Why the hiatus, I'll tell you

I'm sorry for not posting in over a week, but life has gotten in the way. 

My husband had to have neurosurgery done on his spine due to a herniation of a lumbar disk on February 12th. 

If you know anyone who has had that kind of spinal surgery, you know that the surgery is only the beginning of a long healing process. 

He has been, for the most part, totally helpless due to the surgical pain. 

The medicines for post surgery pain only help so much.

I ask you to keep him in your thoughts, and be patient with me, as I try to get him back in order. 

He is the most important person in my life, and he has to come first, as such, posts will be brief, and probably sparse over the next 6-8 weeks.

How to Gong Fu for one, Featuring the Enigmatic Mystery Shou!

Meet the mystery Shou.

I found him ( I think of this one as male, he's very earthy), at my "local-ish" asian market, when I realised that they no longer carry my go to oolong. So sad. BUT- I found this baby for 9.99, which even if it is a dud, it's not a bad price to pay for adventure!

It came in this box, which I know to be a generic pu'erh gifting box.

Even the paper wrapper is generic, and tells me absolutely nothing, only by the color I see through the wrapper do I know it is indeed a shou pu'erh.

Again, just a generic note stating what pu'erh is and where it is generally from.

 the cake is dark, and smells mildly of earth. I had HELL breaking off enough, and when I did break off a chunk I ended up with 7.2 grams

The leaf peices are not very big, indicative of a cheaper pu'erh. 

Into the gaiwan it goes

I started with 208 degree water, I wanted to start off a little cooler, to try and mitigate any fishy-ness.

A gaiwan works just like a teapot, KIND OF. You pour water into the gaiwan, and after a short time (my rinses are three seconds, my first steep was fifteen seconds, increasing by fifteen seconds for each subsequent steep.) you decant it into a small pitcher or your cup (I am using a creamer pitcher I got from a resale shop for $1.25), preferably through a strainer. Practice with cold water first, to get the hang of pouring it, then move on to hot water, you may find you have to adjust your grip based on WHERE your gaiwan tends to heat up fastest. Then move on to making tea with it after revising your grip based on the hot water test.

See all those tiny leaf fragments floating to the top, not a good sign.

  

First rinse did not smell fishy at all, thank the almighty gaiwan, but I went for a second three second rinse, just to be sure.

Both rinses got thrown down the drain, that's just my preference, and since the entire point of them is to get dirt off the tea, I wouldn't drink them, just my two cents.

 NOW ON TO THE PROPER BREW-

My makeshift "sharing pitcher" can hold 3 brews worth of my gaiwan, which is 125 ml per brew, translating to 375 ml of tea.

Again just strain it into the pitcher, note the small strainer on top of the pitcher, that's to catch any leaves the lid can not catch.

Dang this tea brews up dark. Smells straight up like fresh hay as well. 

After a trial sip i tossed a packet of sweetener into the sharing pitcher, it had a very slight mud flavor that was taken care of by the addition of the single packet.

I got 9 more steeps out of this tea before it gave up the ghost, and I have to say, it maintained fairly consistent throughout the tasting, the mud flavor did dissipate after the second set of brews, replaced by a slight mushroomy flavor. The most consistent flavor throughout my tasting was that of fresh hay, which, although I don't mind that flavor at all, I wish this pu'erh had been a tiny bit more complex, but for 9.99, I am NOT going to complain.

 I give this tea a 65/100, and since I have no clue about the actual manufacturer of this particular tea, I can not provide a link. I feel that this tea would be best iced, or even cold brewed after a boiling hot rinse, it might bring out quite a bit of sweetness that I can almost taste in this tea brewed hot.

This was by far not the worst shou pu'erh I have ever tried, that honor belongs to the yellow mini tuocha,but it is not the best, either. I feel that 6 months of being aired out may bring out more complexity, or even dull that muddy flavor, and I may revisit my review at that point.

As I often do, I implore you to explore the tea aisle in your favorite ethnic market. You may find something fun, weird, and maybe even delicious.

Teaware roundup!

This is my modest teaware collection. I will be going through each item individually, With what I use it for.

Above is my tea strainer and the cup I keep it in. The strainer came with a ceramic tea set that I no longer have the pot to, although I still have four of the six cups it came with. The cup came from a local resale shop for fifty cents.

These are my eighty-eight cent diner-ish mugs. That very slight taper makes them perfect for grampa style. They are also decent quality, Albeit not very fancy, they are not for fancy tea, so why care if they are?

This is my VERY EXTREMELY FAKE cheap "yixing" pot. Yes, I knew it was fake when I bought it. Still debating on whether or not to sand it down a bit to smooth it a little, it is very grainy.

This is my celadon glazed coaster from Odd Kitten Art. She has one more, with an apple logo on her store envy site. She is an awesome artist, and I am glad I purchased this coaster to help her pay her bills.

This is my $15 gaiwan that I bought at the same time as the fake "yixing". This has turned out to be a much better buy, overall.

My scale. EVERYONE, no excuses, needs one of these.

The four cups from the set that the strainer came in. they are very thin and break easily, which is why I only still have four of them, and not the pot.

My "teaspoon" and knife. I use the spoon to keep handling the tea sanitarily, and the knife is for my pu'erh cakes. It's pretty dull but has a nice thin tip for prying the leaves off.

My two DAVIDsTEA Perfect mugs. the one with the leaves is an early color changing model, and I don't use it much, because inevitably, someone leaves part of it in the sink and part of the pattern rubs off. That is why the lid doesn't have a leaf on it any more. (T_T) 

My ingenuitea gravity steeper. note the three lines, they are measurements using my three mug sizes, known as regular, medium, and big.

my three cheapy chinese restaurant cups. They are much thicker than the blue ones and are most definitely stoneware.

My antique Richi China tea pot from Japan. If anyone knows of a matching sugar/creamer, let me know, ok?

My McCormick tea pot, of an early run by Hall ceramics. chipped in a couple of places, but still has the contrasting white infuser insert. I really do not use it, I just bought it because I fell in love with the history behind it.

My kitchey rooster teapot and mugs set. It's great for herbal tisanes made from big pieces of dried fruit, because the filter holes at the spout are quite large.

Yes, an infuser tumbler. I LOVE this thing. its great for large tea pearls or rolled oolongs in summer when I cold-brew them.

My two estate sale bone china teacups. $1.50 a PIECE, you can't beat that. the one on the right is from lefton, and the one on the left just says japan on it.

My nalgene and H2JO. This sucks for coffee, I am sorry to say, but for brewing rooibos on a road trip, it is perfect.

My 4L Zojirushi. Best thing my husband has bought for us yet. Yes, it only has four temperatures, BUT, if you know how to manipulate heat right, you can get any temp you want by putting it into different vessels, ect.

And this is where I store it all. Two Rast dressers from Ikea, with an old shelf on top to keep spills contained. My teabags are in the top left drawer, my tea ware in the bottom two left hand drawers. In the right hand dresser are all of my teas. Pu'erh on bottom, tins in the middle, and pouches of loose in the top.

And yes. we have a keurig. I don't use it. I don't drink coffee any more unless I have a pounding caffeine headache. It is mostly there for the convenience of the rest of my household.

The beauty of the simplicity of Grampa style tea brewing, a simple guide

Grampa style is the way most people in China drink their tea, or so I have read amongst many sites.  The technique is so astoundingly simple, and as such I find it very beautiful, almost daringly so.

First off, let me give you a little grampa style tutorial.

• Take a pinch or so of tea leaves and put them in the bottom of your favorite mug. That's right, no infuser, no filter, no tea bag.
• Add very hot water, hotter than you would normally use for a given tea.
• Let it sit for a little while
• Then drink until you need to refill.

That's it, those are the basics.

There are however some nuances to brewing grampa style, and my little tweaks are as follows.

• I like big-ish mugs, but they kind of need to have a tapered bottom or sloped sides. It seems that the leaves don't float into your mouth as easily as in a straight sided mug.
• in a mug, if you are drinking a tightly rolled oolong don't even cover the bottom of the mug with the tea. It expands exponentially, and you need room to refill and drink.
• I usually go with 195, but a LOT of people go with straight boiling. I find that I don't drink tea fast enough to go full boiling without the tea getting bitter as I drink it, unless it's shou pu'erh, which is kind of a special case.
• When most of the leaves have sunk to the bottom, it's usually strong enough to drink.
• Drink only to about half-way. that way there is still some strong tea to mix in to the hot water, meaning you have tea ready faster.
• Don't do this with herbal teas, ESPECIALLY not Rooibos.
• If you find the tea looking like a gradient, don't be afraid to give it a stir.
• Most teas can take 5-10 refills, and pu'erh and oolong can take more, much of the time.
• Biggest tip of all- Don't be afraid to stop when the flavor is gone. once a tea is done, you can always drain the leaves and put them in a jug of water overnight in the fridge and have decent iced tea in the morning.

Both of Teavivre's Milk Oolongs Side-By-Side, Grampa Style!

So, I was thinking to myself "what's the best way to review those milk oolongs I got from teavivre for christmas? It would be a shame to review them indivudually, but I only have one gaiwan, and I only have one gravity steeper. I am not overburdened with a great number of small teapots either." Then I looked in my kitchen cabinets, wondering if I could fake a gaiwan using a glass measuring cup, when I noticed my husband and I's two white mugs. Other than the print on the outside, and the fact that mine has a bad crack on the handle, they are exactly the same. That's when I had my idea.

"Why not do grampa style? Every time someone asks me the easiest way to drink tea, I suggest it, so why not follow my own advice?"

Because of the simplicity of today's tea session, I did not take 48 photos. 

As the caption states, the flavored milk oolong is on the left, and will remain there. Once it is in the mugs, it will be in the green print one.

Ok, here goes. I alternated between the two mugs, and it took me around 30 minutes to get to the point where they would need to be refilled, the good, and sometimes bad thing about doing oolong teas grampa style is that they can literally go all day, and it's already past 3, and if I drink too much tea this late in the day, I WILL be up all night. If I hadn't slept so late, I could have told you how the flavor changes with each hot water refill. But I really can't, since I want to be able to sleep tonight.

Again, the stuff on the left is the flavored oolong, And I think it's worth noting that it is almost all single leaves, where as the unflavored oolong is almost all leaf sets.

I love them both, but for different reasons, and different tastes. The flavored milk oolong is just that, very milky and creamy, almost like drinking warm milk spiked with vanilla. the unflavored oolong, however, is very floral, with a buttery texture.

Since today was very rainy and cold, I found myself favoring more the flavored variant, whereas on a less gross day I would probably be singing the praises of the unflavored one.

I give them both 85/100, and here are the links to the teas reviewed in todays post.

( they were a christmas present from my mother, so give a shout out to her)

Flavored variant, Unflavored Version