Old and Not so Great Tea

While I have said quite a few bad things about the heat and the lack of rain we have had here in southwest Michigan all summer long.  There is one good thing that is coming from it, the 300 gram tin of Dong Ding tea I got at a Chinese grocery store about 3 years ago is finally starting to get worked through on a consistent basis.

I never thought the tea was that great any time I tried brewing it how  I would brew any other dong ding tea. not to mention just about all my teaware for brewing items warm would only use a few grams of the tea at a time.  I don't have to tell any of you how hard it is to get through 300 grams of a tea you do not like only 4-6 grams of tea at a time.

The solution, hot summer days, a french press that has never been used for coffee, water, the tea and a refrigerator. Simply layer the bottom of the french press a few layers deep with the old and not so great oolong, add water, then stick it into the fridge, wait over night or 7 or so hours, then stick the plunger in, push down and its actually a surprisingly nice iced tea.  Better yet, while I haven't tried my hand at doing 3 infusions with a given set of leaves ( worried a bit to much about the threat of bad bacteria), but after drinking the tea down to the plunger level, pulling out the plunger and waiting another 7 hours or so, produces a second great brew from the same leaves.

Not to mention, at the grocery store I also picked up a box of loose leaf Lipton black tea, which is another not so great tea that makes a tasty iced tea.  In fact my believe is a tea that comes across as overly bitter or astringent would make a nice cold brewed iced tea.

The staining of the Yixing

These are 3 nearly identical little yixing, 2 of which are used extensively, (one for High Fire Tie Guan yin, the other for Yancha), while the other has been let practically unused.  Can you tell from the above photo which one is which? 

What if I post close ups of them in pairs:

The first two pictures have the unused pot, and it would have been a bit more of a challenge if I rubbed out the very apparent tea stains on the ones that I use often.  But looking at those first two pictures again, its amazing how with use in with roasted teas, the yixings not only get a nice shine to them, they also turn a bit more red with use.  In the last photo the pot on the right I have had the longest, and its almost developing a slightly rusty character to it with all the use of tea.  The real question will be is that just due to being used longer, or is there something special in the Highfire TGY that causes that that the Yancha does not have?

Kzoo June Tea Meetup

I am sure you have heard other people say/ write this, but it is always a good thing to see how other people brew tea.   Granted Kalamazoo Michigan is a rather small town, in an area that is not known for its tea drinking, let alone the style of tea drinking I write about on this blog.  Through Teachat I found another avid tea drinker in the Kalamazoo area, and we are trying to put together a somewhat regular meeting.

This was our second meeting, though first in quite some time, and due to the season, we figured it was a very good idea to go with Shincha, and the odd one out a Winter Taiwanese Gaoshan. All teas came out quite good, the line up included Hokoniwando 88 nights, Maiko Kinari, O-Cha Miyabi, and Tea masters Gaoshan Luanze (Winter 2011) from Shan Lin Shi.

Seth brewed the 88 nights and Miyabi, and it was certainly an experience, while I do not mind strong flavors, I often drink sencha in larger quantities, as such several 5 oz ( or more) yunomi full of Shincha with the flavors Seth got out of the teas might have had me on the floor convulsing ( not really but it was quite a shock  to the system).  I treated the kinari with my usual lighter hand when it comes to Shincha and Sencha, though it was oddly marine like, both Seth and I got interesting seaweed and seawater notes.  Ending the day on the Gaoshan was both a good idea and a mistake.  While it definitely offered a wonderful change of pace, after some stronger Shincha  I worry that the full effect of the gaoshan was lost on out already juiced up bodies.

We hope to have another meeting in mid to late July, and please do not hesitate to contact me through a blog comment if you are a reader that is also in the Kalamazoo area.

Thoughts on Gaiwans

For some reason the topic of gaiwans have been coming up often lately in the tea circles I frequent.  Pictured above are my first two gaiwans, but the blue and white one I acquired quite a few months before I got the pure white one ( a Tea Gallery small gaiwan).  Since then I managed to buy the other two Tea Gallery gaiwans in the set ( getting this in before they closed up shop).  I have also purchased the Gaiwan from Teamasters blog.  I do have one other gaiwan but its not often talked about because it was damaged during shipment, with the vendor unresponsive to any email I sent, but it is borderline usable ( if you do not mind a huge triangular chip out of the rim of the piece.

While I have not tried hundreds of gaiwans, I have started to realize what makes a good gaiwan "good."   It is mostly how it handles heat.  As such people usually consider things such as the flair of the rim, and the thickness of the porcelain.  I feel there is one more thing to keep in mind but it is near impossible to tell without actually using it, and that is the thermal properties of the particular clay and glaze used in the piece.  I know that sounds odd but I have used a gaiwan that seems medium thick, but is worlds hotter to use, than a gaiwan that's incredibly thick, where both have somewhat similar flair.  The only real explanation I had for the difference is the clay/ glaze between the two had vastly different thermal properties.

Of course with gaiwans you want a wide flair, keeping the part of the gaiwan your fingers will touch away from the boiling water inside.  Thinner is almost always better, as the thinner the wall, the easier the heat dissipates from the rim of the gaiwan.  Some people spend a lot of time worrying about the heat retention properties of their Gaiwan, worrying if it is too thin the water won't stay hot enough to allow the tea to infuse properly.  While this is a concern there are far more workable, and less painful ways around this than dealing with burnt fingers.  Most common of which would be to use a teaboat or other dish/ bowl with raised walls, and a flat bottom, to add boiling water in the dish to sort of create a hot bath for the bottom part of your gaiwan, while the tea infuses.  The hot bath should not extend more than 1/3 to 1/2 of the way up the gaiwan, as we really do not want their to be so much heat that the whole gaiwan becomes too hot to handle. The Teaboat trick, I learned on my only visit to the Tea Gallery.

What I realized yesterday, when I pulled my very first gaiwan off the shelf to pull it out of "retirement," knowing full well it's not as good as the gaiwans I have since become used to using. Though I used that gaiwan almost exclusively for many months, and used it regularly for at least a year if not two.  But pulling it off the shelf, and putting it through its paces on some puerh, I swore I was handling a pan pulled from a hot oven.  Granted I do exaggerate because I could still handle the gaiwan, but the calluses and damaged nerves I used to have, are long since healed so a few times mid pour, I did have to set it down and get a new grip on the piece to give my fingers just those few seconds to cool off.

A major question people ask, who missed out on the widely acclaimed Tea Gallery Gaiwans, is "Where can I get a high quality gaiwan?"  The truth is they do seem to be few and far between, as most vendors seem to think a gaiwan is a gaiwan, and therefore aim for a good price over quality.  I mean who is to blame them, most plain white gaiwans look nearly identical in vendor pictures, and online shoppers are notorious for looking for deals.  While I can not help people with this question for all sizes of Gaiwans, but my favorite gaiwan size ( for 1-2 person drinking) ~60ml, I am quite fond of the mini Gaiwan sold by Teamasters.