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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.Hmm… I still owe you that article about tea taste that I promised so long ago. Great way to remind me.
Back to the issue of fertilizer and green tea taste:I just did a tasting yesterday on a few lesser grade Huangshan Maofeng, trying to find a few possible ones for export demands. Some of them smell so exceedingly pleasing, fragrantly warm and flavourful, with that umami promise. While I was tasting them, all the usual disappointment on tasting lower grade green teas came by. Lack of depth and length; a thinner than expected body and much shorter tastes. Not that they are bad tea, I was just setting my expectation too high because of the smell.A good tea needs to be both balanced as well as possessing length and depth; and with distinctive character. Any singular aspect without the support of others is not enough to give the drinker enough satisfaction. So is the umami aspect.“Savouriness”, or “umami”, or in some translated Chinese text “soupiness” in some green teas is a result of the higher concentration of amino acids. I have to note here that this is not necessarily a measurement for all green teas, and definitely not for most oolongs or black tea. It is one for Longjing, as you are doing.As you have pointed out, concentration of amino acids in the leaves before plucking for green tea production is done by many ways, including adding of fertilizers. Most farmers are well aware of the fact that over fertilizing the soil is not going to do them any good. However, that point of just right is a difficult one. Many overdo it, as does this producer of mass market Huangshan Maofeng I tasted. I figure they would have lots of weed and pest problem every summer.In the horticulture for high grade Longjing, fertilizers, chemical or organic, are used very sparingly and particularly not before Spring harvests. They want these highest priced leaves to grow very slowly so they can accrue ample concentration of all other things in the leaves for the kind of body that a seasoned drinker would expect from a good Longjing. Not just umami. They don’t want undergrowth and pest problems in the field either.I am very impressed by your understanding of what to look for in a good Longjing for your relatively young tea age. Bravo.Let me know if I have not answered your question.Agree. The concept of different values in things is inconsistent in different societies. People easily pay $30 to 300 for a bottle of wine that they finish in one meal and think $10 of leaves good enough for a whole week too expensive.
That’s right. Practice beforehand is important, such that you are not making mistakes that normally you wouldn’t make when not under pressure. I know these people would be your friends, but it is natural to feel a bit nervous when you are trying to perform something in front of a few people, however good you are at that thing.
If you do not have a few gaiwans uniform in size and materials, it is particularly easy to result in tastes not quite the way that you think it would. Try to adjust leaf amount to adjust for it.For people who are not yet used to tea, go on the lighter side in terms of infusion strength.The taste profile of most tea can hold acceptably when infused to the full time but with reduced leaves. That is a generalization, however.For people new to the world of tea, offer them an array of tastes that are quite different, but not bankrupting yourselves. Generally, one from each of the category is an easy solution.I look forward to seeing your own report about this!
