Wholemeal Crank

They have a tea tasting are with about 50 different teas in bulk, and that might be an underestimate, plus many tinned teas, pu-erh cakes in plain wraps and fancy packages, and a large selection of teaware--relatively few gaiwans in simple styles, quite inexpensive, and lots and lots of the small pots like mine, though most were more decorated, may fancier presentation sets and lots of japanese cast iron pots, and more. It is quite amazing. And my little pot holds about 160 mL.

Wing Hop Fung, a tea/herb/grocery in LA chinatown. <http://www.winghopfung.com/>

Got the pointers, but this is still quicker for now My Webpage From a trip to Wing Hop Fung in LA's chinatown recently. Decided I should try a gaiwan, and since they were so inexpensive (all except the clay pot were $2.99-$6.99), I got several. Also, since my favorite little glass teapot broke, I got another one that has a filter built into the spout. A simple glass gaiwan, a porcelain gaiwan decorated with a fish, a simple ceramic gaiwan, glazed inside, a glass teapot, and a lovely unglazed clay pot. Will edit or repost with embedded images in a few days.

Ok, here is the pot in question, profile http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/3806243025/ bottom stamp http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/3807062878/ and the box that it was put in after I picked it off the shelf--no idea if this is the original pot or not http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/3806246481/ I paid just $20 for it. It was one of the simplest designs available. And it makes wonderful tea.

Found it, at my usual tea shop, but again the packaging--the outer box--had changed, although the inner metal tin and the tea inside seem to be the same.

Very lovely glaze and beautiful simple shape

First try with the gaiwan was quite successful last night. I'll try it again today with the lovely Taiwan oolong for the tasting. I started out with the glass gaiwan, which is very easy to use not only because I can see what I'm doing, but also because there is a little lip inside the cup where the glass lid sits that helps to stabilize the setup. I'll practice with it a few more times before I work up to the porcelain and ceramic ones where I'll be doing it blind. It's not yet 'gongfu style' because as I understand it, gongfu refers to a degree of skill that I do not yet possess....but I can see that with a little practice it will be quite easy and more straightforward and easier to clean than my teapot plus mesh strainer, where the mesh is always getting fines stuck in it that are tricky to clean.

Is the tradition hold the tasting notes until everyone has tried the tea? I'm enjoying the first batch in my little clay teapot, and taking notes. I am in love with this tea, and this pot.

After some gentle nudging from this forum, I am now the proud owner a several gaiwans, a small clay teapot (don't know how I'd know if it is yixing or not, given that it was pretty cheap, probably not?), and am going to practice with my favorite ti kuan yin (just found it in abundance at Wing Hop Fung today, yay!), and prepare for the Taiwan Oolong tasting a little later. Pics to come, right now they're drying off after a first quick wash (fingers tap-tap-tapping as I wait). How can I tell if my little clay teapot is Yixing ware?

I have a reasonably robust immune system, so am not too worried about fungus amongus, more concerned about deterioration of the wet leaves leading to off flavors. May try this with the rinsing for tomorrow's work pot of tea

Tea received. Will probably wait until Saturday to brew and taste, so I can practice with the gongfu first, and also brew a comparison batch of some of my other oolongs.

I've wondered about leaves that were left for a few hours at room temp, and whether they're still ok for another infusion (assuming not overused at the beginning). Never thought of refrigerating them to try again later.

The first tea i started regularly preparing for myself was a particular brand of Ti Kuan Yin my father learned about from a chinese friend. I have been buying this particular tea for years, but in the last two years have run out of my previous supply and been unable to find it in local markets. I have tried some from various local tea shops and chinese markets that are nice, but not quite the same; yesterday I brewed one of these substitutes for the third or fourth time and was not entirely satisfied. Looking online, I was able to find this image, that helps to identify the tea: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...%3D105%26um%3D1 or tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/mapuou but that is not a retail site. Does anyone here know where I might find this tea online? Or can anyone suggest a local source in the LA area? (have not seen it at ranch 99, or wing hop fung, and do not know enough to identify which if any teas sold in bulk by other suppliers might be the same thing)

Are these roasted grain teas usually drunk chilled? I have never tried roasted barley or roasted corn tea, but I love love love toasted barley and toasted barley flour in baked goods, and I probably should try it as tea.

Maybe with some cold water and used leaves, even. I've had enough adventures with burnt tongue from too hot tea, don't need burnt fingers too!

Haven't really done this yet, but have a few questions as I get ready to try it. How do you keep the tea leaves in the gaiwan, and out of the drinking cup, especially for the first quick brewings, when not every leaf sinks?

Tried again with the rosebuds, because they're what I have already on hand, and used a higher proportion of buds to tea, crushed this time-- < and it worked better: a very mild floral edge to the tea that complemented it quite nicely.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I am surprised that it would take so much more rose than I started with to give a hint of rose flavor to the tea, but it makes sense that crushing the buds--which did not open up much at all, unlike the tea leaves--will help to get more flavor out of what I did use. I guess I forget that when I'm looking at the tiny bit of jasmine sometimes left in a jasmine tea, that I'm only looking at a small fraction of the jasmine flowers that were used to scent the tea, and the dried rose buds are probably a lot less potent than fresh jasmine. And it also makes sense that I might have better results treating the flowers separately. I will try this and see what happens. i also have some rose water at home--I believe it is just the scented water, and not a syrup--which I can play with. That might be a lot simpler than making a separate tisane, although probably more prone to the overdone effect I have not liked in some of the commercial blends.

I enjoy the 70% scharffenberger for general eating, and these days keep their 99% for baking, which is the same mix of beans as the 70%. But I've never done a head-to-head comparison to see how much difference it makes for brownies vs Bakers, which is what I used to use. It might not be that much, in the brownies I make, because there is so much sugar, butter, egg, and nuts that may compete with the fine nuances of the chocolate for your the taste buds. How do I make the brownies more chewy ? Bake them less. As a general rule for baking, how do I make the result less crumbly ? More moisture and more binder--more egg, more/higher gluten flour, develop the gluten more via beating/stirring/kneading more.

nothing wrong with the coffee, if you like that flavor. That's entirely a personal thing.

And as a confirmed wholemeal crank myself, I have adapted a lot of recipes like this, and put some thoughts about that here.... http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/W...l#Substitutions

In that case, I'd drop the soy flour, because that's a pretty highly processed item in and of itself, adds nothing to keep them from crumbling, and unnecessarily complicates the recipe by requiring you to measure and add two flours instead of one.

Breaking it down, this is how your recipe compares to the perfect brownies, which naturally are the ones I grew up with (and I have posted a variation on the original recipe here-- http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/C...Brownies.html): Ingredient Mine Yours Chocolate, ounces 2 4 flour, cups 0.75 2.25 instant coffee, granules, cups 0 0.25 net dry ingredients, cups 0.75 2.5 butter or oil, cups 0.33 1 sugar 1 2 eggs 2 3 coffee, cups 0.5 baking powder, teaspoons 0.5 2 Yours have more flour and dry ingredients--here counting the coffee crystals as dry--even accounting for the overall near doubling of ingredients per pan for your recipe, for the amount of eggs. I think the eggs are the main binding ingredients here, and since you've dropped an egg to accomodate the coffee, essentially substituting water for egg, and added flour, that's made a crumblier brownie. I think you need to drop dry ingredients, and for a brownie that is not beaten to develop the texture of the gluten, it probably doesn't matter too much if you drop the wheat or soy flours first, maybe by half a cup net per pan. And definitely drop the soda to 1 teaspoon per batch.

Would first try simpler things, if you're almost where you want to be: halve the baking powder bake shorter time, so they collapse a bit after baking, which may add both denseness and makes them a bit moister and less crumbly. And if you could mention what the particular dietary restrictions are, that would help us to make further suggestions that keep within the desired guidelines.

I enjoy floral teas for variety, but find a lot of the commercially available blends are too strong--for example, I usually cut rishi's peach blossom white tea about 1:2 with a nice white or yellow tea to get a pleasingly floral but not cloying brew--or start with poorer quality base teas, so have been adding flowers myself. For example, while reading up on the pouchong tea I recently rediscovered in the back of my cupboard, I encountered several times a note that it is often drunk with the addition of rose. So, when I bought some more of it, I asked about adding rose, and got a bag of little dried rose buds. I added about 8 of them to the amount of tea that I steeped 3 times to fill my quart thermos (about 1 tablespoon of large loose leaves), and was disappointed to find no real difference in the flavor. I've also tried to work with some dried osmanthus flowers, which are often called 'orchid flowers' when used to flavor teas, and not been very satisfied with the results when trying to reproduce a nice 'orchid oolong' tea I was given as a gift. Simply adding flowers or petals until the flavor seems right isn't working so well, and I'm wondering: are the flowers I have too old/worn out to add flavor? Do the rose buds need to be separated into rose petals? Do the flowers change the best brewing temperatures? Are resteepings drawing undesireable flavor from the petals? Are there ways to tell, without opening the bag/jar/box/can, whether the flowers are likely to have much flavor to give?