Wholemeal Crank

Too late for this batch, but i will pop it in a Tupperware next time. Still, it has a tight sealing lid, the spout has the strainer built in, and there can't be a whole lot of airflow in and out of there (fingers crossed).

I like the scent of a new leather saddle, but it's never made me hungry or think of tea. Just not a term I would ever have thought to use, although itmight have fit the pu I drank last nite.

Started tha day with hot chocolate, but now moved on to a mix of rishi tea peach blosso mixed about 50:50 with yellow tea fro vital tea leaf in San Francisco, sadly thelast of what I bought from them. Have ordered more, though. They're the only source I've used for yellow tea: although Wing Hop Fung calls several of their teas yellow, that appears to be related to the color of the liquor rather than special processing technique.

Good point. It was suspiciously inexpensive. They do have more expensive green teas, but it was very crowded yesterday and I got tired of waiting for someone to help me with the bulk teas. But I think I get where you're going with the more tea/less time idea.

2007 Norbu White Bud Sheng Pu-Erh, Yong De County, Lincan, Yunnan This much tea in a 100mL yixing pot, with water right off the boil: (leaves fill about 1/4 of the pot) 1min 20 second first infusion (oops, timer went off for the cookies, was supposed to be 20 seconds) was too strong, bitter, unpleasing. 2nd at 30-40 seconds was much better, still a little bitter, but wonderfully smoky and starting to show some sweetness. 3rd infusion also 30-40 seconds is really getting to be very nice, warm, rounded, very smoky, a little fruity, needs to be put away for a cool, misty winter day; not really right for this summer evening. 4th infusion 30 seconds also is delicious, with a thick body, and again warm, roasted. I will try a longer infusion next, and then will put the pot and these leaves in the fridge overnight. This will be wonderful with the scarlet runner beans and pasta stew/soup I'm making. I missed the farmer's market this morning so instead of a summer vegetable stew, the beans and pu-erh and ginger cookies are impersonating winter in my kitchen.

Why would upping the leaf to water ratio not also up the bitterness?

I'm swirling the gaiwan or pot a bit to mix before pouring out the sip, so it's not as layered as it might be otherwise.

Bitterness is definitely more bothersome than astringency. And for the dragon well, I did pour out a sip of the first infusion after 1 minute, letting the rest of it go to 2 minutes, and found little difference between the two. What was quite surprising to me was the degree of bitterness in the 2nd infusion with cooler water; I would have thought this would minimize it quite a bit, but it really didn't make much difference. Next time I'll start with cooler water.

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.

←

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.