Wholemeal Crank

Only mention I've seen of that is here. Does sound like it's worth the time to counterfeit, at that price.

$12.99 at Wing Hop Fung, aka birdpick.com, similar in size but a lot cheaper than this one they sell online.

I'm not too worried about the water, because I can give them an extended time in the oven at low temperature to dry out. Does sound like the key problem I have to work around. Until I get a few more bottles from this year's harvest, I don't really have enough to experiment with. I'll start with some plain commercial honey, and go from there.

More musing about japanese green teas: last night I was rereading that section in the Harney & Sons Book of Tea, and he says, in discussing the processing of Sencha teas: "The sweetness is extremely faint compared with the honeyed quality of many Chinese green teas." This and other comments discussing the desired astringencies made me wary of these teas, but in my very limited experience of 3 sencha samples, and one gyokuro, what astonishes me and draws me back and back again is that they are so stunningly sweet, when brewing conditions are just right. I have not worked with that many chinese green teas--mostly a variety of jasmines, a couple of samples of dragonwell, and probably two or three more generic teas--but have never experienced anything like the silky sweetness of these japanese teas, even when brewing the fanciest dragonwell at ridiculously low temperatures.

Redoing, because apparently my browser ate my post. It's going to be a while before I get around to my project of exploring Korean and Japanese stores here in LA for some nice teapots, but in the meantime, I decided to try a little experiment: brewed the last two grams of my sencha select sample, dividing one gram each into a porcelain gaiwan and my smallest yixing pot (which hasn't yet been used for any strong teas). I preheated the gaiwan and pot, used the same water/timing etc, but can only say that both made delightful tea, because the yixing held the the heat so much more that the flavor was noticeably influenced by the brewing temperature.

Started the day with the sencha experiment (discussed in the japanese green tea topic), and then as I was cleaning up, the postman knocked with my box from norbutea. So....had to set up the teapot again and taste the 2009 Late Summer Ya Bao - Wild White Camellia Varietal Tea. As I'm brewing it, it is sweet, vegetal, grassy, piney, floral--but all of these quite subtle. Quite a contrast to the refined sencha! I'm also looking forward to making a comparison between the spring, summer, and fall Alishan High Mountain Oolongs. Should be a nice chance to educate my palate about the differences between the seasons in the same tea.

Several posts slipped in while I was working on this one.... That's quite similar to the roman honey cake. They look delicious, with little to hide the flavor of the honey. That's my main concern here--to make a very simple cookie that doesn't overwhelm or hide the nuances of the spicy complex honey. Hence the need to think about the textural effects of a large proportion of honey, so that they don't get so soft and sticky in the cookie jar that they collapse in to a heavy solid mass, or get unacceptably scorched in an attempt to cook them into dry crisp cookie-jar separateness.

Thanks for your thoughts. I will also need to go back to my tea books to review their sections on japanese teas also, but they are too basic and general to have much discussion at the level of effects of pottery on the flavors of tea. I'd like to find a good book on japanese teas but first attempts on amazon is overwhelmingly focused on the traditional tea ceremony.

The question of how many infusions with the gyokuro vs the sencha is not so much because there's anything wrong with getting fewer infusions from one vs the other, but more pondering whether the shaded gyokuro leaves are more delicate and release their contents faster than the senchas, in general, or if this might be more to do with the size of the leaf fragments in the different teas. As for the question of what clays do to the teas brewed in them, that brings up a point to ponder: chinese yixing pots are used for oolongs and puerhs, but less often for green teas because the bitterness of an off-brewing might be absorbed and released into the next batch of tea. But these banko pots are unglazed, and being used for green tea, and prized for an ability to favorably alter the flavor profile of a tea. Why would the unglazed clay be preferred in the one circumstance but not the other? Different tea flavor profiles, brewing temperatures, clay chemical composition?

Inspired by the discussion of a Roman recipe for honey cake, I'm toying with the idea of a making a very simple cookie that would be worthy of my beekeeping brother's prize-winning honey. And though I have quite a few recipes that use honey for part of the sweetener, I don't have any that are simple enough--like the honey, egg, flour recipe discussed in that topic--to really show off the flavor of the honey. I'm thinking instead of honey, egg, flour and a custardy or cake-like texture, using just honey, butter, flour, and ending up with a crisper cookie-like texture. This leads to a bunch of questions: Honey is hygroscopic and not conducive to crisp baked goods. But regular sugar (sucrose) is also hygroscopic, and you can make very crisp baked goods with it. Why is honey so much more hygroscopic than sucrose? And are there other common baking ingredients that are--making up a word here because I have never heard of a term for this--"anti-hygroscopic" that could be used to counteract this effect? Is there any role for an alternative non-wheat flour (other grain? nut or seed meals?) to slow the sticky softening of honeyed cookies after baking? More questions: if I recall correctly things made with honey should be baked at lower temperature because it browns and burns more easily than sugar. Again, is this a property of the simpler sugars in honey?

Curious now: After another batch of gyokuro this evening, I am curious as to why this gyokuro doesn't last through multiple infusions as well as the sencha does--the sencha has a lot to give through 6 infusions in my hands, but the gyokuro is pretty flat at 4. Is this a general property of gyokuros and senchas, or something specific to these particular teas? I'm referring there to the gyokuro kin I got from denstea vs the sencha select from the cultured cup we just did a tasting with here.

Ending the work evening with some gyokuro. Have some questions about this vs the sencha--will take those over to the japanese green tea topic.

Any chance of some more details in the puerh topic?

Today, Pouchong from TenRen. When I finish this batch (I bought several ounces, so it will take a while), I will try their top grade Pouchong for comparison.

2007 White Bud Sheng Puerh from norbutea.com. Just amazing that the same plant can produce the variety of lovely stuff I've been drinking this week--the Big Red Robe, the AliShan High Mountain oolong, Japanese sencha and gyokuro, this and the Lao Mansa puerhs, and a basic green jasmine.

I have been reading about how aging alters puerh, some detailed accounts that are all about chemistry, and some poetic flights of fancy about how fabulous old pu makes you feel, and I think it will be fun to see the process up close for once. This is the first pu I've tasted that has such an interesting mix of things I really really like (the wonderful sweet and fruity and spicey notes) and dislike (significant bitterness if I brew it too hot). So, I'm curious to see if the sweet and spicey and fruity stay and amplify as the bitter fades. I'm getting a single beeng, and will break off some now and then and drink it see if I like it better or not over time. If it gets better, terrific, and if starts to lose any of the good qualities, I'll just drink the rest faster. This is play, and will bear no relationship to the controlled, monitored, serious aging of a dealer or serious connoisseur.

It's an interesting question--how do you tell the difference between better and lesser teas? I've been reading a lot and asking questions here and elsewhere as I try to figure out what teas are worth my time and effort and which aren't. The ones I generally like best have a lot of flavor from each leaf or piece of leaf, give me some leeway in brewing conditions, and when I get them just right, are terrific. An example of one that I used to like a lot, but have mostly put aside now, is an inexpensive green jasmine tea. If brewed just right, it can be ok, but if I am just a little distracted and use water that is too hot or let it sit a bit too long, it rapidly gets bitter--and not just a little bitter, a lot bitter. And if I do get it just right, its best is never anything to sing about. At best, it's good. In comparison, the japanese Sencha we're also tasting now is so sweet and lush that even when I don't hit it just right, the sweet outweighs the mild bitter, and when I get it just right, it's pure heaven. Another example would be the Lao Mansa puerh from Norbutea that we're tasting right now. The first time I brewed it I got quite a bit of bitterness, but also could tell that there was a lot of wonderfulness there too. In subsequent brewings, a lower brewing temperature after the first rinse really downplayed the bitterness, and suddenly the sweet, fruity and spicy flavors came through big time. So a moderate downside if I do it wrong, but a very big upside when I get it right. The cooked puerhs I started with are less prone to bitterness, but at their best, they're not nearly as interesting as the Lao Mansa. I tried to think of some other rules that would distinguish the keepers from the try them once, and these rules didn't help: leaf size--some of them have big intact leaves, some little tiny buds, some are broken bits; intensity of color of the dry leaf--some are bright green or rich dark brown, but some are pale gray; scent--some strongly scented before wetting, some almost odorless until they're infusing; and price--it's a relief to realize that I'm not automatically preferring only the most expensive ones!

Running low on my sample, so I ordered a beeng, some for now and some for ageing.

Supreme Wuyi Big Red Robe from Wing Hop Fung, just right for the day, with that delicately sweet finish to the warm roastiness. Mmmm.

Before I finished off my sample, I wanted to share how pretty this sencha is, from this morning's brewing:

The simple bamboo tea tray I bought a couple of weeks ago--the top lifts off to clean it up. and the character on the tea tray, which I presume means 'tea' And a pretty small cup for drinking, which doesn't show the liquor color, but I'm quite happy with it anyway--the darker glaze sparkles.

The Lao Mansa leaves are quite green even before steeping: And although there are some stems, many leaves appear intact

Today I am brewing this tea again, in the gaiwan, about 2 grams to 2 ounces of water, and drinking it with some fine cheddar, sopressata, and bread. In another topic we were discussing tea with food, and I have to say that tea stands up to the spicy, savory flavors of this meal superbly. The fruitiness and sweetness is perfect counterpoint to it. Happy camper here.

I didn't notice much that I could define as ginseng, but I have no idea what ginseng tastes like. There is a nice sweetness that I was assuming is the coating, powdered ginseng plus whatever that they're using to mix with the base oolong tea. Don't know if the sweet is the ginseng or some sugar to cover up a less attractive ginseng flavor. Can anyone else here describe what ginseng should taste like? And not sure if it was the brewing conditions (in a hurry, a bit chaotic) or the tea, but the Alishan Oolong today was an interesting contrast to the Diamond Tie Guan Yin I've been drinking so much of: a bit less sweet, and more of a deeper flavor that I'm having trouble characterizing--not earthy, not haylike or vegetal, more like umami + caramel, maybe? At any rate, although I am still craving the Big Red Robe roasted notes, it was interesting that this was a little closer to that than the Tie Guan Yin was.

I have a ginseng oolong from Vitaltleaf.com called 'blue people' with rolled balls of tea that look a bit blue, I presume from the ginseng powder. I find it a nice oolong, mild, sweet, but not one that I crave the way I do the tie Guan Yin or the Big Red Robe. Today starting with the Alishan High Mountain Oolong from norbutea, subject of a recent tasting, a very bright green and floral oolong. I was craving Big Red Robe Wuyi today, but am out of it here at the office. Sigh.