Tea Practice

[2024-04-08 Mon 19:19] [[id:80661910-20e3-4a77-9fc8-9e6a04ae6de0][Tea]] Session: [[roam:Kyoto Obubu Natural Gyokuro]] at [[id:20220920T221429.130071][alice]]'s, dog watching

2024-04-08T21:30:00Z

2024-04-08 Tea Session: Kyoto Obubu Natural Gyokuro at alice's, dog watching

Leaves: Kyoto Obubu Natural Gyokuro
Volume: 5g
Teaware: clay travelware
Water: junction city well
Mood: good, high, nice. deep in metta practice for zen.
45 seconds at 175F out of electric kettle. high astringency and a nice flavor, lighter umami than id like
same session trying to see if more umami can be extracted now that the leaves are wet. mostly good, about as much as this tea can handle...
60 seconds at 150F cooled water, its 19:25->19:39 to cool it while i groomed the dog with the teaware covered. more flavor intensity with the cooler water, hard to place though. the mouth is watering now, the astringency on point. maybe its 150F tea. maybe its 140F...

the tea has a lot of pectins, that soapy top-ness, the tea doesnt get fully circulated with my stacked teaset. wish i could see the color, but its good. its really good.

I've been thinking a lot about [[id:sencha_tea][Sencha]] lately.

2024-04-03T12:00:00Z

I've been thinking a lot about Sencha lately.

2024-04-02

Sencha has been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe it's just spring, maybe it's more, I've been drawing myself toward the business of hawking my passion. But it's a tough nut to crack. These teas are delicate and incredible when you hit the mark. The vogue in tea is toward aged and pressed and oxidized teas, beautiful things in their own respects, I'm starting to see how sencha differs somewhat fundamentally from these other teas, and so even folks who are deft with a gaiwan and have impeccable gong-fu don't often experience these teas at their heights in the same way that they could pick up a high quality Chinese green tea.

But when you brew a sencha well, when you hit the mark, it tastes like life, and it makes your mouth water.

People have trouble describing the "umami" or "savory" flavor, but it's the flavor of life. It's the flavor of certain aminmo acids, some of the core building blocks that power our metabolism and well-function. They may not stick around and may not be 100% bioavailable but our body craves it.

It coats your tongue. Then the astringency of the tannins hit. Your mouth feels as if it's drying, but your mouth is also watering from the savory flavor as the sub-conscious machinery of your body rush to collect those building blocks and build with them.

It's brewed with water air-cooled to be the perfect temperature when it hits your mouth to maximize the flavor and minimize the sting of hotter teas. This requires careful work, and I want to understand how to do that work well and to share that sensory experience with others.

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So my buddy James and I got together this morning for tea before he moved to a town a couple hours' drive from my current locale, yet to a different bioregion entirely.

It was a sunny cool spring day, the sort you only ever read about, we Brewed Kyoto Obubu Spring Sun and our 2000 Da Du Gang cake and a similar vintage Liu Bao (more, but not much more, on babelcarp), sat and talked about tea and things about tea, leading to this post. About half the rhododendrons in the garden were blooming, and my allergies still haven't started completely ruining the weather. Really nice time, a perfect spring day.

And on the way home I picked up an incredible gift which I'll write more about next.

[2023-01-06 Fri 11:07] [[id:80661910-20e3-4a77-9fc8-9e6a04ae6de0][Tea]] Session: back to back [[roam:Wakoucha]] [[id:000e38de-9755-4b3a-bbb0-0dae383f570b][Brewing]]

2023-01-06T14:10:00Z

2023-01-06 Tea Session: back to back Wakoucha Brewing

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Leaves: back to back on Kyoto Obubu Tea Farm's Kyoto Obubu Pine Needle Wakoucha and Louisville Tea Co Japanese Black
Volume: 250mL
Teaware: kyusu, fine mesh filter, ceramic cup
Water: freshly boiled eugene tap
Mood: neutral

It's always fun to compare two teas of similar process and provenance. Here we have a black tea from Obubu paired up with a tea that my girlfriend brought back from her family holiday. The Obubu tea comes from Wazuka, and the one from Louisville comes from uhh "Japan" -- so comparing the terroir or even identifying whether this was single-region or single-field is beyond my comprehension without talking directly to the source. However, these teas produce different characteristics of black teas, but both are quite different from, say, an Indian or Chinese black tea in ways that make them more similar to each other than different. The lack of astringency and the sweetness-over-maltiness is a real treat.

Most of my black tea brewing lately is Young Mountain Tea Company black teas sourced from Nilgiri and Nepal, but I oughtta spend more time in general with wakoucha. I have a whole bag of black tea from Obubu prepared in 2020 by one of their interns...

Tasting Notes

First Infusion of Louisville Tea Co

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3 minute brew according to instructions.

First infusion is light and easy to drink. Honey-sweetness and vague fruitiness. Nice, clean liquor, no fines.

Honey-sweetness tracks the same sort of direction as a Dongfang meiren, very little astringency, and little happening "on the tongue"

Second Infusion

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On second infusion the color is slightly more pale/golden. Bit more astringency slipping in, the sweetness has sort of uhh rounded out in to a mellow fruit sweetness, it’s actually much more enjoyable on second infusion, more developed and balanced.

First infusion of Pine Needles

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Second infusion

Did not set my timer and lost track of this tea... augh. Hard to drink this much tea, lol. I've been drinking and writing and reading for three hours now.

Definitely let it steep for a few minutes too long -- but it's still drinkable. The astringency is much higher than the three previous brews, that is to be expected I guess. The complex molasses sweetness is nice even when battling the dry-tongue-feeling.