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I witnessed some closed down because of bad business. 🙁 Have you tried the area between Roppongi Hills and Azabujuban? I remembered sitting in a couple which owners I do not know near there and some decent tea service, with acceptable quality tea. Forgot the names now. Sorry
I forgot: read the article:
https://www.teaguardian.com/health/EGCG_oolong_gongfu.htmlI used only one report for the argument, I hope that suffice for the topicProvided that the temperature of water used and the duration of infusion are both about the same, then the amount of catechins dissolved should be proportionally lessened in each round. Alexargon suggested that it should be more towards latter rounds maybe because usually the tea is more bitty, tar, or bitter towards the end. That is a matter of the proportion of dissolvable matters in the tea. The sugars, amino acids, aromatic substances etc are much less than catechins in tea, particularly green, oolongs etc so they are used up in the prior rounds of infusion. Not much left proportionally to the catechins. The tea thus tastes more spiky.
These are topics that I’ll cover in a planned insertion for gongfu infusion techniques, but that won’t appear in the site in a few months yet. I’ll answer them very shortly here; hoping that’ll help in the mean time.
I suppose for teapot, you mean Yixing teapot.1. All teas stay pretty well in the pot throughout the day. Browned or aged oolongs, puers, and White Peony stay better in the teapot than green or black tea. However, puer stains the pot pretty quickly so I normally discard it at the end of the day. With oolongs, I have reused them the next day and still alright, provided that you have not open the lid after the last infusion of the previous day, lest germs may grow too much. Always blanch the leaves again after an extended period of sitting.2. When the teapot turns too cold to infuse again, there are a couple of approaches; I’ll write what I myself use all the time here:- Use water at the right temperature.
- When filling the teapot, pour aiming at the middle of the rim of the pot neck so that half of the water stream goes into the pot, half falls on the outside. Make sure you pour around the pot two times before filling the pot to just spill
- Turn one more round even after the pot spill, then scrap and cover
I think you can tell the reason behind this, so I am not explaining here. Have fun.This is funny. I am actually writing something about this. Will be posted in the Tea Guardian in a couple of days. Do read the answer there!
Other than newly deep baked charcoal finished oolongs, such as Tieguanyin, and the subcategory of puer (shu cha), black tea in generally maybe the least cooling in TCM nature amongst all teas. However, that does not mean that it is hot and should be avoided by people with a “hot constitution”.
3 times a week is not an issue providing that you have real leaf tea, and those that are relatively fresh (so not stored for a few years) and wholeleaf. CTC (the way broken leaves are manufactured) so considerably alters the TCM nature of tea that most knowledgeable Chinese TCM doctors classify teas made through it not as “hot” but rather “dampness-toxic”. As such, CTC black teas are not good for you. Since the heat toxic in your system would combine with the “dampness” to become “dampness-heat-evil” (in the exact term of TCM translated) which is one major pathogenic energy in TCM term.Tea in general is “cooling” by nature, esp green, white, and oolongs. They will help your heat excess. Do not have them cold and too strong. Avoid using sugar and milk, if so, fresh whole leaf black tea is also good. Overall, choose the right teas and have 5 ~ 8 cups of tea a day to see the effect on helping you to balance your heat.Good health.It has taken me more than one day to come back to discuss the second half of the question list. Apologies.
For the questions c & d, as said earlier, teas produced from the two cultivars are of different taste and appearance characters. They appeal to different preferences, so I really cannot say which is better even from a taster’s perspective. Silver Needles are produced from both cultivars in the two Fujian regions.However, all consumers have to be aware that regions outside of Fujian (and even outside of China) also produce the tea with or without using the two cultivars. I have mentioned in many occasions that there are plenty of downy shoot teas in the market that are in reality green teas. Silver Needle is a name that has been so well marketed that it is an enough temptation to name anything looking almost the same with it.To answer the question, I really cannot point out these two teas, with their simplified “1” and “2” cultivar names, no origin declaration, and obscure photos, which is better, or even if they may be real white tea Silver Needle.By the way, real Silver Needle maybe a bit more expensive than the run of the mill whole leaf green tea, but it should be well within reasonable price range, and below that of traditional quality, fine first flush green teas, such as Longjing etc. I am stating this here because I have seen too many people hijacking the price unreasonably, albeit the recent increase in price and currency exchange.Hello E,
This is a long question, and I’ll try to answer half of it tonight (it’s 12 midnight HK now) and the other half tomorrow.My response to Question a).Silver Needles, like many other teas, have been given names of various funny implications all over the world and I really cannot keep track of them. By the look of the photos in the website you provided, the two teas look like Silver Needles. However, you know look can be deceiving and the photos there are not very detailed or precise in terms of lighting and colour rendition, so it is more difficult. There are green tea look alikes. Please check again the relative pages in the Tea Guardian main site:“Baihao” means white down, and “Yin-zhen” means silver needles. The site is right with that, BUT you are correct in pointing out that the original name of the tea in China is Baihao Yinzhen; so the English name Silver Needles is a conventional short form. Separating them to name two teas does not seem right to me.My response to Question b).First of all, I do not know of a particular varietal (the proper name should be cultivar) named 1 and another name 2. I think maybe that site is trying to make things simple for the customer. Maybe they are not too sure themselves.The two most used cultivars for producing Silver Needles are Fuding Dabai and Zhenghe Dabai. These are turf oriented cultivar: people who employ the specific cultivar have turf preference in production styles. Fuding and Zhenghe are two separate regions. Each pride themselves of the local styles. The Fuding one is lighter oxidation and the Zhenghe one longer. So the latter is darker in leaf colour (so more greyish) and the former one paler. In terms of taste, the latter is stronger, longer. The former softer and more floral.None is better than the other; people just have taste preference.HOWEVER, I am NOT sure that the genuine Zhenghe version is so easily available in a small CA web store who is consistently mixing up light colour green tea as white teas in their catalogue. Genuine and traditional Zhenghe version is quite scarce these days; a buyer has to know his/her way quite well and has a distinct market need to buy such product.…to be continuedHi Snash, you are posting quite a few questions here and I’ll try to respond to them a couple at a time. Hope some other readers may provide other answers too.
I’ll deal with the more objective issue of clarity of colour of the infusion first:The clarity of the colour of infusion (i.e. whether the tea in the cup is clear or not) is NOT a reflection of how good any tea is, or whether the production place is clean or not.A simple observation:The production of sencha in modern factories maybe the cleanest of all in the world today but a good sencha is never clear in colour. Very cheap teabags of dusting of many materials from factories of various standards from any origin almost always give you a clear infusion.This point of your question touches on a few issues that are related to some basic facts so I am laying them down here:What is it that render an infusion murky rather than clearParticles of the tealeavesTiny debris from the tealeaves, in particular those that are lighter in colour that reflect more light when suspended in the liquor, is more abundant in Dian Hong than most other black teas. That is because there are a lot more tips each with more downy hairs in Dian Hong.Oxidation of flavonoidsCaffeine interacts immediately on contact with certain flavonoids to form larger molecules with unstable bonds. They precipitate to become tiny crystals as the temperature of the liquor drops. These tiny particles suspend in the tea and make the tea not clear in colour. The colder the tea gets, the more the precipitation and the less clear the tea gets. You heat it up again, and the bond of the two materials breaks and the tea gradually turns clear again. That is one reason why some black teas are never used for ice tea. Almost all teabags do not show this phenomenon, although which particular flavonoid is responsible for this is not known, and some other very fine Chinese blacks do not show this as well.MicrobesMicrobes exist anywhere in the natural environment, even in the cleanest Japanese tea factory, let alone Assamese ones. There are many tea factories in China that are modeled after the Japanese cleanliness standard, but they may not give you the best tea in term of gourmet standard. The factory of Fengqing Tea Company may not be the cleanest in the world, but it is not bad compared to some in Assam. Microbes maybe quite abundant on the floor, but they are in the human hands when not frequently washed.Some microbes strive on the wet tealeaves when the leaves are wet and laid still for fermentation. Their presence become one contribution to the final taste of the tea. They are there whether the place is clean or not. They come mostly from the air. They are reduced in machine tea production since the early part of the previous century by shortening of the fermentation time by heat and elimination of the traditional “laid-down” fermentation step. This changes the taste of black tea. (Yep, you are right, microbes are instrumental in determining some tastes) Whether one likes the “modern” produced tea or the traditional one is a subjective matter, but the density of the presence of microbes is only relative. It is not logically related to whether the tea in the cup is murky or not. Puer (shu cha) is a great example. Their production is totally reliant on microbes and yet some selections give clear, deep colour infusion.I’ll stop now for today.
