Wholemeal Crank

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?

Surely such a brownie could be created--but if it is going to be just fudgy chocolate, in other words, chocolate diluted iwth nothing but flour, sugar, egg, and butter, well, I'd rather have the straight chocolate. Or limit the diluents to butter, egg, and cream, and make a mousse instead. I only make brownies if I want to play chocolate off on something else--nuts, fruit, spices, different textures of brownie part vs frosting, etc.

Today, Pouchong from Ten Ren teas, a not-too-fancy grade (from the website, it looks like it is a '3rd grade'). Trying to think of how to describe it. I've been loving this tea for some weeks now, drinking a lot of it when I'm not drinking pu-erh. It's like a green tea that has been tamed a bit, without the bitterness that so often lurks in wait behind the sweet front of a green tea.

Finally had a litlte more time to brew some of the new pu,, and while I didn't have enough for the full timings suggested above, I did do 4 serial brewings of a broken bit of the cake, not the fines from the bottom of the box, and it was indeed quite nice. Don't know what I did so wrong that first bit--if it was using the crumbs, the cooler than usual water, or something else, but this was a nice pu: a little light on the fruity aftertaste that my other one has, but still, earthy, gentle, and a little sweet, not at all bitter.

Confession of a pu-abuser: had no time today to make tea, but really really wanted some, so popped a rishi pu-erh tuo cha into my thermos, added hot water from the office water cooler (temp unknown, scalding but not near boiling), and headed down to clinic. It brewed up pleasingly, despite the unorthodoxy, and remained tasty and drinkable right to the dregs. Not that I recommend this, or would try it with anything but a trustworthy pu, but I do so love a tea that rewards even abuse with such goodness. Also added a few shots to the pu flickr set showing the remarkable difference in texture between my two pu cakes, the one I was discussing first on the right, and an older, a little less expensive pu cake on the left. The left one is denser and delicious, the right one, less dense; the jury is still out on the quality: http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/3744672109/ closer up: http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/3744680087/ and the label on the older one http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/3744664959/

Didn't get a chance today to work with the new pu-erh, but did make a batch of the first large cake I bought. I still have about 2/3 of this one, and it was interesting to handle it right after the other one. It is very much denser, smoother surfaced, about the same darkness--so presumably also a cooked version--and utterly lovely, night and day from that first cup of the other one. I broke off just the usual amount of pu--bet there's a good scale somewhere nearby in one of the nursing units where I could measure a sample, if no one was looking--and made it in three infusions, after one quick rinse, pouring all together into my thermos, and drank it right through a notoriously boring 90 minute meeting. Sweet. I paid about $35 for this one, at a shop a few doors down from the Ten Ren where I got the latest one. I am sure the Ten Ren pu will be better when I try it again--can't imagine they'd want to damage their reputation by carrying poor quality pu. Still, this was just a good reminder of how lovely the puerhs can be. I will try the other again, giving it a more proper try, but have to be careful about those first short steepings--if I really use water right off the boil, the risk of a scalded tongue is quite high, so carefully, carefully! Will bring this one home so I can share pics of this vs the other one. Unfortunately, I think I threw away the nice little label with the number key from this one--if there was one.

First question: besides tradition, what is the value of the gaiwan in this sequence, vs the other pot? As long as the leaves are covered, and have some breathing room--so they're not swelling up above the level of the water--how does the gaiwan differ? Then on to quantities--for 3 teaspoons--three times what I used--you're using 9 x 4 ounces=36 ounces of water, about 12 ounces per teaspoon, seemingly a bit less than I used, but if part of it is still compressed, and really weighing six grams, a similar or higher ratio of tea to water, but using it in a very differently timed sequence. Any problem with simply using your fingers to break up the cake? that's how I've been breaking the pu I have at work--breaking off a chunk, then worrying that a little until it divides, usually horizontally, into pieces that are about the right size. And the timings are interesting, implying drinking a lot of water over a short time, since there has to be an empty cup ready for the next infusion. I'll try this next time.

It was about a teaspoon of the crumbs from the cake, that were there as soon as I took off the clear plastic wrapper. Some were larger pieces and some quite small--like a basic loose leaf tea slightly crumbled but not minced like most bagged tea. And that was steeped in about 4 ounces of water, twice. Added more images to the set of the teas, steeping, and resulting brews. http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/sets/72157621660566348/ (I wasn't going to post these because I was not happy with the quality, but since you asked...)

Brewed 1 small batch, more or less gongfu style--not in a pretty ceramic pot, but in a glass one, with water just off the boil--rinsed 10 seconds, then two cups in succession with about 2 minutes steeping apiece. THere was a distinct difference in color between the two--the 2nd one was lighter despite longer steeping--and the 2nd one also had a thinner flavor. It was....well....essence of mud. Nothing bitter, nothing bad, just nothing sweet or otherwise pleasing along with the earthiness.