Adagio Ooooh Darjeeling

Sounds like Adagio expects you to add cream and sugar. Darjeeling has a wide taste profile from weak to strong. Second flush is more desirable. I save my money and buy commercial Darjeeling. I have some that is 25 years old stored in original clay pots I like the most. Tasted one darjeeling tasted them all ie the muscatel aroma is omnipresent and not special. The best Darjeeling Ive ever tasted is classic Oriental Beauty from Taiwan. Darjeeling is the classic example of where less is more.

Jim

I never use anything in my tea, so that never occurred to me. I bet you're right. It would be nice if they mentioned that.

How is it different from first flush?

I also had a 4-tin white tea sampler also from Adagio. One of them was a White Darjeeling. Following the Adagio recs (2.25g/cup, 180°, 7 min) produced a fairly mild tea that was just slightly bitter. In my second trial, I increased the strength and reduced the time and temp (2.9 g/cup, 155°, 6 min) and got a pretty good tea with almost no bitterness. That used up the sample, so I couldn't try any more.

Just as with coffee, most "suggestions" on packaging or from vendors is going to have you *way* overshoot the actual amount of leaf to use per cup so that you buy more and often. All of those numbers seem quite wrong and overstated, from temp to amount to time.

The basics:

a lot of leaf + high temp water = very short steep ~30-45sec. (but you will get many steeps) low amount of leaf + mid-high temp water = normal brew (you will get less steeps but more tolerant to time ~3-4min) mid-lot of leaf + low to mid temp water = light to normal brew that can bring out some new/different aspects ~1-5 min depending on tea

My personal rule of thumb:

most greens: less leaf (maybe a tsp per 6oz.) + shrimp-eye stage water or a touch less + 2-3 min steep most oolongs: mid amount of leaf (maybe 2 tsp per 6oz.) + crab-eye water + 1-2 min (maybe 3 depending) steep red/black: about a tsp + as rapid boil as possible + 45 sec-1min

These are very basic but about as accurate as needed to get it "right"

90% of the time. Some oolongs benefit from a ton of leaf, some greens do better in hotter or cooler water... but overall these will *never* create the bitter brew you had to endure. HTH

- Dominic

I like to hope that this is not "most" vendors, but caveat emptor.

This may well be true for Agadio. I am not likely to buy from them again.

So it seems.

Interesting synopsis. I have been doing some testing and collecting data. I'll have to check this out against my results.

About what I have concluded. I did have to increase the leaf quite a lot and decrease the temp for pone sencha before I could drink it.

That's a bit shorter than I have seen recommended. Since I'm currently testing oolongs, I'll test that, too.

I can't wait to try this out. Most recs for blacks are 3-5 minutes or more. I almost always find that too bitter.

Thanks. Very helpful.

PS: I'm working on a program to capture the data and analyze it. If it works, it will suggest test parameters and try to zero in on the optimal combination for each tea for each user. I suspect most of the folks here will find this heretical, but I'm having fun. ;-)

I just got back from the local tea shoppe. I browsed some of the books on the tea table. Jane Pettigrew's The New Tea Companion mentions Dong Fang Mei Ren was marketed in Europe and US as a Darjeeling before WWII. There was a nice chapter on Georgia teas, all hand processed. And I thought Nigel was setting up the latest vegi-matic :-).

Jim

On Mar 8, 9:22 am, snipped-for-privacy@ix.netcom.com wrote: ...Google Group knows...

LOL! That will keep you busy for quite a while since there are over 3,000 varieties of tea.

How do you plan to account for the individuality of each person's palate?

I don't plan to test them all myself.

The first version of the program will be for my personal use, so all ratings will be mine.

If the program works, all I need to do is add one extra field (userid) to allow it to accept ratings from other users. The program can easily compile stats and make recommendations for each user. It can also compile composite stats so a new user can see what others think about a particular tea.

If that works, I might put it up on a website and let people who have been nice to me use it. ;-)

Sounds interesting. Good luck with it.