Hong Cha For Hot Weather

Today, a few days short of a year after it was harvested on Taiwan's east coast, I finished off the last of my pack of red tea I ordered after thoroughly enjoying the sample Stéphane was kind enough to provide. A da yeh oolong from Teamasters, this tea is made from oolong leaves that were fully oxidized to make a red tea rather than an oolong. Unconventional, to be sure, but as I mentioned in my first post on this tea, this is the only hong cha I've tried that I've really enjoyed. It's complexity and aromas that border on floral belie its oolong origins and make this tea all the better for it.

As we rapidly approach the solstice, temperatures have been ramping up and have been in the thirties (forties with the humidex) for a few days now. During the summer I try to drink outside as much as possible, both to enjoy the ambiance as well as to try to keep the heat out of the house what with electricity costing so much these days. Green tea, however, has got nothing on this heat, much less the low oxidation oolongs that are my preference. It's for that reason that I decided to go whole ho(n)g in the opposite direction.

The first quick infusion is light and complex; full of flavour but not yet hearty and warming. I savour the light fruits over candy sweetness and sniff the hints of flowers in the bottom of my cup as the next infusion steeps a little longer. As I pour it, I worry a little that I might've overdone it a bit and made the tea bitter; one thing I've learned is that once a tea's been drastically overstepped, there's often no way back. The much darker red liquor wafts a thick aroma that's always reminded me of very ripe tomatoes, although the two scents don't actually bear any striking resemblance. As that peculiarity dances across my synapses I take my first sip: it's so thick and flavorful! Far from being oversteeped, this tea has simply become more potent. I can feel the heat cascade down into my stomach and spread out as I finish drinking.

The veins on my arms start to pop up and I start to cool off as the perceived temperature differential decreases. Funny how drinking a something so warming on such a hot day can be so cooling...

The tea goes on, gradually returning to the lightness of the first steep, over a few more infusions. I stop bothering to reheat the water in my glass kettle (which seems better suited to this tea than my tetsubin) and pour in enough water for one last steep to be enjoyed tomorrow.

Guei Fei Oolong - Summer 2012 from Cha Yi

A quick note to share what I'm drinking today: a true dong ding guei fei oolong from the Gatineau tea shop I've been frequenting lately. I bought a small sample of this tea back when it first arrived with the spring oolongs and was warned that brewing this tea properly can be quite tricky. Happily, roasted oolongs seem to be my forte, so I've never experienced any great problems with this one.

Unlike Stéphane's concubine oolongs, this guei fei was harvested at the usual time between late spring and early summer (if memory serves, it may be more distinctly early summer). Summer being a season known for bitterness and astringency, this tea has a greater propensity to dry the mouth and rough up the throat than many. However, if brewed using hot water and short infusions using plenty of leaf, I've found these undesirable traits can be successfully manages most of the time, bringing clean, thick, and powerful sweet ripe fruit to the forefront.

The aromas and tastes are broadly characteristic of the genre, with a clean sugar sweetness in the bottom of the cup changing to apple cider as the stoneware cools. Being closer to a spring harvest, the emphasis is more on the finer and lighter aromas and flavours than the fall and winter harvested teas with the same processing technique I've tried.

To me, a wild (or semi-wild) tea with a tendency to be bitter or astringent is rarely a thing to be feared. These elements seem to often signal a more powerful or robust tea than one that simply isn't good. These teas are as far from insipid as it gets, no matter how they're prepared, and when they're brewed well, they can be among the most rewarding. The process of tasting them cannot be boring, and if nothing else, it's a canary in the coal mine of brewing technique. This is called gong fu cha, after all...

A bit of housekeeping: Thanks to my recent acquisition of a lovely little bit of increasingly ubiquitous technology designed by Apple, I'm now able to write posts pretty much anywhere. The tradeoff comes in the form of photos and formatting, options for the former being few and nonexistent for the latter. Nevertheless, my hope is that this will allow me to post shorter bits of content more regularly in addition to more infrequent lengthy posts. 

Tetsubin Adventures - Part I: The Beginning

Today a bit of tea-kit I've been eyeing for quite some time came in the mail: a bona-fide tetsubin. According to the asian antiques dealer I bought it from (online for a very reasonable sum), this bronze-lidded lump of cast iron dates back to pre-1930. Also according to the seller, the inscriptions on either side of the kettle are a poem and a pine tree, respectively. The inside of the lid is inscribed with the make and what are reportedly congratulations for reaching old age.

While unboxing it I gave the kettle a thorough once-over to check for any rusted out or weakened areas (the seller guaranteed that it would hold water for 24 hours without leaking, but was reticent to say whether it could actually be used as a kettle, and I didn't want it dumping hot water all over my kitchen during a preliminary field trial, as it were) and, in addition to finding no weak spots, discovered a few interesting things. For instance, the little brass knob on the lid, while bent, still spins and can in this manner be cooled when boiling water. A seam all the way down the inside of the wrought iron handle as well as a suspicious lightness seem to indicate that the handle might be hollow as well for extra pouring comfort.

By far the most intriguing part of the tetsubin, however, is the rusty lump that can be seen in the bottom left of the photograph opposite. From the photos on the online item listing, I assumed it was the somewhat misshapen inside portion of the kettle's bellybutton, but in person this seems unlikely. The bellybutton is only about a centimeter wide on the outside of the kettle, but the inside lump is over an inch in diameter. In boiling and reboiling the tetsubin to clean it out and make it ready to drink from (as well as a bit of chipping at flaking surface rust), four radial seams became visible with a hollow area underneath. The odd structure and lack of any leaks so far, as well as the odd and surprisingly loud noises this pot makes as it boils lead me to believe this kettle may be fitted with a singer!

I first stumbled across singers in this article in issue eight of The Leaf and, if memory serves, haven't since. Whether or not that's what this lump actually is remains to be seen, in the meantime I'll keep poking away at it to see if I can deduce anything. In any case, the most important test is yet to come: taste. Having been unable to resist trying some of the plain water, I'll let on that it is indeed delicious, but more detailed notes will have to wait until it's subjected to the acid test of brewing a cup of tea. Until we meet again in Part II, dear reader.

Yi Wu Pu'erh - Spring 2003 from Teamasters

Tea: A spring 2003 wild shengpu, the "top grade Yi Wu Pu Er Qizi Bing Cha" in Stéphane's selection. First tasted as part of a small sample, then as part of a larger sample (I'm too cheap to buy the full cake is out of my price range).

The chunk of tea is composed mainly of dark leaves with a dash of stems and golden tips mixed in, though its appearance seems not to be the most notable characteristic of the dry tea. Affectionately dubbed The Man Tea by a friend with whom I shared a few brews, the tea lets off a strong and very pleasant smell of beef jerky upon removal from its plastic sachet. A slightly sweet aroma of spices underlines the smokiness that inspired its new name. On heating up the leaves in a gaiwan or teapot, this impression intensifies, only to be erased with the first brew.

I don't bother rinsing the leaves, and the first infusion is unsurprisingly warm and a little earthy. However, already this tea contradicts itself with a thickly floral olfactory aspect that turns sweet as the empty cup cools. The aftertaste is long, pleasant, and largely textural at this point. The thick, gloopy liquor adheres to the inside of my mouth until the next infusion is ready.

The dark honey coloured second infusion is even thicker and more complex, now that the chunk of leaves has started to disassemble. The taste evolves through several stages, at first minty and fresh, then malty, resolving on dark fruit with a thicker, more earthy version of honey's sweetness wafting from the bottom of the cup. The next infusion is much the same, and this time I note the very same manly smells from the dry leaf under the lid of my teapot, curiously not to be found anywhere else.

Over the course of the many brews that follow, the calming chaqi builds in my consciousness and the liquor tends towards a clean sweetness and grains. Each time I re-enter the room after reheating my water I walk into a cloud of flowery sweet perfume and a smile spreads across my face.

After various trials, I decided on rededicating the teapot I had reserved for green oolongs to a genre that couldn't be any more different. Much as I like the effect a little bit of seasoning on the brewing vessel can have on a tea, a gaiwan will always render the lightest and freshest notes of gaoshan oolong better than anything made of clay, and this particular teapot did more to shave off the top notes than add thickness to the liquor. Having brewed this particular pu'erh in a gaiwan a couple of times, I decided to give it a go in this teapot to see what would happen (I don't personally believe that a single session, or even a few sessions, with a different can ruin the seasoning of a teapot), and the result was much improved. The clay supplemented the earthiness which, to me, is characteristic of a pu'erh with any aging in it, as well as consolidating the various aspects of this tea without completely erasing any. The power of the tea combined with the filtering effect of the clay produced a well rounded, thick, and still complex liquor I really enjoyed.

I reproached myself at first for pairing this teapot with gaoshan oolongs, a genre to which it now seems obviously ill-suited. But then I remembered what I'd got out of this experience: a teapot that makes a great tea even better as well as a reminder of a valuable lesson. I took for granted the effect this teapot would have on the oolongs I bought it to pair with based on various parameters, rather than letting the tea speak for itself when I brewed it. A little hypocritical for a blogger, perhaps, but the value of simply observing is one that seems perpetually downplayed in all aspects of life, if you ask me. From really tasting a tea before analyzing it to really listening to someone before thinking of how to reply, sometimes just drinking it all in without passing any judgement is an important step that gets skipped. Here's to experiencing tea, not just tasting it.

Sanguinaria canadensis