cdh
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Posts posted by cdh
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Getting a kindle edition of Joy was too tempting to resist.
Is the current edition any good?
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12 minutes ago, gfweb said:
If you let it get THAT grungy 😉
Yeah... my experience is based in making water kefir in the thing, not coffee... I'm purposely growing biological stuff, so getting the film off the screen is where the peroxide helps me...
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Wouldn't a soak in peroxide bubble out the junk you want to clean out of the press screen? Use coffee oil remover first like Urnex or Joe Glow... then any organic junk left over would get bubbled out by peroxide, no? I use a french press to ferment water kefir, so when organic slime turns up in the screen, a soak in H2O2 seems to do the trick for that purpose.
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French presses are about the aesthetics of the press... they look really spiffy served to the table. They introduce customer interactivity... you get left to press the plunger yourself when you feel like it. They don't require expensive grinders to work right... a French Press will do OK brewing the output of a whirly blade grinder.
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I'll third the motion and suggest there's no need to insert a disclaimer in every post. Amazon pricing is hit or miss sometimes dependent on which browser you're using (and what cookies are set and visible). No need to explain that to everybody every time.
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Hmmm... will see if I can make it work this year.
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Oh, and on the jasmine front, I've enjoyed this stuff: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Chinese-Jasmine-Flower-Tea-Jade-Ring-Girl-China-Green-Tea/202648615304?hash=item2f2ecc7988:m:mHAja09PVISsRB88vb7mVZg
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Boost your water up to 200 and the apricot will pop in the 5th to 9th infusions, or at least that was my experience.
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I've been rolling the dice with tea direct from China from aliexpress, dhgate and ebay... don't have a specific US based vendor I recommend.
e.g. Ran across this the other day and am resisting the urge to buy it: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supreme-An-Xi-Ben-Shan-Se-Zhong-Oolong-Tea/302819616070?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3D5c0eda5cc3c24464ac6afcd9a83b7402%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D15%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D222711322384%26itm%3D302819616070%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A9ba5c804-5665-11ea-a0de-74dbd180348e|parentrq%3A7330218b1700a4e922b1d8ebfffbb3fc|iid%3A1
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Looks really spiffy!
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You've hit the fruity middle steeps. It keeps on going and going.
On the Mei Leaf front, I've never done the boil the white tea leaves at the end thing that he advocates. I might have to try that after about infusion 15.
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I'm starting a session today. 5.7g of the little bits that have collected on the wrapper when I dug chunks out of the cake went into my good-enough gaiwan which is around 100ml. Water is at 185F. Did an initial rinse. 20 second initial steep. Slightly floral aromatics, rich woodsy flavor, long aftertaste. Some dried fruit is coming out after infusion 2, also about 20 seconds. Infusions 3 and 4 were 30ish seconds. Body is filling out and it is getting a nice thick mouthfeel and long aftertaste. Woodsiness is abating and fruitiness is coming out more.
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Yup. He's informative but loquacious. And always subtly selling his own picks... but that's easy to filter out. He's a font of good info.
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For a bit of preparatory info, here's a fun video about white tea:
That channel is a fun tea rabbit hole to jump down and learn about tea from the perspective of a Swiss/Chinese London tea shop owner.
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Ha. Wasn't the tea kettle... was the circuit breaker... the espresso machine, the microwave and the teapot all pulling current at the same time seems to trip it. A trip to the basement has sorted it out.
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And now that I've captured its soul, my tea kettle has decided to give up the ghost. Hope it is still under warranty.
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Here's my good-enough gaiwan setup. A corelle coffee cup and a strainer basket that just about takes up all the space in it. That's an oolong I've been brewing again and again for the past few days... interesting tea in that the early infusions are close to tasteless, but now that I'm 3 days and 8 or 9 infusions in it is getting very flavorful. No idea why that is, but it is.
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11 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:
Please! You had me Googling the Gongfu ceremony. I am entranced by the tray. THAT is the definition of purpose-designed!
Gongfu isn't so much a ceremony as a procedure... six of one, half a dozen of the other, I guess. It's about higher leaf to water ratios and shorter steeping times, and repetitive steepings.
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Since I don't read Chinese, I don't see what you saw, Liuzhou. The folks I bought it from sold it as BaiMuDan, and to look at it, it looks about like the picking style defined as baimudan... As I understand white tea nomenclature, there is yin zhen, which is just unopened buds, baimudan, which is upper leaves and a late bud or two, and shou mei, which is bigger leaves from further down the stem.
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It is totally an oyster knife. Does the job. Wait til you see my good-enough gaiwan setup.
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So we've reached a quorum and samples have been dispatched. The tea is from a cake I ordered from one of the alibaba-ish direct-from-China sites, DHGate.com. Here are photos of the wrapper and the cake. This tea has been very forgiving in my attempts to brew it... 180F works, 195F works. Gongfu works, more western ratios work. I generally use about 5g, whether doing gongfu or western. But I also use the same tea basket for both styles of brewing. This tea will keep giving tasty reinfusions all day. When you get it, give t a brew and let us know what you find.
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Wow... go away for a weekend and now it looks like we might have a quorum.
I've got a cake of aged white tea that is an interesting experience. First 3 PMs to me with a mailing address will find a few grams of it in your mailbox sometime not too far away. Brew it as you see fit, and report back.
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Where to buy from really depends on what you like and what you know. In Indian tea, knowing a plantation you like makes it easy to google for someplace that has the current crop from there... If you are limited to knowing and preferring particular limited availability blends from a known brand, you know where you're shopping. There are merchants that specialize in, say Japanese greens, or Taiwan oolongs, or Yunnan puerhs, so if you want a deep dive into one of those, there is the opportunity to jump into the deep end. There are also merchants that do tea-of-the-month club sort of experiences, where they'll send you 3 or 4 varieties with enough to have a few good sessions with something new and different... so I have no idea where your taste buds and sense of adventure are at right now... Are you a black tea drinker, or a green tea aficionado, or an oolong appreciator or something else? I don't want to flood you with stuff not relevant to your interests.
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Are there enough people around here who drink tea and might want to revive the practice? I've got a few teas interesting enough to discuss sitting around that I'd happily send 5 or 10 grams of to a couple of people who would participate in a tasting thread... chime in if you're interested. Probably best to keep it within the USA, as sending baggies of vegetable matter through international mail is likely to result in delays and headaches.
And for those who haven't been here long enough to remember this far back, here is an example of what I'm talking about.
Crazy Good e-Book Bargains
in Cookbooks & References
Posted
Just found this: Good Eats: The Early Years -- Alton Brown $2.99.
If you hate GE and AB, just don't click through. I don't want to hear it.