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I once spent some time with a Moroccan aristocrat talking about their style of mint tea. The traditional has been there because of a few important elements: first and foremost being tea, mint and sugar as an important element for their overly normal plain and unbalanced diet: bread. Sugar and tea are still two major commodities in that country today. The other reason, the princely young man told me, has been the occasion of making tea round the big brass boiler pot when he has the warmest memories of his father. I think he meant its a time for the family to get together.
To me, the tea is exceedingly sweet, almost syrupy, and there is not much importance for the quality of the tea, as long as it is there and quite green.Blanching is essential in all puers and matured or older teas. Fresh (I mean farm fresh) black teas actually taste best when not blanched, but as the tea ages, blanching helps to render more taste clarity and brightness.
The ones with pink over glaze are “half-mould” made, the blue doucai one is hand-thrown and hand-painted. I hope we should be launching the tea ware section in Tea Hong in two weeks. Keep an eye for the price and quality I shall be offering there.
The taste of a matured oolong is really dependent not only on the original quality and skills in infusion, but also on the effects and conditions of storage.
I’ll get into details of this issue in a later article, but for now, Amuk is right. Blanch it well (in case it has not been too well stored), use a slightly higher temperature than for the tea when it was fresh, and use shorter time.Two most common factors affecting the taste would be poor storage and over re-baking. The above two steps kind of lower the adverse effects, but in case the conditions are bad, they would not be able to help much.I am happy that you’ve come to the same conclusion as mine with pu’er in the thermos. I think it is probably the only tea that is the least affected by storing in the heat retention vessel. As for filling that extra 300 ml that your teapot is short for, I’d either re-infuse the same batch of tea or simply add hot water. The texture of the infusion is not at its best anyway.
Before I direct you to the answer, please be aware that different qualities of the same tea variety are different in catechin content. For details: Tea polyphenols: Not all teas are created equal
This is an article which I wrote about tea selection by catechin content:But as I have always said, choose a tea that you like to drink rather than how much catechin it has. It is the habit that keeps you healthy.The action during blanching needs to be a brisk one. For matured teas, such as puers, the way the water reaches the leaves has to be gushy to make sure every leaf get a good wash. For teas with delicate tastes, such as Milan Xiang type of oolongs, the water reaches the leaves quite gently so as not to over heat the leaves. Water is to be poured out quite immediately, so no sitting there. Coincidently, there will be an article about this in the next update in a few days.
As with top drop, you have to skip the process of blanching. It is rather like two different ways of cooking. The idea of top drop is to let water envelope each leaf to give it the right heat instantly. Therefore, the leaves have to be dropped a few at a time, let them sink a bit before another round of drop. Do not use the tasting standard of tea water ratio, otherwise it gets too strong because of this quite efficient way of extraction. 1 to 100 is max. Or even lower, depending on your preference of astringency. Top drop is also better when using larger vessel, where heat loss is relatively slower than smaller ones. I normally use 250 ml to 500 ml ones, with thick walls.One shortcoming of small gaiwans is that they cannot hold heat for very long, as in the case of top drop.Tieguanyin bouquet and browned should never share the same Yixing pot. Browning gives a tea a distinctive taste character that do not exist in the greener or bouquet versions. It really does not matter whether the two teas come from the same cultivar or not, it is the proximity of taste profiles that should be the main concern.
@lamppost, I took the liberty of having the two pictures in your links inserted into your post. Hope you don’t mind. Your avatar name reminds me of a song by Simon and Garfunkel 😉
Glad that you are able to get these two designs. They are lovely to use. I thought they should be out of stock already.
