pimli

There are teas so impressive you want to show them off to your friends. But in every tea pantry there’s a baggie of tea that you wouldn’t recommend to other people, but to keep for yourself for those times that all you want is a no-fuss brew and a hot cup at 11 o’ clock, to get yourself ready for lunch. This kind of tea is the latter.

This Tie Guan Yin was a gift from a friend who had worked in Shanghai. It came in a nice flattened cylinder / oval tin, with an image of a goddess/deity (3 guesses who that might be) over a blue green background.

Brewed Western style, thin layer of pellets just enough to cover the bottom of the gaiwan in a single thing layer. Quick rinse, 5s. (In hindsight maybe I shouldn’t have? But rinsing tea is becoming a habit for me now, what with paranoia over pesticides.) Let it sit in the warm gaiwan for half a minute. Then steeped a couple of minutes.

No remarkable smell (there was the Chinese green smell, but I was too lazy to liken it to something poetic. I thought I caught a faint whiff of brownies, or cocoa, but nothing as strong as what I’d get from my Taiwan oolongs). Tea liquid was a pale chartreuse. After the leaves unfurled, there were many whole leaves, but also a few broken pieces. I hate seeing tea bits (torn off leaf portions as large as baby nails). They make me think that it’s not a very good tea.

Taste is as bland as I expected.

Having this again, for my 9 o’ clock cup. It’s really not bad, and hard to mess up the brewing.

This was part of my “Fit the Day Selection” box, with four different teas to drink over a period of 6 days. I love the concept of being recommended a certain tea suited to a certain time of day, almost like a tea vitamin. :) It also came with a little booklet with a yoga pose for the day (except Sunday), but, yeeeeah… That isn’t going to happen.

This is the second tea for the day:
“Ginger Lemon – A delicious and warming blend of ginger (43%), lemon (6%) and hibiscus. A great tea that creates a feeling of lightness and helps refocus our energies after lunch.”

So it’s ginger. Nothing fancy. It has some kind of sweetener in it, but it’s not as sweet as some powdered ginger brew mixes I’ve tried, so that’s a good thing. But can’t taste the lemon at all.

This tea was given to me as a gift, purchased at an airport in Chongqing.

I really should have read this before brewing: http://half-dipper.blogspot.com/2007/07/2007-xinyang-maojian.html. Could have saved me a spoiled cup.

Here is my inept brewing procedure nonetheless:

My tea came in little 4 gram packets, and I used only half (about a level teaspoon)in my usual gaiwan (120mL). I added just boiled water to a cold gaiwan to fill just about half, swirled it around and let it stand for half a minute, then tossed in the leaves. Then I topped it off with warm water from the dispenser. It probably came up to 90°C. Too high, I know, but I was impatient.

The first brew wasn’t so extraordinary (because, oh, I don’t know, I might have overcooked the leaves! ಠ_ಠ). I think I should have done a rinse. This batch was unremarkable, like a bi luo chun without the smell, or a low grade long jing. Disappoint.

Then the second batch I used lower temperature water (80°C), brewed at about a minute. I was surprised at how strong the flavor was! It was a bit sour (but not strong or unpleasant), a little citrusy, and scratchy on the throat. The tea had little particles that made the soup cloudy. The condensation on the lid of the gaiwan smelled like hay, hence the long jing association.

Third batch, lower temperature water. The color of the tea was a very pale yellow, but there was still some flavor. Scratchy on the throat, and dare I say, salty (??!) It was like a salty broth.

This is my almost-daily morning sencha. It’s not artisan sencha by any means, but I like how it’s easily available from the Asian aisle in my supermarket, and it’s cheap enough to buy regularly. The taste is decent, though a little strong on the seaweed, but I like the calm buzz it gives me in the morning.

Got a good cup out of this at last. It’s been a month since I first bought this tea, and it’s finally acclimatized to my surroundings. Either that, or I was using off-boiling water, when I should have been preparing this like the lighter oolong that it is.

Leaves to loosely fill up 1/4 of my gaiwan, with water that was boiled and left to stand for a few minutes. Quick 7 second rinse, also to warm the cup. (I don’t usually rinse but the tea shop looked a bit dingy. More on that later.)

First steep about 2 minutes. Wonderful, buttery, sweet. Second steep 2 minutes: Whoops, I oversteeped. Too astringent. Faint insecticide aftertaste. Will bump down to a minute and a half next time. 3rd steep: blah. Worn out by my inept 2nd steep.

For a cheap tea (about 200 NTD for 50 grams), I didn’t expect much, which made it a pleasant surprise to find it was decent. Makes me hungry though.

About the shop:

We found this shop just across Ten Ren, in the Ximending area. It had a forgotten-place kind of atmosphere, with a waxed stone floor and poor lighting, and I wouldn’t have gone in had I not been lured by the yixing teapots displayed in the window. Inside there was no air-conditioning, just an electric fan in the corner, in front of which sat an old lady (in her 50s?). Along one side of the shop, there was a flight of stairs leading to the second floor, and I thought maybe she lived there. We had to call out a few times before she heard us and wobbled over. One wall of the shop had large shelves with large (maybe as tall as my fingertip to my elbow length) metal canisters (the word “industrial” comes to mind) of tea.

I’d already purchased Dong Ding from Ten Ren, and had already gotten a few baggies of Alishan tea from, well, Alishan, so the only Taiwan tea left on my list was Baozhong. Ten Ren had some but only sold it in large quantities, which I couldn’t possibly consume in a year. So anyway, I saw she had some pouchong, and I got some, and added I think just 20 NTD more to get a nice cardboard canister to put it in.

I wanted to see her teapots, and to my embarrassment, as apparently those were the only pieces in stock, she creaked up to the window, opened the panel behind it, and climbed in. So here was this grandmother picking her out across tea trays in the store window, and there I was outside the shop pointing at the teapot I wanted, which was an adorable red clay shi piao, that looked to be about 100mL in capacity.

But when I got the pot, I wasn’t so happy with it for some reason, I think it was that the lid didn’t fit as nicely, or just a general meh feeling about it. I know it’s silly but most of my pots, when I see them, there’s that almost swooning moment, and know in my gut that “This is the one!” So I handed it back, just telling myself with its thick walls it might be better for puerh, which I didn’t drink much of, if at all, anyway.

I asked if I could look at the other pot. I had several shui ping pots already, so I passed over those. There was another xi shi one, but somehow it didn’t appeal to me (the spout seemed too long, and it wasn’t, um, the perfect breast shape. Gorgeous xi shi pots I’ve seen elsewhere made me ache to hold them. I’m not a lesbian, but there you go). So what was left was a pear-shaped pot in purple clay, which I got.

It’s a $20 pot and I don’t expect it to do miracles, but I’m happy with my purchase. I know there are cheaper pots, but with the shipping, they’d cost almost as much. Or so I rationalize.

So my Taiwan tea check list was done, and I got a pot, too. Oh, and also from Ten Ren, I got three small gaiwan at only 200NTD each! What was important was that they were about 60mL, which I couldn’t find online in a design I fancied. There were three colors available: red, black and white. I couldn’t decide on one, so I just bought all three.

Sorry for the length, and that’s the end of my tea-shopping story in Taiwan.

Hmm, I’d somehow missed out on the fact that this was an oolong, so all the while drinking it I thought it was a flavored black tea.:P Great breakfast tea (and then later again, for 3 o’ clock). It smelled wooonderful while brewing. Very nutty and smoky and caramelly sweet. I can see how this might be great served iced, with sugar. I didn’t add sugar to this cup today. After the first sip, there was a bit of an aftertaste that registered as “artificial”. And I don’t recall any of that “hui gan”/“hui tian” that I love in oolong. But as long as I think of it as a black tea instead, it’s all good. When I had another batch again for afternoon tea time, it complemented a few butter cookies nicely.

Also: quite cheap! I got this for QAR25/100grams. (around 7 USD) I spent four times that amount on a Formosa oolong from TeaGeschwender. So this is a nice one-step-up from the usual daily Lipton.

I tried to go for a second steeping with the same leaves. It still smelled nice, and some of the flavor was still there but very weak, so this oolong is probably best brewed once, Western style.

I was sucked in by the eloquent write-up, which made my mouth water at the descriptions of this tea being slightly sweet and tender, etc. But you know what, it actually tastes like what it says: bamboo. If you’d like to drink something that tastes like bamboo-soaked water, then this is it. I wasn’t able to finish my large packet of this though, because I don’t like drinking bamboo water. However the leaves are lovely to play with/look very pretty swirling around in a clear glass gaiwan, so points for visual effect.

Oh no, I’m almost out! I may have not used enough leaf for this session, in an effort to stretch out my remaining stash, but steeping in my little yixing for about a minute yielded a brew that was light yellow and slightly fragrant. But it was the mouthfeel that was truly lovely. I took the first sip and the flavor seemed less than extraordinary, and was about to put my cup down, worried that maybe my stash was already too old, or that I’d underbrewed. But when the tea rolled around in my mouth I was taken aback at how silky it was! So I had to take a second sip and then another, and soon I was on my 2nd brew. Good stuff. Baozhong (along with Alishan) is definitely one of my staple teas now.

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! :)

Sudden urge for Dong Ding today. Since I usually have bad luck brewing this tea I decided to give it a shot today, but just for fun, with bowl brewing method (http://floatingleavestea.blogspot.com/2010/01/2009-winter-dong-ding.html).

I have to say it’s much more yummy to me! And in the course of my feeble attempts at tea descriptions on this site, I’ve come to realize that for me this means a tea is ‘grainy’ or ‘malty’. With this tea, usually with gaiwan or yixing brewing there was always that roasted floral note that (though probably the winning characteristic of dong ding, for many) was not to my taste. Now, brewing just a scant teaspoon of the leaves in my small cereal bowl, with a lowerish temperature of water (175 to 180), at around a minute and a half (so I guess these are more Western parameters), there was less of the smokiness and dizzying floral. Usually I push the brewing time to get a stronger cup (is how I thought I liked it) but today I erred on the weaker side and though at first I thought it was bland, (but with good mouthfeel, grippy but not too astringent) the hui tian is now pleasing me to no end.

So quite happy with this experiment, and I think I’ll brew my remaining stock of Dong Ding this way. Hope you had a lucky tea day today as well.

I’ve had my sample for months and only now felt brave enough to try brewing it hot. (I tried the cold-brewing method first, without much success, must have been the ice I used.)

Looking for guidance from TeaChat, O-cha (http://www.o-cha.com/brewing-gyokuro.htm) and this post (http://meandmytea.blogspot.com/2008/04/gyokuro-brewing.html), I settled on 2g of leaf per oz of water. I used a heaping tablespoon which turned out to be 6.10 grams, then used ~100mL water. I started with 140F for my first batch.

First impression: Wow. Like matcha, only smokier.

The first batch I used only about 90ml, and it was too concentrated that I had to add a bit more water. It then mellowed down to a considerably more enjoyable cup. In fact, downright tasty I was smacking my lips. As I’m writing this now suddenly I can taste a sweet powdery taste emerging at the back of my tongue.

The succeeding batches, I upped the temperature of water a bit to 150, then 155, and used more water, about 110-120mL, infusion times between 60-90 seconds.

I’ve seen instructions (http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/wa_style/sub_contents/101/gyokuro.html) to use even lower temperatures (104 to 122F, or 40 to 50C), steeped for two minutes. Since I still have a lot of my sample, I will give that a try soon, but maybe not today, because damn this stuff is already going to my head, like espresso, and I think I better lie down. :P

Having White Monkey along with my toast slathered with cinnamon and honey. Good stuff, but darn if I can tell White Monkey and Xue Ya Ballad apart. :/ Short of conducting a side by side test, the two are just interchangeable in my mind. In fact, in the morning when I want my daily green, sometimes I just open both tins and level them out and see which one has more leaves, then I get two pinches from that one to balance the other out. Maybe I just want to be fair to both, I don’t know. It once occurred to me, why not just mix the two to get a Snow Monkey blend of sorts, but then the purist I never knew I had in me became horrified at the thought. Oh well. Back to alternating consumption then.:p

I’m just thankful pi luo chun is a little more remarkable. It’s probably standing there next to the tin of Genmaicha and Gyokuro, feeling relieved it has that fragrance to set it slightly apart.

I was looking for a tea to break in my new gaiwan with, and was rummaging in my stash and found half a sample of this still left from, er, a month ago. But hey, it was still in the foil pack, rolled down on itself and clipped with a small wooden peg, and inside my Lock & Lock, so it still had to be okay, right? (It was!)

A quick note on the gaiwan: I already have, uh, three, but was considering buying a “cheap” one from ebay, those $3 ones (EXCLUDING shipping) to knock around. Last night I was at the home section in Landmark and saw— I could not believe it!— gaiwans! ON SALE! For something like (converted) $0.66! Of course, one doesn’t expect master craftsmanship at this point, so I examined each carefully from all angles and picked out one that looked alright. It took, I dunno, 20 minutes. Haha. So while I was at it, a woman who was passing by, probably piqued by the intensity of my selection process, paused by the display and picked one up.

“What are these for?” says she, lifting up the lid and squinting into the cup. “Are these sugar bowls?”

“Uh. Well…” How to explain. But then I brightened up at the thought of sharing with a random person the joys of a gaiwan. “They’re for tea! You put loose leaf tea in them, you see, and…” I demonstrated pouring it out and pointed how the imaginary leaves would get stuck…

She ‘hunh’-ed. Blinked. Then went away.

So much for spreading the tea gospel.

But: back to the Long Feng Xia. I can see why this is a favorite among the Feng Fu samples. I shook out only a bit of the leaves for a session of western brewing, probably not even half a teaspoon. But the leaves expanded to fill half the gaiwan. Pleased to find one leaf that seemed particularly large, about two inches long, and an inch across at the widest point. There’s something about finding large leaves that makes me want to pound my chest in a (confused, anachronistic) cavemanly fashion, and proclaim: “Yarrrrh! Yea, I am drinking TEA! From the LEAF. Take that, bitches!” (My caveman needs to watch less television.)

Now turns out the gaiwan is crap at pouring (is what I will maintain. yes.), but it brewed the tea up pretty well. The lid smell is amazing! The first whiff is floral, but let it air out for a bit, then breathe in deeper. I swear it was like… omg butterscotch brownies. Like the ones I buy from our cafeteria, that look dubious but still taste great, even after getting tossed around in my school bag. Sniffing deeply now at the lid of my gaiwan, I can imagine the crackled crunchy crust… the yummy, buttery grease oiling patterns on the wax paper… a hint of nuts sprinkled on top, perhaps… biting into that crunchy, crackley chewy goodness and just…. NOM.

Damn I want one now. But tea, yes. We were talking about tea. The tea liquor is light golden yellow, with a somewhat lemony aftertaste on the tongue, but still that lovely sweet oolong taste at the back of my tongue/in the throat. Mmm. Good stuff.

Oh and my pouring skills improved with the second brew, with minimal spillage on my trusty super-absorbent tea cloth. So here’s to an enjoyable tea session with cheap tea ware, good tea (might have to repurchase that Long Feng Xia. hmm) and drinking mid-morning oolong out of a pair of shot glasses*. Cheers!

*It’s almost been a month since I moved to the new apartment, but tea cups are still at home. ^^; Housewarming presents, anyone?

Annoying P.S.:
And while I was sitting back waiting for my third round to brew and sighing happily and thinking to myself self-satisfied thoughts like “Aaaahhh” and “Man, that’s good tea” and “I pledge allegiance to the teas of Formosa”… (what, does no one else do this?) I suddenly remembered that the boyfriend will be going on a trip to Taiwan next week! I wonder what I shall ask him to bring back for me. :D :D

Months later, am still congratulating myself on my incredible foresight, giving tea pots and tea cups as gifts to my closest friends. heh-heh. pats back To be honest, the tea itself is alright but not spectacular. A good everyday green. But I had the best session of this tea today with a friend, after lunch at his house. Most probably because I didn’t brew it myself. :)

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

The rainy weather today put me in the mood for a bit of puerh. However, my mom did a bit of tidying up, so it took a while to locate this. After describing what it was, she brought me a plastic food container sealed with brown packaging tape with a label written in black marker: “Tea Block”.

My prying off skills are next to nonexistent, so I ended up with a fair amount of tea dust. Popped it in my teeny 50ml yixing. The dark orange tea soup tasted a bit woody, with this minty thing going on, and somewhat sweet. No smokiness that I can determine. To my untrained palate, this was pretty likeable, and with the price (less than $5 for 250g) I don’t have to worry about knocking it about with my bad brewing. However for some reason after I drink this my stomach acts up, so maybe it needs to be set aside for a little more time for me to be able to handle it. :( Pity, I really liked how it tastes now.

It’s wonderful how a bit of knowledge of tea/teaware physics can streamline the morning ritual.

1. Drag self out of bed and down into kitchen. Plug in the sandwich maker and toast two slices of bread. Meanwhile, boil water.

2. When electric kettle clicks, pour boiling water into cool (not prewarmed) designated green tea gaiwan. (Designated as such because the walls of this particular gaiwan are so thick that if I use it to make oolong or black tea the walls become too hot to handle. So Green Tea it is then.) Water drops automatically to about 175F. LIKE MAGIC. For lazy people.

Optional step 2A: If I have a bit more time, I’ll steal some of the halfway-to-the-boil water to warm the gaiwan a bit. Then I’ll pour the boiled water from up high. Don’t know how much of a difference this makes I’ll stick my thermometer in now and then and it’s something above 185F. If I have my thermometer handy I’ll wait until it’s cooled down to 180. But usually I am lazy and hungry for tea and breakfast, so I skip this step.

3. Take large pinch of green tea (bi luo chun, white monkey, et al). Today it was Green Anji. Toss (or drop gently, sprinkle artfully…) on top of the water. Cover gaiwan.

4. While tea is steeping: Retrieve toast. Coat heavily with butter. Locate Marmite jar from where my mom stowed it away in the corner of the pantry because she doesn’t understand what it is. Streak Marmite like veins of marble onto buttered toast. Repeat for next slice of bread.

5. Take large bite. Wash down with the now ready-to-drink green tea, either directly from gaiwan, or decanted into small mug. Note on fruity taste of the tea, possibly peach, but not cloying like most peach flavors are. At any rate, it’s refreshing. Is there some citrus in there? Can’t be sure. But realize that it’s too early in the morning and your taste buds are probably still asleep. Shrug and polish off the rest of your toast. Finish off the cup. Make a second round. Repeat the next day.

Sweet. The instructions say boiled water for two minutes, but I just poured boiling water into a room temp gaiwan, which dropped the temperature down to about 180F. Then I tossed in a large pinch of the tea.

I love how the dry leaves smell like cocoa.

I was going to go for a second round, but there are magic elves in my house that whisk away used cups and dishes as soon as you leave them somewhere for more than two minutes. (Hi, Mom!) I’m kidding. Off to get a new cup to compare whether I like it better with boiling water, or cooler water.

EDIT: Def better with hotter water. Also: not that tasty when chilled. Because I made some extra and popped it in the fridge overnight and the next morning I poured it out and it was, uh. Hm. Sticking to this one taken hot. :P

It was past midnight, and I was reading the comments on this blog post on brewing oolong tea (http://themandarinstea.blogspot.com/2009/10/oolong-tea-brewing-now-and-then.html). For some reason the thought of having a suggested integer by which to calculate water:tea ratio really gets me excited, enough that I got out of bed to try it out. The recommendation for taiwan oolong was: “6-7 gr for yixing of 15 cl: brew 2-3 min, 3min, 3 min, 3 min 30 sec, 4 min…” So just for fun ( I KNOW, I am lame) I calculated 6 / 150 = 0.04.

Got out a 90ml clay pot and put in approx (90 × .04 =) 3.6 grams of tea. Off-boiling water. Best batches I placed as the ones at: 1st:65s, 2nd: 25s, 3rd: 35s. Ended my tasting there, but prepared one last brew just to measure and noted that I got 80mL of tea soup.

The results were tastier than what I would have gotten had I poured out earlier, which I usually do at the 30 second mark. Admittedly, I’m not familiar with this type of tea, but for me it registers as your basic taiwan oolong, with somewhat of a sour aftertaste. That was the notable thing for me, anyway. I feel I can’t really get a good feel for the nuances of the tea just yet, because for this one I used a newly opened pack of tea. It’s like when you’re traveling, I guess, and in a new country, and don’t really feel like yourself… Maybe tomorrow, after the leaves have ‘settled in’ their new atmosphere, I’ll be able to get a more true-to-character(?) batch.

One thing though. I think I’m discovering I like my teas to have just a little little bit of bite, that state juuust before they’re rendered oversteeped/too bitter. At least for the first brew. Maybe to wake my taste buds up, or warm them up. Then the second brew, I like a little lighter. When I sip I like it to feel ‘refreshing’. And for me that round is also the best tasting. Then mostly the third is just to top it all off. For thirst. To get that liquid inside ya. Yeah.

Probably not making sense not as it’s past 1 in the morning, heh. Anyway, will sleep on this, and try to recreate the setup tomorrow. Will also try with a gaiwan.

Gosh, sorry to sound like a total flake/nutTEA professor sciencey person wannabe. THIS IS WHY you do not tea log past midnight. >_<

Peace out.

Still great! Used a LOT more dry leaf this time, which filled up almost half of my small gaiwan. Sadly I was distracted and by default used cooler (190ish) water for the first two brews, only remembering to go for just off-boiling for the third. No biggie. I mixed the first and third to fill a mug. But the second one was juuuuust right. Even when room temperature. I don’t know why I keep mentioning that. Maybe it’s just a sign that this tea is really tasty to me.

Yummy for breakfast, with my PB&J sammich. I actually left my packet of Sencha Fuka-Midori at a friend’s house and only recently retrieved it, so for almost a month I was drinking mostly chinese greens. Today, reunited with my tea, I was reminded why there was a time early this year when I just HAD to have my morning sencha at the office. If not, I’d get really snappy by 9:30 a.m. You do not want snappy. I have pointy objects in reach at my desk.

To be completely honest though, I can’t really tell the difference yet between this tea and my cheaper Japanese supermarket sencha. Can’t afford the premo stuff now either, which is a shame, what with Shincha season around. But for now, I love this for what it is: a good staple.

And oh crap I forgot to try this out with my banko houhin. (d’oh!) Next time.

PS. I have to make a not-so-secret confession. After my second steep I peered into my kyusu and those slices of leaves just looked so delish so I reached in a pinched me a bit and gave it a nibble. heh-heh… It’s actually not bad. But I still felt sheepish about it, for some reason. But why should I? I’ve read you can really eat the leaves anyway. So there’s nothing wrong with me, right? Right?? Gah. Joins Tea Leaf Eaters Anonymous

Flash rinse, then short infusions. The taste is satisfying, but the first three brews smelled very, uhm, fishy. The fourth onwards were alright. I think I’ll let this one air out a bit more to adjust to my climate. Then will try again. ^^

Brewed about a tablespoon of leaves in my kokoro kyusu (heh, that sounds funny. I feel like I’m making an animal sound but anyway) from Den’s Tea. Yum. Nice to have after dinner. I poured a cup out for my mom first, then I waited a bit more then poured my share out on ice. It was gone in 5 glugs. Iced genmaicha is great! Was able to get a good second infusion out of this. And I suspect the used rice puffs will be a yummy snack with a bit of brown sugar. Hmm…