Author: Michael J. Coffey

I had an interesting experience a couple of weeks ago that I’m only now getting a chance to write about. I should start out by saying that what I like about tea is strongly weighted in favor of factual information. That’s not to say I don’t like drinking it or whatever, but I don’t have a super-fantastic palate and I read other tea blogs that are of the “tasting journal” variety more to glean data than to try to figure out what particular nuances their authors are finding in a particular tea. I should also say that I’m more of a wulong kinda guy than a puer lover. Puer is very interesting and I enjoy drinking it, but it doesn’t make me light up like a new kind of wulong that I’ve never heard of before.

That said, I’d often heard (and occasionally repeated) that if you taste a cooked (or “shu”) puer next to a naturally aged green (or “sheng”) puer, the natural aging process would win out over the “forced” aging process of the shu puer. Well, I finally buckled down and did the experiment. On two different occasions, I tasted an old green against a young cooked puer. The green was a Yinhao sheng puer tuocha (or for those puer beginners, a bunch of naturally aged and fermented tea leaves pressed into the shape of a bowl or bird’s nest) from the 1980s. It was also my first sheng puer of that age…most of my puer experience is of ones made in the last 10 years or so.

The first cooked was a Menghai Tea Factory bing from December 2005, and the other bing was one that I don’t have any information on but was a similar kind of decent-quality cooked puer.

And my experience was that the cooked puers had a “bigger” flavor, and that the flavor seemed somehow “damp.” Puer is going to be earthy no matter how you cut it, but the shu/cooked ones tend towards the fall leaves / fresh soil / basement kinds of flavors.

The Yinhao, though, was certainly of a different breed. My first and strongest image was that of being several floors above the basement, in some kind of old manor-house library or historical archive. It was a dry-earthy flavor…delicate, like old books, but also with little hints of things to discover by flipping through the (if you’ll forgive me for mixing metaphors with a single word) leaves.

The side-by-side comparison with the unknown cooked puer happened to be at an introductory puer class. The general consensus amongst the puer beginners was that they liked the cooked one better than the aged green. My guess is that it was that the stronger, more basic flavor of the cooked tea was easier to “get” whereas the aged green was something you’d not pick up on unless you had some more puer experience under your belt.

Or, it could just be that cooked puer tastes better to most folks and it’s that us tea geeks think the aged greens are supposed to be better so our minds play tricks with our experience. Who knows…but if you get a chance to repeat my experience, I encourage you to take it, and to let me know about what you noticed.

P.S. — I got 14 or 15 brews out of the Yinhao, whereas I didn’t get nearly as many of the other two. So the aged green had more staying power than the two particular samples of cooked that I used. The picture to the right shows steepings #1 at 30 seconds, #3 at 50 seconds, and #6 at a minute and a half. And yes, it really did get darker and then lighter again.

For the last four years, I’ve been teaching a tea class at a unique and cutting-edge school called the Puget Sound Community School. The class meets once per week and I cover some aspect of tea–sensory testing, culture, history, processing, geography, chemistry, biology, or (as we did a couple of weeks ago) just sitting around in the library drinking tea and watching Wallace and Gromit with crackers and Wensleydale.

Students have come and gone over the years, but they’ve developed quite a bit of tea skill and knowledge, if I do say so myself. When I challenged them with a blind taste test of several wulongs and had them guess (by taste only) the general level of oxidation and general level of roast of each tea, the basic consensus amongst the students was pretty accurate.

I brought in three Keemun teas (a congou, a mao feng, and a hao ya) and brewed them according to the ISO sensory test for black tea guidelines–without milk–their average scores for each tea clearly ranked them in order of quality. This tasting is what’s shown in the photo.

And I’ve already written about the comparison I did in my Dragonwell tasting post and the followup I did at PSCS in my Dragonwell at PSCS post. If you’ve been following along, you’ll recall they nailed that one as well. Who knew junior high and high school students would be able to so accurately determine price and quality of tea just by taste?

They do me proud.

It’s been a bit since I wrote last, in part because of the Thanksgiving holiday, but more because of the Seattle food & Wine Show. If you’re subscribed to my newsletter, you’ll know that I did a bunch of work helping set up a booth at this show for the Puget Sound Tea Education Association (PSTEA). That’s what’s taken up much of my time over the last couple of weeks, but I can say that it was a success. Our goal was to let people know that we’re working on the first Northwest Tea Festival, and to start building our mailing list.

We had almost 30 tea businesses involved in the discussion and planning, and a dozen or so who contributed to the supplies, advertising, booth staffing, tea samples, and everything else we needed to get the booth up and running. We answered questions, showed off a real live tea plant from Russia, handed out sample cups of tea, and gave out punch cards for samples from local tea shops to those who joined our mailing list.

Now that we’ve started the buzz, though, it’s time to work on the NW Tea Festival itself. It will be Fall of 2008 (hopefully not conflicting with my tea trip to Taiwan!) and if you’re interested in attending, please sign up for the NWTF announcement list. If you happen to own a tea business and would like to be informed when we get the booth registration and/or sponsorship details finalized, you can send an email to teageek’at’teageek.net.

At some point over the last couple of months, I received a sample of tea. Unfortunately, between then and now, the label got sticky or damp or something and stuck to my counter. When I picked it up to brew it, all I could manage to make out was “near Guangzhou.” I know it’s a red (black) tea, and that it’s from a place near Guangzhou, but that’s it.

Anyway, since I haven’t had a black tea made in Guangdong province (a.k.a. Canton) to the best of my knowledge, I thought I’d give this one a try. By the way, Guangzhou is the capitol city of Guangdong province. I’m trying to stay away from tea-tasting reviews on this blog since that’s the focus of most other tea blogs, but I’m making an exception for this tea for the simple reason that it’s a new province/tea-family combo for me.

The dry leaf had lots of long, thin leaf twists that appeared to be whole leaves. It reminded me of a larger size of, say, Keemun Mao Feng or a Ruby #18 from Taiwan. Balancing that were a number of smaller-sized pieces (which could have happened anywhere from the processing to me yanking the bag off the counter).

I brewed 2.5g in a 150ml ISO-standard tasting pot, using a 3-minute steep in freshly boiled water. The source of the water was Seattle tap water, filtered through a Brita pitcher. (Not that it matters, but I boiled the water in a stainless steel electric kettle.) When the brewing was complete, I presented it as if I were doing a flight of tea samples and took a picture. They don’t call me a tea geek for nothing.

As you can see from the picture, the liquor color was an amber-caramel color, which could either mean that it was under-brewed, or that this particular tea simply has more theaflavins than thearubigins (the colorful antioxidants that are in red/black tea but not so much in green tea.)

The scent of the liquor was a little nondescript. I got the impression of black tea, of course, but not much character beyond that. Nothing bad, just nothing fantastic either.

Remember how I said the leaves reminded me of the Taiwan black tea Ruby #18? Well, the flavor was like that also–on the lighter end of black tea flavor. Only trouble was that where Ruby #18 has a sweet smoothness, Near Guangzhou had a little bite to it instead. Again, not unpleasant but not very complex or interesting. I imagine this tea to be a reasonable everyday tea–one you’d have with something, not as the center of attention. Maybe a better description of the flavor would be if you took Ruby #18 and cut it with a low-grade Keemun.

The infusion shows longish (1-2″) twisted leaves. Untwisting pieces revealed generally between 50% and 75% of a whole leaf. My guess is that whole leaf was the goal of processing, but many were broken in processing or while dry. They had a pleasant-yet-plain chocolate brown color.

My overall take, then, was that it was fun to try out, but I’m not going to kill myself tracking down where this sample came from so I can get some more.

I recently got my first International Standard tea tasting set. I’d used them before, of course, but I didn’t have any of my own. I did a little more research and found that they are specified in ISO 3103:1980 which also includes the standard method for brewing tea in them.

You can’t really see it in this picture, but the “pot” behind is kind of like a mug (the handle’s in back) with a lid.  There are several serrations along the edge opposite the handle which allows the tea to pour out with the lid on, straining the leaves.  The infused leaves are then dumped into the inside of the lid and presented behind the tea liquor in the bowl.

If you’re curious, the “right” way to brew, or prepare tea liquor for use in sensory tests (according to the International Organization for Standardization), follow the procedure below. I’ve done some conversions for 8-ounce cups, to make it easier to brew correctly at home:

• Use 2 grams of dry leaf per 100 ml of water, weighed to an accuracy of +/- 2%. Since a measuring cup is 8 ounces, or 236.6 ml, that comes out to 4.64 to 4.82 grams per cup. No more, no less. Or else. I’m serious.
• If the tea is to be tasted without milk, the leaf is added to the ISO standard pot, and “freshly boiling water” is added, filling the pot to within 4-6 millimeters of the brim. Be sure to measure. Steep for exactly 6 (!!) minutes.
• If the tea is to be tasted WITH milk, the milk goes into the bowl first,* using 4.1 to 4.2 ml (or .83 to .85 teaspoons) of raw or unboiled pasteurized milk per 8-ounce cup. The tea is brewed the same way as without milk.
• If possible, use water as similar to the drinking water where the tea will be consumed for maximum similarity between the sensory test and actual drinking conditions.
• A test report should be written, including any variation from the above procedures (like, <your favorite deity> forbid, putting milk in after you’ve poured the tea in the bowl). Be sure to include: mass of the tea used, volume of water, duration of brewing (if not 6 minutes), source of the water, whether or not milk was used and if used the volume and type of milk, when the milk was added, and all details of the experience necessary for complete identification of that exact sample of tea.

…and people think I’m a geek because I know a Keemun from a Yunnan.

* Note: on the rare occasions that I add milk to tea, I do it WRONG! I add the milk after and I don’t write it down. Take that, International Organization for Standardization! Ha!

It’s been longer than I’d like since I last wrote a post, but I’ve been developing a relationship with my digital camera. I don’t have a whole lot of photography experience, mind you, so I’ve been feeling the learning curve. Meanwhile, I’ve also been tasting new teas for upcoming classes (listed here plus a new one at Teahouse Kuan Yin on November 5th), and working on some research for the Tea Geek Wiki.

While I do all of this, I’ve been taking pictures of tea, tea, tea. You can check out my pictures that I’ve got on the wiki’s articles on Bai Hao, Tie Guan Yin, and Keemun, and I’ve included some pictures of my samples here. Sometimes it seemed as if my tea (or a gaiwan in this case) were a wild animal, leaping out of the frame at the last moment.

Next time, look for some history on tea in America…I’ve been working on an entry about that one in the background.

A somewhat frequent question I get is “how should I store my tea?” I figured I could put my answer here on the blog so that folks could find it if I’m not around to ask. While you hear lots of variations on the “best” way to store tea (with additional variations based on what type of tea), for most teas it boils down to four simple principles.

1) Avoid Evil #1: Moisture. This is a fairly basic one. Keep your tea away from moisture. Moisture is good when you want to steep your tea, but for storage, moisture is bad. Keep it away from places that tend to be damp or steamy. For example, next to the shower isn’t the greatest place, nor is right above the stove when you’re boiling pasta. Which brings us to…

2) Avoid Evil #2: Extreme Temperature. Excessive heat ain’t so hot (thus above the stove is doubly bad). And in many cases, excessive cold ain’t cool. Don’t freeze your tea–especially if it’s been open to the regular air. You know how that condensation thing works? Well, that happens on the tea if you’ve got warm air in the bag and you cool it down in the fridge of freezer…then you’ve got Evil #1 going on.

3) Avoid Evil #3: Bright Light. This can tie in to the heat thing from #2, but light itself can affect how long a tea will retain flavor. Glass jars next to the kitchen window may look pretty, but it’s not a good idea if you want to actually drink your tea more than a couple of weeks from now. Your tea should not be more enlightened than you–it’s okay for some things to be kept in the dark.

4) Avoid Evil #4: Air Flow. Nobody likes sitting in a draft, and tea’s no different. With the exception of puer tea, which needs access to a little bit of air to properly age, you pretty much want to seal up the tea so there’s no wicked winds wafting away the wonderful flavors of your tea.

Solution: Use some kind of opaque packaging that you can seal reasonably well (which means no *breathing* materials like paper or cloth unless you’re storing puer). Put it in a closet, drawer, shelf, or cabinet where there isn’t much temperature fluctuation. I’ve included a photograph of some tea storage containers I use.  I keep them in a drawer that only comes open when I want to brew some tea.

If you stick with these tips, you shouldn’t go too far wrong.

Boy, tea’s been in the news!  The October 2nd edition of the Wall Street Journal had an article about puer on the front page (below the fold, of course, but still…front page?).  It talks about how newly-wealthy Chinese investors have been looking for things to invest in and have caused the price of puer to skyrocket, but now there are fears of a collapse.

Then, today, another article about tea appeared in US News & World Report.  This one was about research into the amino acid theanine and how it helps concentration (with speculation that it might help with attention deficit disorder, or ADD).  They also had a link to another article about green tea and possible connections with healthier skin.

Each week, I offer a tea class to the students of the Puget Sound Community School. Now in its fourth year, I’ve had to push myself every week to learn more about tea so that I had something to teach. Last week I put them to the test: they were to taste the same set of Dragonwell teas that I tasted and wrote about here. (Even though some students are new to the class, those who’ve been at it for four years ought to be able to pick out a good tea…)

After reading them a couple of descriptions of what Dragonwell is known for and how it is processed, it was time for the tasting. I had labeled the teas with a letter, had the proper amount measured out, brewed them to the same specifications and gave each student a scoring sheet based on a tea evaluation method that I first read about in Tea: Aromas and Flavors Around the World by Lydia Gautier.

They could give up to two points for dry leaf appearance, one point for infusion (wet leaf), two points for scent of the infusion, a point for the liquor color, and up to 4 points for scent and flavor of liquor.

There were five students in the class that day, and each dutifully inspected the dry leaves, sniffed and observed and prodded the infusion, compared liquors before slurping from their tasting cups…all the while taking notes and awarding points.

When everyone was satisfied, we tallied the points. One tea stood out with nearly 25% more total points than the second-place sample. All of the students graded it their highest, tied for highest with another tea, or second place in their rankings. The tea that won? The same one my partner and I had picked as the best, and the one that was clearly the most expensive of all of the samples, at almost $22 per ounce.

They have learned well. I’m very proud.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I intend to post occasional interviews with tea people, and as you may have guessed from the title, this is just such a post. Nigel Melican is a “tea technologist” who has manufactured tea on six of the seven continents. His business websites are www.teacraft.com and www.nothingbuttea.com

The image below shows Nigel loading green leaf into the withering chamber of the “Teacraft ECM System,” a tea processing unit used for tea research all over the world (also known as “the tea factory in a box”).

TG: What’s your favorite tea?

NM: I’d say that a real favorite tea must be indulged in only rarely or it becomes routine – for me this would be a golden tippy Yunnan which I reserve for special moments. My favorite regular all day long tea is Yorkshire Gold by Taylors of Harrogate – a high end CTC blend mainly from Africa – several of my consultancy clients (in Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa) sell their best clonal teas to Taylors for this one. It’s strong black British tea bag tea that must be made with searingly hot water and have milk added, preferably low fat milk, and for me NO sugar

TG: How did you start on the path to tea geekdom? Briefly describe your history of tea exploration.

NM: Serendipity – I fell into tea in 1980 when I was sent to Papua New Guinea to sort out an agricultural problem on a tea estate (I was a research scientist with Unilever and had just completed two years trials in the Arabian Gulf countries of an arid agriculture product we had produced). Agriculture + Overseas experience gave me 2 out of 3 – the missing 1 being any knowledge of Tea! As the problem turned out to be in the factory and not the field my assistant and I spent 6 months on a very steep hands-on learning curve. In the subsequent 27 years I have continued to learn more about tea every day.

TG: What aspect of tea do you find most fascinating?

NM: The unbelievable number of completely different teas that can be produced from the same shiny green leaves just by subtle manipulation of an entirely natural process – and without adding any other ingredient.

TG: Who have you learned the most from?

NM: In 27 going on 28 years in tea it cannot be a single person I guess – still learning by listening to all those who know more than I do – and also learning by frequently questioning my own knowledge.

TG: What tea resource (book, website, person, etc.) would you recommend for a tea novice?

NM: Google Groups, rec.food.drink.tea – I’d advise to lurk; read; learn; trawl the archives; then contribute

TG: And what’s your own favorite tea resource, potentially for more advanced tea geeks?

NM: A book. Tea: Cultivation to Consumption edited by Ken Willson and Mike Clifford (ISBN 0-412-33850-5) compiled in 1992 but still the definitive technical book on tea – the one I carry with me when consulting around the world.

TG: What does tea mean to you?

NM: A job that fascinates me and allows me to travel internationally for at least three months every year meeting nice people in wonderful scenery.

TG: Name your biggest pet peeve in the realm of tea and tea drinking.

NM: Two answers here: #1. Narrow minded people who cannot see that it is possible to have good CTC teas, and excellent tea bags just as much as you can have poor orthodox tea and lousy leaf tea. High quality tea is possible (and should be strived for) in ANY format. #2. You cannot (despite what some notables in the tea industry believe) you just cannot significantly decaffeinate tea by using a 30 second hot water wash (in fact 30 seconds leaves 91% of the caffeine in place – and removes a lot of the antioxidants)

TG: If you could let everyone in the world know or understand one thing about tea, what would it be?

NM: It’s amazingly healthy and health beneficial – and tastes good too!

TG: What’s the craziest/weirdest/most obsessive thing you’ve ever done in pursuit of your love of tea?

NM: Tea is certainly obsessive. After half a lifetime in a safe career with Unilever I left them in 1990 to set up my own tea technology company – Teacraft Ltd based on zero capital and a dream. Then in 1995 with my wife Helga I added Tea Technology Associates– a tea consultancy and training company. And then in 2002 with my daughter Chrissie we started Nothing But Tea Ltd – an e-commerce company selling rare and specialty teas. Tea is infectious and obsessive and once you become entangled it’s impossible to leave. We have may other future tea ventures up our sleeves – “so much to do, so little time. . .”

TG: Thanks, Nigel!