The times, they are a changing...

I would like to keep posting to this blog frequently, I really would. There are a lot of factors keeping me from doing this right now, but in the not so distant future I should be posting again. I actually miss doing a post or two once in a while.

Bringing something scientific to tea has killed a tiny bit of the magic involved in it, so I haven't really taken detailed notes of a tea in a little while. I've grown to be a picky tea drinker. When it comes to pu'er, I refuse to buy any tea that I don't really truly love, and I'm finding a lot less to love these days. I have too much tea already, and I must start being careful. I also find myself agreeing with the forum public less and less. I'm looking for different things in the teas I drink now, depending on the tea. Posts from now on will be quite different, and mostly to reflect the changing of the times.

2008 Winter Honorable Mention Baozhong

Yesterday I drank three baozhongs in a row. Six infusions each in my new 120ml Dayi gaiwan. All were using five grams, water just off boiling, and infusion times of; 20s, 15s, 25s, 45s, 1:15, 2:00- no rinse. The three baozhongs were from Floating Leaves Tea, and included the Taiwan Wuyi, the Farmer's Choice, and the Honorable Mention. I'm testing them to see which one I would like to buy a large amount of mainly for aging purposes but also for personal consumption.

This was the beginning of my thorough testing to see which baozhong I liked the most, and was also a way for me to continue learning about baozhong. Soon I plan on doing a blind taste test where all three are brewed competition style with my good friend Jamus over at Mug Puerh which would be a good test seeing as how we're both pretty familiar with all three baozhongs already. Then we're going to recreate the same brewing parameters I used for the first test by myself to see how it all pans out. I figure this should be a fun cross-posting exercise.

Before we both get into all of that, I have some quick notes on the Honorable Mention baozhong.
The dry leaf smelled like what I've come to expect from most baozhongs that aren't roasted heavily which is grassy and vegetal, but sweet. The leaf appears smaller than some of the other baozhongs I've been drinking lately.
This is where I let my readers know that I prefer taste over aroma. I think I've stated it before, or it's been obvious but for me taste is always the most important factor. Mouthfeel for me is second, depending on the tea, followed by aroma. I think this is pretty funny considering I'm a huge fan of teas that are mostly produced for their aromas i.e. dancongs and baozhongs. I usually find that the byproduct of their focus during production (taste) is my favorite part. This being a competition baozhong I thought the focus would be almost entirely on aroma which was the main basis of judging in the competition this was judged in. The first two infusions had me believing otherwise as the taste was very strong being vegetal, smooth, and accented with a small astringency to balance it all out. This was less sweet than most baozhongs, and would probably benefit from a good roasting. The flavors after the second infusion just kind of disappear leaving behind a bitter astringent husk that just isn't really enjoyable. The aroma is still kicking strong by the sixth infusion, and never fails to impress. This is a high quality tea, and it's obvious. The aroma, the leaf dry and wet, it all screams out that it has a very specific purpose. The purpose of a fantastic aroma is unfortunately not what I'm after in tea, or this would fit the bill perfectly. If you like baozhongs for their most notable feature, then this tea should be perfect for you at the price point it's placed in. For the rest of us, my search continues.

Some musings on lidded bowls

It was a couple of months after I had gotten used to gaiwan brewing that I took my first plunge into yixing ownership. It was a pot of shoddy craftsmanship and materials that set me back a "whopping" $12 USD. It did it's job within a loose description of a teapot's main objectives, but soon I wanted more. Thus began my (still continuing) hunt for higher quality yixing teapots. Now I haven't used that pot in forever, but that first gaiwan is still in use by me to this day. It's an eggshell thin gaiwan, thus making it absolutely perfect for lighter oolongs and greens. It has two large cracks in it's sides, but it doesn't leak miraculously enough. It cost me a total of $2 USD. I couldn't tell you where my first "yixing" pot is right now, nor do I really care. I now own a few gaiwans with this Dayi gaiwan being my latest lidded bowl acquisition.

Let me confess the obvious. I love gaiwans. Love them. You can brew any type of tea in them one after another and it doesn't matter. It provides an honest cup and thus an honest representation of any tea you wish to brew. You don't have to worry about seasoning it, cleaning is a breeze, and if you break one you could always replace it cheaply. There are multiple ways to use gaiwans (which I won't get into here as it's been covered extensively by a lot of my peers) and overall they're just so damn versatile. Now I'm not discrediting the benefits of a good yixing pot on an aged pu'er, or a nice three year old Da Hong Pao, rather I'm just stating that gaiwans are more than "just enough".

Part of my deciding to bring this all up is that I cannot tell you how many threads I see from people on the most common forums asking help with yixing, without ever having used a gaiwan or owning one first. Then I see a bunch of people discredit gaiwans as being inferior to yixing, or whatever such nonsense page after page. Mind you I'm far from an expert on yixing, but depending on the tea, the clay, the shape of pot, tons of variables, etc. etc. yixing doesn't always make a huge difference, let alone always an improvement. I think a good analogy to a yixing's effect on tea is young sheng to aging. Not all young sheng will age into an excellent and graceful cup of delicious older tea, but a lot of people believe and have been told different.

Let me give you another example of the endless usefulness that is a gaiwan. I refuse to drink young sheng in anything but a gaiwan. I don't care if the yixing pot makes young sheng into something that you could actually (and want to) drink daily- I won't do it. It provides a crutch for the tea to hide it's weaknesses. I don't know about the rest of you but I buy to age or buy already aged. If a younger tea is hiding a large flaw through the help of yixing I would like to know all about it before I buy any cakes of it.

Well I hope you didn't mind reading my ranting and raving in the defense of gaiwans, but it just kills me inside seeing gaiwans being underappreciated. I don't know about all of you, but after writing this I think I'm in the mood for some Bi Luo Chun grandpa gaiwan style.

Early 90's Pin-Lin Baozhong

Ah, baozhong. One of my favorite types of oolong next to wuyi yancha, I think baozhong is the perfect representation of how light oolongs should be done. Of course, 95% of people out there reading this will disagree, and probably mention tieguanyin or any number of gaoshan Taiwanese oolongs, but for my money it doesn't get too much better than baozhong. Like many lighter oolongs, baozhongs are particularly good at one of, or a combination of the following three things; aroma, mouthfeel, and huigan. Plus for me personally, I just really love the taste of it. Well with my new focus on oolongs, specifically aged ones I figured there'd be no better place to start than with an aged baozhong.

This particular example comes from Houde, weighing in at 2oz for $22.50. A fair enough price, if the tea is good. The particular cultivar this tea was produced from, was the common baozhong choice of chin shin. In fact most Taiwanese oolongs are produced from the chin shin cultivar, specifically most oolongs at elevations >1200m.

The first thing I noticed about this tea was it's unusual dry leaf aroma. Slightly musky, dry plum, and overall a little muted. For brewing this tea I used 6g in my 120ml hong ni pot, which ended up being a good decision. I have also brewed this tea with 5g in my 100ml gaiwan. I think yixing pots make the biggest difference when brewing oolongs. The infusion times I ended up using were; instant rinse, 7s, 15s, 35s, 2m, 5m, 12m, 30m

The leaf is of good quality, being strong, healthy and soft. Carmaleized plum is the best way to describe this tea, but not overbearingly sweet like you'd expect. This is good because it also means that there isn't any of that nasty sourness associated with poorly stored/aged oolongs. There's also a little malty sweetness somewhat reminiscent of a slightly older dianhong which I am particularly fond of, but this is a lot more complex than that. The huigan is sharp, and really fast. It's good tea, but not quite $22.50 per 2oz good, especially seeing as how the mouthfeel is not as thick as I'd hoped, but it's definitely not a thin tea so overall it can be faulted for that. I'm definitely glad I was able to try it before Houde sold out though, and if it's still left as this is published then you might want to check it out. Coming within the next week or two I have some fresh baozhongs, and even one from the 70's.

A change of pace

Before roughly a week ago, I hadn't had a proper cup of tea in a month at least. My kettle had gained this ability to add a horrible aftertaste to any water that touched it, I was finding it harder to justify purchases that weren't necessary, and overall wasn't really "feeling it". Well after fixing my kettle, remembering I still had tons of samples, and finally having some money to spend on tea again I found the first thing I wanted to do was just enjoy tea. So that's what I've been doing, which also explains the lack of notes on my blog. Keeping notes of teas as you drink them kind of takes away from the experience.

As any reader of this blog will tell you, it's been almost all about pu'er with some oolong thrown in. I'm looking to change that in the next few months. I'm going to be ordering some Dian Hong's, some newer oolongs that I normally don't drink, and some aged oolongs. I won't be keeping up with the 09 pu'er season like I did with 08's. I've only had probably three or four aged oolongs in my life, so I'm pretty much completely new to that specific genre of tea. I really liked what I have had though, so I'm looking to try as much as possible.

This leads me to my next point. I'm going to experiment with aging oolongs myself. I'm buying a canister set, a roaster, and I'm going to see what I can accomplish. I'm going to see if I can start to log and pinpoint what makes an oolong age well. Who knows, I might end up sharing the end result when all's said and done!