Tuesday, April 16, 2019

A Closer Look At Tea Infusers








Tea Infusers are tea ware that help you brew tea leaves in a container, which acts something as a teabag.  Tea infusers will contain your loose tea leaves and prevents  bits of tea leaves (most of it anyway) from mixing into the teapot or kettle.  

In most cases, it makes easier cleaning of the teapot when you are trying to remove and a dispose the tea leaves after a tea session.  The big teapot at pix 4 gave me a hard time when I try to remove the tea leaves when I am washing up.  I would normally fill the pot with some water and turn it upside down to wash the leaves out.....which may be take an additional rinse or two most of the time.  

Should you get a tea infuser?  No....its not necessary.  But if your teapot comes with one as in pix 1 and 2, then it might be a fun experiment to try brewing your tea with the infuser.  

But for the bigger tea pot in pix 4, I would now brew my tea in a smaller teapot and pour all 10-12 infusions into the bigger teapot.  

The stainless steel tea infuser in pix 3, is about the size of a baseball.  This can be opened by unscrewing the infuser and placing your tea leaves inside.  This infuser comes with a chain and you can use it like a giant tea bag and jiggle it in a teapot of hot water.  

There are now many fanciful infusers available for you to use.  I have seen the Star Wars Deathstar model and even a Jaws shark infuser.  These are eye catching and may even be a collectible hobby for the tea enthusiast.  


Monday, April 1, 2019

2005 Taetea Dayi Raw Pu erh Tuo








Taetea or Dayi tea is a popular tea among the Chinese tea drinking community.  Many tea drinkers will easily rattle out Dayi's famous and popular tea like 7542, 7572 and even list the many special Dayi editions like the recent Colourful peacock.

Dayi produces tuo shaped pu erh tea too.  They are not as popular as the Xiaguan tuos but older Dayi tuos are now hard to find as most of these are in the hands of collectors. Newer tuos and even some Dayi teas post-2013 had a change in the processing of tea.  My Dayi collector friends in Malaysia and China call this new process as 'dark horse technology' and had stopped collecting these tea except for special Dayi editions.  I shall devote a blog entry on this issue.

Pix shows a 2005 Dayi 100g too.  It is no surprise that the tea is composed of pu erh tea leaves harvested from the Menghai region as the factory is located in Menghai.  I enjoy tea from the Menghai region for its signature floral bitter sweet taste and the fragrant sweet aftertaste.  This tea did not disappoint.  Strong bitter herbal taste with a sweaty chi after downing a few infusions.  Impressive  - the 'kick' as good as banzhang in my opinion.  

This tea is hard to find. Will keep my eyes open when I go shopping for tea when I am overseas next month.