, and it was only after I stepped outside that price range as a special rare treat to myself, did I realize that yes a cup that is double the price, can in fact be "nearly" twice as impressive when holding it in your hand. I say nearly because it is all in the eye of the beholder, that and I assume there has to be a bit of a diminishing return. For example, awhile ago Magokorodo had two Chawan that were sold for over three thousand dollars each. Granted while the Chawan looked amazing in pictures, and the pieces are often so much more impressive in person, I have a hard time believing that there is that much of a benefit either aesthetically, utility, or in tactility that would warrant such a high price tag.

I purposely ignored Puerh, so far, because my view of cooked puerh is you are paying for composted tea leaves. In terms of raw puerh, the aged stuff is really hard to classify as deal or not until you've had that particular cake or set of cakes, as storage can cause huge differences even in tea from the same batch. But Young Raw puerh if you love it possibly offers one of the best deals, sometimes even dipping to less than 10 cents per gram. Though you can also get into very high end Boutique cakes, I am drawing a blank but I think there is a Thousand year tree, that even though it is only a few years old is already demanding an incredibly hefty price tag.

So as I like to get a little bit of reader participation, where do you find your values with tea, or do you insist that there are no longer any real values in tea?

Respect for Tea

Just about all Asian Tea Enthusiasts know about The Leaf and the free online magazine they release. An article in one of the earlier issues of this magazine said something, which I tried before, but never really understood until recently. Simply put, enjoy tea on the floor, something which sounds absolutely absurd for a large majority of Westerners, and I have to admit for someone not quite all that flexible rather hard to pull off sitting cross legged on the floor for an entire tea session if not more.

But this past spring semester I took a Zen Buddhism class, just to round out my schedule and finally fit in a personally interest (other than math) class. I absolutely enjoyed the class, and it inspired me to work on my flexibility so I would attempt to sit cross legged a little each day and work for longer and longer times. A hint from the Buddhists for their meditation, actually sit on some cushions so it does not stress your legs nearly as much.

Moving back to my parents house for the summer, in my room I have no good place to really have a tea set up, other than a Blue trunk in the middle of the room, which is far to low to work comfortably with if sitting in a chair, so I figured it was great to practice sitting cross legged on the floor while brewing and enjoying tea.

I must say not only does it force your posture to be much better, the slight discomfort in your legs, forces you to pay close attention to everything at hand, and makes it rather hard for the mind to wander. I find that the tea sessions I have had lately have been the most enjoyable string of tea sessions since I started drinking tea.

Somehow when doing this, I feel I am showing a greater respect for the tea, as even when my computer is close at hand, I hardly ever turn to it, and never get lost searching the web while drinking tea, something which happened constantly when sitting in a chair.

This is just a personally narrative sharing my experiences, and my opinions on the matter, but I highly encourage you to drink tea on the floor every so often.

Impossible Questions

From Chinese Ceramics

From Chinese Ceramics

This new baby arrived today, and I feel yixing force you to treat them unlike just about any other type of teaware. While I admit I got this in hopes of using it as an additional Wuyi Yancha teapot. I am confronted with a problem quite unlike any I have yet come against when pairing tea and teapot.

I have had it occure that after going through the steps to ready a pot, I brew up the first batch and it just tastes off, normally in a bad way. But the baffling part of this session is, I prepared the pot as normal. While people sometimes say you do not need to do this, I feel it always helps push the pot along slightly, I even threw in a few pinches of leaves from the 3 wuyi oolongs I have open, during the boiling process.

So the pot was ready. so I put the kettle on to boil, and add tea leaves... the Andao Da Hong Pao -- and well I'm almost done with the session, and even though I remember the bag I took the tea from, and the leaves in the pot look right, I still do not believe I am drinking a yancha. What I had come to think a wuyi Yancha should taste like, is turned almost upside down.

What always seemed to be a tea that felt like fall and winter, a body warming, spicy dark tea, that has all sorts of hearty factors too it, now tastes light and refreshing, a prevalent citrus note. Even the mouth feel which I love on this tea, for its gripping ability, is reduced to a slight sharpness, but overall smooth and enjoyable.

So here are my impossible questions to answer at this point, but I will have to address them in due time:

Is this due to the pot being new, and will it with use come to be reflective of how I always viewed classic wuyi oolongs?

Is this pot ultimately a wrong choice for Wuyi even though it makes great albeit completely different tasting Yancha?

Could this be similar to how my other Yancha pot tasted when I first started using it, and it just changed so subtly over its many many uses that I just do not remember?


*** EDIT***

I spent time working with Toki over at the Mandarins Tea room, as he is possibly the person I can reach that is the most knowledgeable about yixing tea pots.

He had me run an interesting test, which involved taking a neutral gaiwan, my old yixing pot, and this new one, by pouring boiling water into each of them then drinking and comparing the water that was in them. and taking note of the taste.

The my old yancha pot the Zini pot had a deep base note, though still tasted fresh and clean, the gaiwan was just fresh and clean, but this new pot also had a brightness to it.

So after detailing for Toki exactly everything I knew about this pot, and did in its preparation.

He feels that I may have actually been tasting the true nature of the tea, and that perhaps my old pot rounded out and subdued the flavors a bit more.

He said that if I give it a week or so of consistent use I should start to get some great flavors coming out of the tea with this pot.

I think he is really on to something, as I brewed up some aged DHP that is 9 years old or so, and it actually tasted the best it ever has with this yixing.

Intensive Studies.

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.

The Problems with Tea

If you read this blog, you probably enjoy tea for tea, and for that I am thankful, and feel free to read the rest of this post for a laugh. As this post is 100% serious, but rather laughable when viewed from the perspective of those of us that love tea. So here is a numbered list of the biggest problems with tea that I have found.

1. Tea is Healthy, I'd much rather have tea be somewhere on the over all level of health as somewhere between coffee and cigarettes, maybe settle for on par with soda (though most bottled teas basically are soda). I mean if tea was as healthy as cigarettes I might have reasons to restrain myself from drinking it as often as I do. But the thing I can not stand is tea being billed as some sort of wonder beverage. It drives me nuts, as the tea loving public that are the backbones of tea forums, and beacons of tea knowledge in the west, often have to answer mundane questions like "Will I get more of compound X if I brew my tea in fashion Y." While I actually have no problem with a person trying to be healthy, it is the fact that many people are saying they don't care about taste, while some of the methods of preparation would produce some nasty concoction I wouldn't want to call tea.
   
2. Boston Tea Party, I have no problem with the actual Boston tea party. It is the fact that it had to be tea that was thrown off the ships. While it might have been a waste of tea, and it made tea borderline Taboo in the United States for many many years after that, those actually are not my problems. It is the fact that modern political activists have taken the moniker "Tea Party" as their group thinking that somehow they are fighting a similar war against Taxation that happened in Boston all those years ago. As this is a tea blog, I will have no comment on anything political. But the fact that I can't even have a general google reader news search for "Tea" without coming back with articles mostly on the political organization with maybe 5% of them actually on tea. And Social networking sites such as twitter, have many people flooding the site with the tag #tea instead of tea party.
3. Tea is Asian! This one is really a joke, but the point behind it is the fact that the languages in Asian countries are completely different than most Western Languages. Do not get me wrong, I feel like getting exposure to languages is great, and that people should be fluent in as many languages as possible. But the fact that the differences between Eastern and Western languages are so great, it is hard to get proper translations of information from websites without being fluent in both languages yourself. Also with the Roman based alphabet being so prevalent across many languages I can begin to sound out most words in most European based languages without fully knowing the language, but I can not look at a Kanji character and be able to guess its pronunciation without already knowing the character which probably means I already know its translation. And not knowing how to pronounce the character makes it virtually impossible to look up a translation to a kanji character.
   

I hope you enjoyed this post, I felt I should infuse a bit of humor for us tea lovers.

Attempts at aging Oolong tea.

I'll say right away that this post does not contain any tasting notes, but instead it is what I am doing in the way of aging oolong tea. I have close to 1Kg of oolong that I am storing to see what will happen over time, and they are in a sense testing different storage methods.

First is I have a little Chinese jar that I enclosed some wuyi that I felt the roast was just to much on, as it tasted quite like ash. In all honesty I have little hope for this, and I'm probably going to give it a taste sometime in the next 2 months or so. But this I did not aquire to age, this I aquired then thought it could use age.

Next is rather ambitious, and possibly going to be a huge failure. At a Chinese market I picked up 300g of Dong ding, which I got cause it was in expensive. Made some in a gaiwan, and said "Way to green!" So the easiest way to ungreen an oolong in taste is in my mind to age it, maybe not the quickest but the easiest. This is the tea that actually inspired me to write this post, as while I have not tired it since I first got it about 6 months ago, I did today realize that it was rather dry today, so I decided to do some up keep on the tea. So I "roasted it" quotations as when a tea is roasted in its traditional preparation it involves being roasted over wood or charcoal, something which imparts flavor as well as giving the effect of removing moisture. This I simply had it in a clean fry pan, over my electric hot plate on low, for nearly two hours, and of course stirring often. I stopped when picking up tea with my fingers it no longer felt slightly moist. I feel this is a necessary step when aging oolong especially green oolong in a poorly sealed container as otherwise moisture can get in an essentially ruin the tea, by making it excessively sour.

Another tea I have is rather a vain attempt to try and produce something of the quality of the Shui Xian bricks that the Tea Gallery had dating from 1997. I managed to pick up some 2007 DHP bricks, and I've been keeping them, and I can only hope it works out well.

I also am aging some already aged teas to see if they improve, these are sealed in individual foil packets, and it should be interesting to see how they handle being stored in those over time.

So I will try and keep you informed on these teas as I get around to tasting them when I think they are ready. At least two of them I will probably get around to trying in the next month or so, while at least one of them I probably will not write about for another year as I just placed those into storage.

Mixing and Blending Teas

Regular readers of my blog may have picked up the sense that I like the purity of a single type of tea, and do not buy into the whole hype of flavoring teas.

But today I blended two teas that I have been unhappy with hoping they would be complementary, but I realized after the first infusion the big mistake I made. These were two Japanese teas, but one was a Bancha, and the other was a low grade Gyokuro. In my mind thinking of the flavors of these two teas it seemed like it should work together in harmony. But there was a problem, their brewing methods are completely different.

The best I could hope for was to brew it like the Bancha with short steeps, but with a lower temperature like Gyo. This seemed to not get the best out of either tea, but did not taste bad. This confirms what I've always wondered when people talk of making tea blends such as at Adagio, or other companies that have unique blends, and they mix greens and whites and blacks and oolongs. I always wondered if they were really getting the best out of each individual tea in the blend, as you have to compromise the brewing parameters to try and avoid any off taste.

Porcelain Vs. Yixing a head to head.

With the last of my Jing tea shop Qi Lan, I am doing a head to head brewing compareing my decently seasoned Yixing pot to a neutral eggshell gaiwan.

Keeping in mind I'm probably a bit brainwashed as to the qualities each of these possesses. The most notable thing I have is the one in the yixing has so many more layers and so much more depth to it. If I'm to consider the porcelain as a clean slate and only that tea, then it strikes me that yes the yixing is seasoned, and while its producing better tasting tea, its in all honesty traits from many different teas, rolled up into one, and while the main character is the tea in the pot now, it gives off layers and depth from so many other teas.

That being said the porcelain seems to be lacking in the aroma, and slightly on the taste. But one thing thats just been baffling me is the mouth feel from the porcelain just seems so much better. its like a smooth velvet while in the yixing its like a standard pair of jeans. And actually the second infusion I like better in the porcelain as all the main flavor components are there except in the yixing the roasting is emphasized whereas in porcelain its noted but it is not the focus.

This just keeps on surprising me the further into the infusions I go the more I can tune into the differences and now they seem almost like night and day. And I'm not entirely sure which I like better as they are so different that they offer different things, and its quite surprising that the same leaves can make two cups of tea so different under the same conditions.

Has it already been over a year?

So a thought occurred to me today, to check when I started my blog. The very first post was a year and thirteen days ago. Mind you if you go back in history there are very few posts for a month or so, as I completely refocused the direction of my blog earlier this year and deleted many posts I felt did not fit in to the big picture of my blog.

So In that regard I have a little bit of advice for people just starting out, though I'm rather new in the area also, I think I would have had a very hard time getting this far without this advice.

It is very important once you start to realize what teas you like that you focus your taste on one or two categories. This in my mind leads you to form a good idea of quality. Such as lately I've been posting on Japanese teas, and I feel my experience with Yancha only leads to let me better dial in the Japanese greens and see them at their fullest potential.

Basically learning several teas in a great amount of detail lets you better understand every other tea you come accross. I feel without focusing on a small section of teas, its easy to get discouraged at the many options availible. And your stuck focusing on big picture differences, whereas if your consantly persuing similar teas you start to pick up on minute differences, and with time comes a vocabulary for describing those tastes.

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone in the United States.

Tea and its embodiment of Nature

So most of you only know me through this blog, few of you know that I'm actually a hopeful mathematician. So last night and today I was at a conference at which I gave a talk. But the purpose of this post comes from the thoughts I had on the several hour drive home from the conference.

Driving through the mountains in Pennsylvania tonight, there was something in the air of the slightly moist leaves on a cool evening with sparse civilization around, perhaps a few burning fires. But for a solid half hour if not more of the trip, all I could smell was puerh tea. Now this is odd as I had not had some since my last post here, yet all I could smell and fantasize about was puerh tea.

I'm sure it was one of those flukes with sensory perception, but then I started thinking what was it I was picking up in the aroma? Decaying leaves, a wonderful earthy aroma, and a subtle hint of smoke possibly from a bonfire somewhere in the distance.

This caused me to think back on posts I have made, as I believe I said many times that Yancha makes me think of fall, whereas I believe I also said at least once that puerh is quite like fall. But pondering the differences, I realized yancha reminds me of stuff baked in fall, whereas puerh is the nature in the fall.

And I'm sure we all have ideas about what times of year certain teas remind us of. I have heard many times about green tea being a great symbol of spring. I do not know if thats from the freshness that green tea imparts or the fact that its usually released late spring, and spring is often anticipation for the upcoming release.

Blending Tea...

I've always had mixed feelings on blends, and while I do enjoy a good Earl Grey or Irish Breakfast on occasion, I often feel that the sum of the parts is of lesser quality than each individually. But this has troubling interpretations when viewing it in light of certain teas.

I had the two Jing Tea shop Shui Xians left and together they had enough for one pot full. In retrospect I should have practiced with my small gaiwan as I've been a bit out of practice with my gaiwan. But I combined the two into my yixing and brewed. It is rather dissapointing to say the least, its like the characteristics that make each one unique are fighting with each other, and they do not come together elegantly.

I understand that there are blenders out there whose sole purpose is to produce consistent results, and avoid any unharmoneous results, but my view on blends holds the same for my view with Whiskey.

A blend is never as good as its components though ultimately easier to reproduce within a very small margin of error.

What does this mean with Tea?

Well in puerh it seems all mass marketed cakes are blends, in part as it is the only way to get such a massive quantity, so these and our breakfast blends will not taste much different ten years from now than they do now, bar any major environmental or industrial changes. But the question is do you want to be tasting the exact same tea for 10 years straight over many different production runs?

Gaiwan got you down?

Learning how to properly handle a gaiwan is rather difficult. So here is some advice for those starting out and learning their own technique. First things first, before leaf hits the gaiwan, first pratice gripping the gaiwan and pouring while keeping a good grip on both the gaiwan and the lid.

Once you are used to handling and holding the gaiwan, move on to icecubes and water. Why icecubes and water? Well simply put its easier to get burned then frost bitten. And you just have to think in analog that if the gaiwan is very cold where you are holding it it will be very hot holding it the same way brewing tea. So pratice pouring the water out of the gaiwan using ice cubes and water in the gaiwan a few times and try and have a steady flow, but somewhat minimal, as to not allow leaves out when pouring.

This is very important so you don't break your gaiwan, after praticing with ice water, warm it up in your hands and let it warm up slowly before adding hot water, as ceramics are prone to cracking when temperatures change to rapidly.

Gaiwans take pratice and in my mind really stress the gong fu like method to tea production, as it takes much more skill to use a gaiwan properly then to use a yixing pot.

Puerh the Whisky of the Tea World

Yes, you read the title correctly. And I suppose a similar comparison could be made to wine, but whisky is what I know, and to me certain similarities just jump out. And no not the obvious one about aging and such, or about vintages, I have two others one is slightly more obvious and the other is more of a musing that just occurred to me while drinking my 90’s Huang Yin.

The rather obvious one is the single malts and blends comparison. These exist quite clearly in the puerh world, with single mountains and specific factory blends. In whiskey certain blends are known for being solid, and while the material they have to work with changes from year to year, they do their best to create something as similar to the previous year’s product that they can. Whereas puerh experts can tell you what characterizes a certain mountain’s tea while being able to pick out the mountains of each tea from a blind taste test. I do not have that ability; I’ll admit it flat out.

But what I find as the more interesting observation I have for this comparison. I find that with puerh, especially aged, and whisky, the more you drink them the more you can over look what people find unpleasant about them initially. Many people turn away from puerh for the earthy flavors, and the musty and damp leaves characteristic they tend to exhibit. But drink aged puerh every day or every other day for a week or more, I believe the more and more you drink the easier it is for you to overlook those flavors, and focus on the nuances in that particular tea. In whisky the similarity is hopefully obvious to anyone that has ever had any hard liquor, and felt the burn. Now I’m willing to venture anything at 40+%ABV is going to burn when you drink it. But you have a glass every night or every other night, because you are on holiday, the burn does not bother you, you are comfortably familiar with it, and the tastes of that whiskey is no longer performing shock and awe on your system, you are being shocked and awed by all the unique flavors.

So to say this to people getting into puerh it is not like most teas. Puerh given a long enough break between your last session with it, may just shock your taste buds. But persist through the obvious flavors, and eventually you will be able to pick out the subtle details hiding beneath those strong tones.

Making vs. Experiencing Tea

Anyone can make tea, and with practice and trial and error, many people can make tea that they like. But the difference in making and experiencing tea, comes about with the attention you pay to detail in the preparation. Simply grabbing a mug from a cabinet, and tossing a teabag into it, and pulling it sometime later, yes you made tea. But do you have any sort of attachment to that tea? Was it more refreshing than any other beverage you could have chosen to make or open? In short what made that tea special and unique?



A warm beverage on a cold day can be relaxing, and quite welcome. While you may be attached to a cup of tea in the morning to get you going. Though when you prepare tea like that there is little difference from a cup of coffee, other than personal preference. But if you spent a great amount of time hunting for that perfect cup, picked out that perfect tea, and spent a great deal of care into trying to make that tea sing for you. You are much more likely to be experiencing that tea.

Often we find ourselves searching for a way to better experience that tea. I spent 3 hours on the floor one night drinking tea, to see if it would change anything. While that made little change for me, what did make a great difference was me improving my posture. If I sit straight up, while enjoying tea, it in an indescribable way is much more enjoyable. Others search for the same series of returns from searching for an older pot, or a new way of heating the water, or a different cup.

In short there is no right way, just as I’m sure there is no wrong way. It is perhaps that tea is just a liquid mirror that only reflects in its taste, the amount of effort and practice we put into the drink itself.

Tea Musings

“Tea, it’s water that has had leaves sitting in it.”

Now at first this caused a bit of anger because to me at least, tea is so much more than just some plant matter soaking in water. It is a tradition, a way of life, an endless journey, anything than just something as simple as throwing leaves into water.

Then it struck me, the simplicity of the statement, is none of my concern, and I could accept it simply saying well yes that is what it is, or I could delve into a spiritual, and even metaphysical definitions. So here I will muse about what tea means to me, which due to the very nature of what tea is, could be completely different next week if not tomorrow.

I cannot say I have ever had a great tea, which presents the problem of classifying what characterizes a great tea. Though I justify that any tea which is pleasing to you at that moment in time, either by a divine act you managed to brew it just right, or it was the perfect choice for your mood, as a wonderful tea. But I guess for it to be great, it would need to do that consistently every single time, which seems to think that a great tea has been independent of everything else, something any experienced tea drinker knows is completely backwards.

While I am still new to tea, as having been drinking loose leaf tea for four years now, and drinking it avidly (daily if not more often), for almost a year. There are some things I feel like I should say to those just starting out, learn to make good tea in a paper cup, with inexpensive tea and what ever you have sitting around. If you can do that then the rest is experiencing better and better tea. No piece of teaware will ever make your tea something magical, but if you can make acceptable tea in a paper cup, you can appreciate how it tastes coming from porcelain, be it young or old, and probably be able to tell the difference between them.

I speak from experience as my first yixings were horrible, after several months of use I still looked back at the tea I made in paper cups, saying “That was better than this.” Which should be a tell tale sign that the teaware was no where near as good, but sometimes it takes adjusting to the new methods. I burnt my thumb today using my gaiwan, something I haven't done since the very first week I had my gaiwan. But the tea that came from the gaiwan far better than anything I could make In a paper cup.

What I am trying to say is be comfortable with what you have and then expand your selection to fill a certain niche in what you want to do with tea. As with the paper cup you are making tea, but with a gaiwan and yixing, you are experiencing tea. And if the tea made from the experience is no good, why it won't be a pleasing experience at all, but if you can always make good tea, experiencing the good tea can be life changing.

Tea Musings / Andao Tea's Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe)

Today, I had a session of tea in the manner discussed in The Leaf Issue 1. Now I knew I wanted to write up a review on this tea, to end the Pu-erh steak in posting. Though I'd consider it very fortunate that I read that article again last night, and as I was getting ready to have tea, that I should think of some of the lessons in that simple article.

When I first tried that tea from Andao, I wanted to write it off as under roasted, and nothing a Da Hong Pao or Big Red Robe should be. After having the tea acouple of times, I still never liked it much, but this time I made it all about the tea, had propper posture, and just focused on the tea.

I did not know it would change much of anything. Yet, the tea seemed nearly transcendental, the chaqi from it is still pulsing through my body. I just remember a fruity nose, maybe hints of peach cinnamon, and cherries. And a smooth mouthfeel with a slight bit of astringency. I still have a lingering sour cherry taste in the back of my throat from my last sips.

It seems that focusing on the tea, improved my mood, and my experience beyond anything I would have imagined.