Month: July 2013

A Brief Public Service Announcement

If you are ever hungry and drifting around the internet, i recommend avoiding descriptions like Susan Chang’s delightful prose about buttermilk. It not only stoked my burning desire for excellent dairy products, which are in short order in China, but it also awakened in me a longing to be a better writer. I often gloss over points that I am unable to describe in the puer world, going with tired old adjectives for bitterness or mouth feeling, rather than aspiring to sentences like:

 the way it evokes cream without cream’s over-the-top heft; the way its tanginess goes up to the threshold of yogurt and stops just shy

Shit. Give me some of that! Nothing tickles a Midwestern boy quite like sultry talk of buttermilk. Susan, you had me at evokes cream.

How did this make it onto my tea blog? Well, buttermilk starts with B and so does Beta, so there is probably some connection if you look hard enough.

Beta Blind Tea Tasting

The fragrance off the leaves is excellent, both dry and after the rinse. On the first rinse I can smell the thickness of this tea wafting of the top of the soup.

The first steep is intriguing. Thick in the mouth, fast huigan [sweet aftertaste], and I am immediately refilling my tea kettle, which has gotten low on water. As I wait for the water to boil, the lingering character in my mouth is palpable.

The leaves have a 80/20 split between fruit and smoke respectively. The second steep opens up a lot, again a fast huigan. There is still some smoke in the soup and a medium-light kuwei [good bitterness].

The further steeps seems similar, a mix of kuwei and a background savory smoke flavor. The tea is pleasant and more towards my taste than the theta. The base material also seems a bit sturdier.

The Beta also responds really well to an oversteep, as I accidentally steeped it for several minutes after a distracting phone call. (Protip: Don’t answer the phone while steeping tea) Luckily, there was no ugliness, just a more intense bitterness and stronger huigan.

Oversteeps are a good test if you want to tap around and feel where a tea has chinks in the armor. In some cases, a tea will fall apart and become nearly undrinkable when steeped too long. The Beta holds up very well under scrutiny, and has more going on than the others I have tried, Theta, Kappa, and Sigma, for those of you keeping track at home. I still don’t know what this tea is because I have not gotten around to asking Mr.Hobbes or Mr.Scott.

Lastly, Jakub made a review on his puer tea blog T, where he has a different opinion than I did. Anyone who disagrees with me is totally wrong. Twodogteablog is pure puer truth. Never forget it.

More of the samples from this post. Seems the other tea bloggers did these in a different order than i did. So, my notes may not coincide with those of others, such as Hobbes and Jakub.

The Kappa shows some flecks of charcoal in the rinse and initial steeps. This could just be a stray scorched leaf that was at the bottom of the wok during the kill green stage of processing, or it could be indicative of tea that was cooked too long or on high heat, tough to say from the small 8 gram sample I am brewing.

This tea is far more green in flavor than any of the other samples I have tried so far. It’s got some sort of umami flavor lingering around, with some sweetness on the gaiwan lid. This tea might be better consumed in the short term rather than aging long term.

The Sigma was better tailored to my tastes. Thicker in the body, enough complexity to keep me entertained, and nothing I could pick out in terms of major processing flaws. Not much to describe for particular flavors or feelings, it was  mostly the body that I enjoyed.  I am one tired tea blogger, so despite the short description, just put the Sigma in my like column and the Kappa in my dislike column.

*Notes: Seems the Kappa was a Wuliang, which reveals my aging bias. Still not sure what the Epsilon is, but i enjoyed it.

**Edit: I originally wrote Epsilon. Obviously slept through Greek lessons as a lad.

Blind Tea Tastings with the Greeks

This post was written a couple of weeks ago, but in the interest of synchronized timing, I will be releasing these reviews in the coming few days.

The samples are all labeled with Greek letters, and I have no prior knowledge of what I am drinking. Time to find out how little we all know, as I mistakenly profess my love for pesticide drenched plantation summer tea and denounce spring gushu [old tree] laobanzhang with hubris! Though it is pretty safe to say neither of those things are amongst what Scott offers – as he is usually in the good tea/ good value range. Whatever, Let’s get this frat party started.

Theta, I choose you!

10.2 grams and 150 ml gaiwan.

The gaiwan lid smells of fruit after a rinse and sitting for about a minute. The first two steeps have a few things in common; very gentle, cloudy soup, and soft fragrances. A light astringency comes and goes in the second steep, and the tea leaves a light sweetness in the mouth. There are the beginnings of a coating in the throat.

The soup retains its cloudy character on third steep and astringency perks up even futher, along with a very fast huigan [sweet aftertaste]. It becomes less gentle as it opens up. As far as a distinct flavor character, nothing leaps out at me. Something like dry grass and honey.

The fourth steep makes seems to be a bit thicker. The flavor is still not the center point of the tea. The sweet aftertaste is the best feature, appearing quickly and staying for a long period of time afterwards, as well as stimulating saliva and drying the mouth. The astringency is still very strong, but it is not a bad astringency, it is the kind that a young tea ought to have.

To quickly get off track, some older people have said to me, and I am paraphrasing, “Young people are always complaining about astringency. We used to say that if it is not bitter and not astringent, it is not tea.” Astringency is not a bad thing. Young puer tea should be astringent. So, when I say the astringency is strong, that is not a slight, merely an observation.

Around the fifth steep, it is more of the same. Huigan. Shengjing [inducing salivation, dryness]. I take a ten minute break between cups and my throat is not very comfortable. The coating seems gone and feels a little raw.

Sixth steep through the eight steep seem about the same. After my break, the first cups re-coats my throat. The huigan is still there, as is some remainder of the astringency.

I got for an oversteep on the ninth to see what rises up. Stays pretty much the same. All of the aspects I listed above are amplified, but none of them overly harsh. It has been an even keel of what is described above, not a lot of depth, but consistent enough.

I guess this will not be my favorite of the group and will probably be towards the bottom of the list. It is not bad tea,  but I am sure better things await in the other bags. Also, I had bad experience with the Thetas in college which clouded my judgment of this tea. Damn you, Θ s!