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.