Your day in tea

swordofmytriumph
Posts: 429
Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2018 5:19 am
Location: Seattle, USA

Wed Nov 03, 2021 12:56 am

faj wrote:
Tue Nov 02, 2021 6:08 am
Do you think people were more curious to try it, or less, once they found out?
Hahaha I don't think it changed their opinion of the tea...but they thought I was even more crazy after I explained all the steps required to make it, how people age it, and how the environment its aged in affects the flavor....yeah they moved me from the "weed girl" category to the "I don't even know anymore" category. LOL
User avatar
wave_code
Posts: 575
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:10 pm
Location: Germany

Wed Nov 03, 2021 1:53 pm

debunix wrote:
Tue Nov 02, 2021 10:15 pm
I remember someone who coped with repeatedly being offered yak butter tea, which he did not find to his taste as tea, by telling himself that it was a soup broth. He very much enjoyed the soup broth, as long as he kept thinking, 'soup....soup.....soup.' He was not a regular drinker of tea, FWIW.
This is what I had to do with Norwegian brown cheese. I absolutely hated the stuff at first, wouldn't touch it... and now I love it. I just had to tell myself this isn't 'cheese'- its basically more like a savory fudge or a non-sweet salty caramel.

I've been enjoying changing up brewing styles recently, moving away from more gong-fu parameters and style to something 'slower' - going for a bit lower leaf in slightly bigger pots and much longer brewing times. More dry brewing and just drinking out of a larger soba choko style cup - it feels simpler and more relaxing and this somehow even maybe makes it more focused with less attention going in to action and more in to just sitting with a cup while it cools down a bit. it really brings out something different in each tea, maybe not as strong or intensely as gong fu type brewing but it seems to bring out in a more gentle and pleasant way the storage aspects I enjoy in some teas- especially things with more traditional storage or smokey character. also for teas like 'super' or first grade liu bao unless its very good and older material it brews up this way significantly better anyway.
Andrew S
Posts: 704
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:53 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Wed Nov 03, 2021 8:07 pm

wave_code wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 1:53 pm
I've been enjoying changing up brewing styles recently, moving away from more gong-fu parameters and style to something 'slower' - going for a bit lower leaf in slightly bigger pots and much longer brewing times. More dry brewing and just drinking out of a larger soba choko style cup - it feels simpler and more relaxing and this somehow even maybe makes it more focused with less attention going in to action and more in to just sitting with a cup while it cools down a bit. it really brings out something different in each tea, maybe not as strong or intensely as gong fu type brewing but it seems to bring out in a more gentle and pleasant way the storage aspects I enjoy in some teas- especially things with more traditional storage or smokey character. also for teas like 'super' or first grade liu bao unless its very good and older material it brews up this way significantly better anyway.
My attempt to learn to emulate the Chaozhou gongfu style, as I've posted about a little while ago, has made me think about different brewing methods and why I tend to see the generic gongfu style as my 'default' brewing method.

When people ask us why we brew tea in the gongfu style (I don't mean the specific and concentrated Chaozhou style, but just the generic smaller pot, more leaves, shorter infusions style), I think that we usually say that it can bring out more complexity, more concentration, and simply more good qualities out of our leaves. I think we tend to say that it works well for what we like to drink.

But we all know that lots of leaves in a small pot isn't the best style for every tea, or even for the same tea on different occasions.

I'm guilty of applying the same parameters to different teas, sometimes for consistency, sometimes because I'm lazy and don't feel like experimenting with a new tea that I don't know and don't have much of, and sometimes because I want to test a new tea or push a well-known tea and compare it to how I expect other teas to perform using the same method.

I'm also guilty of instinctively thinking less of a tea that prefers a different style of brewing. If someone says that a particular tea doesn't work well in the gongfu style but works well as leaves-in-a-cup or in the big pot Western style, then I'll instinctively feel that that tea is 'inferior' to a tea that works well in the gongfu style. I feel like I wouldn't want to pay as much for a tea that's best in a non-gongfu style, even if the results that it gives in that style are excellent. Logically, that shouldn't make much sense; it just feels instinctive.

But I think that that all means that I'm guilty of failing to try to adapt my style of brewing to get the very best out of any given tea.

And there seems to me to be a kind of tension between wanting to get the best out of leaves by pushing them hard in a gongfu style, and trying to get the best out of leaves by forgoing gongfu brewing for something that works better for that particular tea.

Perhaps pushing teas hard in the gongfu style is an attempt to try to find the 'best' tea out there and then to try to get the most out of it, whereas using more relaxed brewing methods with a tea is an attempt to get the most pleasure out of what we've already got.

Andrew
User avatar
wave_code
Posts: 575
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:10 pm
Location: Germany

Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:32 am

@Andrew S I think this is a pretty common angle a lot of us have and are trained to think in. If a tea brews gong fu style with lots of changes and flavor variation and goes many rounds = good tea, tea that doesn't = not as good. Granted for a lot of tea this makes sense and holds true, but then again if a tea follows a more traditional processing method that wasn't intended for that, I think we can miss out on a lot too. Just since its what I drink so much of, I feel like this is what I've learned a lot from liu bao- there are those that do great or even best gong fu, there are those that are miserable at it, but if I change the brewing style I can get just as much enjoyment from them if I have them at the right time. Especially when you have teas where older material has a much higher chance of not being of great quality by modern standards anyway. Sometimes I feel like I'm getting more out of modern gong fu because you get the variation or its a way of dissipating less desirable things in the tea just as chaozhou style was for oolong- getting rid of excessive smoke, astringency, or funk in the first brew or two to get to more underlying nuance or sweetness. Yesterday though for example I had some '02 liu an from theTea from a more traditional stored batch, and it was great for longer brewing- the tea is mellowed enough and the storage I find perfect to my taste so in a longer brew it all melds together in a nice way. It is different for sure, but still very nice. I had these HK liu bao tea bags for a while that were nice and strong and kinda musty- it was total junk tea dust in the bag if you opened them and of course you only get one big mug or a thermos, but I still enjoyed them a lot and would choose that tea over many others I've tried that could brew up litres of something I didn't really care for all that much.

My default way of testing hei cha these days seems to be 5g/100ml in a modern nixing pot, 20/40/60 seconds and see if it goes on from there, and depending on how those turn out I know next time what direction to take things in or what pot to use next time. Its also not particularly stressy which is nice too - I do tend to use a pitcher and smaller cup then, though more to get the tea to cool down. For my current lazy brews I'm doing more like 4-5g in 120-130ml and starting at one minute, going for just 3-4 rounds, so I guess almost closer to sencha style brewing? Since you seem to prefer teas with more storage character I'd recommend giving it a go, see how it compares for you. One thing though is rather than creeping in, if a tea has a strong qi and you are drinking a few big cups it does tend to come on pretty quickly.
User avatar
LeoFox
Posts: 1777
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:01 pm
Location: Washington DC

Thu Nov 04, 2021 7:54 am

Just to turn things around a bit, I've found that higher temperature brewing can actually compensate or mask some flaws for sencha. This is my case study:

Brewing yamakai sencha, a cultivar known for strong fruity character and sweetness, but also some bitterness and astringency if pushed harder.

A great harvest at shiga yielded tea with incredibly poweful aroma that was perfectly expressed at 65-75 C with minimal bitterness and astringency. Brewed with higher temp and without drastically cutting down on the amount of leaf, the bitterness becomes unpalatable.



A poor harvest tainted by frost damage from hon yama had only 1/3 of the aroma when brewed the same way. Having brewed it many different ways, I found the milder aroma can only be compensated by brewing it much harder in terms of leaf to water, at the expensive of introducing bitterness- or at much higher temperature - 85-95 C with slightly less leaf, to achieve a brighter and more lively profile that is quite good and surprisingly low in bitterness and astringency.



In short, brewing the hon yama tea harder yielded better results. Brewing the shiga tea harder yielded very bitter results. From a certain gongfu perspective, the hon yama tea should be superior, but to me, the shiga is clearly superior.
User avatar
debunix
Posts: 1812
Joined: Sat Oct 21, 2017 1:27 am
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Sun Nov 07, 2021 10:08 am

Enjoying Obubu Kabuse sencha again today--sadly coming to the end of the package of this lovely tea. And looking forward to some of Tillerman's 2020 LiShan, an overnight infusion because it was still so good I could not compost the leaves at the end of the evening. Mmmm.
User avatar
Victoria
Admin
Posts: 3043
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:33 pm
Location: Santa Monica, CA
Contact:

Sun Nov 07, 2021 10:17 am

debunix wrote:
Sun Nov 07, 2021 10:08 am
Enjoying Obubu Kabuse sencha again today--sadly coming to the end of the package of this lovely tea. And looking forward to some of Tillerman's 2020 LiShan, an overnight infusion because it was still so good I could not compost the leaves at the end of the evening. Mmmm.
Lately I’ve been saving overnight infusions of oolong to chill in glass and then enjoy when on the road. The certain flavors are magnified when chilled, super nice 🍃
User avatar
debunix
Posts: 1812
Joined: Sat Oct 21, 2017 1:27 am
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Mon Nov 08, 2021 10:05 am

One of the wonders of this tea is it ability to taste good at so many different temperatures. I agree that some things come out more strongly in cool drinking, so I nearly always include an additional overnight infusion at the end of any session with this tea, whether it is grandpa style in a cup or in a pot. The primary exception to this is when I need the pot I am using for a session with another tea (I use a particular pot often for both morning sencha and light roasted longs oolongs). It is a big part of the joy of working with these teas.
User avatar
debunix
Posts: 1812
Joined: Sat Oct 21, 2017 1:27 am
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Sun Nov 14, 2021 7:41 pm

It's been a very LA week with weather that started out cool enough that I was sometimes wearing several warm layers on getting up in the morning, and then a mini heat wave that prompted a return to shorts and tank top around the house and even turning on the air conditioning briefly. So it's been a weekend of sparkling tea, with carbonated An Ji Bai Cha, Red Alishan oolong, etc. Hoping it cools off soon so I can go back to hot tea.
User avatar
mbanu
Posts: 962
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 3:45 pm

Mon Nov 15, 2021 3:44 pm

Tossed a flat white tea that couldn't be lively even when brewed gongfu -- frustrating because I'm still a little hazy on the mechanism that allows some white teas to revive after the initial falling off while others go stale like a normal tea. This tea had been crushed by one of the vendors it passed through on its way to me, so the leaves were more broken than usual, maybe that had something to do with it.

Tossed an oolong that had been tainted by too close contact with a traditional-storage pu'er, although I plan to re-order that one as I could tell even underneath the taint that it was a fine tea.

I don't like tossing tea, but drinking tea and not enjoying it wastes the tea and my time, while tossing it just wastes the tea.

On the last bit of Nor Sun pu'er, although that may make it through the winter as I usually drink that kind of pu'er when it is warm out, mostly because when it is cold out black teas become more appealing.

Some nice Golden Monkey from Tea Trekker, but after many years they've decided to retire. Maybe without the business pressure tea can go back to being a source of simple enjoyment for them. :)
User avatar
BriarOcelot
Posts: 43
Joined: Sat Dec 12, 2020 1:42 pm
Location: Montreal

Wed Nov 17, 2021 1:43 pm

@mbanu Hmm - that makes me wonder if I should be throwing more rejected tea on the compost rather than hoping it'll improve. The answer is probably yes and probably a few flat whites on my side too. I never seem to get around to them.

Today I spent a sleepy and cold/damp Montréal morning revisiting the forum and browsing (it's been a while, life has been very hectic for this past year). I've been putting off sorting through and airing out the sheng and shou storage (what is now growing into several large food-grade tubs for sheng alone with humidity and temp controls and all of the associated insanity).

It has to be done though in preparation for several big orders arriving (in the next few months). I'm going to have to find room for a few tongs of sheng, Fu Zhuan and Liu Bao/An baskets as well as the odd random aged cake/brick.

I did a little experiment to wake up some Farmerleaf tea that I suspect may be processed in the 'new way' as it reminds me of oolong, but it was tasting a little flat. The airing out seemed to do the trick.

I tried breaking up a Yongde tuo from YunnanCrafts without converting it into so much tuo-dust, but the compression is no joke. Quite strong and invigorating tea, but a very pleasant taste and a really nice huigan. Surprisingly less bitter than I thought it would be and totally a bargain drinker for those who enjoy the DXS signature scent.

I must distance myself from the internet purchases for a while, as I also just picked up 300g of Yee On's 2001 wild camphor after tasting a sample from a while back. I'll wait for the spring stuff.
User avatar
Bok
Vendor
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:55 am
Location: Taiwan

Fri Dec 24, 2021 9:55 am

To all those concerned - Merry Christmas! To those who aren’t- any day is good to enjoy some nice tea… Cheers!
Attachments
363C4453-5CC6-42A8-B5F7-7002D740122E.jpeg
363C4453-5CC6-42A8-B5F7-7002D740122E.jpeg (190.98 KiB) Viewed 3944 times
User avatar
teanik
Posts: 43
Joined: Sat Jun 26, 2021 5:45 pm
Location: Canada West Coast

Fri Dec 24, 2021 4:11 pm

Bok wrote:
Fri Dec 24, 2021 9:55 am
To all those concerned - Merry Christmas! To those who aren’t- any day is good to enjoy some nice tea… Cheers!
Image
And Merry Christmas to you, too, @Bok.
Andrew S
Posts: 704
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:53 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Sat Dec 25, 2021 3:10 pm

Bok wrote:
Fri Dec 24, 2021 9:55 am
To all those concerned - Merry Christmas! To those who aren’t- any day is good to enjoy some nice tea… Cheers!
Likewise; taking some time to avoid thinking too much by enjoying a dry-stored 80s 7542 down here.

Andrew
Attachments
_MG_9746.jpg
_MG_9746.jpg (136.77 KiB) Viewed 3859 times
User avatar
debunix
Posts: 1812
Joined: Sat Oct 21, 2017 1:27 am
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Sat Jan 01, 2022 9:57 am

Starting the new year in Tea with Obubu Kabuse sencha, from a Cory Lum yunomi. Sweet, warm, vegetal, delicate, hint of an earthy base, a fine way to start the year.
DAEB95C5-9250-4275-AF8A-FEDC7B73D84E.jpeg
DAEB95C5-9250-4275-AF8A-FEDC7B73D84E.jpeg (70.03 KiB) Viewed 3688 times
Almost forgot the most important part of this message: Happy New Year to all!

May the year start for you with something as pleasant to you as this sencha moment, and keep building with uplifting and positive experiences and changes for the better.
Post Reply