Archive for the ‘teablog’ Category

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he can’t even review tea, can he?


2011
09.20

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Posted in Pu-erh, teablog | 9 Comments »

I am drinking Green Pu-Erh Tuo Cha and relaxing a bit after a long day.

Recently I responded to an offer to write tea reviews for a site.  It looks like an interesting opportunity, but I don’t want to say any more about it until it’s a done deal.

I was asked what sort of tea I liked…the site was explained to me and like I say, it looks promising.  So I wrote back saying I was interested, and I mentioned this tea blog.  You know.  As in, ‘You want to see how I write?  Go check out the teablog.’  

Despite how informal and slipshod it might appear, I put quite a lot of thought and care into this teablogging lark.

Here’s the thing, though.  I don’t do many tea reviews.  I do some (I used to many more), but for the most part I start reviewing a tea and I go off on a tangent.  It’s not that I can’t simply review a tea.  But one of the ways I like to set this blog apart from others is to make it otherwise entertaining.  It’s certainly a blog about tea, but I like to see how far away from tea I can get without completely losing my readers.

If I’ve done my job well here, you’ll periodically say to yourself, ‘I wonder what ridiculous nonsense that Lahikmajoe  has been writing about lately.’  That non-teadrinkers regularly come here is something that continues to please me to no end.

But I like to try new tea and despite all the evidence to the contrary, I enjoy reviewing tea.  That’s actually why I think it’d be a good thing for me to write tea reviews in a more organised setting.  

A place where I’m not trying to be clever and distracting and boundary pushing.  Because as much as I’d love to tell you about how this Green Pu-Erh Tuo Cha tastes, I’ve already exhausted myself.  I am curious if the folk at the tea reviewing site took one look over here and said to themselves, ‘Who is this guy?  What the hell is he talking about?’
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Must one study tea to really appreciate it?


2011
09.16

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Posted in teablog | 3 Comments »



Have been up on the mountain most of the day, and here’s a photo of my trusty orange flask as proof:


As much as I enjoy drinking tea at the top of the mountain after the most strenuous part of the hike, one of the things I like most is the time I have up there to ponder things.


Today I had exactly just such an opportunity, and some of that time I spent considering how to answer a question that was posed to me by a relatively new reader to this blog. I’ve mentioned Cara in Cleveland before, but in reference to what tea would best to mask the anti-allergy medication she wanted to give a phlegmy coworker.  My regular readers will concede that this topic is exactly the sort of contribution we need to the world of teablogging.


Now to be pedantic about this, we can’t call Cara in Cleveland a newcomer to tea.  She’s drunk tea for years and has a favourite brand that her grandmother drinks.  This Red Rose tea is one I’d not heard of, but supposedly it’s rather well-known and widely available.  So this isn’t someone who’s never had tea.  She’s not approaching tea drinking for the first time.  


I’m not going to quote her question directly, but essentially she asked if one really needed to become a tea obsessive to enjoy tea.  Do you need to learn about leaves, flavours, steepings, and whatever else to fully get the experience?  Must one practically study tea to really appreciate it?


I think it’s a fair question, and I’ll tell you exactly how I responded.  I said, ‘Not at all. I know tons of Brits who’d rather not think about it at all. Depends on what you want to do.’


What I meant was that many people simply want to drink the tea that they’ve always drunk and not over-think it.  They don’t want fancy tea gear. They’re not interested in Asian tea ceremony.  Tea is tea.  It’s a daily enjoyment but it needn’t be anything more.


And you might think that a teablogger would be against that.  Would have some sort of snotty elitest position on such people.  Other teabloggers might, but not this one.  If you want to enjoy your tea and not be bothered with all the other stuff, then you have my support and even my blessing.


But that begs the question:  What are you doing here Mr Lahikmajoe?  Why all the Sturm und Drang?  Why the obsessive questions and contemplations and strongly-held opinions?


Those are questions for another time.  They too are quite interesting and deserve my full attention.  For now though, I’m going to brew a pot of Choice Formosa Oolong and rest my well-hiked legs.











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all the same teablogger


2011
09.14

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Posted in Devotea, Lazy Literatus, teablog | 2 Comments »

Jo Johnson suggested in a blogpost that Robert Godden and I were the same person.  Here’s the whole post: World Tea East – Finale.  She was joking with VL Hamilton, as she describes it, and VL assured her that there was no way that we were the same.  Like I say, I’m sure that this was an offhand joke, but what better place to start off a blogpost.

First of all, Robert and Geoff Norman and I have joked that we’re the Beasts of Brewdom.  We not only interact with one another on twitter, but we find ourselves blogging in tandem and doing what little we’re able to for the sake of masculine tea drinking.

But I’ve taken the funny off-hand comment and wondered to myself what sets us apart.

Robert’s blog which is called The Devotea’s Tea Spouts is a collection of musings and curiosities that he’s written and he’s particularly good when he’s somehow riled up and/or got a score to settle.  One of my favourite of these is Carry On Up the Spout.  Try it you’ll like it.

And Geoff has included his explorations with tea, as well as cultural ponderings.  One of his better recent posts was Iran So Far for…Tea.  All about tea in a part of the world about which we get such murky information.  Periodically, he’ll go on a tear and write a piece of tea-fuelled prose that is immensely entertaining.  Watch for just such a piece of fiction.  It’s worth the wait.

What am I doing here?  What’s the purpose of a teablog?  Partly, it’s a documentation about my love affair with tea.  It’s a place I like to record the minutiae and the tangentially tea-related.  I’ve also purposely tried to make this blog as accesible as possible for tea newcomers.  I joke about bringing people over to the leaf-side, but it really has been a pleasurable avocation of mine to attract curious people to try good tea.

More on that soon.  Much more.  But in the meantime I’ll simply say that to be confused with the likes of The_Devotea or even Lazy Literatus is not such a bad predicament to be in at all.

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tea for every (phlegmy) situation


2011
08.28

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Posted in Sencha, teablog | 2 Comments »

(a very phlegmatic statue in Munich)

There’s been a lot of talk about phlegmatic people in my little world lately, and although I’ve attempted to portray myself as such, I’m not actually allergic to anything that I know of. That was the meaning of the word phlegmatic that was used. Someone with a lot of phlegm. Someone who’s allergies had got the better of him or her (I think it was a her in this case).

I was thinking of the Four Temperaments meaning of phlegmatic. The one that’s ‘…receptive and shy and often prefer stability to uncertainty and change…’, but then I realised that the phlegmatic person in question was coughing and wheezing and generally being a nuisance in the office. Her kindness was not the problem here.

I should really go back to the beginning of this story. Lisa Galaviz (@lgalaviz) describes it all rather concisely in her blogpost How to Create Drama in your Life and Workplace. And if you got down to the bottom of the post, you know as well as I do that Cara in Cleveland (@zippy219) won Drama Day and did so rather convincingly.

So the question now is: What tea is best to mask the taste of Allegra? Apparently it’s got quite a bitter taste, and we don’t want it to be detected.

I asked Erik Kennedy (@thetearooms) what tea he would recommend for the job. I asked him partially because he’s a very knowledgeable chap, but also because he was there. 99% of life is showing up. Let that be a lesson to you.

His answer? A nice Japanese Sencha. Strong enough that you won’t even notice the bitter medicine-y taste of the Antihistamine. He actually didn’t specify whether the Sencha should come from Japan or China, but I know some of you loathe Japanese tea as a general rule. It’s my responsibility to mention it at every opportunity.

Right after his wonderful recommendation, Erik said that for this purpose he’d actually use fruit juice. But this isn’t a fruit juice blog. You’ll have to go somewhere else for that sort of information. This is a tea blog. We’re giving unsuspecting people medication that they may or may not need in their tea, thank you.

One last thing before I leave you and go brew some more tea sans medicine. There’s been quite a lot of traffic lately to my teablog from some unsavoury countries and places. I don’t know exactly what you’re doing here, but it better be tea-related. No funny business, eh? You hear that Newfoundland and Labrador? Don’t make me come over there.

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getting into tea in Tucson


2011
08.22

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Posted in teablog | 2 Comments »

Have met quite a few tea people only virtually, whether it be by watching tea videos and then interacting with them on twitter or even using skype for an online tea party. Robert Godden set up one of those several weeks ago and it was a pleasure to hear the voices of people with whom I’d had very limited contact. Whether it be reading teablogs they write or their brilliance on twitter.

Then there are some tea people I’ve even met as a result of this teablogging lark. Haven’t been creeped out by any of those new tea friends I initially met online. Not yet anyway. That’s not an invitation for freaky tea drinkers to contact me. Just saying that this has been a very positive social experience with people I’d never have otherwise met.

There are some tea drinkers I know in my daily life. Whether they were already sipping from the dark brown liqueur or I lured them over to the leaf-side, it’s nice to have personal contact with others who enjoy tea.

And there’s a third category I hadn’t thought of until recently. People I’ve known for a long time who I didn’t even know were into tea. You know someone a long time, you get together or see each other at some function and the last thing you think to bring up is your tea obsession. My Aunt Elise found my tea blog over at teatra.de, and told me in the comments over there that she was enjoying reading. That they were ‘getting into tea in Tucson‘.

In another conversation she talked about a tea I hadn’t hear of called Sakurambo Vert. The only tea I found with this name was from the tea company Lupicia, and although I’m not normally a big fan of tea with fruit in it, I’d like to try this one out.

Here’s what steepster.com had to say about it: Sakurambo Vert.

Any of you tried this? One person says it’s bitter. Another seems to say the opposite. Any thoughts?

1 Comment

charms of The Iron Goddess (Tie Guan Yin)


2011
07.24

Posted in Austin, hot brown liqueur, Iron Goddess Oolong, Oolong, Robert Godden, teablog, teanote, The_Devotea, Tie Guan Yin, Uncategorized, Upton Tea Imports, World Cup Final, Zhi Tea | 1 Comment »

For regular readers of my teablog, I’ll have to apologise at the outset. Normally I write about anything but tea. Sure I drag tea into it, but the topics I like most are tangentially related to that hot brown liqueur. I like to write about whatever film I happen to be watching or what I might serve footballers playing in the World Cup Final based upon the quality of each individual’s play. You get the idea.

It’s a teablog, but I rarely get bogged down in actually reviewing tea. Not in the traditional sense anyway. Robert (@The_Devotea on twitter) has assured me that there’s nothing more boring than, ‘I took the tea and I submerged it in the water and then I tasted it and it tasted like ______ and then I infused it again…’ It might be informative and clearly written, but it’s not the most exciting stuff. To each his own, eh?

But sometimes I feel I should just do a traditional review of a tea. It is still a teablog after all. And of course with the introduction I’ve built up, I’m almost daring myself to make it somehow more interesting than the typical teanote. I might have set myself up with unrealistic expectations in that case.

The tea I want to talk about is Tie Guan Yin (the notorious Iron Goddess). A while back I read someone disparaging comments about how everyone knows the sultry temptress that is the Iron Goddess.

As if this tea was somehow boring due to its popularity. I gave into her seduction when I visited Zhi Tea in Austin when I wrote An oasis on the Eastside.

Alex Zorach made a valid point, in the comments of that post, when he said, ‘It seems to be the “default” named Oolong, so there have been a few cases where I tried it and it wasn’t the best quality.’ He went on to write that finding a good Tie Guan Yin is an entirely different story. I think I know just such an exception. The one I’m talking about is from Upton Tea Imports.

Now according to them, this is a 2nd Grade tea. Their description actually states:

A classic Tie-Guan-Yin, with dark-golden, rolled leaves, producing a flavorful cup with the aroma of sweet raisins complemented with robust earthy tones. The fine flavor lingers on the palate with a toasty, sweet aftertaste. (source: Upton Tea Imports).

I can definitely taste the raisins by the second or third infusion. Although the earthy tones are evident immediately, they somehow get stronger the more times I brew the same tea. In my estimation, that’s the sign of a good, sturdy Oolong.

As I’ve heard so often when people talk about it, the thing to remember when brewing decent Oolong is to use more leaves and less water than you might be accustomed to. And almost as important are the incredibly short brewing times. Really.

Roughly twenty seconds to start. After many infusions, you might increase it to thirty or forty-five. But if you’re truly using more leaves and less water, steeping this tea for a long time is only going to result in something bitter. And in my experience, Oolong isn’t supposed to be bitter.

If you haven’t before been lured in by the Iron Goddess charms, will this review convince you to try her out? No idea. I’d like to think this tea is a perfect introduction to Oolong in general. And might this specifically encourage you to try multiple steepings? That would please me more than you might know. Well, now you know. I just told you.