2008 Xiaguan Baoyan Jincha

I'm almost finished with my 2008 Xiaguan Baoyan Jincha. Will I buy more of it? It's hard to say. Smoke, leather, and brown sugar are all that I can taste in the tea, with the later infusions taking on a sweet grainy taste. But honestly, I can't taste an overwhemingly difference between the jincha and Xiaguan's offering of their iron cakes which are priced cheaper at http://www.jas-etea.com/products/-2009-Xiaguan-Yellow-Crane-Iron-Cake-Pu%252derh-Tea-%252d-357g-Raw.html and for more product at 357 grams vice 250 grams.

Perhaps due to the warmer weather with temperatures reaching in the 100's, my tastes aren't inclined to the smoky, leathery teas and I'm finding them a tad overwhelming. Whatever the reason, this jincha is made with the same formula as Xiaguan's Baoyan brick (at least I think it is because of the "Holy Flame" moniker), but it just doesn't taste quite the same. The "Holy Flame" Baoyan bricks that I do own taste like mulled cider with hints of wood and the leaves are tinged with a beautiful rust brown at the tips due to the oxidation process. Perhaps it's due to the lighter compression with the bricks, or the increased surface area, or even because I've had them longer and more exposed to Virginia's humid climate that they've aged more than the jincha. But I'm still not in the mood for them just yet.

What I am in the mood for, and a lot of it, is the Ti Kuan Yin oolong. With its lightly nutty and vegetal taste, it's bridging the gap between a green tea and a strict black tea. But I still doubt I'll buy more than 100 grams at a time considering I've got several bings and bricks of spring harvest sheng pu'er to go through!

Sawbench by Chris Schwarz

I'd started work on a sawbench designed by Chris Schwarz (who when shaven bears an uncanny resemblance to my RDC) because I got fed up hunching over my work while attempting to rip it on a squat bench. I'm slowly, with an emphasis on slow, getting better at this woodworking stuff. The rabbets I cut for the end stretchers on the sawbench were actually decent in that they fit snug up against the legs without the use of a shoulder plane, and the rabbets I cut on the long side stretchers were perfect on the tulip poplar. The rabbets on the pine stretcher not so much.

I'm not sure why. The only thing I can think of is that the pine has a tendency to buckle and I'm still having issues securing my work, so buckling pine plus shifting board equals quivering carcase saw equals crooked rabbets.

Looking back, I still think it's cobbled together pretty shoddily, but I expect to get my money's worth out of it.

On another note, my pu'er from JASetea came in! Another mini brick of Douji wild arbor sheng pu'er, and a bing of 2010 Douji Red Da Dou sheng. I better up my intake of tea otherwise I'll soon run out of room!

2007 Yiwu Yongpinhao 4735 Fall Harvest

This sheng pu'er is quite enjoyable. Light, fruity with freshness, but darker fruit flavors, including a grape note and tannin character are present in the tea.  This is quite possibly the lightest sheng I've had so far: in a literal sense.  Packing my 120 ml yixing full of leaves yields tea that lacks a thick texture.  The complexity of the tea makes sipping enjoyable.  The lighter muscatel tastes are first noticed and closely followed by the darker tannin taste.  I personally enjoyed lightly breathing in with some of the tea on my tongue, much like tasting whiskey, because it actually enhances the flavor.  Succinctly, this tea reminded me of a lightly oxidized formosa oolong. 

This sheng is pretty forgiving with regards to brewing methods.  I was able to use 10 seconds in between each infusion, and the amount of leaves used varied from enough to fill the pot halfway when wet, to the leaves pushing the lid off and out.  But increasing the leaves to that extreme only seemed to make the tea somewhat stronger.  

I will be ordering more of this tea. It's not excellent enough for me to rave over it, but it's good enough that I could drink it every day and be satisfied.

Xiaguan 2007 Xiao Fa tuocha 100g

This tuocha shu pu'er is quite attractive in appearance with a melange of tan, brown, red, and black tea leaves, and with a nice aroma.   However, the resultant tea is simple, with a nuttiness and sweetness standing out from a smooth background flavor.  The nuttiniess doesn't last very long and appears at the beginning of the sip, with the sweet taste appearing at the back of the tongue and a few seconds after swallowing the tea.  Different steeping times didn't cause any bitterness, which was a boon to me.  

For $4 this isn't really all that bad, but I don't think I'll buy anymore for the time being.  The taste is really just average, but comforting.  There's so much tea out there, that I'm still trying to figure out the tea that resides within my tastes. 

The Importance of Heat

Tea and temperature go hand in hand. I try and aim for about 120-140 degrees Fahrenheit for green tea and a little cooler for white tea, a little more for rooibos and wulong, and boiling or close to it for black (or Chinese "red" tea) and pu'er teas. I'm really not that choosy when it comes to tea steeped at approximate temperatures, because I can only tell 3 things about tea and temperature: if the tea has been brewed in tepid water, hot water, and boiling water. And honestly, the taste gives the water temperature away. Tepid water yields weak and watery tea, hot water yields a better tasting, thin tea, and boiling water produces good tea.
But, the next thoughts in this next paragraph don't hold any water (har har) for green and white teas. Today I brewed up some sheng pu'er, the Xiaguan 2007 Tibetan BaoYan, in a porcelain mug. The taste was a little different than what I was used to, much cleaner in a sense, but I attributed my taste familiarity with this tea to my yixing teapot and unlined yixing cup which I use for this sheng. Maybe I was getting flavors from other teas previously brewed in the teapot and the cup, and that this brew of Baoyan with "tea masala" is what I'm used to. But as the body of the porcelain mug got unbearably hot to hold and forced me to grip its handle, I realized that the water was not staying quite as hot as it would in my yixing.
I noticed this in later infusions where the tea tasted very good, but somewhat dulled. I tried warming up the mug with hot water and then infusing my tea, but I still got the dulled taste. I guess porcelain doesn't insulate quite as well as clay. It's interesting because I've never noticed this before with green and white teas, but they only require semi-hot water for good tea. Pu'er just seems to like very hot water to brew properly.

And I'm still wondering if perhaps I should dedicate my yixing cup to one type of pu'er, or if it too will season along with the pot and enhance teas in one way or another.

Chawang 2006 Yunnan Silver 50 gram tuocha

I've let my yixing rest entirely for a day in the hopes that my shengs would taste fresher instead of a mishmash of all the shengs I've brewed in it. A tuocha is a portion of tea that is compressed to have a mushroom cap shape. The tea that I bought has an insane compression. I usually use a knife to pry off flakes of compressed tea, but for this tuocha I had to stab the head with my knife and tear off a single portion of pu'er. I was deathly afraid of stabbing myself, which I've done before, and I didn't care to repeat have a cut finger. But now that there's a portion of the tea pried off, wedging the knife in to the surface should be a lot easier compared to penetrating a rock hard layer of tea.

I have no idea the amount of tea leaves I used in my yixing, but it's enough for the wet leaves to fill it up halfway. tea notes as follows:

5 second infusion: Keemun like character, nothing bad. It's not sweet nor bitter, but predominantly middle range with an orchid like taste.

10 second infusion: darker tasting start, no change in the middle, abrupt finish. No more keemun taste. Fruit component coming in later. I'm still not convinced that this is a good sheng, maybe an adequate one.

18 second infusion: start same as above. Dark, vegetal, some pleasant bitterness similar to raw veggies. The finish/aftertaste is fantastic. Lingering, light, and refreshing.

25 second infusion: still the same start. Light, fruity finish, possibly peach.

30 second infusion: same except the finish and aftertaste are more noticeable.

35 second infusion: the same as above

45 second infusion: the darkness of the start has lightened up a little. Now it resembles a Keemun taste, but lighter, contrasted with the heavy mouth feel of the tea. The sweet finish is still very much present, perhaps diminished a little bit, and slower to begin. The tea leaves have now opened up fully and there are few whole leaves in the bunch. I expect the flavor to drop off dramatically.

55 second infusion: light and orchid. The "finish" I've been tasting is really an aftertaste. It's only present after I've consumed the entire cup of tea, and it's lighter and not quite as blatantly fruity.

2 minute infusion: very light taste, woods and orchids. It only took a minute for me to realize that this is what hot water tastes like when I pour it out of my yixing to clean it. The sweet aftertaste is still there, but coming through in wisps. I think this tea is finished.

Overall, I'll have to give it a few more sessions before I decide if I should buy more or not. The aftertaste is extremely sweet. I hope it's not caused by ethylene glycol, haha. But the predominant character of the tea is just so-so. It's just sort of dark and green tasting, but without much complexity or range of good flavors. What can I say? This tuocha cost me 2 cents per cup to drink, so I wasn't expecting too much from it. And I was not disappointed.

Update: I've had several sessions with this tea and can fully understand its low price and why it won a silver award for some sheng pu'er tasting in China. The tea itself is really nothing to write home about, having a little bit of a keemun character to the baste notes but there is a distinct fruit component to the tea that is vibrant, sweet, and refreshing which appears when the leaves unfurl. I'm giving the pu'er the benefit of the doubt and attribute the taste to the leaves, but at the same time I wonder if it's been enhanced, though I have no idea how to detect it. The fruit component comes into play when the leaves fully open up, so if the tea were intentionally modified, I think the factory would have to add the flavoring to the insides of the leaves, and then roll and compress them, so that when the leaves fully open up the flavoring agent would be released. That does not sound very feasible at all given its low price, but then again I've only seen pictures of a handful of factories producing pu'er. Ultimately, though, this tuocha is very decent based on its fruit component and its price. I would not hesitant to order several more.

Chunming 2007 Yunnan Pu'er Seven Color Spring

Today I had the pleasure of trying this small 100 gram bing of sheng. It's fairly mild and benign, but it still has a good taste to it, not unlike the Kunming Guyi 2006 JingMai Spring bing I have which is considerably bigger (350g) and has a bigger kick to it. Camphor and menthol tastes are there along with a little sweetness, but the overly medicinal taste and sweetness of the Jingmai bing isn't present. At first when I tried this tea two days ago I kept thinking that I was tasting the Jingmai's flavor that had seeped into the yixing clay. I scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed, and soaked the teapot, rinsed it out, and kept trying to brew the tea and taste drastic differences between it and the teas I'd already had. No such luck.

Still, it's not as sharp as the Jingmai, and a nice light fruit note contrasts with the very heavy mouthfeel of the tea. The finish is very clean, with maybe a little sweetness lingering on the back of the tongue. The last infusion hasn't yielded very much change from the first infusion, apart from a slight reduction in astringency. However, there was not much astringency to begin with.

Overall, I like this little bing. I think its small size may have contributed to some slight aging that took the edge off any bitterness or astringency, which is still very much present in the Jingmai bing. It's not strong in taste nor caffeine, but the flavor that is there is good and simple. I'm beginning to wonder if all spring cakes are supposed to have a camphor taste to them (who knows? Maybe that's when the camphor leaves start to fall in Yunnan), but I'll obviously have to have more spring teas to determine that for certain. However, I don't think I would save a bing of this tea for later drinking. It's pleasant and mild enough that you could drink it immediately.

Nov. 15th: I've had a total of 11 infusions of this tea, and it's still good. The tastes have gotten lighter, with the fruit and camphor fading into the background, but a simple green sweetness pervading throughout the tea. It kills me how I can spend so little on tea leaves that will last for two days of continued brewing, and spend 4 times as much on chopped store brand tea leaves that will last for 2 steepings.

21 Nov: The same tasting notes as the last time. Using enough leaf to fill the teapot up halfway, there's a rustic sort of taste to it that I can't pin down. I can taste the camphor of the tea leaf, the bitterness, and the sweetness, but there's an underlying taste that's hard to describe in the first three infusions. It smells somewhat like the leaf. Later infusions make me think this is a similar tea leaf and recipe to the Kunming Jingmai spring bing. It's heavily mentholated with camphor, and a nice taste underneath it, but it's not quite as sweet as the Jingmai bing. Still, I like it.

29 November: 15 second rinse

5s infusion: mild and timid at the start of the cup yielding a satisfying taste with wonderful aftertaste that is sweet, but with rustic, woodsy tastes lingering.

5s infusion: bitter with "chewy" feel and wood note. Mild sweetness.

mid-cup: same taste with sweetness poking around. Mild astringency.

Bottom: sweet, sour, same tastes as above.

15s infusion: too long, mostly middle tastes with bitterness and no sweetness. I've used too many leaves. Instead of a good strength, the tea is overwhelming, coating my mouth, and hard to taste subtleties of subsequent cups.

~I've removed several of the leaves from the teapot and the familiar taste is coming back with camphor and menthol in the aftertaste.

22 December 2008: Using enough leaf to fill the yixing up to the lid has yielded 5 very wonderful infusions. The sheng really hit its stride in the 3rd and 4th infusions with ephemeral sweetness that is impossible to describe. It's sweet, but with a chewy texture to it. Very good stuff.

28 December 2008: I've finally polished off this bing. I have enjoyed its camphor taste and creamy sweetness but the fruit tastes I noticed in earlier tastings have diminished, perhaps caused by the lack of aged pu'er or tips, in the center of the bing. I don't really think this would be a great candidate for aging; it's already tame and enjoyable as is. I wouldn't say this sheng knocks my socks off, but I really enjoyed the chewiness and creaminess of the tea.

2006 Menghai Yue Chan Yue Xiang

Right now I've got a mug full of this stuff and my initial impressions with the taste are as follows: the first steeping is yielding a taste that is earthy and not unlike whole-grain bread. Overall it has a very heavy mouth feel.

Xiaguan 2007 Bao Yan

This tea is a nice reminder that you don't have to spend big bucks for high quality products. $5 for 250 grams of tea is not a hefty price, especially when I wouldn't hesitate to pay twice the price for the same tea. The one word to sum the taste up is: rich. This is a nice, rich, thick tea that is reminiscent to me of a mulled cider. A little spice, some sweetness, but mostly a rich, dark, soothing taste.