Wholemeal Crank

after a little experimentation, I average about 20-22 tastebuds per 6mm diameter circle, which according to several web sites, puts me borderline high taster vs supertaster. So there is a reason why I am so bitter-phobic, but able to tolerate more as I get older and things get less sensitive....

As part of reorganizing my tea shelf to make room for more different tea samples, I have gotten rid of the fancy gift boxes that loosely contained portions of pu cakes. Ziploc bags are very convenient, but may not be the best way to store cakes that I want to permit to continue to age. How do you store your pu-erh cakes that you want to continue to age? wax paper bags? paper envelopes? scraps of cotton fabric? tupperware?

Today, trying some Bird Pick Royal Dragon's Well Green Tea, from Wing Hop Fung. The leaves are lovely and uniform, with a grassy odor. Infused a small quantity of leaves with 170 degree water for about 2 minutes, yielding a nice pale green liquor, some astringency but dilute enough to not dominate the flavors; pleasant but not setting off the kind of taste bud fandango that the oolongs and puerhs do, or that the silver needle tea did yesterday. A second infusion, with water having cooled in the pot to 160 degrees, was similar. But at the same time, there is a very nice sweet aftertaste that is still present some 10 minutes or more after drinking it. I will keep working with it from time to time. I understand the phenomenon of 'tasters' and 'supertasters' as defined by sensitivity to certain bitter chemicals, but never had a chance to take the test myself. I dislike most bitter flavors in general--finding things like coffee and chicory utterly inedible--and wonder if this is at the root of my ambivalence towards most green teas.

Bought a small set of yixing teapots today at Wing Hop Fung, so I can have one each for oolong, ripe and cooked pu-erhs, and I bought a fourth because it was so small and cute that I couldn't leave without it. The three new ones all said Yixing on the price stickers, and their prices ranged from $6.99-$8.99. I only noticed this as I was browsing this time. They're les purple than the one I bought a couple of weeks ago when I was looking for the most purple appearing one I could find. So I'll print this out and put it inside the door to keep them straight. Just not sure what to do with the smallest one--it is tiny, and should be perfect for small gongfu style tastings of really precious teas, as it will take hardly any tea to fill it up. And I have their quantities down now too, after a session with the graduated cylinders. Next step, the very precise scale, which should arrive next week.

This morning I'm playing with two teas that are not oolongs or pu-erhs. 'First quality silver needle yin zhen' from chado tea and 'Emerald lily ancient tree organic green tea' from Rishi. I have been smelling the leaves per the instructions in the Harney & Sons guide to Tea, and am surprised by the disconnect between the leaves and the liquor. I am doing both in gaiwans, and don't have my scale handy yet because I just ordered it last night (getting this one from Amazon--ashtray pocket scale), I can't tell you precisely how much i used, but it was as close as I could visually approximate, with the lighter silver needle tea taking up about 2/3 of the volume of the gaiwan, and the green tea about 1/2 filling it. Both infused the first time about 2 minutes with 173 degree water. Even at this cool temperature, there was a quite noticeable bitterness about the green tea, although also some lovely floral/fruity flavors, that was nearly absent from the silver needle; and the silver needle was much fruitier and sweeter. After the infusion, the silver needle leaves smelled a bit sharp and bitter, but there was very little of that coming through in a 2nd infusion; the green tea did carry the bitter smell even more into the tea on the 2nd infusion, however. A 3rd & 4th infusion of the silver needle (with water that had been allowed to cool to about 160 degrees because I was lazy) were both still lovely, with hardly a hint of bitter, although the leaves now have a strong vegetal odor that is not coming out in the liquor. The 3rd infusion of the green tea, with the same quite cool water, is even more bitter, really almost aggressively unpleasant in the aftertaste, although the first notes are pleasingly fruity, while the odor of the leaves seems similar to the silver needle, but just a lot stronger. Interesting how the silver needle maintains that sweetness along with the vegetal or grassy notes, without getting bitter, but the green tea bitterness overrides the sweet fruity notes almost immediately.

I will start with a glass pot, unless a nice glazed pot grabs my attention when I go to wing hop fung tomorrow.....

Or rather, lack of style! I do have my thermometer, and a good timer, and teapots, and sometimes time enough to use and enjoy them. It's also an excuse to buy a nice handmade japanese teapot, which is clearly a good thing.

That's a very helpful link. As I explore more varieties of tea, I would like to be able to more accurately compare my proportions to what others are doing. When it was just the red tin Ti Kuan Yin or the yellow tin green jasmine, it wasn't an issue, but now, with such variety in the shapes and densities of the different leaves, it is.

I mostly drink chinese teas, and am a little wary of green teas because of their propensity to turn bitter if I am the slightest bit careless with their brewing. I mostly drink green teas as jasmine or other flavored blends. I've not sought out japanese green teas because I'm afraid I'll end up with a bitter cup, especially the powdered versions where you're supposed to consume the entire leaf rather than just steep it. But after playing with some barely oxidized green oolongs that are absolutely bitter-free, I'm ready to try some more greens again. What would you recommend as a gentle introduction to japanese green teas, for a green-tea-phobe?

That tea guide questionnaire is interesting, and according to the 'what food do you like section' I should look for nearly every type of tea given that I like home made whole wheat bread granny smith apples no beers sharp cheddar and most kinds of music, at one time or another but my question today is, how are you measuring your tea leaves, in grams, when posting brewing/tasting notes: an electronic scale? manual scale with weights? eyeballing? I have an electronic scale at home that measures to a single gram, but it is not really trustworthy below about 10 grams. And I have nothing like that at work, where I drink most of my tea.

my eyeballed measurement of the grams of tea used is highly theoretical. I have no fine scale nearby to hone it. But this is for my office, and so I am not drinking that 1 minute first infusion. I am bringing one quart of water to the full boil in my office kettle, rinsing the leaves a few seconds, pouring that off, then doing a series of infusions until I have filled up my quart thermos with all the infusions. That is what I drink for the next few hours. And the brewing times for these infusions vary by who is knocking on the door or calling on the phone and when I remember to check it, and sometimes I forget entirely to let it brew and realize as I am pouring the tea into the thermos that it is more a rinse than a brew. Oops. I averages out to maybe a minute per infusion. And the leaves ended up filling about a quarter of the pot when fully unfurled. At home I am now experimenting with the gongfu style, but here, it is about finding a tea that will stand up to such abuse and still be delicious.

D'Oh! Just realized one advantage of my thermos habit--put a few ounces of the weaker 2nd brewing back into the pot, let it steep another 10 minutes, and returned this to the thermos, shook it up, and voila! Almost as good as the first brewing, with the fruity sweet aftertaste restored. Amazing. Two quarts of lovely tea from a quite small batch of dried pu.

Today I've been drinking a pot of a 1999 CNNP Old Tree Ripe PuErh from an exchange with Richard Kilgore. I think I used about 4-6 grams of tea in my little glass pot (holds about 5 oz), brewed a quart of tea in short infusions (averaging perhaps a minute each), and it was lovely. There was less smoky flavor to the tea than I anticipated from the smoky aroma of the leaves, but there was a really nice fruitiness and almost sweetness in the aftertaste. Very smooth. I just reused the same leaves for another quart of tea, without refrigerating them in between, and the fresh brew is not as strong or interesting. Not sure if it is due to overly short infusion times or to the tea being tired after 6 or 7 preceding infusions, although I suspect hurried carelessness was the problem.

I can't speak directly to that, but I did find this recently, on a web site that belongs to one of my favorite tea shops, Wing Hop Fung: Grading system And the relevant listing is 1. (Name of Tea) ex: White Tea 2. Special Grade (Name of Tea) ex: Special Grade White Tea 3. Premium (Name of Tea) ex: Premium White Tea 4. Premium Special Grade (Name of Tea) ex: Premium Special Grade White Tea 5. Supreme (Name of Tea) ex: Supreme White Tea 6. Supreme Special Grade (Name of Tea) ex: Supreme Special Grade White Tea 7. Royal (Name of Tea) ex: Royal White Tea 8. Precious (Name of Tea) ex: Precious White Tea 9. Precious Rare (Name of Tea) ex: Precious Rare White Tea I do not think that the english names for these various grades are standard, and had no idea looking at the jars of tea in their shop as to which grade was higher or lower. I am looking forward to my next visit with this info in hand, as it should make things a lot clearer. My impression is that most tea merchants here use their own names for the various grades of tea, but the grading is based on a common standard.

Enjoying my first brewing of "Diamond grade Tie Guan Yin" from norbutea.com and loving it. It is an interesting tea that is between my usual dark roasted & earthy Anxi Ti Kuan Yin and the Taiwan Alishan Oolong we were just tasting. It is less floral and a little more roasted than the latter, not nearly as dark and earthy as my usual tea, but still has a delightful sweet undertone. Loving it. I will continue to explore these green Ti Guan Yins with more interest and confidence, while hoping that my traditional dark roast Ti Kuan Yin won't ever vanish.

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if drinking 'grandpa style', how do you avoid the over-brewed bitter flavors? You would seem to have control over two things: how much tea you use at the start, and how hot the water is that you use to brew it, which in turn determines at least the minimum time required for the water to cool enough to be safely drunk. And given that the grades of tea used for this are likely to be lesser, it seems like a recipe for bitter brew.

I have one like this amazon proctor-silex kettle which is more compact than some of these others because it is basically an electric heating element built into a plastic pitcher, no base required, just a short cord. Probably I should just buy another one of these, and figure out a little teapot or cup/infuser set that would fit inside it. That may be as compact as I can get.

I do have a nice little lexan mug--light and sturdy--and a spare wire mesh infuser that also should be pretty sturdy. Just would like a smaller electric kettle, and I'll be all set.

A glass teapot is probably not the best choice, but it is lighter and would be less prone torust than a tetsubin, more compact than any metal one I've seen, and quite inexpensixe to replace should it break. I'd love one made of lexan for something like this. I have a variety of tea balls but they don't generally allow enough room for full expansion of a good amount of tea, or if they do, they're too large too fit in a mug, much less the mouth of a thermos

did not yet have a chance to try it. But I have just received my first shipment from norbu tea, got it just as I was leaving for the weekend, and will have some nice pu-erhs on which to try it. I have steeped many teas 3, 4, 5 times, but am intrigued by the '30 times or more' I have seen written in reference to some of them, and doubt I can get to that number without either brewing such a tiny amount that I can drink each infusion in one sip; or doing it across two days.

I'm trying to figure out what is a good, practical kit for traveling with my own tea. For me this means being able to make at least a pint of tea to carry with me in my backpack for drinking through the day when in meetings etc, where the teas provided, if any are at all, are usually exactly the sort of english breakfast teas I dislike. I love my little electric kettle that I use at work, but it's a one liter size, and I can't find any that are much smaller than that. I'd really like to have a one pint size, and I've seen some electric mugs but those mostly seem to heat rather than boil the water. I also have used an immersion heater coil plus a pyrex measuring cup, but the dedicated electric kettles are quicker and faster. I have a lovely inexpensive glass teapot with built-in strainer at the spout, so no need for an infuser. And a small tupperware or ziploc bag can hold a few days' worth of one tea. What I want is a small kit like a toiletries kit that will hold this stuff, protect the glass teapot from airport baggage gorillas, and live in the suitcase at all times, ready to add tea and go.

That is exactly my fear--that my first love in tea would vanish completely. Already it is not so easy to find, and the random tins and samples I've bought from various sources when I could not get my hands on it were not the same. And when I did find it again this time, the same tin of the same brand was cheaper than I expected, which makes me worry that it might indeed be getting less popular and less profitable, which would put its future at risk. This is one of the reasons I am trying to educate myself more about tea--so I'm less dependent on the one brand from one place.

Too late, did that already, but did omit the corn syrup. And realize now that I should have crisped the cookies in that low oven completely before adding the glaze, and letting the glazing & glaze drying steps be separate.

That's a great start on answering my questions. So....the next step would be to consider my anxi ti guan yin vs the very green appearing ti guan yin on your site--both are ti guan yin, but given how different they look, I have to assume they will taste very different. How far away can the tea get from the original style and still be called ti guan yin? As long as it is from the same plant? Same county? and still more oolong than green tea? And are the newer lighter roasted styles taking over now? Is there much grumbling about the loss of traditional darker roasted teas if so? (obviously, these are questions best discussed over a few pots of the teas in questions, in a tea house in a pleasant garden....)