Your day in tea

[Victoria]

Had a really great tasting with a tea buddy this afternoon that evolved into 6 hours (had no idea!). Take away is friendship, great tea and great music rock. Add to that excellent yancha curated by LazyCat -it is energetic, radiating up and out of the body, in an almost mystical way.

I don’t typically list prices but today we did check. We started with;
* Thunderbolt’s First Flush Margaret’s Hope White 2023 $1 gram. FF white is best within first 9 months. It’s getting slightly degraded, but still tasty. After Castleton Moonlight Imperial (not available in 2023) this is a second favorite white FF Darjeeling of mine.

* HY Chen’s Wild Forest Back Ching Sin da Mou. It’s a really excellent aromatic and nuanced Taiwan black! Highly recommend, very elegant. $ .50c gram

* Hojo’s Yancha Yao Zi Ke Rou Gui - Is good but I assumed before looking that it was a $1 gram yancha not $2.76 gram. Seems overpriced, but I’ll enjoy none the less.

* Lazy Cat’s Gemstone Rougui 2021 – Zhengyan. Very good on par with price point as well. I could enjoy frequently. $1.24 gram

* Lazy Cat’s Sanyangfeng Rougui 2021 – Zhengyan. An Excellent AAA yancha also on par with price point, $3 gram. Lazy Cat rocks. Listened to Thundercat’s Them Changes and Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man while enjoying this one.

[Bok]

* Lazy Cat’s Gemstone Rougui 2021 – Zhengyan. Very good on par with price point as well. I could enjoy frequently. $1.24 gram

* Lazy Cat’s Sanyangfeng Rougui 2021 – Zhengyan. An Excellent AAA yancha also on par with price point, $3 gram. Lazy Cat rocks. Listened to Thundercat’s Them Changes and Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man while enjoying this one.

Nice to hear that Lazy Cat still rocks with his rock tea!

[debunix]

I opened My Obubu Tea Farm spring tea club delivery today (it actually arrived a week or so ago but I hadn't yet opened it). This one contains several gyokuro teas and the annual Sakura sencha, Plus a mysterious pouch simply labeled 20th anniversary. It is a rather mysterious tea without any English label that describes the tea itself, so I'm testing my tea skills trying to figure this out.

The leaves are long, thin, deep gray green to almost black, and there is a rich slightly aged/fruity note to the dry leaf. It smells very promising.

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I've put the whole quantity in my Toujo houhin, and I'm starting at 160° for one minute.

with the gooseneck on my Stagg kettle, it takes about 10 seconds just to add the water and I'm including that in my 60 seconds.

With the large filter and spout, the Toujo pours out much faster than the kettle pours in!

The result is very consistent with the initial scent of the dry leaf: a slightly fruity, aged or fermented note that is very delicate, perhaps a little thin. Next infusion I'm going to go up too much hot water because I think that is what this tea wants.

and indeed, the higher heat infusions are what this team wants. It has a moderate astringency very little bitterness, and there is that fruity/fermented tea flavor that is quite pleasing to me. A very interesting tea from Obubu!

[Andrew S]

Had a really great tasting with a tea buddy this afternoon that evolved into 6 hours (had no idea!). Take away is friendship, great tea and great music rock. Add to that excellent yancha curated by LazyCat -it is energetic, radiating up and out of the body, in an almost mystical way.

I agree with that; tea is usually a solitary experience for me, but it's fun and rewarding to share good tea with good friends, even if they're not as tea-minded as I might be.

That said, I think that it's important to match the tea to the people and to the occasion (although I usually find that some relaxing old tea can make for a lovely experience, provided that the people in question are happy to let themselves get relaxed by the tea).

I started today with some early-morning old bush hongcha (any excuse to play with a new pot...) before spending a fair bit of time relaxing with some friends over yum cha and a pot of BYO 80s 7542. The tea lasted longer than we did.

Andrew

[mbanu]

I feel like maybe my unglazed teapot needs a tea-bath to clean up from all the tea-baths. The lid is now a distinctly different color than the body, and the bottom half is darker than the top half, only with more of a high-water-mark-from-the-flood effect than a cool fade, I'm guessing because I never brushed the pot -- I am neither a painter nor a calligrapher, so had no brushes handy. Does a good job with oolongs that need it, though, in my opinion, and it's always nice to have the right tool available.

I suppose related to this, my guess several months ago that the Pek Sin Choon "Unknown Fragrance" tea needed some time to start going flat before it would brew up well in that pot in the package size they wrap their portions in turned out to be exactly right. It is still serving its original purpose of being the "I feel like an oolong... Oh, but I haven't got any oolong-" backup tea, as I keep forgetting I have it until just that scenario arises.

My teapot needs a tea-bath to clean up from all the tea-baths even more than before, but the Unknown Fragrance tea is perfect for it now, just took a little time. Tail wagging the dog, waiting for tea to tire so that I can use it in my tired-tea teapot, but a good cup of tea all the same.

[LeoFox]

Yellow tea.

[easd]

I've been using a unique ancient teapot for my teas for a while now, and it looks absolutely amazing! I've realized that, along with the art of making tea, creating the right atmosphere is essential. Hope everyone has a wonderful day! By the way, this is where I ordered it, in case anyone is wondering: https://archaica.co/products/4921. That flame stove does a fantastic job

[tolean]

New teapot with some new sound. Borrowed the sound system form my brother for some days to west it))

[debunix]

Lovely.

It has cooled off pleasantly for the past couple of weeks in LA, just in time for me to be comfortable in long pants (needing to be extra cautious right now to avoid any nicks/scrapes/clawings around time of hip replacement surgery, don't want the fine new metal bits to get infected). So a long period of tasty but quite repetitive sessions of sparkling oolongs (mostly Imperial Pearl from Mountain Tea) then was followed by mostly hot Imperial Pearl as the one pouch of tea I brought with me to my friend's house for the post-op week. Now I'm back at home and with the cool mornings (I'm actually wearing a flannel overshirt right now), I'm enjoying some 'natural' gyokuro from Obubu to start the day. This is a pleasant mellow gyokuro, a little grassy, a little sweet, and just right as I await the sun and a bit of warming.

I'll have maybe one more session at lunchtime, but because sleep right now is a bit dicey already, I'm stopping my caffeine at lunchtime. So many teas, so little time!

[Noonie]

Hi everyone,

I haven’t posted for a long time but do read the posts now and then; I’ve just been drinking my favourite teas as always, using teaware I acquired over the years; I would say I’m settled in my routines and not looking for more.

Anyway…

I’m visiting England with my family and mainly drinking coffee while here. They have good coffee and selection of cafe’s. The staff at the good cafe’s know their craft and appreciate good quality beans, brewing techniques, etc. They’ve been great at talking coffee.

I went to a few shops that sell tea. Awful. Low quality and over-priced. Aimed at tourists.

A couple days ago we were at a park in a quaint town south of London. It was cold and damp that day, but we had a great time at the park. They had tea in the cafeteria so I ordered a ‘green’. They heated up the pot with hot water and poured it out, put the tea bag in the pot, added the water and placed the pot on a tray with a tea cup and saucer. Nothing fancy, just modern ceramic teaware.

As I was warming up with my pot of tea I realized I was really, really enjoying it. It warmed me, rounded out the whole English countryside experience and tasted fine. Later that day when we were done I had a second pot. It was equally good. We then walked 35 minutes (after walking all day, my teenager about to drop on the sidewalk from exhaustion lol) to a beautiful pub that was the best meal of the trip, and just a perfect pub.

The perspective I gained was that of setting. The best ‘material’, in the most sought after teaware, prepared in the way of a tea master, can only be as good as the setting which it’s enjoyed. The setting has a huge impact (for me, I’m realizing). Easy to experience this while on a trip, kind of like that French croissant in a Paris cafe, a wine in a vineyard in Tuscany or wherever.

Pretty sweet that an inexpensive tea can taste better than a top quality one, all because of setting.

I have to travel more!

Painshill Park. England

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[debunix]

P.S. I would post a pic of the park but not sure if that’s easy with a phone and pic save on the phone.

this is the easiest way to get pictures in: log into the site from web browser on your phone, and click attachment below the post entry box. Then select the image you want from your image library, select the size you want to upload, and Once uploaded, you click where you want to place it either by first putting your cursor in the right place in the text box, and then clicking place in line, or just finishing your post and then clicking place in line and having it as the last bit of your post.

It really sounds more complicated than it actually is to do it.

The perspective I gained was that of setting. The best ‘material’, in the most sought after teaware, prepared in the way of a tea master, can only be as good as the setting which it’s enjoyed. The setting has a huge impact (for me, I’m realizing). Easy to experience this while on a trip, kind of like that French croissant in a Paris cafe, a wine in a vineyard in Tuscany or wherever.

Pretty sweet that an inexpensive tea can taste better than a top quality one, all because of setting.

Setting can make a meal with food too: I doubt that I will ever have a better experience eating fish then some fresh grilled trout caught by the anglers in our backpacking group and eaten by the side of it lake with a spectacular setting at 12,000 feet in the Sierras!

[debunix]

and so far my day in tea has been delicious with some grandpa style Orchid Dew green tea from Mauna Kea Tea (shout out to Victoria for introducing me to this delicious tea!).

I also finished off a little bit of some really marvelous non-C sinensis tisane that I made last night after 'caffeine hours':

sliced lemon
candied ginger, sliced
crushed cardamom seed
rosemary
lavender flower
mace
tulsi
sarsaparilla
birch bark
chamomile
korean hydrangea leaf (gamro)

tart-sweet, spicy, complex, balanced

[Noonie]

Thanks @debunix

[DigitalSparks]

In the stillness of this moment, a single cup of tea reflects not just the serenity of the river before me but the quietude within myself. The world flows by, blurred and transient, while this humble vessel holds time itself—clear, unwavering, and alive.

[debunix]

A special morning tea today, the first morning gyokuro prepared in a new Petr Novák kyusu. My beloved Bizen yunomi has finally found a worthy partner.

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