Wholemeal Crank

Middle of the day, many infusions of Norbu Tea's Diamond Tie Guan Yin.

Started the day with the Chado 1992 loose pu-erh, brewed gongfu style in one of my tiny yixing pots.

The slightly oily residue is not a good thing when your delicate sweet pastry picks up some habanero heat from what you baked on them yesterday. I do the flat in the sink thing for the wash and rinse, and depending on how many I have to dry, lay them over my stacking cooling racks to dry. Don't have a great picture but the silpats fit across the width of the racks between the stacking legs just fine, and I can dry up to 6 of them at a time this way.

More Big Red Robe from Chado today. So soothing and earthy. Good for a frantic day. Need to drink copious amounts of pu-erh and oolong now before I dare start exploring japanese teas--will put that off for a while. But my boss down the hall has indicated that he wants a mug in his office too, like the one on permanent loan to my next door neighbor. Another coffee lover who is growing more appreciative of teas. "Your teas always taste so much better than the junk we buy." Yes!

Last night I prepared a thermos of yin zhen silver needle tea from chado, to drink at work while at our satellite clinic today (where I don't have tea making equipment, so I always bring a thermos of tea brewed before hand). I was careful to use cooler water and watched the brewing time, and tasted a sample that was very nice, but it didn't hold well overnight in the thermos--it was too delicate and too cool, so ended up like lukewarm not-quite-water by the end of the afternoon. The earthier puerhs and oolongs hold much better, between the hotter brewing temps and stronger flavors.

This afternoon another gongfu session, with the 2007 Sheng White Bud Tea from norbutea.com. Not quite as satisfying as the session I discussed above, probably because I started to get a little more distracted towards the end. But still, a lovely complement to the fruity dan cong that started the day.

Today trying the Eight Immortals 07 Ba Xiang Dan Cong Oolong that I bought yesterday from Tea Habitat after our tasting. I started with one gram of tea for one of the tiny 60mL yixing pots. It has a very light odor in the tin--but the fruity started to come out as soon as it warmed up in preheated pot, before even adding the water. I started with water about 190, and reheated when it got below 160 or 170 between infusions. This is a lovely tea: floral, fruity, winey: reminds me strongly of a tart lychee. And holding up wonderfully for multiple infusions (it was pretty good through 8 or 9, and started to run out of steam after that). And the fruitiness lingers as a wonderful aftertaste.

Not sure what topic this belongs in, so I'll post it here. Today I went to the tea brewing class at Tea Habitat. It was quite interesting. The proprietess, Imen, taught the class, and in 90 minutes, she discussed the history of chinese teas, brewing theory and technique, and demonstrated gong fu style as well as simpler brewing techniques, and clearly showed how much difference in the tea you could obtain by different brewing times and temperatures. She said she aimed for about 3 grams of tea while using an 8-10 oz gaiwan for the brewing; and she emphasized the importance of looking at the tea, stirring each infusion with the lid of the gaiwan to judge the texture as well as color of the brew, in deciding how long to infuse. And then, adjust the infusion time and temp per the taste of the previous infusion. I was particularly interested to note that she used water from an electric teakettle for the different teas we tasted, and primarily adjusted the brewing temperature by pouring the water from the kettle at different rates to allow different degrees of cooling before it reached the tea in the gaiwan. And sometime she let it sit in the fair cup a bit to cool before pouring it from there into the gaiwan. We tried a commercial dan cong oolong, a very delicate green tea that seemed on the border between green and white, and a black tea. Another interesting tidbit was her note that the scent of the dry tea doesn't always give much more information than whether the tea is fresh or stale, and we noted that the oolong tea had very little odor as it was first passed around, but suddenly became lovely and fragrant when it was placed in the damp, prewarmed gaiwan and allowed to sit for a minute or three. Similarly, the black tea was not strongly scented until it warmed up and suddenly there was the almost overwhelming chocolate aroma that I've been reading about but not yet teasted in the Keemum teas I've tried. The chocolate disappeared in the brewed tea--it was lovely and fruity and toasty and dark, but not chocolatey like the earlier odor from the warmed but not yet brewed leaves. I'd highly recommend the sessions to any tea fanciers in the area. When I start brewing the oolongs I bought today (two different Dan Cong Oolongs), I'll post about them in the oolong topic. I was also relieved that she still admits some difficulty with brewing green teas--they're something she can usually 'not mess up' but still difficult to optimize--since I'm having a fair bit of trouble with the 'not messing up' stage myself right now.

This is a bit tricky--I would have said that the color of leaves is an excellent guide to the flavor of the finished tea, but I first started playing with these different oolongs in the form of Pouchong, a lightly oxidized oolong from Taiwan that looks, and one of the versions I have is rather dark, but that is full of rich green leaf when brewed up, and has little odor. But it is still entirely possible to find the darker toasted oolongs. Right now I am drinking some Big Red Robe Wuyi from Chado; I got a lovely Wuyi Oolong from Rishi Teas at the grocery store; and my favorite Ti Kuan Yin is still available in chinese markets, but sometimes is a bit tricky to find. It's the red tin in this image: I think the smell of the tea leaves should be reliable--if they smell toasty, it will be the old style; if bright and floral, the new style; but if they don't have a lot of odor, trickier to tell.

Drinking Big Red Robe Wuyi Oolong today. A lovely smooth earthy contrast to the new style tie guan yin from yesterday.

Gorgeous. But they look well made to stand up to more use than that, unless you're clumsy like me....

I forgot to answer this question in my next post. They are, and that was part of the reason to select them. They help the freshly brewed tea to cool more quickly to drinking temperature, which helps a lot in the first quick-infused rounds. By the time I've done the fourth infusion, the first is likely cool enough to drink. Impatience is the only reason to use the four cups like I have set up here. And I'll take a crack at the gongfu-walk-through question. As I understand it so far, the benefit of brewing a tea like a pu-erh gong fu style are that different flavors infuse from the tea at different times. So infusion by infusion, you separately enjoy all the possible flavors from that tea, which get mingled and sometimes lost in a single larger infusion. Also, especially with pu-erh, the compression means that the outer leaves of a compressed chunk will be fully steeped before the inner leaves have opened fully. Oolongs also benefit from this; green and white teas may, although jasmines and other perfumed teas will lose a lot after the first couple of infusions; and black teas seem meant to give their flavor quicker so give less interesting variation done this way. Because you're going to be brewing up a lot of infusions from one batch of tea (I've gotten 16 infusions from one particularly nice oolong, and 20+ from the best pu-erhs that made me want to keep going), you want a large proportion of leaf to water, and as I discussed above, unless you're sharing with several people, a small pot or gaiwan or cup helps to limit the total volume to something drinkable without bladder augmentation (brewing two ounce batches in a small gaiwan or yixing will yield 32 ounces after 16 infusions). A small scale also helps especially with the puerhs, to get the quantities similar when the density of the compressed tea can vary so much. In theory you could do this with a tea ball in a mug, but the leaves need a lot of room to expand and it's hard to find a strainer or tea ball that will allow you to fill 50% or more of a very small brewing volume with loosely packed leaves. You could do the leaves loose in a mug but then have to be very careful about pouring off the hot liquor while leaving the leaves behind. The small yixing pot with the strainer built into the spout is perfectly designed for this; a gaiwan, which has a base, cup, and lid, allows you to do this simply by picking it all up, tilting the lid to create an opening that lets out water but not leaves, and the shaped of the lid and base help keep them cool enough at the raised centers to keep your fingers from burning as you do so. So...boil up your water (or bring to lower temperature for a tea that prefers it cooler). Preheat the brewing container (yixing, gaiwan, other pot or mug) with one volume of water, let sit a minute, then pour out the water. This helps keep the brewing temperature more constant. Now add your tea: I like about 1 gram of puerh per ounce of water, I see some people using more like 2 grams per ounce. Add to the brewing container. Add one volume of water, swirl for 10-20 seconds, and discard the rinse water, keeping the tea in the pot. I have read in a few places that this rinse is mostly for puerhs that can get pretty dusty as they're aged. Let the leaves rest a minute or so, to allow them to soak up the remaining water clinging to their leaves. Now they're ready to infuse for drinking. Now start brewing: add water, let infuse your desired time, drain/strain the water into another cup to drink, and add more water for the next infusion. As the infusions go on, the brewing times should be longer; if you're not keeping the kettle up to temperature with continuous heating, your infusion temperature will be dropping too, so you also need to account for that with extended brewing times. Probably because I use less tea than Richard, I start with brewings of 10 seconds, and go from there: 10", 10", 15", 20", 20", 30", 30", 45". 45", 1', 1', 90", 90", 2', 3', 4', etc. If the infusions start to taste too strong, shorten the next one; too weak, lengthen the next one more. And that's it. Now to sit back and see if I have 'gotten it'....

Were the leaves of the oolong very green? It's probably one of the more lightly oxidized new style oolongs that I've been discovering recently. They're just remarkable teas, and I've cut way back on my jasmine drinking because they're so floral that I don't crave the jasmines the same way I used to. Yesterday I drank another batch of the Diamond Grade Tie Guan Yin from Norbutea.com which is quite amazingly floral. And watch out for the pu-erhs. They can be habit-forming!

I keep a set of thin bricks in my oven for nearly all my baking--mostly breads and cookies, preheating the oven an extra 30 minutes, but after a very disappointing batch of eclairs last night, I'm wondering: should I leave them in for the choux, to maximize the rapid heat tranfer for early oven spring, or take them out to prevent too-rapid solidifying before they expand fully? In case it matters, these bricks are sets I got 20 years ago with quarter inch thick ceramic slabs fitted together in a shallow metal tray that makes them simple to maneuver in and out of the oven. And the choux were on ordinary steel baking pans lined with silpat. I know there were other problems with my recipe and technique, obvious from reading this thread through in detail, but this is one variable I didn't see discussed earlier.

Not sure where to discuss this one: today I brewed a marvelous tea kindly sent to me as part of an exchange of Pu-erh tea samples with RK. This one surprised me: Ya Bao Spring 2009 Wild White Tea Pu Erh Varietal--another from norbutea.com. I had not read the label closely enough before I opened it up and started to weigh out the delicate pale dry leaves--I was expecting a dark earthy puerh--it was delicate, sweet, and floral. I brewed up 4.5 grams into nearly a quart of tea with relatively cool water, and it was delightful. Unfortunately, it is now sold out, so I will have to wait until next year to get some more!

Thanks for the heads-up. That was an excellent program. And wondering about this claim: "the production of pu-erh has been a state secret since the 14th century." Watched while drinking a keemun black tea--Hao Ya A sampler from Harney & Sons. Still don't taste any chocolate, but a lovely tea.

Rishi's Tuo Cha PuErh today, which was widely shared around the office & clinic today, before I even had a sip. Very smooth and soothing.

Nice to find something that fits so well, pottery destiny!

The last time I needed durum berries I ordered from Natural Way Mills, who also sell durum flour.

Each time I come back to this page now, I see that mention of the Dan Cong Oolong and I get more excited about my tea tasting adventure next week, when I'm going to Tea Habitat for a tasting class, hoping to come home with a few single-bush treasures. But today, I'm enjoying more of the aged loose pu-erh from Chado, CRL-17, which is earthy, sweet, gentle, and lovely. I'm finishing off a bulk-brewed thermos of it, and it's good to the last drop. But next week, Dan Congs, here I come!

A very ignorant question: in another forum, I was discussing some things I hoped to eat in France, and was gently corrected that all of them were specialties of other parts of France (Bouillabaisse, d'oh!). So.....rather than list my ignorance of French cuisine further, are there any traditional Parisian specialties I should look out for on this first trip there?

Champagne Ti Kuan Yin from Chado, a liter's worth in a thermos for sipping as I do housework.

These are excellent suggestions, thanks!

I love to do a basic quinoa that I learned from Bert Greene's Greene on Greens: toasting it first in some butter or oil (about 1 teaspoon per cup of quinoa, butter is really better, but oil will do if butter is not appropriate for your final use), until it smells wonderfully toasty and nutty but not scorched--you do stir it quite a bit--then adding 2 volumes of water, bring it to a boil, and leave it alone to simmer gently over low heat for 15 minutes. Give it another 5 minutes to rest off the heat. After that, it's ready to eat plain, topped with steamed or sauteed vegetables, beans, just a dusting of parmesan or pecorino or dry jack cheese and pinenuts.... What's unexpected about it for me is that it somehow combines being quite filling and sustaining with being very easy on an uneasy stomach--good for a day when your stomach is feeling a bit under the weather.

Precious Xihu Dragon's Well Green Tea this morning from Wing Hop Fung. I think I'm getting it. More in the green tea topic.