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This is funny. I have known that little teashop since many, many years ago. When RTHK made a video about my previous brand building endeavour for Chinese tea, we made a couple of shots there. Haven’t visited them for a while now.
Pancakes, Glad you’ve found your way with the browned Tieguanyin. This variety used to be one of my sisters’ staple tea. She has to keep to warmer or neutral TCM quality for her weaker stomach.
I am happy also that you like the tube packing. It gave us a lot of difficulty for producing this quality.@Pancakes, Well said. I learned that you got the Browned Tieguanyin. Are you able to tame it yet?
The Tuocha Squares are not as tightly compressed as the traditional “tuo” form, because the shape itself would require a different technology to compress real tightly. However, it is tight enough for withstanding a quick first wash (blanching). The slightly looser compression also means that they require less time in the first infusion.
As with all shu cha types of pu’er, the time for infusing Tuocha Squares should be kept to shorter. It gets quite dark otherwise. One thing good about shu cha pu’er is that when the infusion gets too strong, you just add very hot water and the texture is not affected.
If you keep the infusion strength normal every round of infusion, you should get quite many rounds with it. For this product, however, 10 maybe stretching too much. You get a sweet tasting thin tea though.
I promised to post some local ready-to-drink tea products here so here it goes:
Firstly there is the old local brand “Vitasoy” which soy milk products have been a favourite choice by parents, albeit all the overdose of sugar. They have made the brand rich. The rich brand, in return, come back with more sugarly drink. Low production cost, but low selling price as well. Lemon tea, a favourite way of favouring black tea by the locals, is a top seller in the category. It is also perhaps the bottled tea with most tea content in it:
Taoti, a Taiwan brand employing some big-shot local actor in hypnotizing frequency of tv ads, is another brand with a long list of favours. They have also used the term “ji-pin”, meaning “extreme quality grade” which coincidently I have used for real premium tealeaves many years ago in my high profile brand. Seeing that they use it for lousy canned drink is most ridiculous. That’s how marketers brain wash the consumers. That’s one thing that triggered my writing on obscurantism. Notice in the below three images of the same “extreme quality grade” products: they are the same content, but in different packing materials to render the different price point for that “extreme quality” feel :- Note that these things are available almost ANYWHERE in the city. Think of the manipulation they have on the average person’s concept about tea and about quality.USDA’s report on flavonoid contents of popular food and beverages that I quoted in the Health Benefits of Tea article in Tea Guardian has some figures on the range of flavonoid contents bottled tea products have. I am sure Itoen and UCC are better products but am also sure that if you consider antioxidant contents, they would still be in the range of the USDA report.
Flavonoid content of all bottled tea are many times lower than the “average” cup of tea. Having said that, however, it’s still tea.ICE is right, the range of choice here in the East is so huge that I don’t know where to begin describing them here. Obviously there is a huge market need for it as alternatives to water and aerated drinks. There are many choices that are not sugared, low sugared, or non-sugar sweetened. Even big brother players like Coca-cola offers their range of options too.There are increasing choices in the US and the West, but a lot come in ridiculous prices. A lot also come and go.I will post some that are available here in Hong Kong, hope others interested will post those that are available in their market.There will be an article on bringing tea out in an outing in the next Tea Guardian update. Read that.The proper way for the final steps in processing Wuyi Cassia is a sequence of low temperature baking. There are, however, many producers who disregard finishing quality and over bake their productions. There are also those who label other things as Cassia.
Even within the definition of “properly” baked Cassia, there still is a spectrum of various degrees of fire intensity. The recent trend of under baking so as to give a more floral but grassy finish is not right. To me, the firely heat should not give you the “firely” sensation, or TCM hot symptoms. Cassia should be a rather neutral, or neutral warm tea.Since you have got that tea already and it is giving you that TCM hot discomforts, and if you do not want to waste it, try to pack it well and store it away to mature it for three years. It should reasonably tine down its heat.Any Wuyi tea, even those “hot” styles, should not be so overly fired that the TCM hot nature is over.Depending on the final baking style, proper Cassia should be either the same neutrality in TCM property as a Phoenix Milan Xiang (Honey Orchid), or very slightly warmer, but not overtly so.Since you bought that Phoenix Milan Xiang from Tea Hong, you should notice that there are two varieties of Wuyi Cassia there too. They too are different to suit different preferences. However, the Cassia Extraordinaire is my definition of an authentic traditional quality.The condition you described is real and it is rather like moving a mountain for me. However, I believe eventually it will be a lot of people with the same belief as mine and this mountain won’t seem so immoveable. I hope you will join in.
I am very happy to see such positive comments. Thank you all. We do not have enough human resources here; so as in Tea Guardian, Tea Hong is being built bit by bit. I can foresee that many changes will continue to take place even after it is formally launched, as in Tea Guardian.
I was also ill-prepared for the comment section in the product pages which really does not entice presenting one’s thoughts there. Maybe that is one reason why the posts have come to here instead. We are trying to improve on that. My usual retail customers here in HK are much less vocal than you guys here. I hope this will change 😉
