Wholemeal Crank

That is a great idea. I'd be happy to go in on that. I'd love a chance to compare all the different teas and be able to confirm a couple of things I've been suspecting about my tea preferences, or better yet, be proved wrong by falling in love with some teas that right now seem 'outside' my comfort zone. It's certainly happened before! Right now I'm just waiting a bit longer for the three teas Dan recommended to me to come in, and then I'll be placing an order for those in larger quantity.

I got a very nice reply to my inquiry from Dan at Yuuki-Cha, and now have a plan for an order as soon as the recommended teas come in. May browse through those ito-en teas in the meantime.

Yeah! another successful tasting! Today I prepared some of the norbu Diamond Tie Guan Yin for sharing in afternoon clinic, quite deliberately, because we have a student with us for a few weeks who loves tea. I introduced him to puerh just 2 days ago, and the beautiful oolong knocked his socks off. I also sent him home with a tin of some nice pouchong. But because of a dinner out (yay!) no more tea this evening (boo!). Had a very nice brewing of sencha Zuiko this morning.

I sent a request to yuuki-cha for suggestions for specific teas I might prefer, and am waiting for a reply. Meanwhile, the Den's sencha is running low. Might have to just go ahead and order....

Today moved on from the Anji white tea to some Houjicha which did beautifully as a no-time-to-brew tea, going from one meeting to another, dumped small handful of tea into thermos, added hot water from water cooler (temp probably 170-180 degrees), and went to meeting. No bitterness or astringency to the end of the batch a few hours later. Nice stuff. Will definitely need to keep some on hand for just that use. And now moving on to some spring 2009 Norbu Tie Guan Yin. Website says the 2010s are on their way, so I don't have to worry about running out and don't have to be so sparing of the last packets. Yay!

Very intriguing. Hard to see closely enough from the pictures to tell whether the loose tea has more of a natural leaf curliness, or the tight gunpowder roll. But within the limits of the resolution (when I click on the links, I get large but not sharply focused images), it looks like ordinary tea to me. A briny sea flavor is apparently quite common in some japanese green teas, particularly shade-grown teas--perhaps it was steamed like a japanese tea, or partly shaded during growth?

Starting with Anji precious rare white tea this morning, trying to stretch the last of the sencha a bit and get past the decision paralysis to order some more.

Started the tea day today with some Silver Needle from Chado, warming up my tea taste buds for the upcoming tasting. I go hot and cold with this tea: sometimes it is exactly what I want, other times, just not quite satisfying enough. Today, it was exactly what I wanted. Then moved on to some Menghai Golden Needles White Lotus shu puerh. Needed the grounding calming influence of this one today, first day back in the main office after a week of visiting two satellite offices, and of course my mailboxes, physical and e-mail, are completely full. Yikes. Hence, the need for mellow tea!

Your local grocery store has a tea bar? Where is this amazing place located?

Ended the tea portion of my tea day with some yellow tea from jingteashop.com--Huo Shan Huang Ya, always nice. Also today, fall Alishan Oolong from Norbu; gyokuro suimei from Den's; and finishing off with some Lemon Myrtle Rooibos from the cultured cup, because my order came in, yay!

Sounds more shu-like. But sheng is earthy too, but more earthy like ripe cheese rather than earthy like damp fresh compost.

Shu puerh is also aged: while shu is considered 'artificially aged' by processing so it seems older than sheng of the same harvest year(s), it still is considered to improve with age, although probably it reaches its 'peak' sooner than sheng. I drank a very nice shu a few days ago, and a very mellow sheng last night (2008 Yi Wu bamboo aged sheng from Norbu).

Welcome to the tea forum! When I first started drinking tea, I would go to San Francisco's chinatown, but the tea I bought came from the grocery stores--not the cheapest stuff there, but not too fancy either. I knew just enough to know I had no idea what differentiated what I drank from the stuff at Imperial Tea Court, and never actually tasted or bought any tea from them. Returning to San Francisco just a month or so ago, I actually did step into their 2nd store at the Ferry Plaza, but had no time to actually try/shop/buy tea. They do have a reputation for selling quite good tea, but that's about all I know about them. I do not like that they don't tell you if that tea is sheng (raw) or shu (cooked/ripe), however. That is not good policy when selling puerh! That SOTE looks and sounds delicious. I am enjoying some Yi Wu bamboo-aged puerh right now, lovely stuff with simple dinner. And earlier today I had some fall Alishan oolong and then some yunnan Mao Feng green tea, all three from norbu. A very norbu day.

Today started with Sencha, taking some precious morning minutes; then midday some Yunnan wild arbor 'Oriental Beauty' oolong added pleasure to a rather dull meeting; a bit of my favorite Diamond Tie Guan Yin from Norbu got the evening off to a good start; and a Menghai 2005 'early spring' puerh tuo accompanied a long baking session (three kinds of bread and cookies, almost finished washing up). I had a real craving for puerh and this sweet, spicy, earthy, delicous tuo just fit the bill perfectly.

Another tea day without a theme: started sweet with another infusion of the hydrangea leaf; went sweet again with some Gyokuro Suimei from Den's, infused shorter, hotter, more like my sencha, with a nice sweet result; then the need for a prop for photography led to a white tea interlude with some silver dragon from Wing Hop Fung--very like a Bi Lo Chun in appearance, and like the grand total of (1) Bi Lo Chun I have tried (a sample from Jingteashop); and then back to the deeper spicy side with some Po Tou ginger fragrance dan cong oolong from Tea Habitat. A few grams of leaf in my small oolong pot have now flavored nearly two quarts of tea, judging from the water level in my kettle after refilling again. Much tea happiness from Korea, Japan and China. Just couldn't fit in a puerh because the Po Tou keeps going and going.

I'm refusing to imagine not hot tea. I think it will just have to be less tea and more water as it gets hot enough to be uncomfortable without AC. A few better shots of the 'seafoam' yunomi pictured a few posts ago, in a not very flattering phone shot. It's already getting 'broken in' with the glaze crackles now emphasized by the stain of the tea It looks good with tea in it too and when you get to the bottom of your cup, you get this little detail to brighten up a sad situation (the empty cup is a little sad, when the tea was good) This one is like seafoam--white with bits of blue breaking through

A miscellaneous tea day today--started with a not very good attempt at making my own moroccan mint tea with cardamom, starting with a decent but unexciting green tea (a random gift, no brand I can identify in english, just says 'green tea'), peppermint leaf, and cardamom seeds. Overwhelming peppermint did not help the cause. Moved on to some Big Red Robe from WHF, usually such a reliable tea for me, and forget what I was doing, started the first infusion too hot (water straight off the boil), tried to make up for it with a very short infusion, but just ended up with several unsatisfying steeps. Also it was not the right thing for a warm afternoon after some exercise. Then got back on track with some Ya Bao spring wild camellia buds from Norbu, mixed with a bit of Silver Dragon from WHF, a white tea to add a little more depth, and the combination was excellent and just what I wanted. Now finishing the evening with a bit of korean gamro tea (hydrangea leaf) from Hankook.

Another shout out for stainless steel sinks! Had them for years in several apartments, and hating the standard porcelain over whatever kind of metal it is that I have now: it stains, I worry about chips, and things falling into it are more likely to break than with stainless. I do LOVE the divided sink arrangement I have now--a two parter with a smaller and a larger compartment. But I'd rather have the garbage disposal in the bigger than the smaller compartment. Much nicer than the 50:50 divided ones that were too small for my baking sheets. Have a delta spray-head-extending faucet, and LOVE IT. It is many years old, and without a manual I have managed to take various bits off and clean it when scale builds up from the old pipes and hard water, and once I replaced a gasket, easy. I have never lived with a granite counter, but have visited/rented places with them, and find them closer to tile than formica when it comes to breaking things. Being clumsy, this is very important to me. I dislike tile even more, because pretty grouted lines require a lot of maintenance to stay pretty grouted lines. I have mostly lived with cheap plastic countertops and vastly prefer them to either tile or granite, although the aesthetics suck. I'd love to be able to get some of the stuff that is used for laboratory benches. It's tough, durable, not very likely to shatter stuff, and rather heat tolerant too. Wonder if it comes in anything but basic black? Forgot to add, hate tile floors too. Not only does everything breakable mostly shatter on it, but it can break too. A few years ago while I was gone for a couple of days something happened and a shelf gave way--that's another point to consider, the sturdiness and ease of finding replacement parts for your cabinetry--and several dozen pint and half pint canning jars full of jams, jellies, apple and tomato sauces fell onto a tile floor. Most (suprisingly not all) of the jars shattered, and when I cleaned up the mess, here were some impressive chips and cracks in the tile, some of which were clearly fresh. Cabinetry sturdiness: the cabinets in this same house have shelves held up by plastic fittings that sit in holes drilled in some kind of composite laminated verticals. These fittings are fragile, the holes wear at the edges, and I've not yet found the correct brand replacement parts for the plastic fittings while scouting local big box and smaller hardware stores. Not so user-friendly. Be sure you get some with sturdy fittings that are easy to find and replace.

When I have been interviewing for training positions and jobs, I spent more time checking out the local groceries, bookstores and libraries than museums and other local sights. If I couldn't find good stuff, I just wouldn't be willing to live there. End of story. With the internet making it so easy to get specialty books and those foods that travel well--dried, canned, spiced--and having made liberal use of it even though I live in LA, where nearly every possible thing is available someplace--but actually getting to it is not always trivial--I would be more flexible than at one time. But still, it's as important to me as the climate and whether I know anyone there.

I'm suffering decision paralysis as I consider my first order of japanese tea directly from Japan. I'm not sure how to parse the desciptions to figure out which teas will best fit my taste. I'm getting better at that with the chinese teas I've been drinking for a while, but this is a whole new realm. Shincha on top of that is extremely confusing. I've been reading contradictory information on whether it is mroe umami than regular sencha, or more delicately spring-sweet.

That was all the tea I got through yesterday, a very late day at work. Today I'm doing better: Sencha start with the Shin-ryoku again, starting to run a little low, looking at the sencha Zuiko, and the gyokuro, and trying to figure out the optimum moment to order more direct from Japan, considering shipping times & not wanting to run out while I wait.... Then on to orchid oolong afternoon (a green oolong with osmanthus, a nice enough tea for busy work; then some quieter Dragon WEll and a small gong fu session with one of the last packets of the spring 2009 Diamond Tie Guan Yin from norbu. So fresh, so sweet, so floral, and somewhere about 8 or so infusions in, so spicy! before more floral and sweet again. Where did that amazing blast of spice hide before and after those middle few infusions? And I think I'm doing ok with this one, have a bit of fall TGY and winter Alishan plus an unusual green oolong from WHF to get me through to the next spring oolong season. Doing ok, except, of course, for running out of water before I ran out of goodness from the leaves!

I don't have anymore left to try with different water.....

I too find this so strange, because I am experiencing a very intense sweetness that does seem inseparable from an astringent aftertaste, but not the kind of shocking bitterness I find in black assams. I wonder if it could be affecting my taste buds differently? My water is LA city tap water, generally medium hard, quite chlorinated.

Yesterday was another too long day at the office catching up on paperwork, so many small infusions of different teas....Began with An Ji white tea from wing hop fung, moved on to a A-Gu Zhai Wild Arbor Pu-erh tea from Yunnan sourcing, then to some of his Yunnan Wild Arbor Oriental Beauty, next a little some Shui Jin Gui from norbu (really goofed and forgot the first steeping until it was unbearably bitter, very sad to lose several steepings' of that very good tea), and finished with some Bai Mu Dan from wing hop fung. Today is another satellite office day, limited tea opportunities, but I do now have a kamjove stashed there....and will take a thermos filled with 2007 Rui Cao Xiang 'Wu Liang Wild Arbor' Sheng puerh from Yunnan Sourcing, to start after my daily sencha (shin-ryoku again) and chocolate are done.

A very miscellaneous tea afternoon: a bit of Menghai golden needles shu puerh, a bit of a Jeong Seon from hankook, a little Organic Dragon Well from Wing Hop Fung, and now some Chado Pouchong--all small brewings, not many infusions, to help with the massive procrastination required to avoid doing masses of paperwork....