A Tea Addict's Journal

I literally haven’t had tea the “proper” way for almost a month now. It’s rather frightening, actually. I finally have cleaned out a few of the tasks I have to do, and hopefully starting tomorrow, will have at least a few days when I feel better about sitting down and enjoying some tea.

In the past month though I’ve managed to drink up most of the Menghai cooked brick I have (150g), as well as some loose raw wet stored puerh (50g). I also finished a big bag of aged baozhong (200g) and another half bag of an aged tieguanyin (75g). I don’t think I drank quite half a kilo of tea… since I might be overestimating the amount of tea, but it’s definitely in the range of 10g a day or potentially more.

Using a big pot to brew changes the kind of things you look for, and the traits you want in a tea. A tea that is great in a small pot with a small drinking cup is not necessarily good in a big pot with a big mug. My current aged tieguanyin is actually better in a small pot, but in a big cup, it also displays some things that I don’t find in the small pot version — for example, today when drinking the tea, I am reminded of “lemon tea” that I used to drink in Hong Kong during school recesses — really really nasty tea infused with some nasty unnatural lemon flavour, plus lots of sugar. It’s a very tart version of Snapple’s. Somehow this tea smells like that today. It’s very interesting.

One thing about these teas though — you need to have enough leaves in the pot to make it work. If you brew it too lightly, then they just become very bland and very boring…. a total waste of tea.