5000 milestone reached!

Dear readers,
today is the day when the number of page loads has reached the number of 5000. I did not expect that only a half a year after starting this little tea notebook, there would be so many readers! And that I would discover so many other blogs which gave me such enjoyment when I read through them.

When reading posts like this one, I've often noticed that the writer thanks his readers. I thought - why? They come at their own will, it is not a service to the writer. However, now, when writing this, I feel a compulsion to thank you. So... thank you!

Even without readers, writing notes on teas would prove helpful to myself. Nevertheless, knowing that several more people are reading them makes writing them even more interesting.

I know that many things can be improved about my notes. I hope the improvement will come naturally. That's the way things go when one enjoys what he is doing. Learning by doing and all that... Anyway, if you still felt like you wanted to give me a hint what to improve, please, do so!

Right ho, the lake of sentiment has dried out, let's go to statistics!

Where are my readers from?
About 40% from Czech Republic, then USA, Russia (quite a surprise to me) and Slovenia. Generally, it is 50% Czechoslovakia, 50% rest of the world. The trend is that more and more foreign readers are joining.

From the other end - thank you, readers from Lithuania, Singapore, Poland and Sweden, I hold you in great esteem too!

What is the dominant OS?
Windows clearly in the lead (78%), followed by Macintosh with 14%. Linux has 2%, most of the linux users come from Czech Republic.

Even though I come from computer science area myself, I am a rather proud-ish Windows user, thinking that even though being criticized, it is still a very fine piece of software and Windows 7 show that Microsoft is learning from its mistakes. Powershell is pretty good thing, isn't it?

What is the dominant browser?
Firefox leads clearly, having 31%. Internet Explorer has 21%, Google Chrome has 18%, Opera has 14%, Safari 12%. The trend clearly shows that Chrome is on its rise. In the last month, it has reached 27%, which is mighty rise.

On the other side of the field - there are browsers named Maxthon, Gran Paradiso or Iron I've never heard before. Iron sounds like the browser for women...

I myself used to like Firefox too, then got annoyed with it being such a memory hog and realizing that I am not using any of gadgets I added to it. Now, google Chrome is my instrument of choice. Generally, browsers are becoming better and better - whenever I had to work with any of the three leading browsers, I felt no trouble (even with the ever-hated IE! - most of its critics I've met still point to bugs of IE6, which is a bit out of date).

What has been the most read article?
Jinuoshan You Le 2004
And well deserved that is!

Thanks, good night! See you again at 25000.
Jakub

Not impressed 1

Just as negative advertisement is an advertisement, negative experience is also an experience.

After finishing the mighty excellent 2005 Fu Cha Ju Jingmai with tea flowers, I started drinking through the rest of my samples which did not captivate me and thought I'd give them a few lines here. This article will be updated periodically, when it is too large, another Not impressed thread will be created.

2009 Guan Zi Zai Zao Chun Yi Wu
The aroma of the liquor was appaling, rather than appealing, being quite hard. However, the taste was pleasant for first three brews. A variant of generic good Yi Wu, a pleasant change from my usual Purple Yi Wu orgies. The problem occured with fourth brew and the brews  that followed it. The taste took an invisibility (or rather intastibility) cloak probably. This happened to me on all three tasting occasions. First three brews are pleasant, strong enough - maybe nothing to write home about, but at $20, it would be a decent tea. However, the disappearance of the taste in further brews prevents me from saying this tea is good. Maybe it will gain some strength in further years... In the plethora of cakes which are no "maybe", not good enough.

2010 Hai Lang Hao Qi Lin Jun Xiu 
This felt rather too roasted to my taste. The orange liquor raised my suspicion, confirmed by the roastiness in the first three brews. The tea gradually changed into something nice, fruity, Yi-Wu thing, it is not bad for immediate drinking (on the other hand, it is a bit expensive for what it provides). I am not sure how it is going to age though. I guess we'll have to wait some years before we see where the pre-oxidized cakes head. The stamina of this one was not exceptional, rather low I dare say.

2011 YS Ba Da
The tea is rather faithful to the description on Yunnan sourcing website. Indeed, hints of tobacco and pines are present. It is notably grassy, even more than I'm used to in young sheng. It is generally lighter in profile, gently sweet. I believe that that is the reason why I enjoyed it. I'm not really into tobacco shengpu, I prefer fruitier things; this cake had little to offer in this way. Still, although this is not exactly my cup of tea, a nice production still.

2005 Fu Cha Ju Jing Mai with tea flowers

The happy part of you may have met this cake when it was available at Yunnan Sourcing about two years ago. It has long since disappeared (as well as the rest of Fu Cha Ju things :( ). However, it has appeared in Chawangshop. It is one of their most expensive pieces, costing $46; on the other hand, when one looks at the cost of premium new cakes...

To the tea purists who want to murder anyone who would dare to put tea flowers (blossoms) into tea, ruining it: Don't murder anyone. I have tasted 2005 Fu Cha Ju Jingmai with and without the tea flowers and the experience was basically the same. Both cakes are predominantly flowery, fruity and honey-like, the one with flowers has these features even more powerfully developed, but the difference is not large.

Dry leaves are whole, clean, shiny, looking healthy. 

The aroma of wet leaves is crazily pleasant - when had the tea yesterday, I sniffed it for several minutes, warming the pot from time to time. Very complex and fruity. When smelling (and drinking) this tea, one wonders how nature does these things...

Wet leaves are mighty thick, fleshy, looking great.

The tea liquor is also very nice, the color is proper, it is clear and pure as the mirror of Galadriel.

And the taste is definitely yummy. It is powerful, flowery and fruity (apples, peaches, nuts? Feels like stuff from our garden generally...) riding on honey sweetness. Very complex and harmonized. Also noticeably darker than when I had it in 2010 for the first time. The aftertaste is long and good, hui gan plentiful.

This tea reminds me that I'm getting older... When mind-wandering, I thought "hmm, it is dark, considering it is only two or three years old". When I realized that the time has advanced a bit since I started drinking more of puerh...is it really so many years? Now, this cake is seven years old, which puts naturally where I felt it was. 

It is a strong tea, packed with taste. This is, of course, a very positive feature (I was regularily making 15-20 brews of it), however it is easy to oversteep this tea. I was surprised when it first happened - I wondered what happened to that sweet, harmonic, easy-going tea when I got thick nostrum bitter as hell. Or two hells rather. 

Nevertheless, when brewed all right, it is just so good and pleasant. One of the best cakes I've encountered.

This is the last I have of it...

1992 Da Ye loose leaf sheng

This is the first of samples from Essence of tea I'd like to write about. As I succeeded in the exam from computational complexity theory yesterday, I decided I'd taste it again today and write about it to reward myself.

I quite like the descriptions on Essence of tea website... not boasting, letting one form his opinion himself. I guess that the owner knows that when one is good in what he does, he does not have to boast.

Interesting tea deserves good water, a unit of charcoal was mustered. Will have to buy more soon...

Now, dry leaves...

I find them quite beautiful, healthy. Big (one would expect that of Da Ye, wouldn't he?). They release a pleasant, dry, aged aroma.

The water is boiling, sings the kettle...

Wet leaves in the pot smell rather like shu puerh, more clean and "real" though. Could be just my imagination.

The color of the liquor is similar to aged wine in a way. Older wine is not as red as young, having a sort of brownish tint. Approaching this from the other side, this tea is brown with a reddish tint. 

The taste is clean and pleasant, but hardly surprising or mind-blowing. What came to my mind first was "shupu". It tasted according to what I felt I could feel in it... when I thought of dried apricots, I could sort of find them there. Also, in some brews, very  slight fishiness was present (carp, to be exact).

Having a look at wet leaves clearly shows this is no shu. Actually, the mouthfeel and energy of the tea suggest the same thing. The tea feels thick, cools the mouth and sends small "sparks" around. It may be just my imagination, but it also felt more "natural" than shu. 

As has been said many times before, old tea is not always drank for the taste (it would be crazily expensive for that). The energy of the tea is very important too. This tea has pleasant, quiet cha qi. I generally believe that a lot of calming down and feeling good is caused by calm preparations and enjoyment of tea (furthermore, with older teas, one could have tendency to be wow-ed by the experience of drinking something of such age). I can not say that this tea  would affect me so much more than other sheng from 2001-2004. But it is quieter, no rowdydow bitterness or anything notably powerful is in it. Balance and peace, it is.

The unknown amout of leaves I used (5-8g) lasted more than a litre of water, still being enjoyable.

Wet leaves confirm that leaves probably come from several sources, not being  too homogenous. I liked how firm and healthy they still were, not being disintegrated by being rubbed a bit.

Were this tea sold as the biggest speciality in the world, for crazy money, I would have thought "all right, interesting, but not for me". As it is so cheap, I think it is very nice tea to be had more frequently. Although I do not need the kind of feeling it gives (and younger tea does not) too often, it is very pleasant from time to time.

2003 Yong Pin Hao Yin Hao Tuocha

The detested time of year is closing by: exam time. It means there will be less tea notes as my stomach is quite powerfully upset when  I have exams. Generally, I'm happy enough when I am able to get to school to take the exam, therefore the art of tea is somewhat neglected. It also means that my  mind starts being confused (it is being confused since I was born, to be honest) and when I think that this has been a productive month from point of view of writing, it immediately comes to my mind, whether it was also creative... funny thing these creative and productive sets. Computability theory rocks. Though not as "primitively useful" as mathematical analysis, it is beautiful and makes one understand a lot of things about math and algorithms. 

As most readers probably are not interested in creative and productive sets, let us move to something generally more pleasant: 2003 Yong Pin Hao Tuocha, which may be bought at $11 in the great Yunnan Sourcing store: http://www.yunnansourcing.com/store/product.php?id_product=1759

How does it look? Very nice!

It is brown-grey-ish, no signs of green really.

The tuo is rather lightly pressend and feels very dry. It goes apart easily, sometimes breaking almost too much. But breaking this one into pieces is way better than doing the same thing with younger Xiaguan tuos which now reach between 11 and 12 on Mohs scale of hardness.

The aroma of dry leaves is soft, sweet and aged. 

Rinsed leaves are also sweet and aged. Soothing and pleasant. Not overly complex or surprising.

The taste is, as one could expect, sweet and aged :) Actually, in the "main" taste, there is not much beside the agedness. This alone, balanced and good, would make me feel "this is a nice little tuocha". However, in the aftertaste, something like roasted hazelnuts appears, making the aftertaste more interesting and enjoyable.

The energy of the tea does not feel too poweful. It is as it was sleeping.

Probably the lack of characteristic Cha Qi and the overally very smooth and "ordinary", inoffensive taste profile, make me feel that this is a nice drink, but not really mind-blowing all-around. This is not to say I did not enjoy it when I was drinking it - I did enjoy it on all occasions. 

On the art of sniffing

Yesterday's night

It's after midnight. Steam is rising from my trusted cracked gaiwan and the aroma of ancient tree Haiwan Pa Sha lingers in the air (surprisingy, as it ages, it resembles ancient tree cakes I've had more and more - which is kind of unexpected given the - under circumstances - low price). I'm reading some of excellent Musings of Half Diper, feeling guilty reading of how it is not too good to drink tea in the afternoon... Well, midnight is not afternoon, right? Oll korrekt, bad excuse.

However, the aroma reminds me of one thing - my posts may not reflect it, but my appreciation of tea aroma has rapidly increased in last few months. Litres of tea consumed and late hours make me overcome my usual reason for not writing - "who gives a damn about that"... so here is more:

Of course, as one drinks through masses of various samples/cakes/bricks/things, his appreciation of various aspects rises ultimately (actually, this may have an honest neurobiological basis). But I concentrate on the aroma more I would say. Why is that? It is just so pleasant. And it helps me to understand what I am drinking better.

One of less poetic points of view on tea is a table of temperatures and substances being released (and tasted). It is a rather primitive approximation - more dimensions are to it - water composition for example. Or the brewing method. Well, anyway, every time I drink a tea, I am not feeling all of its components. Some of them were not extracted to the taste. However - they are often extracted to the aroma. The aroma often suggests how the tea may taste. When I smell something lovely, but it just is not present in the taste, I know that I may be doing something wrong and local search may be applied to the tea's brewing method, trying to match the aroma with taste.

Then there is the aroma of dry leaves. I must admit that it mostly tells me very little. It mostly tells about a tea's past - how it was stored, how fresh it feels, etc.

Or the aroma of wet leaves. This is my favourite now. I often enjoy it as much as drinking the tea itself. I use the following "technique" to enjoy it best. Instead of simple inhalation, I sometimes blow gently into the teapot for a fraction of second, inhaling right after - feeling the "stirred" aroma. Theoretically, it could cool the pot too much, but I have not found any negative sides to it. I may enjoy more concentrated aroma. However, one could get burned inside the nose if he blowed too close to the opening of teapot or blowed too hard. When done right, it is a pleaasure. I'm often sniffing the aroma for a half-minute, feeling like floating on the waves of  the tea's character for eternity, flying to a bamboo pavilion in some chinese tea garden in a parallel universe.

The aroma of wet leaves tells about the tea's current state - whether its tastes are in harmony, for example. It tells how the tea may (or may not) taste, when brewed differently. It often gave me a hint when I should use boiling water or sub-boiling instead (actually, contrary to the past, I don't pay that much attention to exact temperature, the thermometer I used to use five years ago collects dust).

I found that there are two kinds (at least!) of sweetness affected by water temperature. The sweetness of lower-temperature water brewing is well known. However, some sheng pieces I've had were dull,  harsh and empty when boiled with 90°C, but sweet and full when brewed with boiling water. This is where the aroma comes into play. When I feel that the taste is dull and harsh and the aroma is too, then, most often, it is a bad tea. However, at times, the aroma is right, it just is not reflected by the taste. That's the time when I know I should use warmer water. Or use different kind of water altogether.

The aroma of wet leaves helps to determine the age of trees from which the leaves come. I can not express the difference with words... But when one smells a lot of tea from younger trees and  a lot of tea from old trees, he finds that there is something the young tea just does not have and vice versa. The ability to (partly) determine the age of tea is nothing mythical... just collect enough data and it is obvious then.

The aroma may suggest the future of a tea too. For example the aroma left in drinking cups. I've had bitter, young teas which, after emptying the drinking cup, left a sort of sticky sweetness behind. Some similarly tasting young bitter teas did not. It is a coincidence, that the first kind eventually became sweet, while the other became more dry and woody? I don't think so.

That is all I wanted to say today. I can not provide "Learn to enjoy and use the tea aroma in 21 days" walkthrough. But I can definitely say it's fun to dig inside the aroma a bit!

2009 YS Road to Yi Wu: Man Zhuan

Interesting sky we had here yesterday. Wind screaming, clouds flying (and making photos blurred) around like witches on brooms - sounds like just the time to drink some tea, doesn't it?

I have picked one of samples from Yunnan Sourcing: Road to Yi Wu - the Man Zhuan version. I have not found any notes of fellow bloggers, why is that? 


...I'll answer it myself - because I haven't looked well enough! http://half-dipper.blogspot.com/2011/04/2009-and-2010-yunzhiyuan-manzhuan.html
Reading through the post of Hobbes I feel that I should have mentioned certain vegetalness - which is much less annoying than when I tried this tea in 2010, but is still present. 

 When released from the small container I use to give compressed samples invigorating breathing, it was very aromatic and fresh for Yi Wu material.

I found dry leaves quite beautiful, furry. They are darker than when I tasted the tea first (in 2010).

I was unaware of the price when tasting the tea, but the aroma and first sips screamed "I'm a special tea". They did not scream "I am worth that $169" like Yong Pin Hao 2001 which is sadly not available anymore did. However, after drinking several dozens of smooth, thick, sweet, x*chocolaty + (1-x)*fruity, Yi Wu cakes in last months, this one was pleasantly different.

The Yi Wu character is present, it feels like more things than usual are happening in it. It is generally balanced (not overwhelmingy chocolate-like or something like that), still keeping some of its original freshness. It is slightly grainy, slightly fruity, slightly nutty, slightly cocoa... and heavily bitter. I have never had a Yi Wu tea this bitter. On one hand, it made drinking this tea not so calming and easily pleasant as other "smoother" Yi Wu cakes, on the other hand, I believe it may age differently and maybe more interestingly. As opposed to the first tasting, I noticed that the dark malty sweetness I like started developing here. If this becomes more pronounced with age, this cake could be really lovely.

I tried brewing this tea in several ways, but the bitterness was always present. It is not ugly, stomach-upsetting bitterness, it feels like wild tree bitterness, sort of silky, but it did not transform into sweetness really.

I don't think that this tea is too good for immediate consumption, too expensive and bitter for that. However, older and wilder tea-tree cakes (which this one is) age differently than "usual" cakes and they offer an experience unobtainable otherwise.

Wet leaves (from "competition style brewing" of today) are rather thick and unevenly colored.

I'm not sure whether I'll be buying more. In no tasting of it, I felt like wanting to have and drink. However, I'd very much like to know how it is going to age as I believe it will age very nicely.