Tea and Zen

This is something that makes a little more sense after you've had a lot of tea. You'll be able to tell the difference between a flat, not-complex tea and a complex tea pretty quickly if you try to drink a lot of tea, and a lot of variety. The photo is not mine, it was taken by a friend (whom I'm unsure wants to be named) while we were at the Tea Box in Richmond, London, UK.

Complexity will vary a little bit from person to person, but it typically comes down to the following:

• A noticeable or unique aroma, especially when you can taste the tea from the aroma alone
• Many tastes mingling together that makes it hard to pinpoint what exactly you're tasting
• On the flip side, many tastes mingling together where you can pinpoint what you're tasting
• The body of the tea (Is it buttery? Smooth? Bubbly? Rasping? Powdery? Full? Thick? Thin? etc.)
• Development of the tea over time (so from one steeping to another in both liquor and aroma).
• After taste + the unique flavors mingling 
• Length the flavor sits on your pallet

So, basically, it is very slippery and loose since it really depends on who you're talking to. 

Different teas fit my quota for "complex." For example, I love Japanese greens. They're what I'd call my expertise. A good Japanese green will always meet this. What the greens specific characteristics are will depend on if it is a shincha, gyokuro, sencha, or bancha. Very rarely banchas strike me as complex as they're an everyday tea, but that is besides the point.

Oolongs, good Sheng (that I've experienced so far), white, jasmine teas, many Chinese greens (especially Longjing!), and some blacks such as Darjeeling will also strike me as complex. This is a lot of variety, but I've had a lot of tea, and I enjoy many kinds!

While there are many wonderful black teas that I've had in the past, namely those from Yunnan, Laoshan Black, and Darjeeling, I find that many black teas are a one trick pony for me.

That being said, there have been more than enough teas from every other category that haven't been complex to me either. It really depends.

What's complex to me might be a one trick pony to another drinker, while a tea that is a one trick pony for me may be complex to another. Taste is very subjective.

Drink tea everyday. Drink a variety of teas that vary in quality. Compare the teas to one another if you can. Perhaps take notes on what you can figure out about the tea (even if it's just "I like it because it is sweet/fruity/woody/soft on my pallet" or "I don't like it because it is bland/sweet/fruity/woody/astringent" and simple notes like that) and before you know it you'll be able to tell a complex tea vs. a flat and bland tea, all according to your tastes! 

Believe it or not, most days I only drink one tea, occasionally two. I may plan on drinking more than one, but that almost never works out. Two is workable, but three? Nah.

My typical gong fu set up

Aside that, I have a bit of an issue with caffeine. I'm somewhat sensitive to it so I have to watch myself. It doesn't keep me up at night or give me jitters, but it makes my heart most unhappy. You never make your heat unhappy, that's asking for a very bad time.

I also try to take my time to enjoy my tea. If I'm having a very fine Japanese green I'll sometimes start with two five minute cold brews and then have three or four 60C brewings. Other times I'll be able to get three to five 60C brewings without the cold start. If I brew in a fashion very similar to gong fu I may only get one or two. Since Japanese greens don't give you even close to as many brewings as many Chinese teas, I'll use more leaf than I would if I was having any Chinese tea (and other countries as well, typically). But, I'll probably only have that one tea. Over the course of the day, assuming I'm sitting down to really appreciate the tea, it'll take me several hours even if I am drinking the cups in rapid succession.

The same applies to other teas, especially when brewing them grandpa style. I do not rush when brewing grandpa style. If the water gets too cool for my liking I can get my tumbler down to 2/3rds full and add some fresh hot water. A tea that can withstand at least 10 brewings gong fu style will take me at least an hour if I'm not taking notes to make a review on here. When taking notes the hour will turn into two or three since I'm trying to figure out what I'm tasting, what I like and dislike, and probably brewing the tea in more than one method if I have a fair amount of leaf.

Total, regardless of the type of tea I am making or how long it takes me to sip on it, I drink at least a liter of tea every day. I think it is fair to assume my average is 1.5L.

In the past I would have three or four different teas in one day. I don't know how I did it, but one thing is for sure-- I didn't appreciate the tea at that time as I do now. I didn't spend so much time trying to figure out the nuances that the particular tea I am sipping on has. It honestly wasn't until I started to only drink one tea a day that I was really able to figure out what I was tasting, verbalize it, and talk about it (though there were other factors involved as well. That's but one piece of the puzzle).

My one exception to this is if I wake up late and don't have time to make tea in the morning. I'll brew up some Earl Grey, Irish Breakfast, or genmaicha in my tumbler and run. Once I am done with school and work I will sit down and enjoy a tea. I suppose this is another exception, but my family likes to have tea time in the evening, so if they request tea time I'll have a second tea with them then.

That didn't happen as much as it needed to last year. This year I have decided that I need to set aside at least an hour every day so that I can enjoy some tea. It's not so much the tea that I find calming, but rather the preparation. Sharing it with people is a pleasing bonus. That always makes tea taste better.

All of this being said, lately I've been trying to drink more than one tea a day. I still have 115g of tea from Verdant Tea to go through. It's five different teas, four of which are 25g and the remaining being 15g.

That is a lot of tea, especially considering the fact I made that huge What Cha order. This large amount of tea from VT has me backed logged. After opening the 25g packages I'd rather not let them sit around to get old. That'd be a waste.

You're now ready to plunge into the world of tea. Since you've begun lurking various forums or reading a blog post, you've probably seen different types of brewing methods mentioned: western, grandpa, Gong Fu, and Brewing Matcha depending on where you've been reading.

Assuming you are brand new to tea, I don't suggest spending a lot of money on any tea supplies yet. You can get the bare basics for all the following brewing methods without breaking your wallet. I'll include links where you can find affordably priced tea ware.

If there is any one thing that a person new to tea should be doing, it is drinking tea. Play around with different brewing methods, temperatures, leaf to water ratios, and find out what you personally like. 

Western Style Brewing

Mug with brewing basket, pitcher with strainer, teapot

This is the type of brewing you are most likely very familiar with. You take x, typically 4g//8oz of loose leaf, or perhaps some bags, throw it into some hot water for three to five minutes, strain the leaves or remove the bags, and you're done.

If you don't have one, I highly recommend getting a basket brewer for a mug. Mine is from Teavana, I bought it during my noob days. It's lasted forever so I think it's worth the $15 I paid. Upton Tea Imports has a nice selection of various brewing baskets. I've heard a lot of good about Finum's filters. You can find basket filters for dirt cheap on ebay, a friend of mine bought his for $1.29.

UTP also sells many glass tea pots, but you can find pots just about everywhere. When looking for a pot, make sure it either has a built in filter or a large, wide, and deep brewing basket to allow the leaves to properly open up.

Grandpa Style

You don't get any easier than grandpa style brewing.

Best tumbler ever, leaves brewing grandpa style at 1min/6min

You take a tall, wide mouthed glass, throw in some tea leaves (but less than you would Gong Fu, which is covered next), and then some hot water. The cooler your water is to begin with the longer your tea will last.

Here's a few more pointers:

• As said, don't use too many leaves. When I'm making tea grandpa style in my glass tumblr (12oz/350ml) I'll use 3g of tea instead of my usual 5+ grams. This helps prevent you from choking on leaves and getting them in your mouth. I cheat because my tumblr comes with a "strainer" I can stick in to prevent the leaves from coming up to my mouth.
• Use a tea that doesn't get bitter easily. Most oolongs are good for this. Longjing is another good choice. I've never brewed Puerh grandpa style, but I've heard it can come out fairly decent. I do not recommend Japanese greens unless you like a bitter mess. Experiment and you'll find what you like and dislike.
• Never let the water level get below half full. Top up around 2/3rd full. Try to increase the water temperature as time goes on. For later infusions, pour with vigor to move the leaves. This'll help distribute flavor.
• Later into brewing cover your glass. 

I'm rather fond of this method. Whenever I review a tea (assuming I have enough leaf) I will have at least one elongated session that is done grandpa style.

I bought my tumblr from Tiger Lily Tea, it's fantastic and I highly recommend it. If I remember correctly it was around $20.

They don't always have the tumblr in stock, but they do have several different varieties. Their website does not have most of the teas or ware offered at the shop, so I recommend messaging them over Facebook or through the contact option on their website.

Gong Fu Cha

Gong Fu style brewing is one of my favorites. It can be done with a gaiwan or a small teapot.
Depending on the tea, you'll use 5-7g of leaf per 100ml of water. Since this is a strong concentration, brewing is very fast. The first several brewings are less than 10 seconds. You'll see this in a vast majority of the posts on this blog.

Four of my gaiwans. 120ml/120ml/120ml/60ml

Here's how a typical session will play out:

• Bring your water to the appropriate temperature. 
• Heat up your brewing vessel.
• Pour out hot water. Add leaves. Place lid on brewing vessel, gently shake three times. Enjoy the aroma of the wet leaves.
• Pour hot water along the rim of brewing vessel. If this is a puerh, oolong, Japanese green*, or black tea, rinse once, twice, and sometimes more for a very good or aged tea. Rising means pouring out the water you just poured in and discarding it. This is to open up the leaves. 
• Pour hot water along the rim of the brewing vessel. Place lid on vessel and pour out liquor in less than 10 seconds into your cha hai (pitcher) or cups. 
• Repeat, adding two to ten seconds per each additional steeping. It depends on the tea and your own preference.

*If you are making a high quality Japanese green (gyokuro or sencha) in a hohin, divide the amount liquid volume by five. So, for example, 200ml/50 = 4g. Or I recommend .6g/30ml for sencha and 1g/30ml for gyokuro. I usually use this. After this, everything is the same. For a visual, here is Mr. Akira Hojo of Hojo Tea brewing via the first method.

Now where can one obtain a gaiwan or hohin at a reasonable price?

Yunnan Sourcing has a wide variety of affordable gaiwans. I have this one and this one, both of which work just as well as two of my more expensive ones. YS also has some sets for a fair price.

For the full set, Tea Drunk sells a reasonably priced set. Its more than what you'll pay at YS but it still isn't horrible, all things considered. My two expensive gaiwans cost more than this set on their own.

Hojo Tea also sells gaiwans and your other gong fu needs for a fair price (scroll to almost the bottom. They're above the copperware). 

Artistic Nippon and Thes-Du-Japon [2] offer a ceramic hohin for a fair price.

Brewing Matcha

I really like the instructions provided on /r/tea for preparing Matcha. I couldn't put it better if I tried.

Fresh from /r/tea's faq:

There are probably a few ways you could make it but the the way it's most recognized is with the use of a chawan (Tea bowl), and a chasen (Bamboo whisk).

• You start by putting hot water into the chawan to warm it up and put the chasen in the water to make it more flexible for the whisking process.
• When the bowl has warmed up, take out the chasen, dump the water out and dry the bowl off. Then add about 2 grams of matcha in the middle of the bowl.
• Then pour some new hot water (around 70-80 Celsius) into the bowl in a circular motion to let the tea move around and get your chasen ready.
• Take your chasen with your thumb, index, and middle finger and whisk it in a up and down, zig zag motion. Usually you would do this until it foams up and gets a nice grassy green color.

You can drink it however you want but I would recommend not to add anything and just enjoy the flavor that the matcha offers. Everyone has different taste though and I'm a strong believer that the best cup of tea is what taste the best to you, so add anything you like!
(Thanks to /u/MisterSpencer)
Usucha, or thin tea, is prepared with approximately 1.75 grams (amounting to 1.5 heaping chashaku scoop, or about half a teaspoon) of matcha and approximately 75 ml (2.5 oz) of hot water per serving.
Koicha, or thick tea, requires significantly more matcha (usually about doubling the powder and halving the water): approximately 3.75 grams (amounting to 3 heaping chashaku scoops, or about one teaspoon) of matcha and approximately 40 ml (1.3 oz) of hot water per serving, or as many as six teaspoons to 3/4 cup of water.
Wikipedia has a more detailed guide, which also includes tons of other info on matcha.
If you like pictures, WikiHow has a less traditional preparation guide.

Japanese Tea Ceremony

The Japanese tea ceremony is called Chanoyu, Sado or simply Ocha in Japanese. It is a choreographic ritual of preparing and serving Japanese green tea, called Matcha, together with traditional Japanese sweets to balance with the bitter taste of the tea. Preparing tea in this ceremony means pouring all one's attention into the predefined movements. The whole process is not about drinking tea, but is about aesthetics, preparing a bowl of tea from one's heart. The host of the ceremony always considers the guests with every movement and gesture. Even the placement of the tea utensils is considered from the guests view point (angle), especially the main guests called the Shokyaku. (Source)

Something I am asked very often by friends and family is how I became so interested in tea. The next question is how I came to know so much about tea. My family has begun to call me "tea-tea" after my younger sister conjured the nickname. Despite the fact I tell my friends I'm far from a "tea master" several insist I am.

How I got into tea is a lot more boring than people assume. From others I've heard that they walked into some Mom & Pop tea shop, tried tea XYZ and were converted for life. Others went to China, India, England, Japan, or elsewhere, and had a taste of a quality loose leaf.

I tried Twining's Irish Breakfast Tea. Super exciting right?

Growing up I had access to the bottom of the barrel quality tea: Lipton Tea bags and their iced "tea" sugar mix. Because of this I was sure I didn't enjoy tea for the longest time. I would load it up with sugar and call it a day. It was bland, bitter, and all around terrible. In fact, when I was little I heard of the Japanese Tea ceremony and the first thing I thought was: "Why would there be a ceremony about tea? It isn't even that good."

Twining's had much more flavor than Lipton. My mother had won this package of 20 teabags, among other stereotypical Irish things at a St. Patrick's Day event. I was sure I knew everything about tea after that. Black tea was the only good tea and green tea was horrible. It was bland and bitter, who would like that?

And then I stopped drinking tea for a while. Despite this, I'd talk about how much I knew about tea and loved it. Did you know green tea and black tea come from the same plant?

Because of this tooting of my own horn, my grandma bought me Bentley's Classic Tea Collection for Christmas around '06-07, I don't remember which. I was ecstatic. 120 tea bags, six different flavors. Who could ask for more???

I never finished them. Last year I gave away more than half to a friend of mine because there was no way I was going to get through them all. They were not foil sealed so the Earl Grey tainted the Orange Spice, which tainted the Peach, which tainted the Raspberry which-- they all tainted each other and made their already horrendous green tea even worse.

Sometime around 2007-08 I found anime. I was a weeb for a while and it makes me sad. This new found love (and lack of actual knowledge) of Japan and their culture, I loved green tea. It was the best thing in the world. Little did I know that green tea I was chugging was generic, pan fried Chinese teas.

Around the same time, for Christmas, my mom bought me a teapot very similar to this. Same design, the spout is just on one of the corners and stubbier. I was so happy! I now had a pot and a strainer. This meant I could make all of the tea. I had no loose leaf and didn't know where to get it, so it sat dormant in my room.

Come sometime early 2010 I was wandering around in a mall with a friend of mine and my eyes landed on gold: Sencha. I didn't actually know what this was, but it was from Japan (it said it was authentic and high quality so of course they're telling the truth) so I had to get it. The package said I needed to use 4g/8oz, use fresh boiling water, and let it steep for three to five minutes. It was from the Metropolitan Tea Company. 

I thought it was terrible, but I drank it anyway because Japan. I began to lose interest in anime and grow out of my weeb phase, and so tea left my life again for some time. I was still an expert though.

Around six months or so later I found myself loving tea again. It kept coming back into my life for years, and I had matured enough to realize I didn't know diddly squat. I had done a little reading on Japanese teas (specifically sencha) and soon understood why I thought that it was so horrid. The brewing directions were very wrong and the leaf quality was... not so great.

I kept reading and reading. I learned of this cool tea called Gyokuro. It was really expensive and shade grown. I learned about oolong's beyond the faux Wu Yi oolong tea bags I had sitting in my room. I learned about Yixing and the deep, dark rabbit hole that it is. I learned about the various Japanese kilns (Bizen anyone??). I discovered yellow and white teas, puerh, and a whole world of knowledge. After collecting all sorts of information over a year or so I was a wealth of knowledge. I knew how each category of tea was processed. I could tell you all the major growing districts in China and Japan. I knew what FTGFOP meant. I knew all the main brewing methods, what the general steeping temperature was for each category of tea and the appropriate tea to water ratio before you began to tweak. By looking at leaves I was able to determine if it was of reasonable quality or not. I had discovered numerous reputable vendors.

Yet, at the time, that was all in theory. It wasn't until sometime late 2011, early 2012, that I was able to put my knowledge into practice. At first, I was devastated. I couldn't pick up on all sorts of subtle notes that people said some tea had. I couldn't tell people what I thought the tea taste like other than "good" or any of the main categories (vegetale, floral, earthy, savory, spicy). Even then, sometimes I wasn't sure what category the tea fell under. I read on many blogs that as long as you drank tea every day, took notes, and continued to read you'd start to be able to talk about tea in depth.

A few months went by and I still couldn't do it so I started to give up on trying to figure out what I was tasting and just enjoy the tea. Sometime after, out of the blue, I had found I was able to talk about what I was tasting. I recognized that flavor! I knew how to describe how the tea felt in my mouth. My love for tea was rekindled once more, as it had started to deflate slowly.

I continued to grow from there and find myself where I am today. My tea journey was anything but exciting. Slow, broken, and pompous for quite some time.

So good reader, if you are new into tea, remember this: if you can't talk about what you taste too much, do drink tea daily. Try to drink it in smaller amount (less than 100ml brews) in order to appreciate and taste the tea more. Do try all sorts of tea, you never know what you'll like. Do play with the leaf to water ratio and temperature of teas. You may find you like a tea at a higher or lower concentration, a lower or higher temp, than what is recommended. Do join communities like Tea Chat, /r/tea, and local communities to learn more about tea. You'll never know everything!

Do not get discouraged. You'll get there. Keep at it and before you know it, you'll be able to talk tea. I wasn't very confident in my ability to speak intelligently about tea until sometime late 2014, and even then I felt like I still didn't know enough. Now I know I can talk intelligently about tea, but I also know there is a wealth of knowledge I can still obtain. 

However, if you are very new to tea, I don't recommend investing a lot of money into tea ware. As I did many, many times, after the initial zing of tea dies off, people lose interest. Most never get back onto the boat many times like I did, only to plunge face first into the depths of tea.

In my next post I'll talk about how you can get into tea if you're not already. I'll include everything from the bare basics to fancier, more critical styles of brewing such as Gong Fu cha.