Tea and Zen

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.

After trying Ito En's Oi Ocha: Unsweetened Green Tea for the first time in years I didn't like it very much. It was very bland and bitter (I still want to get my hands on their dark Oi Ocha though). I'm too spoiled with high grade Japanese greens.

Unsweetened Can, a sweetened version is available

I was at the store and I laid my eyes on this. I had it once in the past and thought it was "meh." If that's all you care to know, that's how the Matcha Love is. It's their unsweetened green tea mixed with matcha. I feel it is very safe to assume that the matcha is food grade, not ceremonial grade.

I liked this better than their Oi Ocha. The taste you're met with at first is a much smoother and less astringent liquor than that of their Oi Ocha. So, basically, your bare bones Japanese Green tea flavor.

In the after taste there is matcha. Not a very good matcha. It's a slightly heavier stereotypical bare bones Japanese Green tea taste. There is no sweetness in this tea. It's not bitter either but I mean does that matter when it doesn't really taste like anything?

After the liquor hasn't been in your mouth for a while, there is a slight sweet aftertaste. It's not quite enough to redeem the tea.

Liquor

For $1.50 it isn't bad though. I wouldn't buy it again now that I've done a review of it. If you're unfamiliar with Japanese greens and don't like bitter things, try this out before you try out their Oi Ocha. However, if you too think that this is bland, don't judge all Japanese teas off of this or Ito En's Oi Ocha. They're everyday teas and a high end Japanese green will blow your mind away with how floral and sweet it is.

This is part of my Sample Demolition: Verdant Tea series.

Dry leaves

I have so much of this tea. I have 50g of unopened leaf and another 15g of open leaf after this, freshly opened when a friend came over for tea time. 65g is a lot of one tea for me. My package originally got lost and/or stuck in customs for over three months, so I sent VT an email, they couldn't figure out what happened, and sent me a new, complete parcel of my order. A month after my new parcel showed up, my original one did in a very beat up, unhappy looking box.

So now I have a ton of this tea. I had 100g but was able to go through the first 25g pretty quickly. The rest? Not so much. If you'd like 25g of it shoot me an email. I'd be more than happy to swap it for something!

I have serious doubts about the age of this tea. For one, it's hard to find an aged oolong over 20 years. Up to 20 isn't super easy, but they exist. Right now What-cha offers the China Fujian Anxi 1996 Se Zhong Oolong Tea which is one example of a 20 year old aged oolong. I'll be reviewing that later. Hojo Tea also offers a Vintage 30 Years Oolong and it is much pricier than this tea. It is $23.68 (at the current exchange rate) for 30g while this tea is $12 for 25g. Hojo's is almost double the price for 5g more. I would like to review this tea sometime in the future, I currently don't have it.

The other thing that makes me doubt the age of this tea is how much they're selling. I've seen this tea go out of stock and come back in stock many times. With how old this tea is supposed to be, when it's gone, it's gone. There also, theoretically speaking (and almost always) isn't much of it.

Brewing leaves

Verdant Tea has had an issue with the ages of various things, like the age of the trees their puerh was coming from. If you'd like to learn more, check out my Sample Demolition: Verdant Tea post. I love Master Zhang, he is by far my favorite farmer from Verdant Tea, but due to the past shenanigans of Verdant Tea, I don't know if they are exaggerating/lying or if they were duped by Master Zhang.

Who knows.

I used 5g/120ml, 100C water, washed thrice, 10 second steeping time +3-5 seconds for each additional brewing.

Gong Fu Brewings

The aroma reminded me of malt, peat, chocolate, bran, and honey.

The aroma from the first cup reminded me of all the above, plus vanilla. I think I should have washed a fourth time because there wasn't much flavor aside peat and cedar, and even that was incredibly light. In the aftertaste there was a hint of vanilla and lilikoi blossoms. The liquor was full, medium weight, and smooth with a hint of astringency.

Liquor

The aroma was the same. The liquor of the second cup was a beautiful amber color. The liquor tasted like honey and toasted bran with hints of wood. The aftertaste was like lilikoi blossoms mingled with vanilla and kumquat.

The aroma was mostly of wood and lilikoi blossoms mingled together. The liquor tasted of wood with a hint of vanilla. There was a slight aftertaste of vanilla and melon.

Since this is darkly roasted like a wu yi, I decided to sip on some water. A very sweet berry flavor flowered across my pallet. I couldn't decide if it was more like blueberry or blackberries.

Wet leaves

The liquor in the fifth cup reminded me of vanilla and wood as well. There wasn't much of a difference.

The remaining cups tasted exactly like the 4th on. I went up to 11 cups. It didn't lose it's flavor, it continued to taste like vanilla (the taste of wood slowly disappearing), but didn't evolve either.

Grandpa Style

I think I like this tea better when drunk grandpa style. It has sweet hints of vanilla and honey mingled with cedar. There isn't a whole lot of aftertaste. It is mildly astringent and has a full mouth feel with medium body. The down side? Similar to the gong fu style brewing, after your first, and certainly after your second top up, the flavor begins to disappear. After the third it was extremely weak. Thinking perhaps I hadn't stirred the leaves enough I poured even more vigorously on the fourth and well... I had brown water with a hint of cedar and honey. It didn't even last an hour despite my attempt to make it love that long. The aroma was just like the gong fu style brewing, except a little weaker.

Brewing leaves, 1 min/6min

Leaves in cup once done

Rating

This tea is a five, through and through. You don't get get much out of this tea. The leaves are very unwilling to open up. I mentioned this in a previous post, but in case you didn't read that, I recommend reading Hojo's very nice article Tips on Tea Quality Inspection that goes into some detail about this. I think it is a good, educational read. If you're familiar with tea it'll reinforce knowledge you probably have, and if you're new to tea it'll offer some knowledge.

It is normal for it to take many brewings to properly open up an aged tea, they rarely fully open. But after 10 gong fu brewings and an hour grandpa style? No. The fact these leaves are so unwilling to open in both the grandpa and gong fu brewing is a bad sign. At least the reserve TGY was much more willing to open when brewed grandpa style.

Gong Fu leaf samples

Grandpa Style leaf samples

The tea doesn't develop much. It changes in the second and third brew, but then it flat lines and slowly fades out. The body is average, the flavor, while nice and initially complex, dies quickly. The depth is inconsistent the various times I brewed this tea gong fu style with the same leaf to water ratio. There is next to no after taste, and what there is, is pretty dry.

As the five implies, the tea is very average. Not bad, not great, average.

If you're interested you can purchase this tea here.

Ito En has the best bottled green teas hands down. Before I was a serious tea drinker I would purchase this all the time. My supermarket used to sell all the bottled flavors that Ito En has available, but now they only sell this one.

Bottle and liquor

It makes me sad as I really like their darker bottled sencha. I think it is better than this one, though this one is good as well. I'm considering buying some of the darker Oi Ocha from their website since the price isn't bad and it'll be convenient since I'm going back to my University soon.

I have unfortunately never had the chance to try any of their matcha or loose sencha, but I've heard that it is pretty reasonable. In the event I do buy some of their darker Oi Ocha perhaps I'll buy some of their loose leaf.

I don't know if they used to, but now they have haiku on the bottles:

Midnight basketball
The clang of the netless rim
Under crescent moon
-Neil Whitman

I think the fact that they're now including haiku's by drinkers is pretty cool.

Bottle

Since it's been a very long time since I've had this tea I wasn't 100% sure what to expect. It smelt kind of bitter. Think of a generic bancha that you've brewed up and it smelt kind of like that. I was hoping it wouldn't taste like one and whelp... it did.

There wasn't much to it. It was rather bitter. I left it in my mouth for a few moments on a few occasions to try and see if I could pick up on something.

The bitterness intensified the longer it sat in my mouth.

It wasn't overly astringent. There wasn't much aftertaste beyond the lingering bitterness and a tiny hint of the characteristic sweetness that a good Japanese green will have.

Considering it is a bottled green tea, and dirt cheap at that, one can't ask too much out of it. For what it is I liked it.

Now if only I can find their dark unsweeteend green tea without having to buy it off the internet.

This is part of my Sample Demolition: Verdant Tea series.

Puerh is a fairly unexplored world to me. I've had it on a few occasions and thought it was rather pleasant.

Because of the fact I have not had the pleasure of tasting a large variety of puerh, take this particular review with a grain of salt.

About 10g of dry leaf

Upon opening the bag I was met with a very sweet, yet pleasantly earthy aroma. The sweetness was strong enough that I could taste it on my tongue. Since I did not buy a whole cake I was expecting them to have already make the cake into loose leaf, but it was not, so I had to break up one of the chunks that were inside. It wasn't a big deal, but it was a surprise. I was very excited to try the cake.

Here I used 5g/120ml and 95C water. I rinsed twice before enjoying my first cup. I added 10 seconds to each additional brewing.

Cups 1-4

Leaves during the 4th brewing. I now see why it is sometimes called "green" puerh.

It was very, very pleasant. The mouthfeel was very smooth with a light, but not abrasive astringency. You're first met with a spicy taste, like that of new wood. In the aftertaste your tongue is washed over with a very sweet, jasmine-like taste mingled with elderberries, and at the back of my throat, raspberries. The finish is very long and it goes down your throat very smoothly.

For the third and fourth cup the sweetness in the aftertaste began to die down slightly, and the woodiness had a more prominent flavor. The liquor was more astringent, but not unbearably so.

Leaves after the 4th brewing

Cups 5-7

In the fifth cup the woodiness died down considerably. You could still taste it, but it wasn't nearly as potent. The raspberry flavors began to linger across the sides of my tongue and inch forward from the back of my throat. The elderberry was less apparent, and the jasmine-like flavor was just as strong as the first cup.

In the sixth, now that the woodiness was gone, a different flavor began to show up in the aftertaste. It reminded me of dark, old wood. Not quite rotting, but it wasn't a very pleasant taste. It was stronger than the previous, lovely floral and sweet tones. My friend described it as tasting like a 9 volt battery.

Liquor

In the seventh almost all flavor was gone. I could still taste the jasmine, but that is all that remained.

Several hours after I had finished this tea, the raspberry sweetness still clung to the back of my tongue. It wasn't until I shared a TieGuanYin with a friend of mine that the sweetness left, and was replaced by the TGY (which was outstanding, I must say).

Various wet leaves after brewing for show of quality

Rating

Overall I thought this was a reasonable tea, I liked it even though it wasn't anything particularly special. I give it a 5, my friend gave it a 2. If it weren't for the unpleasant aftertaste that begins to show up in the 6th cup, I'd have given it a 6 and they would've given it a 3. It didn't blow my mind away so it wasn't anything ground breaking to go tell your friends how fantastic it was, but it wasn't bad. It was a little above average, but not deserving enough of a six. If I were to continue to buy tea from Verdant Tea, which I will not be (for details refer to the Sample Demolition: Verdant Tea link above) it's something I'd buy again.

If you are interested, you can purchase this tea here.

This is part of my Sample Demolition: Verdant Tea series.

Dry leaves

I've had a lot of TieGuanYin. Far more than any other Anxi Oolong I've had the pleasure of sipping on. I've had "meh" and I've had some fantastic TGY. This one is hands down one of the best TGY I've ever had. From Verdant Tea I've had every TGY that Master Zhang has to offer except his 15 year aged TGY. This is my favorite of all of his offerings.

For this session I used 5g/120ml with 95C water and added 3-5 seconds per each additional brewing.

Gong Fu Brewings 1-5

The aroma is extremely floral. From that alone I could taste orchid and honeysuckle with a hint of raspberry and melon.

The first sip of the first brewing had a light, sweet taste like snap peas or sweet grass. Melon, raspberries, lilac, honeysuckle, orchid, jasmine, and cream being the tastes lingered all over my tongue in the after taste. The liquor was buttery smooth and had a very long finish.

Liquor

In the aroma of the second cup I could pick up on marzipan and cream mingled in with the floral notes. The flavor of the liquor was now explosive. Strawberries, sweet grass, and jasmine glided over my tongue. In the aftertaste, the jasmine was the strongest by far, lingering on the back of my pallet.

I found that raspberries had the strongest aroma for the third cup. There wasn't a whole lot of flavor aside from the sweetgrass, but the liquor was even lighter and had become more buttery than the first cup. Jasmine remained the main flavor in the aftertaste, but it mingled with raspberry.

Wet leaves

Raspberries and jasmine remained the main aroma. In this cup the floral sweetness of the tea began to disappear and become a little rough. The sweetgrass was the dominant profile, and I could barely detect some raspberry and boysenberry mixture at the back of my throat.. In the after taste fruity notes began to strengthen as the floral notes weakened. The boysenberry was barely present, the raspberry as strong as the past few cups.

In the fifth cup the liquor began to become astringent but it wasn't unpleasant. I could taste jasmine and melon at the back of my tongue mingled in with the sweetgrass. In the aftertaste it was a mixture of jasmine and raspberries once again. There was cream as well. I almost didn't notice it.

Gong Fu Brewing 6-10

In the 6th I primarily smelt sweetgrass with a tiny hint of raspberry. The astringency from the 5th brewing was gone. The mouthfeel was very silky now, still very full but no longer buttery. I mostly tasted sweetgrass and watercress (without the raddish-y part of watercress) in the liquor and aftertaste. At the sides of the back of my tongue and two spots on the center of my pallet I could taste melon and blueberry. I hadn't tasted blueberry yet so that came as a surprise. Raspberry and cream was still present, but it was very hard to detect.

Steeping leaves

The aroma was more or less the same as the 6th cup in the 7th. At the tip of my tongue I could taste cream, all across my pallet I could still taste sweetgrass, and at the back of my throat I could taste melon and raspberry. A hint of jasmine lingered in the aftertaste at the back of my throat.

I wasn't getting much aroma in the 8th cup which was a good sign to me that this tea was now on it's last legs. In the liquor I could taste water mingled with the sweetgrass which was the main flavor. The aftertaste was a gentle mix of jasmine, cream, and raspberries.

Since I was already this far, I decided to do two more brewings. They were more or less weaker versions of the 8th. In some of the earlier cups there was something sweet and savory I wasn't able to quite put a finger on because it was so subtle. Since most of the fruity and floral flavors had left, I was able to figure out it was caramelized banana. It was very nice.

Grandpa Style

I don't have a whole lot to say about this tea grandpa style. It never went bitter, it was lightly floral and a little vegetale. It was definitely better when brewed Gong Fu style. I had it over a period of four hours. I used 3g/350ml, used 95C water for most of the time.

Best tumbler ever

Leaves in cup once done

Rating

This tea is fab. The aftertaste lingers forever. I had this tea with a friend before making this review and we ended on the 5th cup. The aftertaste that lingered was much stronger than the one that lingered when I went up to ten. So, I recommend stopping at the 5th or 6th brewing if you crave a wonderful, long lasting after taste like I do.

When I was with my friend we went out to eat. I had a buffalo "chicken" panini. The chicken being seitan, which is wheat gluten with a very meaty texture. After we were done it wasn't long till I could taste this tea again. A good TGY is supposed to have a sweet, floral and/or fruity aftertaste that lingers for a long time. This one certainly delivers.

Please take a moment to look at the leaf samples below. As you can see, many of them are not fully unrolled and are chipped/broken in many cases. I opened/flattened out a few of them on the left side. Most of the wet leaves never opened up fully even after all these brewings. While the liquor is absolutely delicious, this says something about the leaves: they're not very high quality. The price reflects that. Hojo of Hojo Tea has a very nice article Tips of Tea Quality Inspection that goes into some detail about this. I think it's a good, educational read. If you're familiar with tea it'll reinforce knowledge you probably have, and if you're new to tea it'll offer some new knowledge.

Gong Fu leaf samples

Grandpa leaf samples

Overall I give this tea a 9. If you do decide to try this tea, I suggest trying it next to their Traditional TGY or their Autumn TGY. You'll be able to taste and see the difference in quality. I have a review on their Autumn TGY if you are interested.

If you are interested in trying this tea, you can purchase it here.

I am super excited. The title says all.

I had heard a lot of good about What-cha on /r/tea so I decided to check the website out. The variety of tea that was available was anything but disappointing. Their variety rivals that of Upton Tea Imports. The catalog isn't as huge, but the variety, damn!

I ordered something from pretty much each category. My order includes:

Intro to Tea Collection (stock rotates depending on availability)

And two samples from Alistar:

They are all 10g samples except for the "Australia Arakai Spring Green Tea", which is 5g. 365g of tea in total.

The reviews for these teas will start coming out in September as I have a reasonable queue of teas in my blog right now. Possibly until the end of the year it'll mostly be reviews of these teas, with some others mixed in. The main reason I've had tea reviews come out every two days up till this point is I have had 25g to get through for a vast majority of them. This gave me time to get through all, or most of the 25g before opening another.

I can't tell you how excited I am to try all of these! I've only had a few of the teas that I ordered (from other sources) so this will be a lot of new experiences for me.

I'll hopefully continue to update every two days so that I can keep a reasonable queue. As with the other reviews, I'll be trying the tea before the review is posted. My semester will definitely murder me dead so I need to have a bit of a queue in the worst case scenario. I would like to publish them faster (one a day) but then I'll either run out or school will bone me and not make this practical.

I hope you will enjoy reading these reviews as much as I enjoy trying these teas!