Less is More

 

Before I get skinned alive by the high fire Yancha and TGY crowd that love to turn 60ml or smaller pots into veritable clown cars by packing in 10 or more grams of tea.  I am not talking about that.  I am actually talking about other teas, especially when brewing them Grandpa style.

For some reason in the tea world, and perhaps even the coffee world, its not uncommon to want to push the limits when brewing.  As such, more and more leaf/ bean gets added trying to get something so incredibly flavor packed and delicious.  Well I have found that when brewing Grandpa style, that I have been adding more and more and more leaves.  On a few bad occasions ( often with more dense dry leaves), after they got wet the would be nearly up to the top of the bowl when swimming in water.  Not only when brewing Grandpa style can that produce something akin to battery acid, but you actually get more of the battery acid effect because it is rather hard to sip effectively when there are that many leaves.

So I am making a very conscious effort to use three-quarters, if not half the leaves I would normally use.  So far it has been working to great effect.  The flavor is more subtle, but it is often far more enjoyable.  It may lead me to re-evaluate certain other brewing procedures I have for various teas to find out where I can actually improve by cutting back.

The Non-Green Korean Teas

I have written quite a few posts about enjoying Korean Tea, though its quite hard to find, even harder to find without paying an arm and a leg for the tea.  While their greens are good, the Korean teas that haunt me are the Hwang cha/ Balhyocha, and their red/black teas.

For those of you who want a very detailed discussion on the many facets of Korean tea, I will point you to the following two blogs

Mattcha's Blog 

• Namely for those who have never had Balhyocha or Korean Hwang Cha ( yellow tea) before, the posts in his series discussing what it actually is, and how its not well defined by any of the Chinese Tea Categories.   Here is a link to his first post. 

Morning Crane Tea

These darker oxidized ( sometimes slightly sometimes fully) Korean Teas, continually rank among my favourite teas. Namely for their incredible versatility, they can be great when brewed "gong fu" style, yet for a lazy day of drinking, simply throw them in a teabowl and sip and refill all day long.  Another reason I feel like I enjoy these Balhyocha so much, is the fact that they often improve with age, unlike their green counterparts.  So while they rarely last long in my place, there is less of an issue if it should find itself lingering for awhile.

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.