TeaChat

This thread made me feel like a decadent jerk. I am often up into the 10g-12g range. But with quick steeps and long sessions.

BioHorn wrote:Brewing sheng pu I tend to use 8.5 grams in a 110 ml porcelain gaiwan.

That's a pretty serious mouthful. I love the deeper flavor thought.

bryan_drinks_tea wrote:

yanom wrote: ]But if I'm drinking something which is nice but not super special, and am concentrating on doing something else, it's a bit of a pain to keep re-steeping all the time. At the moment I brew up in the 110ml teapot, pour into a faircup, brew again straight away, put that into the faircup, and I've got 200ml of tea to drink before I have to boil the kettle once again. But maybe it'd be easier to have a larger yixing instead!

Just a question, are when you brew it that way, are you concerned about the individual flavours coming from each infusion?

No. I don't really make an effort to think about flavours, unless perhaps I'm sampling a tea before making a decision about whether or not to buy more of it. Or maybe if it's a special tea or an expensive one.

That doesn't mean I don't appreciate them.

I drink a lot of tea but tend not to drink it as an end in itself, especially pu'er: instead, it's more of an accompaniment.

EDIT: I should add, to clarify: I do like to be aware of the way the drink changes throughout the process, but if I'm drinking something that isn't particularly special then I'm not too fussed about mixing, say, infusion number 4 and infusion number 5 together because to my unremarkable palate there won't be a huge amount of difference between them anyway. These days when I'm not at work I tend to be studying Chinese: tea seems to enhance that for me, and the doubled-up brewing makes it less fiddly.

This thread got me thinking about a crazy tea session I had a few months ago. When I left Korea to travel, my teacher made me a special goodbye pot of my favorite tea: 1997 Yellow Stamp Iron Cake (pretty pricey, though this company sells it around 1/2 of what other places sell similar tea), which we normally brew with 7 grams in a 140cc, 90s-clay, master-made zini pot (my teacher's favorite pot).

For this session, knowing I like my tea strong, he threw in about 20 grams! Amazingly, it was still delicious, which speaks well to the tea, the pot, and the maker. After 15 or 20 infusions, it was starting to taste like what it would normally taste like on the first steep! Fantastically delicious as that session was, we had stomach aches afterwards, and I don't know the last time I was THAT jacked up on puerh! Learned more about the tea though. All in all, good experience.

needaTEAcher wrote:...After 15 or 20 infusions, it was starting to taste like what it would normally taste like on the first steep! Fantastically delicious as that session was, we had stomach aches afterwards...

Now that is what I am talking about. Kind of like when you are on your 7th glass of Bourbon and realize you have made a terrific mistake

TwoDog2 wrote:terrific mistake

Exactly!