cdh

Query- should the chunks of leaf be rubbed apart before steeping, or are they fine going in as chunks? Should I treat it like pressed tobacco and rub or crush it into flakes before use? As to the initial rinse, is its purpose to heat the vessel, or to do something to the leaves? I heat my vessel by running some steam into it from my espresso machine's steam vent (which also shoots 180F water, which is convenient for the teas I like.). As to variations in the brewing, I'm up for some guidance from somebody who knows this tea. A bit of googling leads me to conclude that a Shu pu ehr is "cooked", meaning that its ecosystem has been killed off, so it won't continue "maturing" or rotting or however one might describe the bacterial action. The Google also tells me that the observed barnyardiness is common in these teas, and part of the reason these teas are aged for years... a newborn like this displaying the funk is normal... but is this how it was meant to be enjoyed, or is the real payoff several years down the pike?

Alright-- first attempt: 200ml water just off the boil. 2.3 g of tea, 2 minutes. Results are mixed... Aroma not so pleasant, kind of barnyardy, but at first sip this tea seems sort of insipid, just a light black-tea flavor, in keeping with the light reddish color of the infusion. This steeping really shines in the aftertaste. It coats the mouth and keeps on going for minutes afterwards. Again, a light flavor, not at all tannic like black teas, but more like the mouthcoating flavors of oolongs. This reminds me most of a Bai Hao in its overalll impression in the mouth... though a Bai Hao would win in the aroma contest hands down. A second steeping of the first 2.3g of leaves under the same conditions with a 2.25minute steep produced similar flavor results. Aroma in the yixing is still very barnyard-y, but doesn't transfer much to the cup the second time around. Second steep has little aroma. A third try at the same 2.3g of tea the following day (yes, the tea sat in my yixing overnight)-- barnyardy aroma back in spades in the pot... more decomposing vegetable matter with an ammonaic hint... not, shall we say, "mucky". This time the water was 180-ish and the steep was 5+ minutes. This really brought out the dark-oolong spicy-woodiness of the the tea. Again, very remniscent of Bai Hao type oolongs, but without the underlying floral hints. Still goes on and on in the mouth. Exhibits a weird almost salty flavor on the first sips, which then recedes into the background and becomes part of the bigger picture.

Good news! Mine's arrived. The dry tea in the bag has an interesting very earthy note over the aroma of black tea... More aromatic that other pu ehrs I've run across... but those were in little pucks, rather than chips off the old block.

I don't have a yixing small enough to do the proper gongfu method with just 10g of tea... so I'm likely to make this with western ratio of leaf to water, but in a yixing pot. When you write 10" are you meaning ten seconds or ten minutes? I read that as ten inches instinctively... is " the seconds mark in the degrees minutes seconds lat/long system? I always though of seconds as coming after a colon, e.g. :10... but enough about the typography... can't wait for the tea to arrive...

Haven't received mine yet... but I'd suggest that if you've got a scale, go by weight rather than by volume. We're shooting for as similar tasting conditions as possible, right?

so... did it come out OK? Thanks Chris. I will try that. I was mostly concerned with the apparent complete lack of "gurgling" in the airlock. I've never seen this before. ←

Most certainly. Most rum is made from fermented molasses, which is then distilled.

I am so happy to hear that terapinchef! Great comments all around! Very few beers last 6 months... except the sour ales I've been brewing that have been occupying 15 gallons of my capacity for the last 9 months... and I don't know when they're going to be ready, but I think I'm going to need to blend them real soon now... just to free up some space.

Give it 10 days. And get it cooler than 79F. It should sort itself out. Yeast makes all kinds of funny smells when it is concentrated and active. They should blow off. Give it a chance to work through the process.

I've still not managed to catch one episode... Sounds like my initial reaction that it must be a joke was pretty accurate. With FIOS on the way, I'll try to tune in and see if this is the train wreck it's made out to be here.

I've never tried it myself, strangely enough given all the brewing I've done and all the time I've spent living in Russia and immediate environs... but I've never had the opportunity and the desire at the same time. If you want to find it, look in Eastern European markets like the one in this thread. Scroll down for pictures of bottles of it on shelves.

For black teas with flavorings, I'm partial to vanilla... best done as tea with slices of vanilla pod mixed in. Have had very nice examples of the style from both Adagio and Tea Trader. Twinings Lady Grey is a nice riff on Earl Grey. The absolute best Earl Grey I've had comes from the House of Tea, and is just their traditional, not one of the fancier deluxified imperialized versions.

Probably not wise to drink any of it if you're 15... nor to give it to similar aged friends. I'd not want you to end up needing my professional services as a result of following my hobby hints. (I'm a lawyer in real life, FWIW.)

You can proportionally reduce the recipes I've put together for this course. You might surprise yourself and find that you actually like some of the beers you make... Feel free to ask any questions that come to mind. (but you should read at least the first 10 pages of this thread...)

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you... It's been a busy week. First concern on the recipe is that you introduced no enzymes into your steep to convert the starches in the oatmeal into sugars, so you've got a starch issue. As to the blow off, sometimes it happens... some yeasts get exuberant. Don't cut back on how much yeast you pitch if you've gone to the bother of growing up a starter. Deal with the blow off. Some folks use a blow off hose in place of an airlock for the first few days of fermentation... if you're using a 3-piece airlock, take the top off, and the floater out, and attach a few feet of tubing to post the floater goes over. Stick the end of that tubing into a jar half-full of sanitizing solution. Voila- a place for all the blow-off to go. Hopefully the blowoff isn't goopy or chunky enough to clog the hose. Another solution is to use a foam control product... I've never done it, but homebrew shops sell them.

I agree, at least as far as the Chinatown NYC store goes. I had a very pleasant experience (with somebody who was much more English-speaker friendly) at the Ten Ren in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, strangely enough. The New York store is just surly, and has been for the dozen years I've been going there. And only the top of their line is interesting or conceivably worth it... my experiences with stuff below the third grade have been really not so good. Their ginseng oolongs, particularly the green oolong varieties are very nice indeed. On the other end of the oolong spectrum, they also do a damn fine Bai Hao.

Have only heard of Teaism out of the bunch, and have never been to any of them. I'd nominate The House of Tea in Philadelphia, but then again, it is the bricks and mortar tea shop in my part of the world that I go to... But it seems the best tea shops out there are mail order operations.

Try making the same tea with well water from different locales and you'll come to understand the importance of getting the right water. My own well water here in Eastern Pennsylvania is what I'm used to, and makes fine tasting tea. I took a trip up the Hudson Valley to visit friends up there and brought some very nice tea along (a Taiwanese ginseng oolong), and tried to make a pot with the local water. The tea came out with an iron twang and a sulfury aroma. The tap water there gave no hint of either iron or sulfur, but when added to tea, both flavors appeared. I'd hate to be stuck living someplace with water like that.

I recently dusted off my FreshRoast after years of neglecting to roast anything for myself. I've been going through some old (maybe "aged" now) beans and the results have been great. Some 2001 Cuzco Peru from Sweet Marias blended very well with some Kona beans that were brought back from Hawaii. I also did a blend of some other '01 vintage PNG and Brazilian beans and that turned out great as well. Green coffee keeps remarkably well.

Well, the alla calce olives did turn out to be what I hoped they'd be-- they're soft and buttery. They have a sort of avocado flavor and texture, which is greatly improved by some salt. So, add another technique to the olive repertoire: 2 parts sifted fireplace ashes, 1 part pickling lime, made into a batter/paste. Treat olives 10-18 hours with the paste, rinse em off, and soak them in water, changing it daily for a week. Then brine em for flavor.

I did add some more water to that bag, and let the olives go overnight. It appears that it was still too potent, insofar as a number of them have sloughed off their skins and some of them have gotten squishy. I'm now soaking the whole olives that survived in water to get the alkali out of them, and will then brine them.

Some of those olives sitting in their water bath have gone into another experiment. A bit more googling (thanks to google translator) led me to a better description of the Italian "alla Calce" method of curing here. It seems this method is not limited to just Apulia, but is also practiced in Lazio. It calls for a 24 hour treatment of the olives with a paste composed of a 2:1 ratio of wood ash and pickling lime. Fortunately I've not cleaned out the wood stove recently, so there was plenty of hardwood ash to be had, and the Agway down the street had pickling lime. I mixed 33 grams of lime to 66 grams of ash in a ziplock bag, and added wet olives. The alkali mixture encrusted them fairly well. Here's a snap: I wonder if I need to add more water, or if that will be sufficient. Anybody out there familiar with the alla Calce method of olive curing?

Dennis- Thanks so much for keeping this thread alive. So much interest has dissipated since Newman was deposed by who we've got there now and the seriousness of the PLCB took a dive. I don't know of any current bargains, but should I run across something, I'll certainly let you know.

OK, I've changed the brine... and here's a snap of the olives that have been in brine for a day. And here are images of the olives in alkali solution: And here they are in an alkali and brine solution: I've got lots of citric around, so I'll add a teaspoon of that to the brine in the bowl... any target pH I'm shooting for in an acidified brine?

My big bag of olives has arrived, so I'm experimenting with various curing techniques. So far I've got a bunch submerged under just ordinary water, uncracked. These are in a holding pattern, I think, until I figure out what to do with them next. I gather that if they stay under water for long enough, the bitterness will go away. I've got some slit open and soaking in a 12% brine, like ChefCrash prescribes. A day into the soak and they're already shriveling and the brine is going brown. In poking around the internet, I've found some references to an Italian (Apulian) style of curing called "alla Calce", which appears to use ashes and calcium hydroxide (aka slaked lime, not the citrus kind of lime). I'm a huge fan of the bright almost fluorescent green italian olives that Fairway sometimes carries, and I'm betting that they're cured with a method like this, so I've started a couple of experimental batches in pint glasses submerging slit olives in a mixture of fireplace ashes and pickling lime. One of them has some salt added to the alkali, the other is just pure alkali. My pH strips go bright blue (meaning 10+ pH) in these solutions. The liquid in the salted batch appears to be turning an orangey brown color after a day. The pure alkali solution hasn't begun to discolor yet. I'd love to learn the chemical mechanics behind the olive curing process... what is it about alkali solutions that speeds the process? I'd imagine that brine has the same osmotic pressure for busting through cell walls as an alkali does... why's it work so much slower? Or are the quick cures that call for lye just super speedy because refined lye is so much more reactive and powerful than the more "natural" methods like wood ashes (from which lye was traditionally made).