Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

Owes its flavors to oxidation levels between green & black tea.


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Feb 14th, '14, 23:09
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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by TIM » Feb 14th, '14, 23:09

wyardley wrote:I find that, with some exceptions, I like to enjoy my tea when it's still at its peak, which means I usually either don't brew to the bitter end, or I brew the final infusions in a more casual way.

For really old pu'er, using a thermos to maintain temperature, or even boiling the leaves, can produce good results sometimes (after the leaves are otherwise spent).
What's 'bitter end' means? A taste?

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Feb 15th, '14, 00:02
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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by wyardley » Feb 15th, '14, 00:02

TIM wrote:
wyardley wrote:I find that, with some exceptions, I like to enjoy my tea when it's still at its peak, which means I usually either don't brew to the bitter end, or I brew the final infusions in a more casual way.
What's 'bitter end' means? A taste?
No, a figure of speech.

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Feb 15th, '14, 09:35
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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by William » Feb 15th, '14, 09:35

debunix wrote:In some situations like this, I will leave hot water over leaves for some longer-than-optimal brewing time, and when I return to that pot/leaves, pour it out into a larger cup, and do a 'flash rinse' with boiling water over the cooled leaves, and add that to the long/cooled brew. The combination will be warm enough to bring out the flavors better than the cool brew alone, and the fresh hot tea dilutes the cool long-brewed, and the combination may be brilliant.
This is a great idea debunix. I will try soon. :mrgreen:

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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by Teaism » Feb 16th, '14, 10:04

A nice 3 brews of Jin Liu Tiao. I enjoyed the hint of plum sourness with intense sweetness, a thick body in the edge of the cliff rhythm. Can almost feel the touch of the breeze in the mountain cliff. :D
Yummy!
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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by JRS22 » Feb 16th, '14, 14:37

I needed to finish the book my club will be discussing tuesday evening. It was hard going, until I decided that I could drink as much tea as necessary to pass the time. After sessions with a japanese green and a chinese green I managed the last few chapters by enjoying a sample of regular grade Rou Gui from Tea Urchin. The canister of gold medal rou gui that I purchased last year is safely in the closet not to be wasted on this book.

I have difficulty describing teas with the detail that other tea chatters manage - I'm more of a visual person - but I did immediately head to my computer to order more yancha from Tea Urchin. Two premium yanchas and one everyday yancha should arrive about when I'm finishing up the samples from last year.

Tea Urchin sells some Seong Il tea ware and there's a video of Seong Il making a pot very similar to the one that I was using to steep my yancha. I recommend it to all the Seong Il fans out there.

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Feb 17th, '14, 02:45
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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by 茶藝-TeaArt08 » Feb 17th, '14, 02:45

Yesterday my wife and I poured Tea Urchin's Luo Shui Dong 2012 puerh and then followed it up with some roasted Pete's Tie Guanyin. The paring was a nice progression.

A while back I was visiting a friend's acupuncture clinic and I parked at the Pete's coffee across the street. I had time so I wandered through Pete's. I saw they had Tie Guanyin, 113g for $15. The price seemed fair so I thought I'd give Pete's tea a chance, though I was skeptical. This Tie Guanyin is a quality Tie Guanyin that I enjoy and will buy again, especially at the very reasonable price of $15. It has a nice body, full-flavored, cocoa, vanilla sweet, with fruity, roast undertones and a nice "tie" feel on the sides of the tongue. It's a warming and soothing tea for the recent grey weather.

So today when I asked my wife what she wanted to pour, she went back to her roots and we returned to Taiwan for two different winter Alishan teas bought a year ago in Taiwan and only recently opened. Both of these teas are vegetal with a cane sweet and a buttery presence, one more than the other, and are lighter on the mouth flavor but have a good throat and subtle, lingering presence.

Blessings!

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Feb 18th, '14, 08:03
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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by bliss » Feb 18th, '14, 08:03

Had a beautiful session with the 2013 Winter Da Yu Ling 95K from Origin Tea this morning with my fiancée. After several steepings of wonderful buttery broth in a gaiwan and two singing cups, Jenni needed to head out.

I decided to finish up the leaves grandpa style on my own. So I grabbed my tenmoku chawan from Michel François that I purchased at Postcard Teas two years ago, popped the leaves from the gaiwan in there after heating it. I got two really nice bowls out of the leaves with a slight astringency towards the end of the last bowl. All in all I found this a very enjoyable experience (thanks mcrdotcom for the idea) since the different brewing methods drew out different aspects of the tea.

Warming the kettle again now to see what more I can get out of these precious leaves.

There is an added dimension to enjoying the tea like this and I find it was a great way to finish up the tea. There are probably a few lines I'm crossing here with using a chawan as well as brewing a bunch of DYL grandpa style, but I do find that the way this was done was respectful in both regards.

Does anyone know if the tenmoku bowl, which has its roots in China rather than Japan, was used for other teas than powdered tea like macha? I believe I read in 'The Book of Tea' that powdered tea came from China and was the dominating type of tea at the time of arriving in Japan, but I could be remembering wrongly. Has chawan-sized bowls only really been used with powdered tea?

Anyway, here is a picture of the brew.
Image

And a bit of sexy drippiness.
Image

Oh the joy tea brings!

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Feb 18th, '14, 10:23
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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by debunix » Feb 18th, '14, 10:23

Looks like it was a very tasty session. I got a lot out of brewing DYL in a tea bowl grandpa style from the start, and recommend trying it. I needed to start with a quite small quantity of leaf, because the necessary wait while the tea cooled enough to drink prevented the usual quick infusions. I have to think that someone was brewing tea this way, in tenmoku cups if that was what they had, even farmers in the midst of preparing tea leaves to be powdered.

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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by Tead Off » Feb 18th, '14, 10:52

From what I've read, it was more than tea that they put into their tea bowls. Other things would make their way into the brew.

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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by 茶藝-TeaArt08 » Feb 18th, '14, 13:05

bliss wrote:Had a beautiful session with the 2013 Winter Da Yu Ling 95K from Origin Tea this morning with my fiancée. After several steepings of wonderful buttery broth in a gaiwan and two singing cups, Jenni needed to head out.

I decided to finish up the leaves grandpa style on my own. So I grabbed my tenmoku chawan from Michel François that I purchased at Postcard Teas two years ago, popped the leaves from the gaiwan in there after heating it. I got two really nice bowls out of the leaves with a slight astringency towards the end of the last bowl. All in all I found this a very enjoyable experience (thanks mcrdotcom for the idea) since the different brewing methods drew out different aspects of the tea.

Warming the kettle again now to see what more I can get out of these precious leaves.

There is an added dimension to enjoying the tea like this and I find it was a great way to finish up the tea. There are probably a few lines I'm crossing here with using a chawan as well as brewing a bunch of DYL grandpa style, but I do find that the way this was done was respectful in both regards.

Does anyone know if the tenmoku bowl, which has its roots in China rather than Japan, was used for other teas than powdered tea like macha? I believe I read in 'The Book of Tea' that powdered tea came from China and was the dominating type of tea at the time of arriving in Japan, but I could be remembering wrongly. Has chawan-sized bowls only really been used with powdered tea?

Anyway, here is a picture of the brew.
Image

And a bit of sexy drippiness.
Image

Oh the joy tea brings!

Yes, tianmu bowls were historically used for powdered tea and powdered tea was the dominant method of serving tea in the Tang, etc. but....while practicing tea in the teahouse in Taiwan with my teacher, we students often brewed loose-leaf teas in bowls. Qiu Shan Tang/秋山堂 (the teahouse) has a nice selection of exquisite tianmu bowls for sale and use. We practiced different settings and pots (teapot, kyusu, gaiwan) but the hardest style to prepare and serve to others was bowl style. The setting was the same as the other tea settings, multiple cups (scent cup, drinking cup), etc. except with a bowl and ceramic spoon used as the brewing vessel. Serving tea brewed from a bowl to guests is really tricky since the tea can not be poured from the bowl and the heat loss from a bowl is faster. The bowl does not contain the leaves like a pot would, meaning that the leaves often expand quicker/at different rates. Though a proper thickness bowl contains heat better. If the tea leaves are not rolled, as in a gao shan wulong tea, and are more similar to a baozhong or Wuyi wulong, then their essence spreads quickly (sometimes too quickly) into the brew within the bowl; this made serving some aged or red (more potent) teas much more tricky. We placed the proper amount of leaf in the bowl and then carefully used a beautiful ceramic spoon to serve the tea from the bowl to the guests' scent cups. It takes time and patience and proper timing but is a very elegant, meditative way to serve tea to guests in a formal gong fu/cha yi setting and almost always has a calming, enriching effect upon guests served in this manner.

In some Taiwan teahouses wulong tea is often served this way: a brewing bowl/chawan packed with leaves, a ceramic spoon, and a second drinking cup or bowl to fill for one's self if one so chooses. There was a teahouse in the mountains not far from my town that I'd ride up to visit. It was on a large overlook above a Cherry tree setting alongside a creek, visited a lot during the blossom season. Their specialty was serving Taiwan gao shan tea "bowl style" in large chawans.

For myself, I often put some leaves in a smaller shino tea bowl that my wife made and sip Taiwan wulong tea from the bowl. This is also a way that my chawans get to see more use, since I seldom brew matcha. As you wrote, there is an added dimension and simplicity to enjoying tea this way. For the Taiwanese, this method is definitely not a faux pas but I don't how the Japanese feel about it. :)

Blessings!

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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by bliss » Feb 18th, '14, 14:20

Thanks for the replies all. I love this place.

Deb. Oh yes, I remember your photo shoot of this with the madnakash bread in the last pic. In fact I had to try it a few days later because I couldn't get the mouthwatering picture out of my head. I also had much less leaves then since I was brewing from start. I enjoyed it a lot. Some people in the chat thought it was a bit wasteful to use DYL this way, but I will have to try other gaoshan grandpa style before I know whether I agree.

Tead. Other things, as in TCM kind of things?

TeaArt. Thanks for you long reply and sharing that info. I've heard about this bowl and ceramic spoon brewing before, through the Teamasters blog methinks. I like the idea of this a lot, but two questions that I have been wondering since I first heard it:
1. Wouldn't it be hard to get all the tea out of the bowl with the spoon? I can imagine tilting the bowl and pouring the last dribbles out into the spoon is not how to go about it. So I presume you leave the last dribbles in there?
2. As I believe you allude to regarding serving potent teas, it must be hard to keep the steeping time short since you don't want to rush things with the spoon. Also getting equal strength in each cup strikes me as a non-trivial problem. For the brewing, I take it you just have to put more effort into other parameters such as amount of tea, temperature, tea choice and bowl choice (I hadn't thought about this last one if you hadn't mentioned it)?

I'm very tired. Hopefully I'm not too unclear in my writing :oops: Another few cups of pu and then it's beddy byes for me.

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Feb 18th, '14, 15:32
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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by debunix » Feb 18th, '14, 15:32

bliss wrote:Some people in the chat thought it was a bit wasteful to use DYL this way
Can't call it wasteful if your session brought as much pleasure as mine did!

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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by bliss » Feb 18th, '14, 15:54

debunix wrote:
bliss wrote:Some people in the chat thought it was a bit wasteful to use DYL this way
Can't call it wasteful if your session brought as much pleasure as mine did!
Agreed! I have no regrets at all given that it was an unusually rewarding session that brought a lot of presence with it :D

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Feb 19th, '14, 00:55
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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by debunix » Feb 19th, '14, 00:55

An all-oolong day, today: started with green high mountain oolong from OriginTea; then moved on to a Yunnan Bai Yun from Norbu, plummy and deep; and now, Ba Xian Dan Cong from Tea Habitat, fruity and floral and sweetly delicious.

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Re: Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

by chrl42 » Feb 20th, '14, 09:39

bliss wrote:Had a beautiful session with the 2013 Winter Da Yu Ling 95K from Origin Tea this morning with my fiancée. After several steepings of wonderful buttery broth in a gaiwan and two singing cups, Jenni needed to head out.

I decided to finish up the leaves grandpa style on my own. So I grabbed my tenmoku chawan from Michel François that I purchased at Postcard Teas two years ago, popped the leaves from the gaiwan in there after heating it. I got two really nice bowls out of the leaves with a slight astringency towards the end of the last bowl. All in all I found this a very enjoyable experience (thanks mcrdotcom for the idea) since the different brewing methods drew out different aspects of the tea.

Warming the kettle again now to see what more I can get out of these precious leaves.

There is an added dimension to enjoying the tea like this and I find it was a great way to finish up the tea. There are probably a few lines I'm crossing here with using a chawan as well as brewing a bunch of DYL grandpa style, but I do find that the way this was done was respectful in both regards.

Does anyone know if the tenmoku bowl, which has its roots in China rather than Japan, was used for other teas than powdered tea like macha? I believe I read in 'The Book of Tea' that powdered tea came from China and was the dominating type of tea at the time of arriving in Japan, but I could be remembering wrongly. Has chawan-sized bowls only really been used with powdered tea?

Anyway, here is a picture of the brew.

Oh the joy tea brings!
The Japanese worshiped 2 major Chawans, one is Tianmu (commonly known as Tuhao in China) of Fujian during Song, the other is Ido from Korea during Chosun dynasty. Both were #1 items Samurai had to have, so they could perpetuate 'Bushido'..

A Korean potter named Cheon Han Bong, is known to replicate Chosun Ido Chawan with his soul, China Tianmu or Tuhao has been replicated by Taiwan...but nowadays Fujian makes lots of them as well. The black glaze is known to reflect 'bubble' of Matcha very well...during Tang-Song, the bubbles were how they could evaluate the quality of tea...and that's why those Tuhao Chawans were worshipped as far as I've known... :)

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