Im a woman who have loved tea since my early teens. But I have only just started using higher quality tea. We have a awsume balck/red lose leaf retailer in my hometown, so I have alwayes used and preferd loose leaf. When they started to carry some nice oolongs I just fell in love with milky oolongs. But I soon noticed that regular western brewing had a tendency to empty my stock rather quick, even if I had two extra steepings. So I found some videos on youtube about tea ceremonies and found gongfu cha.
After trying gongfu cha with my oolongs and green dragon Pearls that I aready had, I was just mind blowed! How can the same tea taste so different? My friends dident belive me so i made some for them. Now we all have got some gongfu cha equipment that we share on sunday tea sessions. Lovley time!
I have one kyusu that I bought 3 years ago (ish), I needed a small brewing vessel at work. My employer are nice to offer us coffe and tea, but why the tea bags? And even worse, they are cheep flavored ones...
I have also invested in a traveling gaiwan tea kit with tea tray in clay, it works.
So far I´v only got my hands on light oolongs, but they are lovely! Especially King Hsuan oolong from JUSTMAKE Taiwan tea.
Im waiting for 4 diffrent kinds of Anxi tie guan yin, one Anxi huang jin gui, one premium lan ren ren shen and one shui xian (narcissus wuyi rock t4). And I´m soo exited!
The only pu-erh I´v tried is 2007 Lao Cang Shu Mini Tuo Cha. I´m not fond of the earthly flavor from the first 2-3 steeps, but the 4-7 is nice. But my friends loves it.
I have tried matcha and did not like it, the flavor is fine but I dident like the consistency of the tea. But matcha vanilla icecream is a new favorite.
I´m intresing in sencha tea as well but havent got my hand on a decent whole leaf sencha yet.
The only good quality White tea I´v tried so far is Bai Hao Yin Zhen (sliver needles). I found it to be weak and boring. But I wanna give it a try later, my first try was just after I discovered good quality tea and still preferd western brewing.
Im keeping a tea diary so i wont forget some nice tea and my brewing findings.
// TeaViking
