teaddict

Drinking it again today, right after a particularly nice set of infusions of Dragon well, and having drunk some of the Jin Xuan green tea last night, and it does have a subtly different flavor that is not particularly like those greens, or quite like a green oolong either. Can’t put a name to it yet, though.

Just opened this one, and it is lovely. First impressions are sweet, floral, delicate, with less caramel than an Alishan and yes, less sharpness than a TGY, but these changes bring the sweet and floral notes front and center. Wow.

Using a small porcelain gaiwan, about 2 grams of tea in 60mL with water 195 degrees, about 30-45 seconds per infusion to start.

I bought this tea mistaking it for the ‘commercial’ version of a Honey Orchid Phoenix oolong that I had been enjoying so much, and was brought up short by some harsher notes it expressed on first brewing. I looked again at the label and realized this was the single-bush Dan Cong version, and unsurprisingly it demands a bit more respect.

Tonight I am brewing it in the Chao Zhou pot I bought from Tea Habitat, and it is lovely. It’s flavors are sharper, spicier, and sweetness is more honeyed and distinct. It is like the prior tea brought into sharper focus.

So far I am on about the 9th or 10th infusion, and anticipate plenty more infusions are left in it.

I used about 2 grams of tea in the 60 mL pot, and infusions from 30 seconds at first to 1-2 minutes now, water 195 degrees, give or take 5, and the entirety of this gongfu session has been delightful.

Today’s infusion is so sweet, so floral, so rich and yet so delicate, so gorgeous, so perfect.

Love this brilliant tea.

Drank again this afternoon, a thermos full. So very mellow and nice.

coming back to a dear friend, after romancing a lot of sweet young things…..or rather, somewhat bitter young things…..

So, after having drunk some 2010 white buds* that are basically the same tea, uncompressed, the parallels are so clear, and the tea is so nice, that I am, naturally, falling in love all over again with this tea, as I do every few months. I’m drinking it very dilute, as this is the end of the day and I don’t want to be buzzed all night, which may amplify the similarities with the uncompressed young tea.

A moment of overconfidence and overlong brewing was a clear reminder that this is PUERH, and not to be taken for granted, yet it gave only momentary pause, not oops-dump-and-start-next-infusion-over response. Even when it’s bad it’s good.

*http://www.norbutea.com/2010_Spring_YongDeBaiYa

First try with this new tea today. They look thin and delicate compared to the Ya Bao buds I have used before. They smell of peaches and peach blossom.

2 grams of buds to 2 oz water in a small gaiwan, about 30 seconds first infusion. The tea is as promised by the scent, sweet, floral, fruity—again, notes of peach and sweet stone fruit blossom, but lighter and milder on the camphor than the Ya Bao buds. It’s closer to a silver needle, which happens to be what I was craving this morning, but didn’t have around.

A 2nd infusion, also about 30 seconds, is still very sweet, but with less of the floral and fruity notes.

Trying for a 3rd infusion, but upping the water temperature to 180 degrees, and time to 1 minutes, to see if higher temp can unlock more flavor. It does, and there is a pleasing fruitiness returning, a little tart, but overall I suspect this tea would be better brewed as a single longer infusion, to best get the fruity and floral maximized together.

Trying again, another 2 grams, but this time in a 6 oz teapot with water 170 degrees and for 5 minute infusion: this is what the tea wants, I think. Brighter floral flavors, deeper sweetness and fruitiness, the fruitiness has receded a bit, but the overall impression is better. I do think the leaves are done after this first infusion.

This is a very nice tea.

Today was the first time I brewed this up in the Chao Zhou pot I got from Imen. I am not sure if that was what made the difference, but the tea was definitely sweeter, mellower, more rounded, almost too much so.

I clearly need to do a head-to-head with the same tea in a gaiwan.

This has been a pleasant, reliable oolong in my cupboard for a long time. I am surprised I haven’t posted about it before. It is a dark, earthy, woody, toasty oolong, when brewed well, capable of some pleasing spiciness, but capable of a bit of surliness if mistreated.

A nice tea, but not a great one.

I did a head-to-head with this tea and a similar tea from Yunnan Sourcing today:

http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/YunnanOBs.html

In the end, both were lovely teas. Oddly enough, given that the BYO was end-of-bag with more broken leaves, it took the 2nd infusion to start showing the spiciness and full flavor that the YSOB gave immediately. The BYO, however, seemed to hold that lovely flavor a little longer, but by the 5th infusion, both are starting to thin out, pretty much done. I have only had one Taiwanese Oriental Beauty, and that was a rose scented version that was quite unlike roses or like these lovely teas. A high quality Taiwanese Oriental Beauty is reputedly quite hard to come by, but these teas are quite satisfying, and not too pricey, so I don’t feel any particular need to try the genuine article.

1.9 grams of tea
about 4 oz water (larger gaiwans, not preheated)

1st 195 degrees, 45 seconds
2nd 185 degrees (too impatient to wait for full reheating), 30 seconds
3rd 175 degrees (ditto), 1 minutes
4th: 195 (more patient this time), 2 minutes
5th: water just off full boil, 1 minute
(stopping because of diminishing marginal returns)

Yunnan Wild Arbor “Oriental Beauty” Oolong from Yunnan Sourcing
Leaves: thin, dark twists, with sweet fruity tea scent
1st infusion: sweet, plummy, floral, with a spiciness that is not there in the BYO
2nd: spicy, fruity, floral
3rd: losing a bit of the spicy and sweet edge, thinner flavor, perhaps dissipating a little faster than the BYO, but really not much to choose between them at this point
4th: 4th: a little thinner, but still quite enjoyable; not holding as well as the BYO
5th: thinner, still a little fruity/spicy
Wet leaves: dark red leaves with hints of green; scent is sweet/tart

I did a head-to-head with this tea and a similar tea from Yunnan Sourcing today:

http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/YunnanOBs.html

In the end, both were lovely teas. Oddly enough, given that the BYO was end-of-bag with more broken leaves, it took the 2nd infusion to start showing the spiciness and full flavor that the YSOB gave immediately. The BYO, however, seemed to hold that lovely flavor a little longer, but by the 5th infusion, both are starting to thin out, pretty much done. I have only had one Taiwanese Oriental Beauty, and that was a rose scented version that was quite unlike roses or like these lovely teas. A high quality Taiwanese Oriental Beauty is reputedly quite hard to come by, but these teas are quite satisfying, and not too pricey, so I don’t feel any particular need to try the genuine article.

1.9 grams of tea
about 4 oz water (larger gaiwans, not preheated)

1st 195 degrees, 45 seconds
2nd 185 degrees (too impatient to wait for full reheating), 30 seconds
3rd 175 degrees (ditto), 1 minutes
4th: 195 (more patient this time), 2 minutes
5th: water just off full boil, 1 minute
(stopping because of diminishing marginal returns)

2009 Fall Bai Yun Oolong—Yunnan Oolong Tea from Norbu
Leaves: thin, dark twists, with sweet fruity tea scent
1st infusion: sweet, fruity, floral
2nd: spicy flavor there now, still fruity and floral
3rd: still spicy/sweet/fruity/floral, but starting to thin a little esp in the fruity notes
4th: a little thinner, but still quite enjoyable; holding up better than the YSOB
5th: thinner, still a little fruity/spicy
Wet leaves: dark red leaves with hints of green; scent is sweet/tart

Another lovely infusion this morning. I am almost out and so glad that the next order has come in. Whew, no interruption to sencha happiness!

Once again, it delivers superbly. Today, just a tiny amount of leaf, maybe a teaspoon at best, infused up two full quarts of delicious tea. Just amazing. Almost done with it and then it will be time to break out the 2010.

First try with this tea.

First infusions about 1 gram of tea in a 2 oz gaiwan, water 160 degrees, 30 second infusion. It is a little more floral and less vegetal than the Tai Ping Hou Kui I was just drinking, and nothing like as fruity as the Yin Zhen silver needle from the Cultured Cup that I recently tasted. It is a little milder than the Yunnan Mao Feng I’ve been getting from Norbu, as expected for a white tea made from the same general source material. The floral taste is decreasing after the 3rd infusion, but some mellow sweetness remains through a 4th at least.

As anticipated, it is a less refined and more camphorous tea than the versions I’ve had before from Fujian. It is sweet, mellow, but not bitter. A nice tea, but not spectacular.

This is a weird and wonderful tea. The leaves are gigantic, wide, flat, long.

First try with this tea was 30 seconds infusion at 160 degrees, about a gram of tea in 2 ounces of water in a small porcelain gaiwan. It is sweet, spicy, vegetal, floral.

So far, the 9th infusion is still very similar, very very nice: the vegetal flavor is weakening, mildly there, but the sweetness and spicy is still present. And this is not a super fancy version of this tea: I only paid $39.99/lb for it. The ends of the leaves are broken, so it’s not fully intact, but given the size of the leaves, a break or two in each does not seem to be making anything bitter.

Even after 5 infusions, the sweet/spicy scent is still there in the wet leaves.

It reminds me most of the Anji white tea I’ve been getting from WHF, but this one is a fraction of the price. I will definitely keep this one in regular circulation.

(photos on my web site here: http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/TaiPingHouKui.html)

Still enjoying this one very much, getting towards the end of the pouch, and I agree that the flavor profile is lighter than the Tenryu Misakubo, which is why I prefer this one, because I prize a honey-sweetness that gets drowned out easily when the umami increases.

Fortunately my order has shipped and I’ll have plenty more of the ‘sencha’ version of the same tea shortly, before this one runs out.

This has been a tricky tea for me. It has very strong spicy flavor and astringency that can easily overpower the lighter floral notes. But when I get it just right, like tonight’s infusion, it is sweet, spicy, floral, with that extra complexity that just makes the best Dan Cong teas sing. And tonight, it’s doing a floral aria on my taste buds.

I wish I could give coherent brewing suggestions, but I can’t, because I lightly and thinly scattered the leaves over the brewing screen of my Kamjove, poured through water from my Pino set to about 190 degrees but didn’t check the temps before the infusions, and then didn’t pay attention to brewing times—1 minute? 2 minutes?—and mixed the two infusions together.

I was trying to prepare a pint of nice brew to share with some colleagues working late, so needed a larger set of infusions than I easily get from my small gaiwans, and tasted along the way rather than measured. Anyway, this came out so nice that I am going to let this tea out of the ‘doghouse’. Will try to get the same results with a more measured brewing and report back; I’m thinking maybe 0.5 grams in my 60mL gaiwan or the 60 mL Chao Zhou pot to start.

I came back to this tea after several weeks of drinking a fair bit of sheng puerh, and preparing a few orders of tea from Norbu and other suppliers, and thinking to myself that I have at least come to sufficient understanding of my preferences regarding puerh to skip the shu sections of their web sites. And today, I wanted a less demanding tea but wanted a puerh. So I worked loose a few little nuggets and brewed up a thermos of this tea.

It’s a lovely reminder of how nice shu can be: first impressions are delicately sweet and fruity, hints of cherries, plums, grapes, a bit of caramel. It has always been nice, but this is the best infusion yet. So nice. And this is a quart of tea from perhaps 5 or 6 g of nuggets that were still so dense and tight after about 10 minutes of hydration and infusions that there surely is a lot more flavor to be recovered in additional infusions, as the tight bits open up more.

Temp 200-212 degrees, infusions 1 minute or so, but really, there is no hint of bitterness or astringency, so infusion time is entirely up to your preference. The tea liquor is a deep ruby red, quite beautiful even in my rather use-stained Kamjove infuser.

Leaves are dark, tightly rolled, some stems, toasty dark tart scent.

1.5 grams of tea into 60mL gaiwan, water 180 degrees, rinse x 15 seconds, then 20 second steep: first impression is spicy, interesting, but oops, before I can form a proper opinion, I am thirsty and it is gooood, gulp, gone. 2nd infusion is a little spicy, a little sweet, a lot toasty-roasty, but there is a smoothness here even in the 2nd infusion that often takes 4 or 5 infusions to achieve in a more assertive Wuyi rock tea or even my old supermarket brand Ti Kuan Yin. And there’s no sense that a bitterness or astringency is just around the corner if I am careless with times or temps.

I was interrupted and have lost count of the infusions, but I am pretty sure the current one is 9 or 10. The flavor is more dilute now, but there is still some sweetness and a little something else that is very Ti-Kuan-Yin-like. And the flavor was smooth but still quite definite out to the 7th or 8th infusion—that smooth 2nd infusion carried over without turning to water at the 3rd or 4th.

After the infusions, the leaves are unrolled, but still very crumply and twisted, with a dark brown color and a charcoal scent: with some determination they can be coaxed and pressed and flattened into medium sized, quite intact leaves.

Nice nice tea, need to get my order in before I post this, people order it all, and Greg runs out!

I’ve already brewed this one a time or two, but didn’t take many notes. I was particularly interested in this one because it is from a famous name factory and it is a raw sheng, not a ripe shu.

I started with little more than I really wanted—that’s the way the beeng broke—4.2 grams into a 75mL gaiwan. Rinsed with boiling water for a good 20 seconds, because the beeng was fairly tightly compressed. Giving it a couple of minutes to hydrate before the first infusion.

A first infusion at 200+ degrees and 20 seconds was a bit unpleasantly strong, as I was forgetting the very concentrated starting material. Should have broken it up into smaller bits, because this really is too much tea for the gaiwan. Regrouping with a 10 second infusion (measuring to the start of the pour from the gaiwan), now the flavors are still strong, but the sweetness is more apparent, along with earthiness and a hint of smoky. The liquor is a pale amber. And because it is infused in boiling water, I have to remember to wait, to not burn my tongue—brewing cooler green, white, and oolong teas there is no such wait required, and it’s hard to discipline myself when the first sips are so nice. 2nd infusion is earthy/sweet/smoky/caramel/vegetal. 3rd, 4th, 5th are very similar, as long as I remember to keep them extra short because of the excess of leaf.

The leaves are fairly broken up, a medium olive green with hints of reddish tints here and there.

I’d recommend a more typical 1 gram per ounce/30mL leaf to water ratio, short infusions with hot water, and a good long time available to enjoy the many infusions from this tea. It is a stronger than my favorite white bud sheng puerh, earthier with more astringency, a deeper rounder flavor overall.

Quite a nice tea, and one that I think I will keep checking in on from time to time, to see how it matures. That’s in part because I currently have more puerh than I can drink in a reasonable period of time, but also because it’s a famous label tea that I expect to be able to find information and comparisons for in years to come.

I got a free sample of this with an order from Norbu, and it’s a pretty nice tea. I’ll be ordering more with my next order.

I did a detailed review of it compared to another Taiwain black tea here:

http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/TwoBlacksTaiwan7.10.html

I did two rounds of tasting—one dilute (1 gram to 2 oz boiling water) and one more concentrated (2.5 grams to the same), and found it was still not bitter at the more concentrated level. Fruity, sweet, nice. But I would not let it sit, because bitterness can develop if the steeped tea waits too long.

Got a sample of this in a tea swap, and compared it to another Taiwan black tea here:

http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/TwoBlacksTaiwan7.10.html

This was a nice sweet fruity black tea, not bitter, but if the brewed tea sits, it may develop bitterness.

I got a free sample of this with my last order from Norbu, and tonight, when my tongue was overdone with tasting several puerhs together, I tried just a pinch of it as a change of pace. I prepared it with probably about half a gram of tea to 2 oz boiling water (it was late, and I didn’t want to be up all night), and after about 2 minutes steep the liquor was deep orange red, and delicious. Fruity, sweet, no astringency at all (not that I expected any, really, given the dilution I started with), and a second infusion was equally delightful. Not sure about the wine-like aspect, but this was a quick & dirty sipping, so I’ll have to try it again, more carefully, and take better notes to see if I can identify that.

I will certainly get a little more of this tea for a change of pace, and I suspect it will make a nice alternative to my golden Yunnans for take-a-thermos-to-work days.

I have been enjoying the Lao Ban Zhang Mao Cha for several months, since I first tried it as part of a tasting on egullet.org, so with my last order from Norbu, I tried a couple other Mao Cha, to see how they compared.

2010 Shi Tou Xin Zhai Mao Cha, Nan Nuo Shan, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan
2009 Lao Ban Zhang Mao Cha from Xishuangbanna, Yunnan*
2009 Wulian Shan Mao Cha from Dali Prefecture, Yunnan

This is my first brewing of other two young shengs. As expected, these are wonderful teas, with more capacity for infusions than I have space in my bladder, even with the very small gaiwans, so sometime after 10 or 12 infusions, I stopped drinking the full infusions, and did a series of longer steeps, discarding the liquor, and then did a final infusion, which I estimate to be about the 20th for each, so I could finish the tasting, get the photos of the spent leaves, and go to bed!

Overall? I love all of these. The Shi Tou Xin Zhai is the most approachable in the early infusion, and is one I’ll take to work to share in some one on one meetings with other tea lovers—it’s less likely to bite back if I get a bit distracted. But at the however-many-it-finally was infusion, when all were pretty dilute and mostly had just a gentle sweetness left, I found a little more depth or complexity in the LBZ in than the other two. So….if you’re anxious about bitter, start with the Shi Tou. If you’re already a connoisseur of young sheng, and want the maximum complexity, go for the LBZ. And if you’re undecided, get the Wulian, or better yet, enjoy all of them.

Tasting setup

Used 1.0 grams of tea in small 40 mL gaiwans
Infusions 205°F/96°C-212°F/100°C
2 rinses at about 10 seconds each, before first 10 second infusions

2010 Shi Tou Xin Zhai Mao Cha, Nan Nuo Shan, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan

Dry Leaves: long dark twists of intact leaves with some stems, sweet woody anise scent
Liquor, 1st infusion: light tan liquor, sweet anise flavor predominates
Liquor, 2nd infusion: the anise sweetness continues to make this one mellower than the other two
Someplace about the 8th or 9th infusion: still the mellowest of them, even after the dregs in the cup sat a bit and bitterness started to come into play; how is it that the youngest is the least harsh?
Liquor, many?-th infusion: sweet, dilute, still that lovely hint of anise
Wet Leaves: olive green leaves with reddish accents, woody earthy spicy scent

http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/ShengMaoChaTasting7.31.10.html