Wholemeal Crank

Even without using the pressure canner, I sometimes hear pinging when the temperature changes and the seals pop on my jars. I am quite careful to re-use lids with the best-looking seals for the most delicate things--and have had barley malt powder and powdered sugar stay light and fluffy through midwest humidity for several years. My sleepy error on the pint conversion. I have a few of the 1/4 pint/1/2 cup jars, that I will use for my next fruit jam prep. They're not available in wide mouth but should stack fine on top of the other jars.

Got 2 new kyusus from tokoname.jp, and am currently enjoying my first morning sencha in the leaf pot: It holds 5 oz water, stands on one handle, has a nice sasame screen, is shapely and pretty, and pours well. And BTW, my simplex is so pretty that even the water drops that condensed on the edge of it form a beautiful pattern

The sweetness was not caramel-like; I'm trying to find a word to describe the silky-smooth-umami-which did have some caramelized overtones. The sweetness was associated with some sharp astringency; and the sweetness and the umami were not perceived together.

After the warnings about bitterness, and late hour caffeine/sleep concerns, I started off very cautiously. First try in small (75mL) gaiwan (no leaves were broken in the making of this tasting, honest!): 1 gram leaf, water fresh off the boil, rinsed x 10 seconds, let hydrate briefly, then infused 10 seconds first time in about 40mL water--very dilute, interesting potential--smoky, earthy--but much too weak. Using less water for the later infusions, to try to strengthen the flavor. Water temp dropped much more than I expected by the 2nd infusion--about 170 degrees, surprise--and let it infuse longer, 30 seconds--very umami, earthy, almost salty but not the briny taste of a japanese green. Reheated the water a bit, started to hear what I thought was a boil, but it was only 185 degrees, and after 30 seconds, that same flavor is back and intense. Some astringency is also there, but it serves well here, is not bitter and unpleasant, but wow, the other flavor is strong but smooth, like silky-caramelicious-umami. Quite interesting. There is a neat sweet aftertaste too--I totally get the bitter and sweet that Greg mentions. Fourth infusion: drinking sips straight from the gaiwan (!), got a fair bit of astringency at the last drops, but several sips over a minute were remarkably consistent until that last drop: the strong caramel-silky-umami predominates. Gaiwan and all to fridge overnight. Will play more with this tomorrow, to see how long the leaves can go, but also will be less anxious and try the next round with more leaf, full gaiwan, and a full kettle keeping near-boiling temps longer.

Canning jars, come in sizes down to 1/2 cup now (1/2 pint). I use the wide mouth sizes exclusively, they stack nicely and are more stable than stacks of the regular mouth jars. Use lids that have not been used for canning yet or that were removed gently without leaving a palpable rise in the lid and with intact-looking rubber seal and you get a nice, airtight seal (albeit not vacuum tight as if you really used them for canning). Then write on the side of the jars with a regular Sharpie pen. The Sharpie is permanent but will easily come off of a glass surface with a little application of a green scrubbie pad and water--once part of the writing starts to peel off, it will all come off quite easily. No sticky paper labels required. It's a little harder to see when you're labeling something very dark, but very easy for sugar vs cornstarch vs powdered sugar vs salt etc. And best of all, entirely critter proof--any moths that hatch in your buckwheat stay in the buckwheat, and any mouse in your house goes hungry b/c he can't get into the jars. (spiced gravenstein applesauce from '08, a good year; don't have a good shot of the white stuffs all lined up and already on the flickr, sorry)

Excellent step to prevent oolong deficiency. I took care of that today with some pouchong. Now pondering a first infusion of the puerh from our current tasting--cooler? warmer? Will start with a small quantity in a gaiwan to get a sense of the tea.

Did the bitter lessen in the later infusions? Still pondering whether I should try hot/short or cool/short first time. Have some errands to do but then home tonight for long paperwork/reviewing session, perfect to sit with the tea for gong fu cha.

I think a dose a couple of times a week is probably sufficient to keep clinical deficiency at bay, but would suggest closer to every-other-day dosing for optimum satisfaction. After all, with oolong you're dealing with dark and light, floral and toasty, so much encompassed in one simple phrase.

Backing up a step: after the pots were dried, there was a white, waxy coating on some of them. I think letting them cool in the water was a mistake, and will reheat, remove and rinse them while hot.

Sencha, matcha, puerh; sencha, matcha, oolong; sencha, matcha, rooibos; sleep, eat, repeat: I see no rut and no problem aside from possiblity of oolong deficiency arising. Yunnan gd with osmanthus in the thermos today, yum.

Long time quiet topic. So....I bought one more of the little 60mL size yixing pots this weekend from Wing Hop Fung, and decided I should season them properly, since I'd done very little with them before besides pouring boiling water in and over them. I put them all in a large stock pot, two layers with a couple of trivets to separate the layers, lids and pots; filled the the pot to cover with tap water, and brought it to a boil, dropped the heat to lowest I could keep the gas on for an hour or two, then turned off the heat and let them soak overnight. The next day, there was a little scum visible on the surface of the water, not sure if it was from wax on the pots or something else. A couple of the pots still feel relatively slick on the surface compared to the rest; all are relatively rough inside. The rinse water was a little orangey at first--?clay colored?--but quickly became clear. They've all but the one been rinsed with boiling water before, and they're drying now, and later this week I was planning to start with tea soaks. Eventually I want to do a couple of comparison tastings of the same tea brewed in my glass teapot, the dedicated newly seasoned yixing, and a gaiwan.

Do you have a fine strainer to help with the dust?

Hainan purple bud Puerh from norbu this afternoon and evening, a nice companion for a moderate drive today. Nicely infused, smoky, earthy, sweet--just how I like my puerh. I just bought a new yixing pot at Wing Hop Fung yesterday, and used the occasion as an excuse to try to start over a bit with all of my 'yixings', letting them just barely simmer along for a while and soak, and next will come some tea-specific steep & soaks. Because they were mid-soak, the puerh was made in the basic glass teapot, functional if not particularly special.

Seems like the stairs may be the best explanation, put more clearly in a blog posting here: "the term "flight" in the French language is"escale". Like a flight of stairs, wine Judges use this phrase in reference to the arrangements in coordinating a tasting, predicated on the Bordeaux classification of 1865. As it would be "unfair" to compare a "lesser" properties' Claret to a "Superiore" First Growth, the tastings would start with the lighter wines and escalate to the rankings of each level or "growth"."

After my mildly disappointing session with the gyokuro vs sencha yesterday, tried a head-to-head tasting of the two Dens senchas I have right now, and I can't tell the difference between the Sencha Zuiko and Sencha Shin-ryoku. Infused 2 grams in the 75mL gaiwans with water at 160 to 170 degrees, infusions about 30 seconds to a bit longer, was being a bit sloppy without timer or counting off precisely, but the end result after 4 infusions is that both are sweet and taste brighter than the gyokuro did, and will bring much morning happiness over the next couple of months.

I don't have access to the OED until I go back to work tomorrow: do you happen to remember what the earlier citations were referring to, before the flights of wine entry?

Finished my tea day with the last of the imperial shih feng long jing from jingteashop.com, and then a new taiwanese oolong I discussed in the oolong topic.

Just curious about this point: why do we call a group of wines for tasting a "flight"? I was reading this term regarding teas, which led back to wines, and to this forum, because it isn't a term that comes to mind when I think of teas, or wines.

I just de-scaled my simplex kettle for the first time, after having it for about five months now. It got a short boil with a vinegar solution, some thorough rinsing, and a quick wipe with a clean dishtowel, and again it is brilliant and shiny and gorgeous. I am very happy with it.

I first became aware of the term in reading a menu at Tea Habitat, where Imen described tasting 'flights' of related Dan Cong teas. Just wondering if there is some interesting story behind the term, as there so often is when it comes to tea.

Why do we call a tea tasting a 'flight'? And today I had an interesting new oolong. While at Wing Hop Fung to buy more of the amazing An Ji 'precious rare white tea', I decided to try the 'Zhangshu Lake' oolong from Taiwan. It is described as a 'semi-oxidized, earthy brew' on their web site. I found the dry tea leaves to be fairly dark, relative to the greener, lighter looking oolongs in nearby jars, and when I opened it up to infuse some, they were quite dense, very tightly rolled leaves. I took just a small amount--enough to cover the bottom of the small 2.5oz/75mL gaiwan--for my first brewing, and after a couple of infusions the leaves nearly fill the gaiwan. The first impression was rich, thick liquor, sweet and floral and rich, but when several combined infusions sat for a while in my 10 oz cup, the sweetness was much less pronounced, and a deeper, earthier flavor appeared. I am used to some flavor changes as teas sit: I typically brew up a quart of my teas at a time, and drink that from a thermos over several hours during my workday. But I've not noticed such a rapid and profound change in any of my lightly oxidized Ali Shan and Tie Guan Yin Oolongs before. I guess that's why its described as "earthy" rather than predominantly sweet. Very interesting.

I'm awaiting a reply to my e-mail request to buy some.

Used about a teaspoon of the leaf mix, and my 6 oz glass teapot, water at the boil; steeped 5 minutes; strained into a cup, sipped some, steeped a 2nd time, same conditions, added 2nd steep to cup, and kept sipping. This is a brisk, wake-your-tastebuds, bright-tasting tisane. The lemon myrtle apparently is a remarkably strong source of citral, and it's like a bunch of fresh lemon zest added to the deeper notes of the rooibos. The things that put me off rooibos at times--words lacking here to describe that flavor element that sometimes feels right and sometimes bugs me, not earthy, or tart, or sharp, but strongly herbaceous, perhaps a bit piney--is perfectly balanced by the strong lemon. And the lemon, in turn, gets a flavor balance and base from the rooibos. And, like many herbal tisanes, it is very forgiving and doesn't get bitter or sharp or off if left to steep longer--the little bit that was too much for my cup after the 2nd infusion steeped another 10 minutes in cooling water and was still pleasant. So....for moments when I want a little pick-me-up, but don't need more caffeine, this is brilliant.

First attempt with brita-pitcher-filtered water at 160 degrees F, 1.5 grams and 1.2 grams in 2.5 oz gaiwans, infused for about 1 minute, with sips tasted at 20, 30, and 45 seconds too: more dilute, but still stronger umami/briny/vegetal than sweet. 2g 160 degrees 1 minute: sweeter, some bitter, still strong umami/vegetal/briny 2g 150 degrees 30 seconds, then 2nd infusion 20 seconds: best yet, sweeter, not bitter, better balance of sweet and umami. And one more time: 2 g, 150 degrees, 30 seconds, compared head to head with the sencha zuiko bought and opened at the same time, and the gyokuro again gives the impression of umami over sweet, and the sencha sweet over umami, with a bit of sharpness--not bitterness, really, just a hint of an edge--that accents the sweet further, and with a bit more *tea* flavor, while the gyokuro is more understated and mellow. I think I just like sencha better than gyokuro. Next up, annotated tasting of the lemon myrtle rooibos, because I will need something not caffeinated after this!

Good point about the organics. Doubt freshness since opening is an issue, because it was opened just 10 days ago, and my impression the first time was virtually identical to this time. Will try some filtered water tomorrow, have a new filter in the brita pitcher. And will try a couple of different concentrations of leaf in some smaller brewings in gaiwans.