White Monkey Tea

White Monkey Tea

I have no idea why a green tea is called "White Monkey" because it's not white tea, nor do its leaves resemble a white monkey's fingers. It's leaves and buds vaguely appear to have a facsimile to a clenched, white fist, so perhaps that's where they got the name from. Plus, "White Fist" sounds sort of like a racially charged energy drink.

Taste

The taste is really unique, because it's common. Imagine the way a steak or any cut of meat might taste, especially its savoriness or the umami component. If well prepared, all meats share this certain flavor. Now, imagine what the steak or cut of meat would taste like if you were able to increase its umami by 1000. You might end up with something akin to eating crisco with bacon bits on it. Too much of this good flavor would ruin the meat, similar to adding too much salt to a dish, rendering it unpalatable.
This analogy is applicable to White Monkey. It has a green tea flavor that is shared by all green teas. But most green teas have varied flavor components that yield different types of teas. Not so with White Monkey. It's like green tea on steroids. It's overwhelmingly green, and if I really concentrate, I can detect a little sweetness, (Or is that chlorophyll?) but this takes a backseat while the spinach and asparagus taste charge forward. To briefly understand what this tastes like, wash an asparagus stalk and just munch on it. After about every third munch, sprinkle a pinch of sugar on the stalk and continue munching. This tea tastes exactly like that.

UPDATE: I've decreased my steeping time from 1 1/2 minutes to just 30 seconds. This has cut down on the overwhelming taste, but it's still present and hasn't improved with the lower temperature and less steeping.

Scent

White monkey smells faintly like leafy vegetables and a little bit of oolong. Unlike most of the teas I've tried, its smell doesn't tell you what you're about to taste.

Steeping

For this tea, I covered the bottom of my cup infuser with a small layer of leaves (probably 3/4 tablespoon) and steeped for 1 1/2 minutes at 180-190 Fahrenheit. I really don't think you'd want to steep at a higher temperature or for much longer, because you'll get a really grassy, strong tasting cup of tea.

Looking at www.adagio.com, I'm not alone in my opinion that this is a strong, green tea, despite their description of it being "a very light cup that is noticeably sweet, and infused with a fresh, delicate scent." Fresh, yes. Delicate, not quite. A second infusion for 30 seconds at a lower temperature yielded a milder cup, with very little flavor or tea character except for a spinach/asparagus taste. Perhaps I should throw out the first infusion, and just enjoy the second and third infusions, but that seems a shame, especially when there are much better teas to enjoy.

Bai Mu Dan

Bai Mu Dan, Pai Mu Tan, White Peony

Bai Mu Dan is a Chinese white tea that's supposedly a lower grade of the Silver Needles. What makes me wonder if this is true or not, is that I've seen different grades of Bai Mu Dan.

Taste

The taste is fairly similar to Silver Needle tea, but it's darker and actually more vibrant. You do get a little bit of the floweriness at the start, but that's soon replaced with fruity, jam-like notes. The finish is clean and doesn't leave a lingering taste. There is an overall "airy" quality to the taste but it's not as prominent or delicate as Silver Needle.

Scent

The scent is a little flowery, but it's not perfume-like or sweet, and it has a slight green tea scent to it.

Steeping

For this tea, I used a slightly smaller amount than I normally do. Half a tablespoon, instead of a full one, and I steeped it at about 180-190 Fahrenheit for 3 1/2 minutes.

I really enjoy this white tea. It's robust enough that you can read your favorite book without stopping to concentrate "Am I tasting jasmine or hibiscus? Wait, no, it's lemongrass. Wait, no Sevilla oranges. Wait" etc, and it's delicate enough so that when you sit for lunch you can actually taste your meal and not tea.

Nads Hair Removal (Slightly Salty)

Sometimes there are products whose names describe exactly what they are and how they function. Take the jawbreaker for example. I'm sure it was named because the person attempting to eat it busted his teeth out and cracked his mandible. If you see a car hurtling down the street and notice that the driver has a pair of pliers to make the car turn, you will aptly call it a deathtrap when the decrepit vehicle doesn't make a turn completely and explodes into a heap of metal. So while I was briefly watching TV over supper tonight, an ad came on for a women's hair removal product called "Nads." It's almost like the CMO scratched his or her head in thought, and just said, "To hell with it. We'll just call it nads, because 'ingrown hoo-ha hair' won't sell as well."
Oddly, a look at the website yields this information: "Simple and effective, Nads Natural Hair Removal Gel is perfect for legs, bikini line, underarms and arms." They don't have a disclaimer that "Nads works best on nads," yet they name their product after a shortened neologism.
That's deliberately misleading the public.
What's next? A Clear Eyes brand of toothpaste? Just in case you don't believe me, they have a website: http://www.nads.com And guess what? They don't even bother having having a url of "www.nadsproducts.com" or "www.nadshairbgone.com" It's just simply "nads"
But how would people explain that they use this product or even admit to it? At least I didn't write the commercial's script, because it would've have gone something like this:

Woman#1: Sheena, you have such smooth legs that have a healthy shine. What's your secret?
Woman#2: Glad you asked, Karen! I use nad's!
Woman#1: Nads?
Woman#2: Yep, nad's! You have to send away for it, and it comes in this special tube. All you have to do is squeeze some of the product out, apply and let dry, and the hair just washes away!
Woman#1: That sounds great! But what about unwanted facial hair? Do they make something for that?
Woman#2: Look no further than nad's facial wand! Soft and gentle, it'll get you the results that you want! If you desperately seek those "eye-catching eyebrows," then you simply must use nad's!
Woman#1: But what if nads are too hard on my skin? Are there moisturizing nads out there?
Woman#2: There are, Sheena! There's nad's sangria punch! It leaves your skin soft, smooth, and supple while removing your hair!
Woman#1: That is so fantastic, Karen! I think I'm going to try nads tonight! Can I find nads in my local cosmetic supply store?
Woman#2: Nad's isn't widely available yet, but they're working on it! Soon, nad's will be found in every beauty supply store!
Woman#1: Thanks, Sheena. I'm so glad we had this girl talk on nads!


See what I mean? It'd be hard to actually get actors to go through all of that with a straight face. As a matter of fact, something seems completely odd that "nads" would actually be used for product names, including a special "facial wand," a painful sounding nad's "sangria punch," and a nad's line for men. There's no way someone couldn't actually stop and point out to the company that they just successfully named their product after reproductive organs. But perhaps someone pushed for this name and is living out their little joke, and will still guffaw 40 years later when they hear two women gossip: "Nad's is the best hair removal product ever!"

A Quest for Humor

What Is Humor? (A Myth to Discovery)

Intro

I think writing can sometimes be a little like trying to fit a puzzle together to get a picture. You start off with a single piece's shape and a portioned image which fit together with other shapes and images until it becomes clear how the remaining pieces fit together and the image they all create. Writing's like that, except you have fragments of ideas and it isn't until you have at least half the story written that you know how each sentence connects and forms coherent paragraphs which will make up the story.
But lately it seems like all the puzzle pieces have been the same shape and I always end up with the same picture of The Village People oiled up wrestling with one another (I appreciate the gift, Aunt April, but I was horrified when I discovered that the jigsaw puzzle was not of a sailboat like on the box).
So how do I get out of this writing cycle? Humor always draws me into writing, whether it's an idea or a real event that happened to me. But what is humor? How does one accomplish it? Perhaps an analysis of what humor is will yield different pieces and images of this puzzle called writing, but if it comes to it, I'll settle for a less disturbing image of The Village People.

Body

I've never really understood humor because it's different for everyone in its ability to make people laugh. Take the average TV show. A common, generic exchange on a common, generic sitcom between a common, generic man and his common, generic wife, "Hey honey, did you take out the trash?" "Yeah, why?" "Because there's a huge pile of it outside the door!" will always yield raucous laughter from an audience that happens to be common and generic (or lobotomized). My inquiries into why this exchange displays "humor" is always answered with a "This show is funny." "Well, what makes this show funny?" "It's just a funny show." "But that exchange happened between me and my girlfriend the other day and we weren't laughing at the end of it." "Gah, it's just a funny show! I can't explain it!" So in addition to being suspiciously unfunny , humor from these types of shows seems to lower the viewer's intelligence enough so that any attempt of communication on explicating the show's humor becomes incredibly frustrating and painful for the viewer. So my search for understanding humor was paused by this response.

But, I prevailed and began to wonder. Perhaps humor is making light of situations and interpreting something awful, embarrassing, and awkward as being funny. This new view on humor reminded me of a time last year when I was sitting at a bus stop while raining. I wasn't raining, but the skies were, and a bus that happened to drive by at an excessive speed picked up water in its tires and flung them upon me and a man sitting beside me. After spitting out a mouthful of the brown sludge, he turned to me and with a Cheshire grin yelled, "This is just like a waterpark!" "Maybe there's something to that, " I mused. I encountered several different situations that met this new definition of humor: "Oh, I got a bad grade on this test...It's just like summer camp!" I'd chortle. "I can't find a job or a place to live...Just like California's Skid Row!" "I have no food and I haven't eaten in weeks...Just like Sudan!" I began to have misgivings and started heavily question this new humor I'd found. I was completely miserable and after experiencing a humorous bout of stomach flu, I threw the new definition of humor in the toilet.

I was in a tunnel-visioned, depressed mood. What if my entire life is funny, but I don't know it? Or what if my entire life is awful, but I keep on thinking that it's funny? There should at least be some sort of legal definition or law on what humor is and isn't. Relief came with a source that actually defined humor. It was a book that I was reading that credited the quote "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when I walk into an open sewer and die," to Mel Brooks. Perhaps that's what the problem was. People like me were confusing tragedy with comedy. For once in my life I was able to walk around and tell people with bravado what humor really is. Until someone pointed out that Mel Brooks had only defined COMEDY and NOT humor! This was a stumble backwards, I admit, but I had a definition of what comedy is which includes humor, so that was a step forward. So with the stumble backwards and the step forward, I sort of had my legs stretched out longer than was comfortable, straddling the notion of humor. And fate as it were happened to smile at me (or maybe kick my backside since I fell over), but I immediately found the situation humorous. And it was humorous because I was in a quest to try and define something that can't easily be defined, plus I looked silly sprawled on the floor of the Student Stores with everyone walking around, avoiding me. It started as a slow, rolling chuckle which morphed into a maniacal laugh that forced all the air out of my lungs and manifested itself as tears coming out of my eyes. It seems that I had discovered humor, or that humor had discovered me.
And! at once! I was able to see what things were and weren't humorous! The unique juxtaposition and embarrassment that occurred after the fundamentalist campus preacher pointed to a woman wearing a dress and yelled, "All you women should wear what she's wearing and be just like her!" which prompted said woman to lift up her dress to reveal that she had forgotten to wear panties that day. That was humor!
Or the light-hearted misunderstanding between an African gentlemen and myself where he repeatedly insisted that he was looking for "Ah-POH" road and my tenacious rebuttal of "Yes, yes! You're looking for Airport! Airport Rd!" which was always refuted by him with a shake of his head and a louder exclamation of "AH-POH!" Sometimes, when I lie awake at night, I wonder if he ever was able to find his "Ah-POH!" road and happiness. Or if he just had to settle for Airport Rd.
I was confident I knew what humor was now. When prompted, I told the masses, "Humor is a certain trait that presents itself in seemingly unlikely and unusual events, or something that is jovially ludicrous. And as I've found, there's a certain amount of unexpectedness and pain involved."
It wasn't until a month later when I was moving my bookshelf that my Merriam-Webster dictionary fell and landed with the pages open on "h." M-W's definition of humor was on the top, left hand side of the page and it was a paraphrase of what I was telling people, which forced me to ask myself, "Why the hell did I spend that much time trying to find an answer when any old fool could have looked it up in a dictionary?" How ironic.

Conclusion

So in my quest to discover just what humor is, I was more than a little saddened to discover that humor had already been defined and discovered. I was downright in the dumps when I reminded myself that I'd made this discovery by dropping my dictionary. I mean, imagine if Alexander Graham Bell first tested his telephone weapon prototype, expecting it to shoot sonic waves that could blast through walls, and then all he got was a muffled voice coming out of the horn saying, "HELLO? HELLO? Why this piece of junk doesn't work!" I'm sure Bell was discouraged by not having an awesome weapon that all the babes would admire, but he found his silver lining in the cloud and refashioned it as a humble instrument that made distance communication possible. So for the sake of humor, I've determined myself to define possibly another word that would have some usefulness in breaking my formulaic writing. I think I'm going to understand and define that feeling you get when you feel like you been somewhere before, or done something already. And I shall call it "R-r-r-r-r-repetitive awareness."

Gunpowder

Temple of Heaven Gunpowder

Gunpowder tea is pretty nifty. It's a green tea that's been dried and rolled into little pellets that resemble grains of gunpowder, and you get the nice visual display of the pellets "exploding" while steeping. Supposedly because the overall leaf isn't as exposed to air as a twisted tea leaf, they keep for longer.

Taste

I'm tasting A Southern Season's version of gunpowder tea. The overall flavor is one-sided, prominently being a generic "green tea" taste that melds together with a little bit of sweetness and grass. It's not a strong tea, but it doesn't have a delicate taste, either. The majority of the flavor is towards the finish.

Scent

This smells like green tea, with maybe a *little* bit of a smoky scent. Other than that, it's pretty nondescript.

Steeping

This is one tea that you really don't want to steep for too long and at too high a temperature. I steep it for two minutes at about 140-160 Fahrenheit. Any longer, and you'll have a cup of nasty, burnt tasting tea that will coat your mouth.

Pu'er

Pu'er, Puer, Pu-erh tea

Pu'er tea is unusual to me. Do you recall the first time you ever smelled cheese that hadn't been processed? Chances are good that you said, "That smells strong," or "that smells awful," or even "that smells like my little sibling." Pu'er is a little bit the same way; according to Wikipedia, it's made from tea trees that have gone feral and the chemical composition of its leaves vary slightly from regular tea strains, resulting in the distinct aroma and taste. I've only had the fully fermented and oxidized version of pu'er, and I can't say whether its the leaves' chemical compositions or the fact that it's actually fermented that makes the tea taste different. But different it is.

Taste

Pu'er has a very odd taste to me. It has very little tannin character, probably due to oxidation and fermenting removing most of the bitterness. The kind of pu'er that I had was Organic Wild Tree Pu'er from A Southern Season (it was half off), and it yielded some unusual tastes. The first taste that greets you is an earthiness. No, it doesn't taste like dirt, but it does have an initial taste somewhat similar to raw, leafy vegetables. The second taste that you can detect is its sweetness, which comes after the earthiness. The last taste that lingers on your palate is a funky, musty, indescribable taste (it could possibly taste like some sort of fermented food, I can't really tell) that takes a little getting used to, like developing a taste for ripened cheese.

Scent

The scent of pu'er actually isn't all that bad. It smells like a big leaf pile in the fall without the oaky scents, and even more earthy. However, after I'd had my bag open for a while, the scent changed to an earthy-funky musk that was rather off-putting.

Steeping

Steeping was almost stupid simple with this tea, which makes me worry that I got a lower quality sample. I just poured about a tablespoon full of tea in a mug, and made several infusions out of it. I didn't bother using an actual infuser or even timing it, I just continually sipped it until it was cool enough for me to actually drink it and enjoy it.

While pu'er has its fans, I'm not completely sure I'm for it or against it. I could taste something that I liked in its musty-sweet flavor, but then again it's rather expensive for tea, and there was something altogether off putting for me about it.

Keemun or Keemum

Keemun or Keemum

Keemun is a black Chinese tea that I really enjoy. It's more complex than the other teas that I've written about and depending on how long you steep it and the amount you use, it's character can change so that it resembles a different tea entirely.

Taste

Its taste starts off being floral and barely sweet. Once it completely enters the mouth, the taste changes with the floral notes fading and a slightly winy taste comes into play. This too leaves, and a tannin taste (that's almost bitter) lingers on the palate. The neat thing about this is that unlike other teas where the taste stays the same and becomes bitter toward the end of the cup and dregs, keemun changes its tasting notes throughout the cup. The top portion of the cup has a light, warm, flowery taste with very little tannin and a little winy character. The middle of the cup has decreased floral notes, and a more pronounced winy character that increases in strength towards the bottom of the cup, until you have to actually concentrate on picking out the floral notes. The dregs are somewhat bitter but still palatable. The tea that I'm currently reviewing is the Southern Season brand, which I can't be sure if it's a tea with primarily Keemun and a lower grade black tea, or exclusively Keemun. The Grace Rare Tea Co.'s version of Keemun was decidedly stronger and a lot more winy (though it did say "Winy Keemun" on the tin and not "Oh-So-Delicious-Floral-Keemun").

Scent

The scent of Keemun is sort of flowery, but nothing like Silver Needle tea. It's more subdued and doesn't have a crisp, sweet scent, but rather a warm, fragrant scent.

Steeping and then some

For me, this tea is hard to pigeonhole into a specific steeping method. I use a full boil and steep for 3-5 minutes, but the character of the tea changes with each infusion! A first infusion yields a robust melange of flavors: floral, winy-sour, and tannin. A second infusion highlights the floral notes throughout the cup, transforms the winy-sour taste into a winy-fruit taste, and leaves very little of the tannin character left except for the finish. A final third infusion removes the winy character of keemun and results in a mildly smooth, sweet, lightly floral cup.
I've heard several different ways of yielding consistently good infusions of black tea instead of pouring, timing, and hoping that it tastes good. One way is to rinse the tea off to get rid of the dust on the leaves. This tea dust has a high surface area and steeping can extract a good portion of the tannins, resulting in a tea that's very bitter and harsh tasting. No tea dust, no harsh, bitter tea!

Another way is to actually pour boiling water into the infuser with tea in it. Swirl it around for about a minute, and then dump it out. Reboil water, pour water into the cup and infuser, and steep normally. The thought behind this is that this will extract enough of the tannins but very little of the flavor compounds in the tea leaves, so that you're left with a good cup of tea that's somewhat similar to the second infusion.

For keemun, I can't say which way is better than the other. I've tried the rinsing method and the half extracting method, and I've said to heck with it. Now I just try not to steep the tea for too long (3-4 minutes at the most), and enjoy the changes in flavor that each infusion yields.