A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘black tea’

Pyramid teabags

April 1, 2007 · 3 Comments

Pyramid teabag is one of those things that we’ve been seeing more and more these few years. Many companies now make them, including I think Lipton, according to an article from, I think, the New York Times a while back. The theory behind them is that pyramid bags, by virtue of their shape, allows for more room for the leaves to be in. They also allow for the tea manufacturer to put whole leaves in them, rather than the fannings that you usually see in regular bags. This, supposedly, will yield a better cup and, of course, be more expensive.

But is it?

I had one today, made by Tea Forte. It was an English breakfast tea, which tasted like your typical Ceylon blend. By the end of the tea…. the bag was filled with the expanded leaves. I am not sure if it really achieved the goal of allowing for more room for the tea to move around.

Also, the amount of tea initially that was available was really tiny…. maybe 2g of tea? It’s quite expensive for what it is….

It might not be much more than a gimmick 🙁

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Khongea Assam

March 20, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I sometimes get lazy, particuarly when I’m in Cambridge. Today was one of those days, and the tea I drank was an Indian red tea sent to me by Lochan Tea. I brewed it in my girlfriend’s very large teapot, English style…. basically stewing the tea in water for a few minutes.

This is what came out

The tea is full bodied, with an obvious aftertaste that coats the mouth. I liked it quite a bit, although I should do a full tasting with gaiwan and all to tell for sure. There’s a bit of roughness going into the second infusion, which I didn’t like so much. It reminded me of teas that I drink in cheap Hong Kong restaurants serving watered down teas. I think watered down Assam is probably what they used.

Looking down the cavernous teapot…

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Tea meeting

March 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Yesterday I had tea from 1:30pm to 6:15pm with D, a local tea friend whom I’ve met last time we went to Royal East. We had a whole bunch of stuff…. including
1) Chen Guang He Tang’s Yiwu Yecha from Hou De
2) Lapsang Souchong I got from Beijing
3) 1990s Yiwu loose puerh from Hou De
4) Loose puerh, unkonwn age, from Hong Kong
5) Yiwu cake sample I have from Beijing

I’ll skip over 1, since I still need to taste the Yiwu Chawang to compare it against, and to post my results then. I might do that late tonight.

The lapsang I just find pleasant, and I didn’t use a lot of leaves (it’s very dangerous drinking tea with two people — very easy to overdose). It lasted…. 6 infusions? Something like that. It’s something that can, I think, be enjoyed anytime.

The 1990s Yiwu loose puerh is an interesting piece. D wanted me to try it because he thought it’s nothing like what he’s tried before. When I opened the bag and sniffed, I think I could smell what I know as wet storage smell… that musty, pungent smell that accompanies wet stored tea. The leaves look rather uniform. We used a gaiwan to brew it… and…. after the wash, I smelled it, and there was something odd about the tea. I couldn’t explain what exactly it was, and I don’t think D could either, although he said this is exactly what he thought was odd about it. We tasted it… and the tea is thin, with a little bit of bitterness in the undertones, and not really tasting like any puerh I’ve had before. The thing that it reminds me of is actually a Yunnan hongcha (red tea), or something similar.

The tea looks really good. It looks like a well aged puerh in colour, but when brewed it has none of that taste. Comparing it with, say, the Xizhihao Yiwu 1997, for example, this one is obviously lacking. I think the thing that I am missing is the sweetness that comes from puerh… it doesn’t turn sweet like a puerh should, but instead stays the way it is. We didn’t drink too many infusions of this… about 5 or so, before giving up and moving on.

I pulled out a bag of loose puerh I got in Hong Kong (I bought quite a few different kinds today). I haven’t tried this for quite a few weeks now, and it’s been sitting in the bag since I bought it. When I opened it, there was a strong, pungent medicinal smell coming from the tea. It’s definitely stored poorly as well, I think, and the age isn’t that old. I used my pot to make it, and interestingly enough… there was, underneath everything, a similar taste to the Yiwu loose tea, but with something overlaying that bitterness base. I don’t think the taste was entirely pleasant, and D didn’t think so either. It tasted a bit different from when I tried it in the store, and I thought perhaps it has to do with the fact that what I tried in the store was the surface of a big bucket of tea, whereas this is something that was scooped up. It was also sitting in the bag for a month now… which might make the unpleasant tastes more apparent. I think I need to air this tea out before drinking it.

Since we didn’t go too many infusions on this one, I left it in the pot and brewed it again today. Funny enough…. the unpleasant taste is not apparent anymore, and the tea is infinitely more drinkable. I’m not sure why. The guy who sold it to me told me that I should leave the tea out, all spread out on a flat surface, and let it sit during the days when humidity is high in Hong Kong. Then, take it back in after its gone through a few days of dryness. He thinks this will make the tea much better. I can’t do that, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Lastly, we ended with a sample of a Yiwu tea I got from Beijing. D said he hasn’t really tried a young puerh (under 3 years or so, I suppose) that he actually enjoys, and I thought this could be one that is enjoyable. This tea is… a little odd, in that it doesn’t really have much of the bitterness so characteristic of young puerh, yet not bland either like a lot of bad, un-bitter puerhs tend to be. I don’t really quite know what to make of it, but I bought a few liking the huigan and the overall complexity of the tea.

By the end of the session, we were both rather buzzed with caffeine. It was definitely an enjoyable afternoon, and it is not easy to find tea company around here to both talk about and to drink a lot of tea. I’m hoping that before I go back to China, that we will find time again to get to gether and drink some more tea.

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As promised

March 14, 2007 · 7 Comments

A better look at the GYG leaves, after I finally emptied the pot after two days….

You can see the unevenness of the colour of the leaves… some are darker, some lighter. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the fact that I used three pieces — pieces that could’ve been from different cakes. It could just as well be differentiation in aging within the pieces themselves. The tea is very tightly compressed, so that is entirely possible.

Anyway, these days my tea drinking isn’t terribly interesting. It’s mostly been loose-tea-in-a-bag of various kinds, because that’s what’s most convenient when I have to run around. Today, for example, I had a Ceylon Breakfast from a place called Timeless Teas. They’re a store on Newbury Street in Boston, and underneath them is a cafe (that is always full) that serves their tea (although most of the business is coffee).

These people specialize in Ceylon teas. I really haven’t tried many of their offerings, which are definitely Ceylon tilted. The tea I had today, brewed in a big pot, was a “Ceylon Breakfast”. It was…. mild, sweet, pleasant to drink, but not that exciting. It’s probably BOP or even lower in grade, although I’m no expert in such things. The tea, while pleasant, was utterly uninteresting. It’s simply not a great cup, merely an average one.

Of course, I’m being picky. I’m also not drinking it the way I normally would, so the comparison is hard to make. That said, any store that sells loose leaf tea is not a bad thing. I really ought not to complain.

The next few days I hope to do some tastings, because a few samples arrived.

The two Yiwu on the right are what I ordered, and Guang of Hou De threw in the extra, a sample of the Malaysia Trade Fair commemoration cake, on the left. Commemoration cakes are rarely my thing, since they are hardly worth the money (i.e. there’s always a commemoration cake premium built into the price). At the same time, it might be worth trying it out just for the sake of trying it out.

I am planning on doing the two Yiwu tasting soon, in the next few days, and posting on the LJ Community. I know a few others will join in on that. If you have a sample of this, have tasted it, or are about to, it might be good for all of us to do that and exchange views on it.

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Decaf

March 11, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I had decaf tea for the very first time today.

It was an accident, I assure you. I will never order decaf tea knowingly, even for the sake of discovering what it tastes like. No. I will not waste my money on that. I will rather take McDonald’s tea than decaf.

What happened was that I was having some food with my girlfriend at a middle eastern restaurant, and while she ordered a Turkish coffee, I wanted a cup of tea. Among the choices of chamomile, earl grey, rose, and blueberry butterscotch dillweed hibiscus, I heard “English Breakfast”. That’s an unadulterated tea, I thought, so I ordered it.

The teabag came in a little plastic bag, I opened the little bag and noticed that on the blue tag where it said “Trader Joe’s Premium Teas”, there was a little orange line underneath it, with a bold black word “decaffeinated” written across it, as if it were a warning sign.

Since I already opened the packaging, I didn’t quite want to return it to the server, and figuring it would be the first time for me drinking decaf… I plunged it into the cup of hot (really not so hot) water.

I couldn’t really tell any difference between this teabag and any other teabags I’ve brewed in the past. It does the usual diffusion of colour slowly, and I let it sit, figuring it needs a good few minutes to brew a proper cup for me to taste test this thing.

So a few minutes later, I took a sip… hmmm… it tastes like…. the second wash of some bad teabag tea. You know how sometimes, when you’ve brewed one cup with a teabag already, you can always try again and brew another, weaker cup. Well, this tastes like that weaker cup. It’s…. bland. It’s not bitter at all. I suppose the lack of caffeine reduces the bitterness. I also suppose that whatever the decaffeination process is, it probably does something similar to brewing the tea once. It’s so bland… I let it sit some more in the cup, and tried it again, and it was still the same bland taste. I don’t think this thing can take a second infusion, no matter what you do. It was so bad I even took a small sip of my girlfriend’s Turkish coffee.

I think I’m going to brew myself some puerh now.

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Sick

March 10, 2007 · 6 Comments

No updates yesterday because, well, I didn’t drink any tea yesterday. I was down with a fever after that very long and unpleasant flight. I didn’t want to drink tea in that kind of condition.

I’m now drinking some Lapsang Souchong to cure my caffeine headache. It was getting unbearable. I am brewing it more or less English style with a big white porcelain pot. My instinct is to pull the leaves out much sooner than I probably should, but even after only about two minutes of infusion the tea is already wonderfully smokey, but at the same time smooth and sweet.

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Tea everywhere

February 14, 2007 · 2 Comments

Let’s see, how many teas have I had today?

I had my first tea after lunch. It was one of the samples that Mr. Lochan sent me, one of the Darjeeling oolongs. I don’t want to say much about it yet, as I think I brewed it under sub-optimal condition, and also because it’s the first time I’m trying it. It’s a new genre, I’d say, so I think I need to try it a few times before I know how to brew it properly and form a concrete opinion on it. It’s strong in some places, and weak in others.

Then, I went out to see a movie. After that… it was dinner with my cousin, where we ate at a very old Hong Kong restaurant (since 1860) serving HK style western food (they’re famous for their Swiss chicken wings). They pour you regular “tea” for drink (think of the role of iced water in Western restaurants, but substitute it with hot tea). The tea is a watered down version of the traditional Hong Kong milk tea (but without the milk). Then, to finish off dinner, we both had a cup of milk tea, but neither of us added milk. It was strong, bitter, sour, full bodied, but VERY smooth. This is stuff that is boiled in stockings. From what I know, it is a mix of a blend of Indian tea plus some puerh to give it a sweet edge. It’s a very unique taste that is not replicated anywhere else other than Hong Kong style restaurants everywhere in the world. This particular blend tasted a bit coffee-ish, given its harshness. Best with milk, but I was bad today :p

Then…. I picked up my mom from her dinner with her friends, and there, I had some watered down biluochun. I think it was biluochun anyway. It was pretty watered down and I could only get a hint of the taste.

Tea everywhere, as you can see. Caffeine intake here is quite high in the course of a normal day, so I really need to watch myself when drinking tea at teahouses, because otherwise…..

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A study in Zhengshan Xiaozhong (lapsang souchong)

February 10, 2007 · 4 Comments

I went to Maliandao today to buy some tea, and of course, during the course of the afternoon, I had a dizzying array of tea (when do I not when I’m there?). I won’t bore you with all the details of all the teas we had. Needless to say, it included a lot of puerhs… mostly Yiwu today.

But that’s not the interesting stuff.

I had a lesson in Zhengshan Xiaozhong (Lapsang Souchong) today. A valuable lesson that I will always remember. So, I figured this is a good thing to post about.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves

This is the fourth infusion of the teas above, but left and right are flipped around. So, the leaves on the right above brewed the tea on the left, and vice versa

This brewed the cup on the left

This brewed the cup on the right

I think it is not terribly obvious, but you can sort of see how in the brewed up… the right hand cup is slightly darker. The first two infusions were largely identical… it’s extremely difficult to figure out which one is better, even when drunk back to back and right by each other. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how they can be 40% different in price. The second infusion… you can sort of tell the one with smaller leaves (buds) is a little more complex… but it’s a very faint difference.

Then from the third infusion onward the difference became clearer… the flavour for the buds was sustained, whereas the one with the leaves started feeling a little watery. Then, as infusions went on, the longer lasting nature of the buds Zhengshan Xiaozhong became more and more apparent. The tea is nice, sweet, complex, mellow, easy to drink, and everything I really care for in a tea. I could drink this all day. The cheaper one is more watery, a little thinner, less complex, but still very good, at the end of the day.

I really think that every Lapsang lover need to try this stuff out. Of all the teas I’ve encountered in China this year so far, I have by far found the Lapsang to be probably the most palatable tea for Westerners who are used to drinking only teabags or black teas in general. The smoke is not overpowering, and is gone by the third infusion. Instead it is a very pleasant sweetness that coats your mouth. I really like this stuff.

Just for reference, Laohe (the owner of the store) called the best stuff “Special Grade” and the other “First Grade”. I also looked at the “Second Grade” stuff, which is basically broken leaves. He said it’s not worth trying after we’ve had these two, and I believe him.

Then for the rest of the afternoon I drank a whole bunch of young and not as young puerhs. The most interesting Yiwu of them all is one I also have a few cakes of, a 2005. I might’ve actually neglected to post pictures of it… I’ll do so another day 🙂

Meanwhile, I need to rest up, as I’m going back there tomorrow to grab some teaware. I need a set of tools in Hong Kong so I don’t have to bring stuff back and forth and risk breaking half of it everytime. I didn’t get to do teaware shopping today.

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Two teas today: darjeeling + Xizihao Mengsa

February 8, 2007 · 4 Comments

I was bad and drank two tea today.

I came home after lunch, and since I had an hour before the library opens again (they close for lunch), I decided to make some tea to kill time. I brewed up the darjeeling I got from Hong Kong this Christmas.

It’s…. a darjeeling, first flush, methinks. At least the way it tastes and smells and looks are first flush quality. No specific estate, so I have no information beyond that. It is quite tasty, and brews a slightly darker infusion than yesterday’s Lochan

3rd infusion

The tea is less rough than yesterday’s, although it could also be because I was managing it very carefully to try to make a tea that is less rough on the tongue. I managed to get about 5 infusions out of the tea, at which point it was clearly dying. The fragrance from this tea is less immediately stunning, although I think it has a deeper flavour than the airy aroma of yesterday’s. What taste is this? I don’t think I know how to describe it.

Wet leaves — typical Indian tea, very broken

After library, I got home… and felt like I didn’t drink any tea at all. 4-5 infusions of darjeeling just didn’t cut it.

I rummaged through my ever-growing collection of sample-sized teas, as well as tins and cans and bags of stuff. I’m sure most of you who read this blog know exactly what I mean — there’s always more tea than you can ever finish drinking. Among them, I saw a Hou De bag… one that I have completely forgotten for a while. This is a sample of the 1999 Mengsa from Xizihao. I looked in the bag… there was enough for an infusion! So…. out it came.

I was sniffing the leaves and noticed something — it seems to have absorbed some of the paper bag’s smell. After all, it’s been in the bag for more than half a year. It’s only natural that it soaked up some of the smell, but that is not a good thing. I immediately dumped the other Hou De stuff from the paperbags into little plastic bags that breath a little. I think that is a better option. I peeled off the labels so that they could be easily identified and threw those in the bags too… if you have Hou De samples lying around aging, you might want to check and do the same.

There was actually slightly too much tea for one infusion, but I didn’t want to leave a tiny bit of tea behind, so I brewed it all anyway. The first two infusions were a little off, no doubt due to the paperbag. It had an odd flavour, a little unpleasant, and bitter. The liquor looks nice enough

By the third the tea improved a bit. However, whereas I remember being quite impressed with the tea the first time I tried it, now I’m not so impressed anymore. Perhaps this is extra experience from the past year, when I’ve drank my way up and down Maliandao and Hong Kong shops. Perhaps it is poor aging. I’m not sure.

The tea retains aromas that are similar to what I remember it had last time I tried it. There is something that I didn’t notice last time though, and that was a little sourness… there’s some sourness in the tea, most prominent during the 2nd to 4th infusions. Dry stored teas can have a sour edge to it, and this one showed. It wasn’t very nice drinking puerh that was slightly sour. The sourness went away around infusion 5, and the more characteristic puerh sweetness returned, but it already left a bad taste in my mouth.

Infusion 3

Infusion 8

It generally seemed a little weak and thin, relatively speaking, especially considering the amount of leaves I used. It also went downhill relatively quickly, as puerh goes. It was still pretty flavourful when I was finished with it, but it wasn’t exactly impressive at any point of the tea.

One thing I noticed about the wet leaves is that the leaves of this cake seem quite heavily rolled, especially when compared with teas that are being produced now. Heavy rolling supposedly makes the tea a bit more bitter, but heavy rolling was the norm. In fact, rolling is getting lighter these days, because people like seeing their tea unfurl. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

All in all, it was pretty interesting revisiting this tea. I remember the first time I had it, I thought this was better than the 1997 Yiwu. Then, on second try, I thought that the Yiwu actually was better than this. I no longer have a sample of the Yiwu left, but I think I would still hold the same opinion. Perhaps it’s just my taste that has changed.

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Late night tea drinking

February 7, 2007 · 8 Comments

I got some tea in the mail today, which would’ve made this blog entry, but then, I got called out by ZH to go tea drinking at around 7:30, so off I went.

By the time I got there it was already 8:30pm, but that didn’t stop us from drinking lots of tea. It was quite a nice little teahouse, actually. I really liked it, and regret not bringing my camera. Nice service, allows us to brew tea freely for a nominal charge, and really just a decent place all around. If only China has less smokers….

Anyway. First tea was a fired tieguanyin, supposedly with some years of age. It was difficult to tell, because, apparently, it was very recently re-fired, as they do from time to time to keep moisture out of the tea. That, however, means that it was harder to taste the subtle aged taste of a tieguanyin, and a lot of the roasted aroma instead. Not bad, quite mellow, and pleasant. Obviously aged. It’s just a matter of how much.

Then…. we had two Yiwus, side by side. One is ZH’s stuff, supposedly something like 8 or 9 years, I can’t remember now. It’s been in Beijing for about 4-5 years, and it shows. The tea, i thought, was only 3-5 years of age, because it looked young. When tasted, it had an odd aroma… something I’ve never encountered in a Yiwu before. It has a hint of what I know as the Yiwu flavour, somewhat aged, but it’s different in that the aroma of one particular aspect (sort of a spice… not sure what) is quite distinct. I think what it is is that because aging is slower here, it takes longer for the tea to pass through each stage of aging, and therefore what might be sped by in Hong Kong storage is instead accentuated here. Different flavour, for sure. It’s a little bitter and a little astringent. I think in some ways I prefer the Hong Kong taste.

The other Yiwu is this — something I received very recently as a sample

The coin is there mainly for comparison, it’s about the size of a nickle. This is a 2006 fall Yiwu small arbor tree, made with tea that is about 20 years old, supposedly. This is stuff that many vendors try to pass off as “old tree”, “ancient arbor tree”, and stuff like that. I specifically asked for this so I could use it as a basis for comparison. Of course, if a tea tastes like this it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a small arbor tree, but what it does mean is that it is small arbor tree quality tea, so it should command a similar price…

Anyway, the tea is nice, sweet, very very mellow, and very Yiwu. It is slightly on the thin side, compared with better, old arbor tree teas from Yiwu. It’s less aromatic as well. All in all though, not a bad tea. I might even consider getting a few just to see how they taste when aged, especially in comparison with all the other Yiwu I have right now.

After we went through some rounds of the Yiwu, we moved on to a cooked brick from the 80s in ZH’s possession. Oddly enough, it tastes somewhat like the Guangyun Gong I’ve had recently, with the exception that the GYG had a lot more yun, or aftertaste, than this one. This one is sweet like the GYG, but is not as “long” as the GYG. It also doesn’t last quite as long, and by about the 10-12th infusion, it was going downhill, losing the sweetness. It will be good for some more infusions if one were to boil it. Nice tea though, and very enjoyable.

Next was the “30 years loose puerh” from Best Tea House. I am now of the opinion that this tea is probably more like 15-20 years. Not 30, but then, it doesn’t really matter. It’s quite enjoyable, and quite nice, especially for a loose raw puerh that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. As ZH mentioned, he feels indulgent when drinking stuff like his brick and this kind of tea. It’s old, and at the end of the day, the market price for this stuff is not low.

Meanwhile, we talked about teas in general, plans for Zhongcha this year, etc. The conversation is better than the tea, and that’s what really makes these gatherings.

Just when we were about done (I was all tea-ed out), we were thinking “is there anything more to drink?”. I was going through his bags of samples that he has (he has lots), and found an interesting item… Lochan Darjeeling. Hmmm, didn’t expect to see it here.

He got some through his work. Since I told him I have been chatting with the owner of the firm on the internet, he said “why not?”, and off we brewed. We didn’t use much leaves. It was a first flush taste — very light, green, almost white tea like. An unmistakable Darjeeling flavour profile. ZH comments how Indian teas in general can be so consistent, whereas Chinese teas are less so, usually. The aromas are quite pleasant, and quite strong. The liquor is light in colour. The tea is a bit on the thin side of things, and with one quite noticeable flaw — the tea, when drunk, is VERY rough. You know how some teas leave your tongue roughed up? Well, this is one of them, and quite seriously so. Part of this is a water issue, and playing with the water can help fix it. Part of it, though, I suspect is just the tea itself. This is extra apparent, probably, because we’ve been drinking a lot of very smooth teas today, so the roughness stood out.

Then again, this is not a tea that was produced for gongfu brewing, I think. Instead, it’s made for a different style of drinking, where such roughness would be much, much less apparent and tolerated. Priorities are different as well. This in some ways exemplifies very well the different preferences of Western versus Chinese tea drinking. Western tastes are very aroma focused, with typical descriptions of a tea surrounding a particular tea’s taste — it’s about how a tea literally TASTES and SMELLS. Chinese drinkers, however, don’t only go for the aroma and the taste, but also how it FEELS in one’s mouth, on one’s tongue, and down one’s throat (or even after it’s been swalloed). These are equally, if not more, important to a tea’s overall quality and appraisal. For example, in Hong Kong when drinking tea with Tiffany & Co., if a tea is rough on the tongue, no matter the aroma, they will rate it as a bad tea. That is not to say it is really that terrible, necessarily, but to them, that’s enough of a sin to make it not worthwhile to drink. The same tea, given to another group of people with entirely different tastes, will receive very different reactions.

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