Brewing a Bike is just like Riding a Tea...

I mean brewing a tea is just like riding a bike.  A long standing and overly used phrase in the United states for a skill that you do not easily forget is said to be just like riding a bike.  So while I still brew regularly lately as the weather has started to greatly cool off recently its definitely time for gyokuro.   But it has been roughly 8 months since I last brewed gyokuro. 

When I first started brewing it again this fall, I was a little shaky, and while my first session was not stellar, (sorry Seth), it was far from bad.  But after brewing it two more times I can now brew it confidently once more, and really make some great tasting tea.  

I have found that with any tea I have gained some sort of proficiency in brewing, I can put it down for an extended length of time, then with minimal effort regain that proficiency.  Of course there may be a few botched brews, but that is to be expected.  Heck, even when I brew a tea quite often, I still mess up the occasional infusion, especially when I am not completely focused on the tea at hand.

So now that I can wake up and start to find thick layers of frost coating everything out side, and the sun starts to call it quits before I even get to leave campus, it is definitely time to bring out our favorite cool weather teas again.  For me that mostly means Gyokuro and a plethora of Roasted oolongs.

Seeking Simplicity

I know many of my more intense tea drinker readers may object to this, but while I know there is no replacement to a solid session or two of tea, in which you really get all you can out of the tea in many steeps, sometimes simplicity is the answer.  I personally am not a morning person, so any time I do have tea in the mornings it is what can I do with minimal effort.  The answer is in just about every case "Grandpa Style".

So what exactly is the beauty of Grandpa style?  For one steep times are nearly optional, as it resorts to adding hot/ warm water to the cup/glass/bowl full of leaves and tea, and drinking.  Then repeat until the tea seems to be little more than colored water.  Even better is as its usually a lower leaf to water ratio, the temperature of the water you introduce to the leaves will either cool quickly enough to not extract the incredibly bitter components that can come from too hot of water exposed for too long of a time in a Gong Fu session.

In my personal opinion your feelings towards the vessel you use to brew "Grandpa style" will significantly alter your total enjoyment.  Such as if you love to watch the dance of the leaves, then perhaps a glass vessel is ideal. I do not care as much about the dance of the leaves, and I like to see how a piece is progressing, so my Celadon teabowl is ideal in my opinion, as while the inner cracks are quite stained, the cracks on the outside of the bowl are slowly staining.

When busy I find it is so much easier to stick to simple types of brewing than working about fitting in entire gong fu sessions with teas that require a lot more attention.  While certainly those gong fu sessions produce excellent tea, well worth the effort, when you really love tea, you want to enjoy tea in any way you can.

Making it work

So recently I have had the chance to try a good quality Taiwanese tea, and for my regularly readers you may have noticed or remember me at one time mentioning that I just do not do Taiwanese teas.  Not because I do not like them, but rather I just have not put forth any effort in exploring them.  As such I perhaps have slight holes in my teaware (shocking I know).  

But in regards to this, I was told for this tea heat retention was key, so a thin gaiwan could not be used.  This had me rattling my head, as for all more delicate teas that are not heavily roasted or heavily oxidized my go to vessels are Gaiwans.  But determined to make it work, I realized I have a Seong-il pot which is bulbous in shape, holds heat quite well, and is glazed on the inside so I shouldn't have to worry about much interaction.

It was certainly an experience, while this was not a super green high mountain taiwanese oolong, it was actually labeled as being traditionally fired, which I learned upon opening the package that traditional fire in Taiwan means a whole different thing than traditional fired for Hong Kong.  The leaves were still decently green, but the taste was quite interesting, I would have almost guessed this was a midway aged tea, that was not in an "off stage."  There were some interesting flavors of darker fruits most notably plum, but also a lot of nice greener and fresher notes.

If Taiwan offers many more teas like that I might just have to give in and start placing some orders.

Seeing Triple

What else can I say other than when looking for decent quality on a budget, in a size that is rarely offered in stores that cater to English speakers, options get quite limited quite quickly.  While I honestly do not know how many of these little 50ml brown yixing's Zen8Tea has sold, but quite a few people I know that have bought one have not stopped at just one.  I recently purchased two more bringing myself up to 3 of these little guys.  They might not be the greatest quality but they seem to work wonderfully with stuffed pots of roasted oolongs.

My biggest problem was how would I keep these straight, as one was to be used with high Quality Yancha, the other to be used with High Fire TGY, and the 3rd a switch hitter who is to fill in the gaps if I ever want to do a side by side brew/comparison.  I realized a simple wrapping around certain parts of the handles could greatly help.  So while I currently do not have string available, I did mark one in an interesting fashion with some dental floss.

Having used them quite a bit,I will say they do not hide what they are, but for giving you the ability to brew in a teapot, and one that does pick up a little bit of patina, instead of a gaiwan.  I love gaiwans but the ones I have are absolutely horrible in terms of heat retention and even when having the gaiwans half submerged in hot water, I feel like I am fighting a loosing battle with heat. Not to mention fighting a loosing battle in terms of water.

I must say this is the first item of teaware I have ever bought multiple of that is not a cup to create a matching set.  I am still unsure how I feel about that.