Toughest tea to brew

Are you *sure* it's the same tea the shop brewed for you?

Have you tried it with cooler water? With BLC, I often find 140F, or even cooler, is best.

/Lew

Maxing out Darjeelings ist the greatest challenge life has ever thrown at me though perceptional factors might play a bigger role than I´m willing to admit.

Karsten

Hey Lew,

Yes it was indeed the same tea from the shop. it's really tough sometimes i could get a great cup out of it. sometimes it just doesn't i remembered this tea very well because it was the toughest tea i ever brewed!

Jazzy!

It is the same experience here! That bloody BLC!

I had one from a Dongting West Mountain tea garden. I can't get it to brew properly.

I paid seriously top top bucks for it.

It has all the signs of an authentic tea.strong fruity aroma that you will never find anywhere else, very tiny leaves that is so distinctive of BLC and durability.

But can't brew it right.

I will try again. At different concentration and temperature. Will let you know.

Julian

with the BLC i only got to an awesome flavor 1 time, needed some tea on the go, so i put some leaf in a .5L bottle room temp water when i came back (hour/hours?) the fruity/apricot flavor surprised me, it was so tasty! but i havent been able to replicate the exact experience.

looks like BLC is really a tough tea to brew!

I'm struggling with Dan Cong.

Phyll

I've been meaning to mention that I've had an interesting ride with the BLC I bought in Vancouver from Spring Cottage in late July. Wanting to use it while it kept some freshness, I've been brewing it most mornings. As I expected, the full, blooming, melony glory lasted only the first week. But as the leaves lost freshness, something unexpected and, to my taste, delightful crept in, starting with the second steep: a kind of cooling spice note, somewhere in the realm of cardamom, for want of a really close comparison.

/Lew

Phyll,

Dan Cong? Why? How do you ussually brew it? I would use water around slightly before boiling degree, I admit that it can get nasty with dan cong, certain breed can go bitter if overbrewed as well as depending on your brewing techniques you might get more infusions or lesser infusions.

snip

It goes bitter when pushed too far, right? But, for me bitter is not bad. Anyway, I fill my gaiwan or gungfu pot chockablock with Dan Song and then, using water just off the boil, I do instantaneous steeps for the first several and then add seconds slowly from then on. It works for me. BLC I've ruined, DC seldom.

DC is a good example in my opinion of tea which provides, as Lew mentioned in another context, different pleasures brewed in different ways. Although I never bring the water temperature down, I do increase and decrease the amount of leaf and the length of steep occasionally to vary the taste and style: Generally, pushed harder, I get more bitterness and more finish. But, pushed like that, there can be a harshness up front.

Just my random thoughts.

Michael

I'm with Lew on this one. If you use water that's too hot, it will sear the leaves and any flavor out of the tea resulting in some oddly flavored water. Also be careful about what kind of water you use. Try to use some kind of mineral water.

Ah, the water. I find myself daunted by thinking about The influence of different waters on brewing various teas. There are too many variables already in trying to get a good cup out of the leaves! And with my very limited experience comparing waters, I'm not at all sure that this is an issue only for delicate teas.

/Lew

Actually that´s the main historic reason for Eastfriesian blends to contain such high amounts of Assam, usually > 90%. No other tea that made it over here back in the old days benefitted so much from the extremely soft, slightly acidic water they have here. From my experience an average Assam can handle quite a broad span of water hardness resulting in some interesting changes of flavour and colour of the brew. However, most Frieseans seem to like their tea water soft, so some folks took to collecting rain water while other folks I know over here don´t travel without some canisters of local water in their cars. On the other hand I have to use bottled water [Volvic] or add some minerals for my Darjeelings, using water straight from the tap results in a flat and downright boring brew.

BTW: having been born and raised in a city with miserably hard water that is totally unsuitable for any sort of tea [but somehow great for coffee] this leaves me speculating on what effects a worldwide improvement in the quality of tap water would have on the popularity of tea.

Karsten [some Highgrown Sri Lanka leaves in tazza]

But rainwater would have essentially no minerals at all. So there is a tea, after all, suited to demineralized or distilled water? Amazing.

Could you please expand on this fascinating hint? I've often thought it should be cheap and environmentally responsible to try to emulate good mineral waters by adding the right salts to tap water.

Maybe it isn't that simple. What would be an improvement in water for one tea might harm another tea.

It's a Biluochun morning here.

/Lew

During my years in Eastfrisia I´ve enjoyed some cups of Eastfrisian blends that had been prepared that way and I really liked the way those teas tasted. But then I have to mention that eastfrisian blends are almost never drunk straight but with a rock of sugar and a carefully applied layer of thick cream.

I remember another water/minerals related discussion on rfdt where DogMa threw in some fascinating facts on adding minerals [gives me something to google for tonight]. Anyway I tried all kinds of minerals from my stash [homeopathic, Schindele, "Dr.Schüßler Salze", Basica, ...] with all kinds of results. Talking about Darjeelings the best additive I´ve found so far

- inspired by talks with my tea guru is .... Darjeeling soil, namely a pinch of "holy" earth from Arya Tea Estates, Happy Valley, North Tukvar and others [sue me folks, .... smell another income source A. ?] I just throw it on top of the leaves before I add the water, a little more than 0,5g/l. Again it could be all 100% subjective, like the driving force behind my never ending quest for the "optimum" brewing parameters, but somehow more nuances appear to make it through, not necessarily those of the earth but those I remember from having drunk that specific tea up there where it comes from. YMMV.

Certainly so, but having traveled a little bit I found the water from quite a few places - no matter if cold from the tap or boiled entirely undrinkeable or in our case unsuitable for the preparation of any tea I know of.

Karsten [just back from a delicious afternoon tea session with my eastfriesian neighbor, a "Buenting" lady]

Yeah - be a heck of a lot more convenient than schlepping water home from the market. I've tried a few saltoid addenda, including sea salt, garden lime, crushed dolomite and alum, but none worked very well. When the need seems to arise, I just add a small splash of bottled mineral water - full strength is far too much.

A critical option is brew vs. spike: add minerals to the brewing water, or to the brewed infusion off the leaf. They both work, and I usually can't tell the difference. (Of course, I can't tell tea from coffee without a look at the label, but that's another story.) This casts some doubt on the extraction-variables case - though whether or not ions matter much in brewing (as distinct from effects on the tongue, or in binding solutes in various ways), I remain convinced that extraction is indeed affected strongly by small changes in pH.

-DM

Danica has some stuff that's designed for re-mineralizing filtered or distilled water... it seems to work Ok. You just put a few drops in the water before heating it.

Ask a local homebrew shop for "Burton's Water Salts." This is a mineral mix that is intended to duplicate the mineral water composition at a particular site in the UK. When added to distilled water it gives you a nice soft mineral water.

This makes sense, but I suspect it's more than just pH too.

--scott