Your day in tea

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LeoFox
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Sun Jul 03, 2022 1:04 pm

@Andrew S
Thank you. Your image of the stormy weather is quite vivid!

Ever since my second child was born 2 weeks ago, I've been binging on Taiwanese green oolong (mostly lishan, 10-20g/day) - to keep me energized. Chose this type of tea during this critical period because it is very easy to brew for me- and the pot is very sturdy and simple to use, even for a sleep deprived zombie in the midst of baby bootcamp.

There were in fact a few days when I couldn't drink tea last week when my first daughter brought home a nasty stomach bug...and after that cleared away i still had a low grade fever that only resolved with a session. Made me paranoid that part of the illness was caffeine withdrawal...

Here is lishan today
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Andrew S
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Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:41 pm

Yesterday involved a big pot of TheTea's Winter 2019 charcoal roasted Long Yan Lin, followed by a big pot of Tillerman's traditional oxidation Dong Ding. I suppose that roasted Taiwanese wulong is my style of easy-brewing comfort teas (as well as old tea, of course). I should probably have swapped the order of those two around, but they were nice and friendly teas nonetheless.

Today has involved the same slightly-aged yancha as before, but with a very different presentation in a different brewing style and a different little pot, and now some debilitating yancha in the form of EoT's Zhang Hui Chun 'cong xian'.

The lorikeets are still getting buffeted about, and the wind is still howling and whistling, with the occasional intense downpour of rain, but I feel less bothered about it thanks to the tea.

Andrew
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Ethan Kurland
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Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:18 am

Andrew S wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:41 pm
... and now some debilitating yancha....
"debilitating yancha" Does it knock you out? Make you so relaxed you just sit in a chair? :)
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debunix
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Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:24 am

I can’t ever remember being debilitated by tea….but I do find sipping Taiwanese oolong’s grandpa style very relaxing, keeping hot and cool water nearby to adjust concentration and temperature for comfortable drinking: if I take a long pause and it gets a bit too concentrated, more cool water to dilute (without encouraging so much more from the leaves), then more hot to get them to release more flavor, or warm me up when I get a momentary chill.

Yesterday I finished the last of Tillerman’s 2021 Wenshan Bao Zhong, a lovely rich and fragrant oolong, and opened up the pouch of Floating Leaves Tea’s 2022 spring Alishan. I was so eager to try the new offering from FLT, but the Tillerman was much too fine to rush through. Grandpa style just works so much better with the more intact Alishan leaves, many still connected by by stems, since the fewer larger leaves are more easily avoided while drinking.
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Add in the loveliness of Petr’s Flower of Forgetfulness, a few interruptions by cats seeking snuggles,
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and I feel a calm that helps with contemplating what is going to be a long and difficult day.
Ethan Kurland
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Tue Jul 05, 2022 12:39 pm

debunix wrote:
Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:24 am


...Yesterday I finished the last of Tillerman’s 2021 Wenshan Bao Zhong, a lovely rich and fragrant oolong,...

...and I feel a calm that helps with contemplating what is going to be a long and difficult day.
debunix, Thanks for such a vivid description of how well a relaxing tea session can help one face the challenges of a day, even when the preparation is the less exact, grandpa style. I love how cities in Taiwan have water stations at temples, bus stations, & train stations for anyone to fill a bottle, thermos, etc. w/ hot or cold water. One can easily go about his day & enjoy tea grandpa style. I spent 5 or 10 minutes 2 or 3 times relaxing on a bench, sipping cheap dong ding that I was lucky to find worked well for my roaming around w/ tea leaves in a glass bottle.

Words don't just come to mind easily the last few years for me; so, I liked reading "rich and fragrant" when you described Tillerman's Bao Zhong. I somehow associate sweetness w/ rich and fragrant & don't use the words. I will say "sweet". If a tea is rich & fragrant w/o being sweet, I won't mention it usually or just say "great aroma".

The tea I call Perfect that I drink often is a Shanlinxi grown at about 1600m high. So, it is a high-mountain tea but perhaps being grown not near the peak, allows Perfect to be very much like very good Bao Zhong for the first infusion. Subsequent infusions are what one expects of high mountain gaoshan, not so "sweet" which is the word I used. Your account of having hot & cold water handy for various purposes reminds us that 1 tea can seem like 2 or even more teas on its own w/o or w/ adjustments we make. Thanks, debunix.

To return to Andew's use of the word, debilitating. We might be debilitated relatively speaking. I would bet that often we delay doing things after a great tea session. We sit for a while relaxing. Andrew, it is a great word.
Andrew S
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Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:59 pm

Ethan Kurland wrote:
Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:18 am
Andrew S wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:41 pm
... and now some debilitating yancha....
"debilitating yancha" Does it knock you out? Make you so relaxed you just sit in a chair? :)
Indeed, this was one of those teas that knocked me into a relaxed state (and knocked me back into the chair) for a little while... It can be nice to be overwhelmed by a tea every now and then. Within limits.

I've gravitated towards old teas and yancha both because they're most suitable to my constitution but also because the good ones can render me debilitated, in a relaxing sort of way. Some teas persuade me into a calm frame of mind. Some combine that calmness with a kind of alertness or focus. Some detach me from the rest of the world for a little while and make me stare out of the window. Others force relaxation upon me whether I want it or not (and it can be important to know when to drink, and when not to drink, those kinds of powerful teas).

I appreciate that many people don't focus or care much on those aspects of tea (which makes me a bit self-conscious mentioning them), and I'm not sure how I came to focus upon them. It may well have been the simple act of drinking some very nice old teas early on in my tea adventures, when they were a little bit more affordable. Feeding some of those powerful teas to my friends over the years (who are neither into tea, not into 'qi') was also an interesting experience. What I observed of them reinforced to me that these feelings were real, not juts imagined by me to justify the price of some of these teas, but I also soon came to appreciate that not everybody enjoys the sensation of being forced into relaxation against their will by a strange mouldy old tea...

I suppose that the corollary of all that, in a sense, is that I have not paid much attention to aromas and flavours, but reading about other people's thoughts and experiences on this forum has certainly encouraged me to think more about such things, which is a good thing. And I am sure that there are plenty of teas other than old tea and yancha that can provide such feelings, as I am slowly learning.

Today was my first dancong in perhaps a decade, perhaps a bit longer. I had been put off of dancong during my early experimentative years by how green, bitter, astringent, harsh, and one-dimensional they seemed to be, but that was probably due to my trying some poor examples and drawing the wrong inferences from my very limited experience.

Today's one tasted pure, fresh, with a deep but subtle honeyed quality, nothing like the over-the-top character of the ones I recall trying all those years ago. This one indeed had an astringency, and a young raw green quality to the flavour and mouthfeel that reminded me of young raw puer, but the tea nevertheless felt comfortable, and the astringency served to coat the mouth with texture and flavour, rather than simply to hurt me.

I need to play further before I draw any conclusions, or even any particularly useful thoughts. I felt that the beautiful long leaves called for a wide pot, but next time, I'll play with my Chaozhou pot and see what it can do.

Andrew
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debunix
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Thu Jul 21, 2022 11:45 pm

I'm enjoying a lovely sparkling tea session with chilled Alishan Black tea, and contemplating a first order from FarmerLeaf tea that includes some wonderfully scented teas but it's still too warm to brew up any of them. Sigh!
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LeoFox
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Wed Jul 27, 2022 9:20 am

Enjoying some zairai sencha
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debunix
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Sun Jul 31, 2022 12:13 pm

Yesterday, cool infused Alishan mountain oolong atop Mt Pinos in the San Emigdio Mountains, Ventura County, CA. Lovely tea seasons with altitude, thirst, and a well-earned view.
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Pants404
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Location: Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Thu Aug 11, 2022 9:44 am

Today a new to me Sou Yamada aoyu teapot finally arrived.
I am running a few different teas through it to see how it goes. So far an average Yunnan black and an aged white.
I don't know how frowned upon it is to use Japanese pots for Chinese teas, but hopefully there is some general acceptance.
Please enjoy an average picture. Hopefully I will get around to taking some decent shots of it.
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debunix
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Thu Aug 11, 2022 2:02 pm

Certainly no Frownies from me. I am happy to use pots from anywhere for tea from anywhere, if the pot and the tea are well matched for size, density, and past use (if unglazed inside).
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Pants404
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Thu Aug 11, 2022 4:40 pm

This little guy is 'relatively' thin walled, maybe closer to medium, depending what it's compared to. At around 85ml it's the perfect size for me with black and white teas. So far it's just a little bit muting. Most high notes are present at first but make way for the warmer mid flavours and the body is amazing. I'm looking forwards to seeing how it goes after a bit more use
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debunix
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Thu Aug 11, 2022 7:01 pm

I haven’t really tried to figure out how my Yamada Sou pot mutes the green teas that are mostly what I drink from it. I’ll have to have some sencha from it tomorrow morning and check it out.
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Pants404
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Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:35 pm

Being a clean pot I'm expecting it to take a few sessions to warm up, providing this white clay acts similarly to shudei and Chinese clays. I'm actually not entirely sure what this clay is..
If I didn't have a cold coming on this morning I would be putting a couple more sessions through it today. Whisky will have to get me through until I feel better
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mbanu
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Fri Aug 19, 2022 4:49 am

I was reading a short book by Dolly Yates called Tales from the Teapot that mentioned off-hand a style of tea from her childhood I had never read about before -- coal-miner's tea:
Dolly Yates wrote:I have in my mind an indelible picture of a miner walking down the street on his way to begin his shift down the coal mine. This was in the days before pits were equipped with showers, so miners went to work in the clothes they would wear underground. Around his waist was a belt. Strung on the belt were his snap tin and his "dudley". The snap tin was so shaped that it would be impossible for a rat to prize it open and consume the miner's lunch of the traditional jam and bread. The "dudley", or you may be more familiar with the word "canteen", was filled with, yes, you have already guessed, cold tea. This very simple and basic fare of tea and bread and jam was proved to be most practical and suitable in such working conditions.

So we see our miner with canteen and snap tin flapping from his belt, getting closer to the pit head. I wonder what his thoughts are as he leaves the sunlight to be lowered deep into the mine and crawls on hands and knees to his place of toil. Let's try to take a glimpse of our miner in our mind's eye, as he takes time out for his "snap". Often times he would be quite alone, his only light being that of his carbon lamp, which would be strapped around his forehead. By now he will have discarded all his clothes apart from his pit "hockers", in other words, baggy shorts.

Hopefully he will be able to locate the spot where he deposited his lunch, knowing that it was impossible for rats to break into his snap tin. Probably he would reach for his "dudley" first and take a really long drink. Oh, what rapture! No place to wash hands or take a walk, just crouched there in the darkness with only the flickering light from his helmet, which on occasion would reveal the eyes of a waiting rat, hoping to snatch the smallest crumb which could fall.

After the bread and jam our miner would once again reach for his canteen of tea. It was so cold, maybe have some sugar in it, but oh, how refreshing. Over time there must have been gallons of tea drunk down the mines and every drink a drink to be remembered. I'm sure if our miner had the choice of taking tea down the mine or taking tea at Buckingham Palace he would choose the latter. On the other hand, if you asked him which he needed the most, obviously the answer would be when he was deep in the bowels of the earth.
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