I don’t generally review a tea more than once. But the circumstances around this latest brew of one of my favorite Laoshan greens compelled me.
You can read my previous review of this tea to get a sense of how I steep it, as not much has changed. I still use a 2 part glass tea infuser with small slits in the inner glass brewing chamber, the only difference is I decanted into my Finum double wall cup. It’s just the perfect size for me. Somewhere along the line I transitioned from drinking tea like it was trucker coffee in 16+oz cups to going smaller and more refined. I do however still go down and dirty at work with a portable jar system, like the guys I saw on the train in China on a visit years ago. There’s something to the 1/2 day steep. I rarely will do that with my more temperamental teas, otherwise I feel like I’m throwing them away. Speaking of throwing them away. This is why I felt I needed to post today:
So I had a good solid nights sleep, woke to some of my Teavivre Organic Longjing and then went about my day. A few steepings of that tight Dragonwell, carried me through to the afternoon/early evening, when I was inspired to enjoy something different. Having slept so well, I wanted to take care with caffeine content late in the day. I didn’t t want to go into the week unrested. So I’m looking at my teas, and thinking maybe a black on a cooler evening… or maybe I’ll pull out a sample and give it a shot; all too caffeine unpredictable. I briefly consider an oolong, but then think maybe this Autumn Harvest Laoshan from last year would be nice. Kinda vegetal for a cool winter evening, but what the heck.
I’ve got it in a nice double-lidded tin that really seems to keep it fresh. I pop the lids and find to my dismay there’s really not much left, maybe 1/2 a cup of leaves. Tea’s meant for drinking though, right? So I consider my brewing options and decide to go with what I know works.
I grab a spoon to measure out a couple teaspoons. Somewhere between taking it out of the container and transferring to my brewing system I catch an edge, and a heaping teaspoon of my precious Laoshan Green gets dumped on the floor. And this is where I contemplate, “I can save this.”
Mind you I’d spent a good part of the day noticing how filthy my floor was, how the fur balls from my cats were rolling around the joint like tumbleweeds. I’d thought to myself, we really need to clean this place. With our work schedule, my wife and I had spoiled ourselves with occasional visits from a cleaning service. I was thinking, A) We both needed to clean up ourselves more (I never once judged my wife) or B) Occasional visits by our cleaning service needed to be more frequent.
But there I was looking down at a filthy kitchen floor, partially covered with dirty laundry piled neatly according to color & fabric type, wondering how much of this tea could be salvaged. It would take much longer than 3 seconds. I could possibly sift some of the dirty bath towels into the sink and get some fairly reasonable leaf, but the floor, not so much. Between the crumbs, dust and cat hair, not to mention whatever I couldn’t see, I had to accept this was a loss.
That’s the kind of tea this is. The kind of tea you’ll consider steeping off the floor. Need I say more?
