Wholemeal Crank

The peachy/floral is very nice with a little strong dark chocolate, a good contrast.

Today got off to a good shincha start with the sayamakaori from yuuki-cha, then I tried a sample of what turned out to be a quite nice taiwanese oolong from zen Tara, then got nicer with a dan cong from tea habitat--stone wall edge or something like that. It actually came out very nicely in the kamjove and thermos--I decided not to wait until I could do a formal gongfu session with it. A little green, greener oolong, then darker oolong. All I need now is a puerh to finish the progression through the day.

I have enjoyed them with light dessert plates: fruit & nuts, walnut cookies, or honey on toast, even a bit of chocolate. I think their delicate flavor is best appreciated with foods gentle on the palate.

I have just finished off my second thermos full of the 2007 White Bud Sheng Puerh from Norbu (a private production cake which is now sold out). This was a typical thermos brewing--working with the kamjove 'gongfu art' brewing thingie, flash rinse, starting brewing with water even before it quite hit boiling, having to stop and start several times over an hour and half as other work kept pulling me out of the office, and finally ending up with a brilliant thermos of tea, subtly smoky, sweet, with a warm background of caramel. Just soothing and calming and oh so good. And as is usual for this tea, a little went a long way--maybe 5 grams-8 grams for a 1 quart thermos full, then resteeped for a second full batch. Fortunately, I have several more beengs of this in reserve. Heh.

Starting the day with Shincha (the Sayamakaori from Yuuki-Cha) after a very pleasant session last evening with some Yunnan Mao Feng from Norbu. The horror of the tealess Tuesday is fading now, chased by abundant good tea.

Just became aware of this topic as Richard woke it up today, and while I have no answer for his question, I do have a suggestion for the original question about Japanese teaware in general: The Tokoname teaware catalog is where I got my kyusus and there are some other types of pots as well, with a wide range of prices. I ordered according to the directions on this page (follow the order link). It was quick and easy. The gallery link also shows extra nice (but more expensive) pots.

So far, a thermos full of Yunnan Sourcing's Oriental Beauty, so so nice. Yay for back to tea!

Don't think so.

Today I drank no tea. Quite shocking.

My impression is that you get the best of the PMD sooner, where the YZ gives less up front, but keeps giving and giving with the subsequent infusions being pretty much as pleasing as the first. I wonder if that's due to the delicate thin larger leaves, in distinction to the tiny needles of the YZ?

Yesterday was a delicious but limited day of tea. I drank only one tea, the winter harvest Bao Zhong from HouDe, but it was delicious, and I had a thermos full plus an evening gongfu session with it. Yum. Sunday was busier, with several comparison sessions with delightful white teas from the current tasting, and a pair of Tie Guan Yins. Saturday was also pretty limited, but as usual, the Big Red Robe from Wing Hop Fung kept me going through that all-day class. So it's been tasty, though shincha-deprived and puerh-less.

My first brewing of these was an attempt to get close to the same ratio, 2.5g to 6 oz water, that Richard is calling 'western style', but I miscalculated and should have used 1 gram of leaf in the 75mL/2.5 oz gaiwans to get to a 0.4:1 ratio (I used 1.3). I used the smaller gaiwans only because I wanted to try both teas side by side, which is harder to do when drinking a couple of 6 oz glasses of each tea. My caffeine capacity becomes limiting at that point!

Penzeys has epazote. And so do many of my local grocery stores....but have only seen dried, while not sure I'd recognize the fresh if it were at the market.

I just invested in some laser labels for mailing labels, and used a few for the kitchen, and after only a week they seem great. But I have no idea of their long term removability, so have only used a handful in places where I'm not going to remove them. I mostly use sharpies directly on my glass jars and bottles, because sharpie is surprisingly easy to remove with a good scrubbie and a bit of water. It's water proof but once you break it up a little by scratching or scrubbing, the water seems to get under it so it comes off the rest of the way quite easily. But the sharpie labels are a bit unnattractive, hard to read over dark jar contents, and the scrubbing off, while not hard, is not entirely trivial. What labels are you using--brand/item number?

2nd round, 2 grams of tea in small gaiwans, 2 ounces/60mL water 160°F/71°C. But before the water hits the tea, even the scent of this Yin Zhen is so much stronger than the version I had before, and it has a strong peach/plum odor, almost like an oolong I had tried recently. Mmmm. Anticipation! And the Pai Mu Tan has an equally delicious odor, but I expected that. As soon as the water hits the tea, the scent shifts to vegetal, very strongly, but by the end, the wet leaves have a milder scent with some floral amidst the vegetal. Again, after 30 seconds, the Yin Zhen liquor is paler than the Pai Mu Tan, light creamy yellow vs medium gold--but the flavors are closer than the colors. The Yin Zhen is a little more delicately vegetal, and the Pai Mu Tan has a bit more of a peach/camphor, almost fermented fruitiness. The second infusion went longer, pushing the teas a bit, to 90 seconds/2 minutes. Now I'm seeing a stronger difference, with a deeper flavor to the Pai Mu Tan, and a more delicate flavor to the Yin Zhen. There is a slight bit of astringency to the Pai Mu Tan, but none to the Yin Zhen. For a 3rd infusion (about 1 minute), both teas are quite nice, but the difference is more pronounced: the Pai Mu Tan is more like a ripe fruit, and the Yin Zhen is like the flower before the fruit. Both still pleasing at infusion 4 (1 minute); at infusion 5, the difference again is more amplified: the Pai Mu Tan has lost the sweetness, and there's some caramel but also some astringency; the Yin Zhen is still pretty light and floral; 6th infusion (shorter again than the 5th), the Pai Mu Tan has a little lighter touch with a nicer balance of fruity and floral still present. A 7th & final infusion (the kettle is running out of water), at 180 degrees (because the Pino has trouble holding temp when the water level is low), there is still some lovely flavor coming out.

100% Hawaiian grown oolong by Hilo Coffee Mill I’ve been given a sample of this tea as part of a tea swap. Dry leaves: strong tart/fruity aroma. Infused 2 grams of leaves in a 50mL yixing pot with 190°F/88°C water for 30 seconds. The tea is fruity, sweet, like ripe plums. A second infusion for 30 seconds brings out a little spiciness in addition to the rich fruit. 3rd infusion at 60 seconds is still strongly, deeply, fruity. 4th infusion at 120 seconds is sweet, fruity, not much tart left. 5th infusion at 4 minutes is losing strength, a little sweet, a little fruity, warm and friendly, but not strong like the earlier infusions. 6th infusion at 10 minutes (just couldn’t let it go) is still pleasant, mildly plummy, sweet, but again rather dilute. I think I may actually buy a little of this for a treat. It doesn’t have the legs of a great Dan Cong, but the fruit up front is pretty incredible. Even the aroma of the wet leaves after the infusions are over is still quite nice.

Yesterday started properly with shincha (Sayamakaori from Yuuki-cha), moved to some Lao Cha Tou shu puerh, so nice and mellow, and some Sichuan Yin Zhen silver needle yellow tea, these last from norbu. Today, missed the shincha window, but got in a nice thermos of Yunnan Mao Feng from norbu, much to the taste of those in clinic with me, and then it was on to Ba Xian, eight immortals Dan Cong from Tea Habitat. Tomorrow is an all day class, will need a thermos of strong stuff to pull me through.

I do end up simply composting the veggies used for my stocks, and that makes me sad, but I find it indispensable in my pantry, and pressure can it to keep a good supply along with a rich chicken or turkey stock, at all times. A good rich vegetable stock should not simply be an afterthought, only tossed together from random veggie trimmings in your freezer. A one-shot stock for this or that dish can certainly work--like corn stock for my freekeh soup--but I often ended up with a lopsided stock without a broad enough flavor base to really build on. I can't recommend the section on vegetable stocks in the Greens Cookbook highly enough, for the discussion of what different vegetables add to a stock, and the collection of basic stock recipes therein.

Can't imagine the horror of having to do without one or the other of these. No carrot-sweet carrot and parsnip soup? No roasted carrots? No fresh sweet crunchy munch for long drives? Yikes. But carrot would be exactly wrong in so many places where the tangy herbaceous crispness of celery brings perfect clarity. It is the perfect companion to tomatoes in my tomato basil soup. It is a more singular foil for walnuts in salads. And together they are such excellent companions in many other dishes. I refuse to choose! Don't make me live in a world without either one!

Ok, so I was not that far off with my bai mu dan. Perhaps just the Bai Mu Dan is wrong for this.

I keep some of the original Greens Cookbook summer vegetable stock on hand at all times, for a variety of soups & bean dishes where a strong meat stock would blunt the fresh sweet vegetable flavors: Tomato basil soup, curried lentils, my vegetarian posole; and a corn stock can give the same richness of mouthfeel as a meat stock, but again does well with sweet and light spring/summer vegetable soups, like this vegetable soup with corn and freekah, or even in this late summer/fall pepper and corn soup. My basic approach to corn stock is given in the corn/freekah soup recipe: I make it on the spot with vegetable & corn to be used in the soup, rather than canning in advance.

For brewing western style, low leaf-to-water ratio?

How much tea are you using for how much water? I read about using more tea when cold brewing, and managed to make some rather horrid stuff, perhaps from overdoing it.

--hand rubbed sencha. This is amazing, to watch a tea master make the tea completely by hand.

How does C sinensis provide teas as diverse as white, black, green, oolong, puerh? I was browsing wikipedia the other day, and came upon this great chart, that shows the different steps in processing tea, and how different combinations of them result in very different types of tea. It's brought a lot of information together in a way that helps me keep it all straight, more simply than several books and many articles & web pages. So the chart shows how oolongs and black teas both go through some bruising and oxidation, steps that white, yellow, and green teas skip, which steps help develop their fruity & spicy complex flavors, with black tea going 'all the way' and oolong varying from almost green to very near black tea. It also clarifies the relationship between puerh and green tea, making clearer why some young puerh appeals to me most when brewed as though it were a green tea (low temp, short infusions). Of course, if I had just looked at the chart without reading those books & articles & web pages, it might have been pretty confusing itself. So this seems like a good idea for a topic, to discuss tea processing, and link to good sources for information about it. For example, I have a link to a great video of hand processing sencha in Japan that I will try to find & post next.