A Tea Addict's Journal

Back to the grind

March 30, 2007 · 4 Comments

I’ve been drinking more teabags than I care to mention these days. It’s really quite sad. Most of it is because I don’t have time at home to brew my own tea — I am on the go and thus am stuck with some sort of take out tea or another. If I’m not in the Square, then buying teabag is the only way to get my caffeine fix.

Luckily, today was a relatively lazy day. I got a chance to brew my teas, and I picked out those Guangyungong bits to brew.

The stuff is really quite tightly compressed, and the first infusion of the tea looks weak

By the third infusion, it gets much stronger

The tea has a taste of corn husk in it, with woody notes in the 3-5 infusions, and what my girlfriend describes as “generic aged puerh” taste. The corn husk returns later on, with a mild sweetness to it. There was a little bit of bitterness in the tea today, mostly probably because I added more leaves than I really should. Because of the hard compression, it’s really hard to tell how much leaves I’m really using, and thus I’m prone to using too much.

Now I’m on about the 20th infusion, and it’s still giving me stuff. It’s a mild, sweet, and smooth tea now. It’s a relaxing drink, even if not the best.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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4 responses so far ↓

  • wyardley // March 30, 2007 at 1:45 am | Reply

    Buy some of those pyramid type bags and keep them in your backpack or whatever you carry around with you. Not the greatest, but better than regular teabags.

  • lewperin // March 30, 2007 at 5:48 pm | Reply

    Your problem of not knowing how much tea you have due to the varying density or fluffiness of the leaves does have an answer: use a scale. I drink lots of different teas, and I usually don’t eyeball it. Scales can be easy to use, and they can be tiny.

  • zhilaohu50 // March 30, 2007 at 9:49 pm | Reply

    Just read your blog. I see you were in NYC. Next time, perhaps we can meet. I’d like to spend some time talking to someone who doesn’t think I’m crazy because of my tea addiction. Even my wife gives me a hard time sometimes, and it was her friend who “turned me on to it”.

    Very new to puehr, and haven’t been to Tea Gallery yet, but was considering it this evening when I got off work. Had a choice of Tea Gallery or J&R Music Video and Computers. Both are in walking distance from my work. J&R won, today. Maybe next week.

    How’s the tea in Boston? (I promise – no jokes about tea in the harbor. At least I’ll try not to….)

    Zhilaohu50
    tea(at)zhilaohu(dot)com

  • MarshalN // March 30, 2007 at 11:16 pm | Reply

    There is a credible crowd in NYC who drink puerh, you can try them on Tuesday afternoons, which is when, I understand, these peeps meet. I think they all think it is perfectly normal to spend a whole afternoon drinking tea and doing nothing else. If you go at other times, my understanding is that you should call ahead.

    Yes, I know, I should ideally bring my teabag around, but I’m lazy!

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