What Oolong Are You Drinking

[CWarren]

1988 Aged Ginseng Oolong from Totem Tea. Sweet, earthy and medicinal with serious huigan. Some good feels after too.

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[lac63]

Here's a pic from some time ago that I had not posted - an aged oolong from some friends in Taiwan. It is very mild and very comfortable, and makes me remember their brewing style

Hi Steanze,
Incredible set!
I've been looking for a "Teapot Tray"
but I can not find, if it is not indiscreet on my part
Can you tell me where I meet you?

The teapot that shows is aesthetically incredible

Congratulations on your set

Lluis Abad

[tealifehk]

Drinking a charcoal roasted tieguanyin from the last outfit in HK that still uses charcoal! This is their top grade. I tried their dahongpao and shuixian over the last few days and found it disappointing; I now think it may have been that the little 40ml pot I was using didn't allow me to load enough leaf because the leaves were touching the sides of the pot when dry. I'll have to give them another shot with a larger pot! The TGY has both stone fruit and berry flavors, along with spearmint. There is a little roast flavor (buttered popcorn) but it is very subtle.

[Bok]

Hi Steanze,
Incredible set!
I've been looking for a "Teapot Tray"

Looks like it is from Lin’s ceramics. But they change collections frequently. You should be able to find very similar ones on Taobao.

[lac63]

Hi Steanze,
Incredible set!
I've been looking for a "Teapot Tray"

Looks like it is from Lin’s ceramics. But they change collections frequently. You should be able to find very similar ones on Taobao.

thanks, Bok for
your help;
for my part I have found:
https://es.aliexpress.com/store/product ... 59c93f1a7a
I have never bought on Aliexpress,
I have no experience or opinion

Lluis Abad

[Brent D]

Ive been resisting posting here because I dont want all my posts to be about HY Chen, but im having some Alishan I got from him, and for the price (his least expensive tea) its really incredible. Excellent, creamy high mountain goodness. Ended up making it last longer with some extreme steeping times.

[steanze]

Hi Steanze,
Incredible set!
I've been looking for a "Teapot Tray"

Looks like it is from Lin’s ceramics. But they change collections frequently. You should be able to find very similar ones on Taobao.

this one was made by Xu Dejia, a potter in Yingge. They used to have some of his wares at Houde and Red Blossom, but I think mostly cup and some pots. I got this one in Taiwan at his studio...

[lac63]

Hi Steanze,
Incredible set!
I've been looking for a "Teapot Tray"

Looks like it is from Lin’s ceramics. But they change collections frequently. You should be able to find very similar ones on Taobao.

this one was made by Xu Dejia, a potter in Yingge. They used to have some of his wares at Houde and Red Blossom, but I think mostly cup and some pots. I got this one in Taiwan at his studio...

Many thanks to all for your
contributions.

Cheers


Lluis Abad

[Victoria]

Lac63 I'm sure you can find beautiful ceramic bowls in Spain from local contemporary potters. The bowl below is from a local potter.

After a couple of days using subpar oolong teabags while traveling (hopefully not to be repeated), I'm now back home enjoying HY Chen's Charcoal Medium Roasted 100 year garden followed by his LiShan Primitive Wild Forest oolong. Wow, I forgot how buttery smooth this Wild LiShan is, plus it's like walking through an evergreen forest with a sweet lingering palate. The dry rolled leaves are a beautiful forest green. Steeped in Hokujo 180ml kaolin chip kyusu.

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[lac63]

Lac63 I'm sure you can find beautiful ceramic bowls in Spain from local contemporary potters. The bowl below is from a local potter.

After a couple of days using subpar oolong teabags while traveling (hopefully not to be repeated), I'm now back home enjoying HY Chen's Charcoal Medium Roasted 100 year garden followed by his LiShan Primitive Wild Forest oolong. Wow, I forgot how buttery smooth this Wild LiShan is, plus it's like walking through an evergreen forest with a sweet lingering palate. The dry rolled leaves are a beautiful forest green. Steeped in Hokujo 180ml kaolin chip kyusu.


IMG_8447_sm.jpg
IMG_8437_sm.jpg

healthy envy gives me to contemplate
that postcard and not being able to try
those feelings of which you speak;

for my part i'm with a sample
from

Tetere in Barcelona

:
Da Hong Pao harvested and processed in the

Wuyi

area. Dry sweet aroma, enveloping, delicate with notes to apricot. Infusion light brown, orange, clear and transparent with less floral notes, giving way to more mineral notes and wood. Enveloping in the mouth and slight astringency on the sides of the mouth. Allows several infusions.

cheers

Lluis Abad

[debunix]

One disappointment of this trip to Japan: my hotel specifically listed 'tea set' as a feature of my room. So against my better judgement, I did not bring my usual travel Kamjove tea infuser. The tea set consists of one electric kettle (temperature setting unknown; the directions refer to boiling but the sound of the water just before the auto shutoff suggests that it never gets to a boil); two small ceramic yunomi on a lacquer tray with two plastic tubes of matcha to add to your cups and mix with the hot water.

I'm so glad I brought along my sturdy travel dish set: two bowls, two plates, and two mugs. I am brewing up the oolong I brought (where the temperature of infusion is far less critical) by putting tea leaves in one mug, adding hot water, and pouring the infused tea into the other mug, while trying to spill as little as possible. I haven't seen any shops with very small and inexpensive teapots to take up the slack, so I haven't opened a single package of my lovely sencha, gyokuro, kukicha, matcha, or the black tea (I've already forgotten the name for it in Japanese) that are fresh from the farm. Sigh.

So it is SeaDyke Ti Kuan Yin hot this morning, and while out and about today, my water bottle is filled with Red Alishan Oolong from Norbu, the most flexible and delicious tea that I've ever had: it is brilliant hot, through many gongfu-style infusions; is wonderful with my usual hot-start technique, where I put a bit of hot water over the leaves in my water bottle, let it sit to open up for 5 minutes or so, and then fill the bottle with cold water for a day on the go. And that is alternating with some Li Shan that I think was from Mountain Tea, the Taiwanese shop (farm?) that was featured in a TeaChat tasting buy a few years back. It was vacuum packed so still quite fresh and tasty.

But....not sencha, gyokuro, or matcha, sigh.

[CWarren]

Aged Da Hong Pao Brick from ChaCeremony. This one piece of the larger brick is about 11g.

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Sweet dried fruit, bamboo and leather with more mineral notes and deeper color as it continued. Well over ten infusions.

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[Victoria]

@debunix nice to see you posting here, welcome. I sympathize with your tea ware predicament; I also will make sure to travel from now on with needed tea ware and tea, plus a thermos. On my last short trip I thought I really wouldn't have time to focus on tea, so grabbed a bunch of oolong teabags....uhhhh
If it's the same Mountain Tea they have headquarters here in southern Los Angeles.

@CWarren that brick looks beautiful. Looks like you needed an XL cup to fit it inside. How long did it take to break up?

Opened up a 2012 Origin Tea HK High Fire TGY. Steeped in an early 90s, 85ml Yixing Qing Shui Ni ShuiPing, also from Tony at Origin. It has a rich thick aroma and palate, with a spectrum of malty, chocolate, camphor, forest floor notes with intersperced wild flower accents.

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[Bok]

One disappointment of this trip to Japan: my hotel specifically listed 'tea set' as a feature of my room. So against my better judgement, I did not bring my usual travel Kamjove tea infuser. The tea set consists of one electric kettle (temperature setting unknown; the directions refer to boiling but the sound of the water just before the auto shutoff suggests that it never gets to a boil); two small ceramic yunomi on a lacquer tray with two plastic tubes of matcha to add to your cups and mix with the hot water.

I might have gotten lucky. When I went to Kyoto years ago, they had such a nice teaware set in the room that I promptly purchased one! Not from the Hotel shop, but I found it by chance in the pottery shop area. Have not been using it much since, as it does not work well for hotly brewed teas from Taiwan, gets impossible to handle… Another topic entirely, but I have frequently found that a lot of japanese glazes have a not so good influence on the taste of the teas I brew.

[CWarren]

@CWarren that brick looks beautiful. Looks like you needed an XL cup to fit it inside. How long did it take to break up?

The piece is part of a larger bar. Each piece breaks off very easily much like a Hershey’s chocolate bar. I didn’t have to break up this piece as I placed the entire 11g piece in a 120cc pot then poured directly into the 150ml Novák cup. It took a 20s rinse/wash, 20s steam and another 30s rinse/wash to open up then it was all good from there. Well over a dozen infusions too. I don’t drink dhp often as they are hit and miss for me but I enjoyed this one.