Mooncakes and Tea Caddies

This is the time of the year where mooncakes are available for sale In Chinese confectionary and grocery shops.  These cakes are made and eaten to celebrate the Chinese mid autumn festival (next week).  If you had not tried mooncakes, they are actually baked pastries filled with sweetened lotus or bean paste.  Some of these cakes may include a salted duck yolk inside.  Somehow, this unusual combination makes eating a mooncake a pleasure to eat.  I love mooncakes.  My daughter managed to snagged a box for me at the Hong Kong Airport while she was there last week.  Yummy.

Mooncakes and Chinese tea makes a great pairing.  The sweetness of the mooncake and sipping Chinese tea makes for an addictive exercise.  I can gobble half a mooncake in one sitting.  I feel pu erh tea and high roasted oolong are good with mooncakes.  

I had received a couple of questions on how I would store my pu erh when I had broken up a cake or tuo.  I would break up the tea cake into small pieces and store them in one of the tea caddies you see the in pix.  The rice porcelain piece is actually a double-boil soup vessel where traditional Chinese soups were prepared in the container and the whole container is half immersed in a large pot of boiling water and cooked for a few hours.  You will notice that this rice porcelain container is double lidded and I am using it as a pu erh tea caddy.  These porcelain containers are easily available in Chinatown in your neighbourhood.  They were inexpensive when I saw them in San Francisco and Toronto Chinese shops during my last visit.    

I would placed the broken pu erh pieces inside and fold the erh wrapper on top of the tea (so I can identify the tea if I had forgotten about the contents).   I will put this tea caddy inside my tea cupboard and only taking it out when I want to brew the tea.  Yes, this container is not airtight, which  allows to tea pieces inside to breathe (Chinese call this Xin Cha).  This allows the pu erh to 'awake' and I personally find that the tea tasted better if  allowed to breathe for at least 2 weeks after breaking up your pu erh.  

In addition, the paper boxed tea caddy and the used oolong tin, in the above pix, are also equally good, in my opinion to store your pu erh tea.  I am using 8 tea caddies for my pu erh (5 raw and 3 ripe).   

How do you store your pu erh tea for daily drinking? 

Plates And Dishes

Give your old plates and dishes a new lease of life by using them in your tea sessions.

I am sure there are small plates and dishes in  your kitchen cupboard (or even at your mom's place).  These porcelain pieces could be the remnants of a complete set of dinnerware that got accidentally broken over time leaving you with the odd surviving piece.  You could had bought such pieces at a garage sale or from a flea market.  

Some of these porcelain can be used in a tea session.  You would have noticed from the pictures I had used them as teacup or teapot plate stands.  I had collected these plates during my tea travels.  A few of these plates were inexpensive as they were found in flea markets or in the odd and ends shelf of a shop.  The last pix shows an old plate, which I believed was made about 40-50 years ago. There were Chinese villagers that may own similar designed porcelain and the families would carve their surname on the porcelain pieces for easy identification in the event that there was a village gathering or party where villagers 'lend' their plates for the occasion.  You can make out the surname 'Lu' on the plate.  

I feel using such plates and dishes makes a tea session more interesting.  It does add a little whimsical nostalgia when you sipped your tea.  Wouldn't it be nice if you later discover that you owned a rare porcelain piece that can sell for a million dollars.  Dream on.  

2006 Fu Hai 7536 Menghai Pu erh Cake

This is a 7536 recipe produced by Fu Hai Tea Factory.  This 2006 raw pu erh, is already 11 years old and this tea had been stored in Singapore for about 10 years.  The information slip in the tea stated that the pu erh is harvested from the Menghai region.  Pu erh tea drinkers would be familiar with the Menghai region as many vintage and classical old cakes were traditionally made from this region.  

This tea had aged well over the 10 years in Singapore.  The tea when brewed is mellow and sweet.  Notice the pleasant dark gold color of the tea.  Surprisingly, I found the tea paired nicely with fresh fruits (apples, pear and peaches).  I felt, that sipping the tea after having these fruits, the tea tasted sweeter.   Overall the tea has a nice pleasant sweet aftertaste and a nice floral-herbal  complexity In the tea.  I recommend that this tea should be brewed on the stronger side....by adding an extra gram of tea to your standard brew.

But I digress.  Making your tea on the stronger side......adding more tea leaves or a longer infusion?  Don't you get a strong tea from both methods?  Yes, but there are 2 main differences.  

a) using more leaves can get you more infusions in your tea session.  If you let your tea infuse for a longer time after every pour, you would get lesser rounds of tea.

b) there is a difference in taste and aroma.  The chi or energy from the tea is more pronounced with adding more leaves.  

I would try to get an ideal brew when I opened a pu er tea cake.  Yes, its a personal preference in terms of strength.  It would normally take a few brews for me to determine whether I should use more/less leaves and the infusion times for the brew.  It may take 3-4 tea sessions before I settle down and conclude the brewing parameters for the tea.  How do you, my reader, determine your brewing parameters for your tea, please share with me your methods.  Thank you.