Tag Archives: tea

More adventures with the Brazier

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With some success on our first try, my fiancée this afternoon attempted to speed the process of heating the charcoal on our ceramic tea stove. While much was learned, the resulting water was not as hot as we could have liked, and so we searched the tea cabinet for a tea that would fare well with less-than-boiling water.

The easiest choice was a well-sealed packet of single-estate organic Gyokuro from 2010 that I had somewhat forgotten about. You know the kind of tea, you were saving it for a special occasion, but eventually it was just too old to use, and so there it sat. Gyokuro, if you’ve never encountered it, is essentially the highest quality tea made in Japan, second only to Matcha in the respect afforded it. That said, all tea comes in many different grades, and nearly all tea produced in Japan is a blend.

Unlike China or India, where there is much land to be had, Japan is tiny and overpopulated to the point where growing a tea plantation is out of the question. Tea farms are generally small estates planted carefully wherever the conditions are right. Unfinished tea leaves are then brought to special tasting events where representatives from large tea companies will find a selection of small batches that they like and then finish them all together. This tea, however, is from a single garden in Japan, and it’s certified organic to boot. Also not an easy feat.

Gyokuro (meaning “Jade Dew”) is grown only from a specific selection of cultivars of the tea plant and is shaded for several weeks of its growing season just before harvest. This shade, traditionally with bamboo or more modern mesh, causes the plants to work that much harder at finding sunlight. The resulting richness of the leaf is well worth the effort. Of course, it is still a green tea, and the real magic of such things only lasts 6 months or so.

So clearly we were skeptical of this find, but that skillful Japanese packaging managed to keep the leaves in pretty good shape after three years. While definitely not the creamy rich and salty experience I would expect from a recent Gyokuro, this still had the characteristic mellow vegetal body coupled with a vibrant green broth.

gyokuro_and_brazier

Now the challenge will be to drink the rest of the packet. …Or it may just go back on the shelf.

Engagement Cha Xi

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Yesterday my excellent friends Ben and Sarah joined my fiancée and I for an outdoor tea session to celebrate our upcoming wedding. The weather cooperated and we spent around four hours talking, sipping, and taking pictures.

Now normally when I get together for a long tea session like this one, we blast through as many infusions as we can make, savoring the contrast between each cup before moving on to a different tea. This time we only drank one tea, and although it made us a good 20 infusions, they were often spaced apart by 15 minutes or longer. The reason for this, besides various photo-ops, was the tea stove.

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The tea stove and accompanying kettle are things of beauty hand crafted by a potter I cannot praise highly enough, Petr Novak. When my partner and I decided we wanted a tea ceremony as part of our wedding many months ago, I asked Petr to make this set for me. Our wedding will be outside and I felt that it would be a good touch to have a real brazier heating the water we would use. So, after much back-and-forth about the shape, size, and style, the tea stove arrived at my home to great fanfare. The only problem was that it was too cold and too rainy out to use it.

So for months I’ve been keeping my thoughts on the stove, waiting for just the right time to inaugurate it. After all, I’ve never used a charcoal anything before, let alone a small clay burner such as this. So when yesterday arrived, and we had set up the stove next to a handy pile of kindling and charcoal, the real adventure began.

First we got a small fire going with kindling and a little paper, then we added small chunks of charcoal over that, allowing the burner to heat up to a temperature we could use. The challenge, I suppose, was that the actual area where the charcoal sits is quite small, probably about the size of a cupped hand, so we had to tend the fire carefully. Naturally we made many mistakes, but eventually our first kettle came to a boil and began a series of really wonderful infusions.

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To that end, I should mention the tea! Ben had provided a piece of a Red Mark (Da Hong Yin) Sheng Puer from the 1950s. What a treat! I think a little smoke taste had accumulated in our first cup, because we all thought it tasted a little like firewood, but after that the infusions were smooth and earthy with an aroma a little bit like dark cocoa powder. The color of each infusion was a transparent reddish brown that only started to turn yellow around number 10. Other than the first, the taste was also remarkably uniform and satisfying.

engagement_chaxi_pouring

It’s important to have sessions like these to remind oneself that young flaxen sheng cha eventually matures into rich old cakes that could be mistaken at a glance for a shou puer. But of course, that’s what shou puer is often made to mimic in the first place! The real thing can’t be compared.

engagement_chaxi_teacup

It turns out that I really enjoy tending a fire for making tea. Even though it took quite a while (especially when the fire died down) to boil the water each time, it made the whole experience more rich. I was always adding a little wood, some coal, and listening for the singing of the water. And it wasn’t without help! I am humbled to have such friends and such tea in my cup. More tea stove adventures to come!

Ways to Pour a Gaiwan

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First I should say, do you know what a Gaiwan (蓋碗) is? Literally, it means “lidded bowl”, so there’s not a lot of confusion. Sometimes it’s also called a “Gaibei” (lidded cup) or “zhong” (Cantonese, if I’m not mistaken). They are made in different sizes and materials, but generally are between 100-200ml and made from white porcelain consisting of a saucer, a bowl and a lid. The porcelain means that heat will dissipate quickly, making it ideal for teas that are best infused with cooler water, such as greens.

In ancient China, tea was sipped directly from the bowl while the lid was used as a strainer. While it’s possible to find teahouses that still serve this way (I’ve seen it still done in Sichuan), most use of the gaiwan now is as a sort of teapot, allowing the leaves to infuse before straining into a cup (or pitcher) with the lid.

As I’ve often told people learning to use a gaiwan for the first time, straining the tea is similar to straining pasta or vegetables from a saucepan by tipping the lid slightly to allow water to leave and retaining what’s inside. And just like with a saucepan, the water inside is quite hot, so you need to take certain precautions.

To that end there are several ways to pour a gaiwan. Probably the easiest is the two-handed method: one hand holds the cup by its rim and pours while the other hand holds the lid by its top nub at a slight angle to keep the leaves in. I want to emphasize holding the cup by the rim and the lid by the nub to protect your hands from the heat.

gaiwan_two_handed

A more common technique is to hold the gaiwan edges with one hand, using the thumb and middle finger on the rim and the index finger or knuckle on the lid.

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The third method that I use is more advanced in that you are much more at risk of dropping things. I find it most useful when infusing tea gongfu style in a gaiwan, meaning that the water is very hot and isn’t given time to cool before straining. In the other methods, sometimes even the rim is too hot to touch, so it’s possible to hold the entire gaiwan by gripping its saucer and lid between the thumb and the middle finger. Since the lid must still be tipped, this requires just enough pressure to avoid dropping anything, but not so much that the lid will go shooting away from the cup! In this method it’s also best to make sure the palm of your hand is on the side of the gaiwan while pouring, or else the steam escaping from the back of the lid can be very unpleasant.

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While all this may seem like much more work than simply using a teapot, a gaiwan has two significant advantages that no teapot can claim. Firstly, the opening of the bowl is so large that it’s easy to see the leaves and the color of the liquor as they infuse. Especially when first infusing a new tea, this gives you a good way to judge the time of the infusion. Because of this, I would never suggest purchasing a gaiwan without a white interior. Secondly, a gaiwan can pour out its contents within a few seconds, much faster than any teapot, meaning that when you have decided that the infusion time is up, your tea will be poured and ready without any additional steeping that might occur during a long pour.

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I highly recommend the humble gaiwan as a tool for beautifully making a cup of tea, especially for those new to judging infusion time. The methods listed above are just suggestions based on my own experience, so feel free to find your own way to pour.

Keemun from the UK

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Keemun Mao Feng

Darkly sweet, like a deeply ripe blood orange. An aroma of very dark chocolate with a touch of cinnamon. There’s a subtle dryness and roughness at the end that is typical of some Qi Men teas.

Qi Men (aka: “Keemun”) tea (祁門红茶) is a black tea (“red tea” in China) made in Anhui province in Eastern China. It is a style that has been relatively famous in the West for quite a while and is often blended with other, stronger leaves to produce concoctions like the English Breakfast tea. As with any harvest, though, there’s a spectrum of quality that can be had and most of the leaves exported for teabags are literally the bottom of the barrel. A Mao Feng (毛峰) pick is considered a pretty high grade and should have entirely full leaves, gently twisted into spirals.

This tea I purchased from an artisan tea and coffee shop in Brighton in the UK. While the staff didn’t know a tremendous amount of tea information, I appreciated that their tea was well sourced and well served.

At the shop they used a kind of plastic mug with a drain on the bottom for serving, so the leaves went right in with the water and then the infusion was strained out of the bottom into a ceramic mug when ready. I’m not a big fan of plastic for anything tea-related, but this method did have several advantages which I think many methods of tea infusing lack.

Firstly, the leaves were not separate from the water during steeping. Probably the most common way to infuse tea of any sort in the West is to use some sort of separation tool, such as a teabag, tea ball, or strainer. While there is quite a bit of experimentation ongoing with these methods in the form of different fabrics and materials, shape and size, ultimately there is always part of the water which is not coming into direct contact with the leaves. In my experience this never produces quite the same effect as having loose tea leaves swirling around in your pot or mug.

The second advantage of these draining mugs was that after the infusion time was up, it’s easy to quickly drain the whole thing into your cup. This means that no tea remains steeping in water while you drink your first cup, which would otherwise almost invariably produce a bitter second pour. The speed was also important since a slow-pouring teapot can make timing your infusion much more challenging than it needs to be.

Due to the plastic, I find it hard to recommend these devices in general, but you could do a lot worse, and the above points are definitely worth keeping in mind for your own infusion experiments.

Overall I’m very happy with this tea and pleased that there are more shops taking unflavored tea seriously. Thank you, Naked Tea!

Da Hong Pao from Shanghai Shop

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Rich golden orange liquor with a sweet pumpkin taste and a gentle roast in the aroma. Fantastic.

Such good Da Hong Pao. I bought several Wuyi teas when I was in Shanghai and I haven’t had this one in a while. Clearly I’ve been missing out! Thankfully my fiancée picked it from our tea cabinet because it has a nice tin. I remember asking for the tin specifically when I bought the tea, even though it didn’t normally come in a tin.

I felt pretty skillful at haggling because I got the tin and my hedgehog tea pet from that store at quite a discount. I’ve been wondering, though, if indeed the discount was as good as I thought, or if the proprietors were perhaps just hoping that these strange foreigners would just go away.

1970s Bao Zhong

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When we were wandering around Pinglin (坪林區) in Taiwan looking for exciting Bao Zhong to taste, we only found a couple of places that piqued our interest.

The first was a small family shop right next to the bus stop and was where we spent most of our time. That’s another story.

The second, though, seemed a little more professional (which is not always a good sign) and I think was partially a cafe or restaurant, although – like the rest of Pinglin – it was deserted. There were also plenty of the giant mosquitos that Taiwan seems to be famous for milling around the room and attacking me whenever they had the chance. I didn’t dare sit in one place for too long and give them an advantage, and don’t ask me about the bathroom. It was still an interesting place, and had gigantic clay jars of various tea in the center of the floor.

I forget exactly which teas we tried, but for the most part we were unimpressed and their prices were a little high. Before leaving to go back to the other shop, though, I asked about a tea that was on a shelf in a somewhat ornate container. It turns out that the tea was an aged oolong, purportedly 40 years old.

The real thing that surprises me each time I drink this tea is how smooth it is. For some reason I always expect a strong charcoal-style roast to come out of the leaves. I’m not sure if it’s due to the darkness of the dry leaf or the unmistakable aroma of a dark roasted oolong, but there’s something that implies a Feng Huang Dan Cong in this tea. There’s even a hint of the fruitiness one finds in a Guandong Phoenix. And yet it’s gentle, soothing on the stomach, and has a bit of a lychee or fig character hidden in its orange-colored liquor.

I’m glad that I bought some.

2012 M. Xu Bai Hao

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What a delight. The taste of honey and street roasted chestnuts. A full body and dark orange color that are as comforting in Spring as they were in Winter.

This tea is Bai Hao or Dong Fang Mei Ren Cha (東方美人 – Oriental Beauty). I picked up this bag from Camellia Sinensis a few months ago at their recommendation. It’s definitely a classic Bai Hao taste and very welcome this evening. I was very pleased when I gave a sample of the fifth infusion to some customers at the tearoom and they immediately said that it tasted of honey. That’s exactly the flavor that I think best describes Bai Hao in general and so if someone who’s never had it before thinks of honey when it touches their palette, it must be good!

The Bai Hao sourced by Dobra this season is much darker and even though I think it’s delicious, I’m much more reminded of a sweet Chinese black tea, perhaps an Anhui Qi Hong.

I’ve read that the 2012 Bai Hao harvest was not very promising in general, due to weather conditions earlier in the year. I have high hopes for the 2013 season, but for now this is the tastiest Bai Hao I’ve had since the last of the 2011 passed us by.

I easily got 9 infusions of honeyed goodness, making for a sweet night indeed.

2012 Ping Shui Ri Zhu from Shao Xing

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Today’s tea was a gift from a tea factory I visited in Shao Xing (绍兴), Zhejiang province, somewhat near Hangzhou. We had traveled to the factory to learn more about the production of Zhu Cha (珠茶), more commonly known in the West as Gunpowder green tea. Zhu Cha is often considered a lower-quality style of Chinese tea, since its production is almost entirely by machine (a rarity in China), but one thing this visit taught me is that even such “low quality” tea has quite a pedigree.

Most tea in China is picked by hand, usually early in the morning at high elevations. Zhu Cha is picked by a machine that looks something like a lawn mower, but is held up in the air over a row of tea bushes with a handler on either side. The tea leaves are sheared off into a collection bag on the back. For this reason you can always identify machine-harvested tea gardens by their immaculate rows of bushes. It’s worth noting that this style of harvesting is the norm in Japan, but that’s quite another post.

The leaves are then processed through a series of machines. First they are heated in a drum drier to fix the leaf (this is what makes it a green tea).Then they are withered and rolled and heated in a series of steps to create the tiny pearls that give the tea its name.

After our tour of the factory and gardens, we learned that from these gardens, there’s still a range of grades. Ping Shui Ri Zhu (平水日铸 – Ping Shui is the region), the tea we received, is apparently the highest grade of tea produced in that area. Ri Zhu tea is made earlier in the season than Zhu Cha (before April 20) at the same time as the local Long Jing, but the leaves are smaller and the processing is more akin to Zhu Cha.

The leaves are dark green and rolled small, although not quite as small as Zhu Cha. The liquor is a pale gold and the taste is surprisingly sweet with a delicate vegetal quality. The aftertaste reminds me of a Sencha, actually, although its production is pretty far from that and there’s no corresponding aroma to make me think of Japan. In fact, there’s very little aroma at all.

Energizing and quick, this full-bodied tea doesn’t have a lot of nuance, but is delicious to drink, especially on this sunny spring morning.

2013 Yunnan Mao Feng

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A fantastic fresh Chinese green tea from Stone Leaf. My fiancée describes it as “like pesto”, and she’s right. There’s the salty, the sweet, the nutty, and the green.

The aroma is gently, according to my tasting chart, empyreumatic: kind of toasty, but certainly the fresh vegetable taste carries most of the weight. We had trouble coming up with which vegetable we noticed specifically, and I think it’s watercress. Crisp and sweet.

The body is medium and not over-strong and the liquor is a spring green. The aftertaste is that Yunnan dryness, certainly, but it’s almost overwhelmed by the sweetness that lingers at the tip of the tongue.

I would say we got a good four infusions before the flavors started to wane. Even the fifth infusion was still bold and sweet, although I had to steep it a little long (maybe 2 or 3 minutes).

If you have not tasted a fresh Chinese green, I cannot recommend it highly enough. There is an energy, a bright qi, that just does not exist after a few months.

Hawaiian Oolong

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A gift from the kind owners of Dobra Tea, this Hawaiian oolong is really a fascinating mystery. I haven’t felt adventurous enough until today to give it a try. Until a few months ago I didn’t even know that there was tea grown in Hawaii, and now I’ve sampled several.

The dry leaves are large, dark green, and quite waxy in appearance. A few blushes of red are also apparent.

The buttery, clove and cardamom-like aroma of the warm leaves reminded me instantly of christmas cookies. The liquor is a dramatic pumpkin orange, more glowing than any oolong I think I’ve seen. A little woody, the flavor of cardamom definitely lies in the flavor as well and a noticeably rich sweetness that remains on the tongue.

I managed a good 4 infusions, and I think a few more are present, but my obligations take me away from the gaiwan for now.