Wholemeal Crank

Well, yes....it just sort of happened that way....I go to the white or green or oolong or sheng or shu folder depending on my mood, to pick the next tea to brew.

I've started the last couple of days with sencha, and yesterday moved on to try a comparison of three versions of Norbu's Tie Guan Yin: 2009 spring, 2009 fall, and 2010 spring. I happened on a last sealed packet of the spring 2009 (in the back of a cabinet), had opened the 2009 spring just a few weeks before the tasting (oops, meant to keep it sealed until this), and then had a fresh package of the 2010. Sad to say, nothing much to put in the oolong topic as a review, because they were all so nice I couldn't really distinguish much between them. Today I'm having some Da Hong Pao, a 2009 from Norbu, very fruity & toasty.

How I'm interpreting the question is a specific combination of ingredients that is so good it has remained more or less intact through centuries or even millenia: e.g., something so good that it has survived the cross-cultural pollination that followed Columbus: a dish from the Americas that is still made with beans, squash, corn, tomatoes, epazote but without old world spices or grains or animals--no cinnamon, wheat, beef. Or an old-world dish without tomatoes, potatoes, corn, peppers, vanilla. Basil pesto could have been enjoyed by Romans a couple of millenia ago--basil, garlic, pine nuts, hard sheep cheese--and is so good it hasn't needed much 'updating'. But it couldn't have been made in more or less current form before the invention of cheese. Similarly, french toast needs domesticated animals for the milk. So....anyone know a still-popular stew made with wild game and sufficiently specific indigenous herbs, vegetables, and grains or legumes to make it specific and traceable, no dairy, that could have been made by a hunter-gatherer in the same location 10,000 years ago? One of my favorite dishes, Mujadarrah, is pretty simple: lentils, rice, onions, olive oil, salt, pepper. Minus the pepper, it could have been made in the middle east as soon as people figured out how to press olives for oil and to fry things in it. But no idea when it really first appeared.

It is quite toasty-roasty for me, but there is a sweet/floral base that is different than the more spicy/astringent, approaching bitter, base of the SeaDyke TKY, but both to me have a similar degree of roast.

Today working through a large infusion of the Dong Ding dark roasted Taiwanese oolong from Norbu. It has a lot more elegant refinement than the SeaDyke TKY I have been drinking forever, just mellower but so very very good. I remember being a little wary of this one when I first saw it posted on Greg's site, remembering a quite harsh and unpleasant brew by the same name I got from TenRen (to be fair to TenRen, I don't think I bought the top grade of that one). The Norbu version just has a smoother base for the darker roasted flavors.

Last year, I really fell in love with strong young sheng puerhs, particularly that gorgeous Lao Ban Zhang from Norbu, and finally tried some seriously aged puerh from Essence of Tea, leading me back to the best qualities of my favorite shu pus. I also broadened my palate for Japanese teas, explored some korean green, yellow/'oolong' and herbal teas, gave up on matcha, and got better with greens in general. This year? No particular tea goals; I feel like I've tried a little of almost everything I've been especially interested in, and my cabinet runneth over. I think I'll be content to mostly drink what I've already got, and pick up a few fresh shinchas and senchas here and there, and make sure to not run out of my favorite TGY.

Had some very nice sessions while traveling over the weekend with TGY--'new style' from Norbu and old favorite SeaDyke dark roasted. This week, some sencha (Hon Yama Zairai from Norbu is nearly gone), puerh (a lovely session today with Wuliang Shan loose mao cha from Norbu), and oolong (now drinking some wood-roasted Shui Xian from HouDe); Houjicha from Den's got me through a long afternoon where I had no time to brew in advance, just toss in leaf (ok, stems), add water, go). Some Jin Xuan green tea last night too. But I am trying to forget a particularly unfortunate session with a cheap phoenix oolong, that previously behaved quite well. Keeps one from getting overconfident, I guess....

1--Kamjove KJ-350 infusion cup, leaves are a Nan Nuo loose sheng mao cha from norbu, from a while back 2--Thermos for carrying tea to clinic and meetings (sadly empty) 3--Pino digital kettle pro 4--bamboo tea tray with yunomi by Ginkgo and small koi gaiwan, with some Dragon Well tea 5--basket for carrying yunomi with me to clinic 6--tea forum on the computer

Actually walking up and down the hall with the tea tray was a new thing....and felt extra fancy. I've got a nice little collection of pretty cups now for sharing this way--feels so nice to do it. Today started with Zairai Hon Yama sencha from norbu, and moved on to some Yunnan Mao Feng for the afternoon. Will be stuck with limited tea access again for a few days, so had to store up a lot of good tea time while I had the chance between colds & trips.

Just looking at and touching that beautiful stone must have made light of the work. Might almost convert me into a matcha fan!

Experimenting this morning with a gift tea, a small quantity of gyokuro from my local chinese tea shop. I was quite skeptical of it when I first brewed it, but this morning, brewing it instead of my usual sencha, it's pleasant and mellowly vegetal, and not particularly briny--which is something I generally dislike in my tea. Nice. It will not be composted or fed to the worms! Other teas in the last few days were the Winter 2009 Dong Ding from Norbu, a dark roast oolong that was just lovely sustenance through a long work day; some Silver Dragon white tea from Wing Hop Fung (yesterday I went up and down the office hallway with a kyusu, fair cup, and several nice cups sharing it, went over very well); and finished off a packet of 2010 TGY from Norbu and eked out a thermos full with some Zhang Su lake oolong from WHF. Plus several evenings of chamomile/hibiscus/tulsi herbal teas for a warm cuppa at bedtime. Cold gray wet weather makes for excellent teatime.

A working holiday today, with excellent tea--a really marvelous infusion of Norbu's 2010 Spring Wu Liang Mtn - Xue Dian Mei Lan - Yunnan 'green' tea, and finally opened a sample of an interesting young puerh from Yunnan sourcing, 2009 You Le Zhi Chun. Not sure where to put a review of the Xue Dian Mei Lan: Greg's listing it as a green tea, but it does get a little oxidation in the processing, and the result is wonderfully between an oolong and a green tea as far as I can tell, floral, fruity, sweet. I'll put something in the Puerh topic about the You Le Zhi Chun if I can ever get to the bottom of it. I started iwth high tea-to-water ratio because I didn't want to break up the sample too much, and even very short infusions are quite powerful stuff.

Not quite in someone's home..... A group of us from the college co-op went camping, a trip arranged by one who, it turned out, had never camped before. The first morning, for breakfast, he dumped half a bag of charcoal into the camp stove, poured on a remarkable quantity of lighter fluid, lit it, and then put a giant frying pan full of scrambled eggs (a whole flat of them to feed about 15 or 20 people) over the not-yet-hot charcoal, with the oil he intended to fry them in floating about 1/2 inch deep over the top of the pan. Thank god my tentmate had his own little backpacking stove, and a few extra packets of oatmeal. A few poor souls who'd brought no snacks of their own actually tried the egg morass that resulted, apparently tasting very strongly of the lighter fluid, and survived to tell the tale. We did not let our hapless would-be-cook near the food again.

Some quiet days, nursing a cold, some chamomile and some oolong, sencha and Tai Ping Hou Kui, but not really tasting all of it so well. Still, hot & wet, goes down well.

Soup, my favorite food....some favorites that aren't too ordinary include West african groundnut stew from the Sunday's at Moosewood cookbook--sweet potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, peanut butter, spices. Double the spices--especially the pepper--and it's a crowd favorite. Chickpea and onion stew from Flatbreads and flavors--chickpeas, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and a fabulous spice blend of cinnamon, saffron, and coriander. Spelt and mint soup with cheese, utterly simple, but utterly fabulous. Just really good stock, spelt, mint, and cheese. The corn and sweet pepper soup I invented for a thanksgiving a few years ago is still amazing. Depending on where you live, it might already be too late for tomato-basil soup, where you need best summer tomatoes and tons of basil, because there's not much else to it either. Kwati, a sprouted bean soup from Nepal, is another one even the foodiest of your other guests are unlikely to have had before. And even if they've had lentil soup before, I've got two excellent lentil soup recipes posted--the ultimate comfort food version of german lentil soup and a sophisticated armenian lentil soup. Can't go wrong with a good stock and any of these recipes.

Plate o' shrimp: today I've been drinking two Houde 2009 teas--Rou Gui and Wood-roasted Shui Xian. Both lovely spicy roasty-toasty oolongs--the Shui Xian is always intriguing because it looks so light green but tastes more Wuyi than Pouchong. The other tea.....blanking on the 3rd I ordered at the same time--was also excellent. I'm sure you'll enjoy your order.

How do you make your chai? I've had a few late-night sessions with herbal tisanes lately, when caffeinated teas would have been too much, and pondering making a spicier version of my usual chamomile plus hibiscus combinations--something more like a cinnamon/clove/ginger/cardamon combination, more like a classic chai--but I've read about boiling tea for chai, and that would make the base tea too bitter for my tastes. So, while I get ready to start the tea day with some reliable but undistinguished shu puerh, I'm contemplating something livelier for later.

I find it pretty trivial to take a pomegranate, slice it in half, and put it in my citrus juicer. I have a reasonably heavy duty versionlike this, and it makes the juicing easy. I don't try for every last bit of juice. I have an acquaintance who brings me fabulous pomegranates every year, and I juice them and make curd, jam, or simply drink the juice. Well worth a little trouble, although I probably wouldn't do it if they weren't free, or nearly free.

Drinking a richer than usual mix of sayamakaori sencha from Yuuki-cha, almost 6grams in my little 5 oz kyusu, brewing a little cooler than usual, 145 degrees, and oh my, rich, sweet, deep, lovely. As usual, a wide variety of teas over the last couple of weeks, and some of the highlights were a nice herbal tisane last night, a mix of chamomile, hibiscus, citrus zest, and tulsi; some sessions with the 2009 Norbu charcoal-roasted Tie Guan Yin from Taiwan, a sneaky-good tea that just gets better and better the more I drink it, and the longer it sits in my thermos when bulk-brewed; a couple of lovely dan cong sessions with the Wu Ye dark leaf from Tea Habitat; some very pleasing puerh sessions, mostly with young loose mao chas from Norbu; and one horrid session with a jasmine/silver needle mix that reminded me why I have stopped buying and drinking jasmine pretty much completely--it was at the request of a colleague, and I had only a little of it left, and the soap-like taste was memorable for all the wrong reasons.

After that very nice session with the Norbu Zairai sencha two days ago, today I tried my Sayamakaori cooler than usual--starting at 145 degrees, ending up at 160, instead of starting first infusions 160 and gradually increasing to 180 degrees. It was lovely--a little sweeter, mellower, but still rich and vegetal. Very nice.

Have never had to clean oven racks. I keep both racks in my oven with bricks on them at all times, unless I have a specific reason to not want the bricks there: I regularly bake two sheets of stuff at once and shift them top/bottom and flip front/back once during baking.

Today's tea day has been shifted towards the lighter side of things: more of the Zairai sencha from norbu, lower temp and sweeter results; Hankook 'oolong' or Hwang Cha; Ya Bao wild white camellia buds from norbu; and Anji 'white' tea from Wing Hop Fung. Now feeling a bit tea drunk this evening.

Another brewing of the Zairai sencha this morning, and at Greg's suggestion, I tried a lower temperature: 145 degrees, and it is quite entirely lovely. This is the sweet spot. 30", 10", 30". Upped temp to 155 for the 4th infusion. Sweet and nutty and lovely. The nutty was decreased in the first infusion vs the last time when I started 160 degrees, but came back in the 2nd and third infusion; the fourth, with hotter water, brought back the sweetness over the nutty. Still, the nuttiness reminds me a lot of Long Jing.

Spring 2010 Hon Yama Zairai Sencha from Norbu Tea This is a sweet, nutty, vegetal sencha without the strong briny umami that I so often find offputting in more heavily steamed senchas and gyokuro. The leaf is deep rich green, medium long fragments--not quite as long as the Sayamakaori from Yuuki-cha, but longer than my average Asamushi sencha, very sweet smelling, even a bit nutty. 2.5 grams of leaf in a small gaiwan, about 2.5 oz or 75 mL of tap water per infusion 1st infusion, 30 seconds sweet, vegetal, nutty, very nice 2nd infusion, 10 seconds vegetal, sweet, nutty--the nutty is a hint of astringency, I think, but not bitterness, and a hint of toasted/roasted flavor 3rd infusion, 45 seconds again, the toasty, vegetal nuttiness, astringency, but light a 4th infusion, 1 minute still nutty, vegetal, now fairly astringent The finished leaves are bright green, and moderately broken up, although I did fine one or two small whole leaves I think part of the astringency is the brewing, here, because just for accuracy's sake, not really for comparison, I'm brewing up some of the Yuuki-Cha Sayamakaori sencha at the same time, and finding some of the same elements in it--not the roastedness, but more astringency than I'm used to. I think my leaf-to-water ratio is really not quite the same as in the kyusu. But I've got a pretty good idea that this is going to be a very nice sencha, and am looking forward to first proper session with the Tokoname kyusu. Both with this and with another new green tea I tried this weekend, it's quite clear that despite attempts to control conditions, changes in brewing conditions for the purpose of doing these comparisons--brewing sencha in my gaiwans instead of my kyusu--sometimes distorts the results, because I'm moving outside my usual comfort zone. A 2nd set of infusions, in the 5 oz kyusu with 4 grams of leaf, tap water 160 degrees at first, infusions 30", 15", 30"; raised temp to 170 degrees for 45 seconds and 1 minute infusions, worked out better, still some astringency but not as much. This is a nice, vegetal nutty sencha.

1997 Heng Li Chang Bu Lang Sheng Puerh Aged sheng puerh tea from Essence of Tea, First try with this aged puerh. Using tap water, small porcelain gaiwan, 2 grams of tea, and 60-75mL water with each infusion. Water is just off the boil. Dry leaves smell of sweet rich soil. First a flash rinse, then 20 second first infusion: sweet, earthy, anise, a hint of herby/spicy but no bitterness. The liquor turns my golden shino cup to deep red-orange. 30 seconds 2nd: sweet, earthy, thick, liquor and a little bitter 30 seconds 3rd: sweet, earthy, little bitter 30 seconds 4th: still sweet, earthy, no bitter, bit of fruity 45 seconds 4th: sweet, earthy, little spiciness/resinous but not bitter 60", 60", 60", 90"—color lightening, still sweet, mellow, earthy, bits of caramel and raisin or plum 2’, 2’, 3’—starting to lose it, heading towards sweet water. Going to try one more at 5 minutes—and there is still something there, even earthy and sweet coming forward despite having just eaten a mint. It’s not strong, but not quite just sweet water yet. Nice pu! The big question I was trying to answer with this order from Nada was how much better aged puerhs are than my current young shengs and shus. While this is a very smooth and pleasant tea, I can’t say that I love it 5 to 10 times more than some of the lovely but quite inexpensive young pus I’ve gotten from other sources. It’s definitely smooth and mellow in a way that has no parallel in my young shengs, but it is approached by the better of my young shus, and the young shengs have other attractions like smokiness and umami that are absent in teas like this.