OK, I have a question that I've seen considerable debate upon recently on other forums. As most people know, when doing Gongfu cha it's custom to use your first steeping to clean the cups and the materials with the tea to try and avoid any contamination from other teas used with those pots/cups etc. I've also heard that this helps remove any impurities that the tea may have or it cleans the leaves.
When steeping your first brewing, do you dump it out or do you drink the first brewing? I have been dumping it simply out of habit because I do gongfu cha so much especially if it's a Wulong or a Tie Guan Yin. What's your opinion on this?
Green tea I don't dump. Pu'er it depends on the type and how strong it is.
Mydnight
-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.
Except with (some) Puerh, it isn't impurities that make me do a first rinse. The main reason I do it is to saturate the leaves with hot water so that they're full of tea liquor concentrate the next time hot water enters the brewing vessel, making it possible to do short steeps and not "cook" the leaves. (This idea's been mentioned here before, most cogently I think by Dog Ma.) There are other reasons, like getting the brewing vessel hot enough.
Sometimes, if the aroma is seductive enough.
I generally rinse those.
Nor I.
I usually dump Puerh, for the same reasons as oolong, and I always do it with low-quality Puerh.
I can see the logic behind letting the leaves get wet through doing a rinse. Problem is, I haven't been able to make myself do it much because if my tea is of many different sizes (if it has crumbeld etc.) then I'm going to lose bits when I dump the rinse water. Plus my only yixing pot pours really slowly (to me...I don't have experience with others) so I feel it's less of a rinse with that and more of a semi-short steep, and I don't want to dump that out. I rinse my pu-er just because it does open it up a little more. The puer I have at the moment though is quite crumbly and has a bit of detrius or dust when I break it apart. (not dust like dirt though by the way). Anyway I can also rinse my puer easier because I'm not using a yixing, I'm using a little ceramic pot I got passed down from my grandma. It pours out faster and I use a strainer to catch any loose bits to throw them back in. It's not elegant or enjoyable to do it that way but I can't figure out any other way to not lose tea out of the rinse.
My other thought is that the smaller bits in the pot are going to infuse faster when I do a steep...does anybody here go to great lengths to make sure that the bits in the pot are of roughly the same size? In particular with puer? I actually went thorough my older bag of Tai Kuan Yin, the one I used to love so much that gave me a very nasty bittter experience last time I tried it, and I sorted out the sizes to mostly whole, half that size, and grains, just so that size wasn't a factor when next I get up my nerve to try it.
as an aside, definitely make sure you use different yixing pots if you are going to brew pu'er. using wulong and tieguanyin in the same pot is alright, but pu'er leaves a residual more profound than wulong.
you blokes agree?
Mydnight
-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.
I found that not crumbling up the puerh works better for me. It prolongs the whole extraction process and makes the first steep not as sensitive for oversteeping and second and third more flavourful. Try it. Jut use the same amount of puerh in one or several chunks, without crumbling. Taste constantly because the first steep MAY take a bit longer (may not).
Well I haven't timed it but just by memory...around 10 seconds? But also remember that my yixing is a lot bigger than most people's on here apparently, it is aroung 11 ounces I think. The spout hole is small it seems to me compared to some of the yixing I've seen online. It doesn't seem to pour much faster when the lid is all the way off though.
Oh geeze....LMAO I can't win, lol....;) And here I thought I was on to something. Thanks for the info though, I'll just, ah, go remix my TGY...::tip-toes off quietly:: :)
Oh yeah, I would NOT put pu-er in a pot that I wanted to use for an oolong, nope nope nope. But I haven't used my yixing for anything but TGY anyhow, and a heavier baked one at that. I may buy multiple pots for the different oxidation levels of the oolongs. I really want to get another pot so I can try a Bai Hao in it though....man that stuff is good....
When you say, "wulong," are you referring to all those Oolongs that are not "tieguanyin," or is there something I'm missing here. (I know I've asked this question before, but I haven't yet gotten a handle on it. Is there a variety of "Oolong" called "wulong"? If the two terms are not synonimous, I'm thoroughly confused. BTW, Mydnight, I thoroughly agree.
Apparently I created some confusion by neglecting to mention that the gongfu purists who crumble some of the leaf do it only, as far as I know, with oolongs.
Michael, could you expand on this for me? What I mean is, WuYi is what they call "rock" oolong, correct? And isn't it one of the ones that one has to be careful about that is mis-labled at times because it is so precious? Is every WuYi that you've had similar in oxidized level? Can you give an example of different WuYi variatals..do you mean different flushes or different origins or..? In other words what are some of the designations/labels of variatals? Same question applies for me for Phoenix Bird (same as Dan Cong?) and thirdly what are the Bao Zhongs, i.e. do you mean all that are named Bao Zhong or..? I got the part about TGY since I've had a both light and dark one of those.What are the specific oolongs you never brew in those other pots?
My question is more basic than you might think, I'm just trying to get a handle on the different varieties you talk about since my experience isn't that extensive. I can look at vendor pages all day long but there are so many different names and sometimes different names for the same thing or partial different names for the same thing which may or may not matter, that I get easily mixed up. Oh, and where would Bao Hai fit into this scheme? Thanks very much!
Make sure to buy from reputable vendors and you will have no problem. I am told that there are millions of tea vendors and tea shops all around the mountains there. I got my WuYi teas from "TeaSpring." They appear to be quite honest. I don't think you will get fakes from them. Another vendor who sells these teas and appears to know what he's doing is "JingTeaShop."
No. Some are more oxidized by tradition or by the taste and the experimentation of the vendor and/or maker.
We are speaking of subtypes of tea leaf much as there are subtypes of tomatoes or pansies. I don't know whether these varietals are associated with different parts of the mountain range. Generally speaking, the older the tree and the higher the elevation at which it grows, the better the tea will be. In English, examples are "Big Red Robe," "Little Red Robe," "White Cox Comb," "Golden Turtle," "North Star." The first one is by far the most common.
Phoenix Bird Mountains is a region of Guang Dong Province. "Dan Cong" means "single tree" or "single bush."
Bao Zhong (Pao Chong) is a very lightly oxidized, twisted but not balled up, Taiwanese style which is absolutely delicious and delicate in a melon flower fregrant sort of a way. There are also higher oxidized versions, but they are bastards most likely, and in my opinion.
I was thinking of one I got from Silk Road Teas called "Fragrant Plum," among others. Taste will tell the tale.
You are *not* alone in that, and I sometimes think they are trying purposely to confuse us, but it's fun trying to sort it all out.
Another example of a tea that needs its own pot. Bai Hao -- I take it you mean "Bai Hao" -- is a more heavily oxidized Oolong from Taiwan that features at best an exquisite honey/fruit sweetness brought about by the action of a leaf-hopper insect nibbling the leaves. This tea goes variously under the name "Oriental Beauty," "Formosa Oolong," and others. Well worth tasting. I have a very fine sample from TeaHome.
You are quite welcome. I mentioned some vendors, but there are others who sell these teas. In Pursuit of Tea and The Fragrant Leaf come readily to mind as two quite reliable sources in addition to those already named. Hope this post doesn't confuse you more.
One more thing. Visit this web site:
There you will gain a full vocabulary of tea terms as you need them.
OK..problem for me is that some vendors will have Big Red Robe on their site but won't say "this is a WuYi variety". Whereas it seems like TGY is usually labled as TGY. Of course I could just be getting caught up in rather fluid catagoried too...
Got it. But are there the same sorts of problems (actually not problems) with the proliferation of subtypes within Phoenix Bird Oolongs? Best of all by the way, anyone know of an oolong page that will set out all these types and subtypes? (Compared to greens it seems like oolongs are more complicated...could be because I don't know my greens thoroughly though)
snip
So you taste a new oolong in a gaiwan or something before you put it in a pot? Guess I shoulda thought of that. Being that I only have one pot though, I've been trying to order oolongs to fit the pot, when what I really need is more pots so I can order whatever I want and always have something to gongfu it in.
snip
Whoops, eay in the day for me. Yes I meant Bai Hao, lol.
is a more heavily oxidized Oolong from Taiwan that
So in general though, if I were to have a yixing that I put Bai Hao in, and I were to order a Bai Hao from a vendor I had never ordered one from before (not to mention that they change slightly from year to year anyway), I could reasonably expect that the tea would probably work in my yixing pot dedicated to Bai Hao?
Most of this would be remedied by getting myself a larger variety of oolongs, and a whole set of yixing....
BRR is indeed a variety grown in the WuYi Mountain area.
Try as you might, you'll never sort it all out. I don't have a good handle on the Phoenix Bird Oolong varietals at all.
Yes, I do. BTW, your pot is 10 or 11 ounces, which is huge. I recommend you get one more like 5 ounces, and use those little cups of around 1 ounce.
I usually brew Bai Hao in glass or glazed ceramic from habit. What you say is true, and you can do it that way as well. I wouldn't worry about changes from year to year or vendor to vendor.
Or three cheap little YiXing pots. And many people here question the whole issue of whether the teapot affects the taste of the tea. They are wrong of course, but they are there. Scientists, you know.
Wu Yi in tea names is most probably be geographical area (WuYi mountains). So a "WuYi" tea also has to have a tea name (say Shui Xian, or Yan). But I also seen references to WuYi as a type of tea. Never seen written in Chinese, though, so may be this is just a western mistake. In Wu Yi mountains if I remember right the first character is Wu - military and second - Yi - (combination of man + long bow) = barbarians (Yi tribe).
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