Breaking a puerh cake

28/11/2010, posted by Cha in journal,video

I decided to break this cake in half , then store half in a earthen ware and half in it’s (almost) original form. I’ll check in time the differences between those two.

This was my oldest cake of shu puerh.  The knife I used is not your regular puerh knife. It’s actually a somehow more dangerous item. I also like knives and I have quite a set at my home.  The bladed weapon passion comes from my martial arts passion.    If you would think that tea defines me, you are wrong. In my journey of defining myself, tea is one of the tools. Same as martial arts.  My blog is called chadao not because I’m an expert, but because I am a scholar.  I honestly want to learn more about tea,  every day. But in the sane way.

I sadly see so many (western) people taking tea for what (I believe ) is not.  Drinking a cup of tea will not make you understand zen, or tao or anything . Trying to make your best cup of tea for several decades may do that. And it will probably happen with a cup of tea.  That is kung fu.   If one drinks tea for a year or two and starts to understand the universe, I would called that person tea possessed.  I think that it’s important to learn, but it’s also important to take away the mysticism.

Oh , but let’s get back to the video. If you have any other suggestions about breaking the cake or storing the puerh, don’t hesitate to tell me.

1999 yiwu shu puerh

26/11/2010, posted by Cha in tea

Definitely a shu I like . I’m writing this post 10 minutes after, and the aftertaste is still pleasant. I can’t define the taste, but some keywords that I can come up with: sharp , clear.    Drinking this tea feels like erasing a  whiteboard, where my head represents the whiteboard.   Without considering the warming effect, I think there are few shu puerh that had such an effect on me , effect that goes beyond taste .

There were more than seven infusions, but this is where I stopped with photos. I had another ’round’ of tea later.  The photos were made in a different tea session. For any tea that I write of, I’m trying to have at least two sessions. One to take the photos and one for the complete experience.

This tea is a sample i received from Canton Tea. Too bad I can’t afford one right now, but If you can, I highly recommend it.

Cha Bu

20/11/2010, posted by Cha in journal

I picked the habbit of using a Cha Bu from Teamasters , a blog which has a big influence on me. It’s one of my most important source of  information, especially because I share the same philosophy on tea as Stephane, although I still have much to learn.  Still , even if I share the same philosophy, I now realize that my spirit of tea making is a bit different,  perhaps due to my martial arts background. (  I will talk about this when I will be ready to explain it with words .)

As I probably said in earlier post, a Cha Bu is much more versatile then a tea tray.  You can be much more creative and you can reflect your mood/feelings/spirit with ease by having the possibility to create almost unique setups according to the situation. A Cha Bu is easier to store than a tea tray  and you can easily make your own .  Having more than one Cha Bu gives you many possibilities. I would say, at some point, a Cha Bu becomes a must.

Besides creativity, I feel (as Stephane said on it’s blog) that I become more focused on the tea itself once I started to use a Cha Bu.  This is mostly because you will not have the luxury to spill water all over once you start to use it.  But there is always some excess of water, and for that, a teaboat is used in conjunction with a large bowl that stores the water used to wash the teapot and cups. When brewing with a gaiwan, the extra bowl is not always necessary.

Of course, good results can be obtained without a Cha Bu at all like in the previous examples.

With or without a Cha Bu , I find that not using a tea tray is very liberating.  However, that doesn’t mean I stopped using tea trays.  I am now somehow amused as I see a past version of me who imagined that a tea tray is a mandatory item to comfortably brew gong fu.

Mi Lan Dan Cong Oolong

06/11/2010, posted by Cha in tea

When speaking of Dan Cong you can never be right.  I remember a while ago this was the only ‘flame war’  in the tea word that caught my attention.   I will not define Dan Cong, but here is what babelcarp says:

dan cong (Dan1 Cong2) = literally Lone Bush (单丛 or 單叢 or 单枞 or 單樅), implying

• (1) a tea tree or unpruned shrub rather than a low shrub as in large plantations
• (2) the promise that all the leaves in a package come from a single plant, or
• (3) in Fenghuangshan, all the leaves are harvested from a cultivar descended from a single Shuixian tree growing in that mountain range

This tea is also found under the names : Phoenix Honey Orchid Tea, Feng Huang Dan Cong Tea, Dragon Phoenix, Fenghuang Dan Cong, Shui Xian so this Dan Cong would wall under the third definition.  Mi Lan translates (I guess ) in Honey Orchid.

This tea has indeed a floral characteristic and it’s sweet and goes many infusions. Too bad my camera batteries went out. I could not take pics with all the infusions. As with many oxidized oolongs, it’s hard to go wrong when brewing this tea, but still, I prefer not to pour directly on the leaves.

Why do I write about tea?

01/11/2010, posted by Cha in journal

This is part of the Blog Carnival of Association of Tea Bloggers hosted by Jason at Walker Tea Review.

There are at least 3 main reasons for which I write about tea:

• Feedback
• Sharing
• Connecting

Feedback

I write many of my posts in the hope that some of you who are quite experienced in this tea field will give me your feedback. From time to time I do receive feedback. For example I received valuable feedback on my latest video.  ( I will post the feedback at some point)

Sharing

In my country, there are very few who know about Chinese Tea. Many ‘respectable’ tea company sell fake tea or low quality tea. On another aspect, even with a good quality tea , few have any ideea what to do with it. I am trying to share my knowledge so that other can learn what I did.

Connecting

I have met many great people, from which I learned a lot via vis blog or other social services. I found people who will help me in Hong Kong for example and people who will help me plan a tea trip in Taiwan. It seems love for tea opens many doors..

Of course, these are only the main reasons. As with everything, nothing stays the same, so this post is available only now, I don’t know why I will write about tea next year or if I will still write about tea.  However, at any point, this blog will document my journey on the way of tea. That’s why the blog is called Cha Dao.