My Online Store - Time To Revamp

 

I am suppose to reopen my online store when I had returned from my USA trip last month.  I will need a little bit more time. 

I want to tinker with my product offerings. Let me elaborate. You would agree that the prices of tea had gone up significantly, especially after the 3 years of covid.  Many goods and services, beside tea, had seen their prices gone up. My regular local chicken rice or beef noddle meals had increased by more than 25% and I find that my overall monthly expenses had gone up.  I can imagine as a Chinese tea drinker as myself, ordering and buying tea can burn a little hole in your wallet. 

This is what I plan to do in my online store. I will like to give my buyers a more exciting, informative and hopefully a happy and inexpensive experience in my store. I am thinking of offering tea that you can compare say within a brand, or a vintage year or comparing tea being store in different regions ( Malaysia, Hong Kong or Guangzhou storage). You need not buy entire cakes of pu erh but I will offer you an economic option of purchasing in say 50g or 100g. This meant say you want to try a 2009 Dayi 7542 and a 2009 Dayi 8582, I will be selling as a set of 50g of each tea. Like wise you can also try selection of old pu erh storage from Hong Kong vs Malaysia in 50g packs. This would allow you to appreciate the many varieties of pu erh as well as the results of storage from different regions. 

We can also have a tasting discussion online where we can have a live chat or even a group video face to face discussion where we can exchange our views or even disagree whether there is a sweet aftertaste in the tea.

I hope this inclusion of 'study' tea packs will provide you a wider appreciation of the Chinese tea without hurting yuur wallet.

So stay tune while I tinker and consider the tea that I will offer as 'study 'packs.  If you have suggestions what you like to see in my store, let me know. Thank you.    

Tea Exchange

 

I had been talking about tea exchange in my posts and one reader asked how he can exchange tea with me. 

A tea exchange with me is simple. When both of us get to meet .......we would exchange a tea or tea ware with each other.  You can tell me what you would like from me; whether it's a pu erh, oolong, liu bao or other tea you like. It may also be a teapot or teacup....provided I have extras.  In return, you can give me a tea or tea ware in exchange. I hope that we can experience and appreciate the different tea storage conditions of our collections. 

This exchange can take place in Singapore. if you are local or visiting Singapore, let me know and we can not only have a tea exchange but have a meal together as well. Same when I am overseas, we can meet, have a meal and a tea exchange as well. I had met and made many new tea buddies this way. 

We can also meet up overseas when we 'happen' to be at the same place at the same time.  I am hoping to travel to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and possibly Seoul later this year. Tea exchange anyone? 

2013 BaiShaXi Black Tea Brick

I have added black tea into my tea drinking repertoire. I now brew black tea at least once a week. The pix above is a 2013  black tea brick produced under by the Baishaxi tea factory. This factory primarily produced black tea and is like the 'Dayi' brand of pu erh. 

What is black tea?  It is actually a popular tea that is enjoyed all of the world. Really. Those teabags you see sold in supermarkets are black tea. Many of this black tea is produced in China, India, Africa and Sri Lanka. Yes, the teabag you jiggle in your mug (sometimes milk and sugar is added) came from these major producers. The aroma and flavours of the tea from these teabags are 'blended' that the tea would taste the same in taste and aroma today, next month and even a year from now. 

This black tea brick is more in a raw form in that nothing has been blended into the tea.   Moreover long term storage of this Chinese black tea, which is highly desirable, make this tea an aromatic and delightful drink. 

This 2013 black tea had undergone fermentation during the production process.....something like shou pu erh. However the taste and aroma is different. While shou pu erh is more earthly or has toasty bread aromatics, black tea is more like a Chinese herbal medical tea concoction with a light sweet aftertaste. I had mentioned a tea buddy in Penang, Malaysia who brewed 7g of black tea into 500ml water and slow simmer the tea over a charcoal stove. You can imagine the intensity of the taste and aroma of the tea. I will try this setup soon, but meanwhile I brew my black tea in a teapot and and let it infuse for a couple of minutes per infusion. Good for 2-3 infusions.  

Malaysia Pu erh Tea Club 10th Anniversary Cake

How do you commemorate a pu erh tea club 10th anniversary?  Duh...obviously with producing a puerh cake. Yes, this was what they did.  This is the 2014 10th anniversary raw pu erh cake. This tea were from the Lincang area and the cake was pressed iron cake style. The pressing is different from the traditional Xiaguan iron cakes in that this cake is smooth on both sides unlike the Xiaguan version which is spiky on one side of the cake. 

I decided to open a cake and brewed up a session of this tea. There were many things Iike about this tea.  This tea brews strong. There is a long lightly sweet aftertaste. A wispy smoky camphor aroma makes this tea a delightful drink. 

I will take about 50g of this tea for my USA trip (Portland, Chicago and Seattle). If you like to have a tea exchange with me, please let me know and I will look forward to meet you. 

It is a pity that many new pu erh cakes produced are so much different now. Many newer pu erh  tea are more floral 'green tea' taste.  I am happy to have enough of the old style pu erh in my collection to last me a long time.  

Questions About Dark Tea

 

I had posted an entry about dark tea last week and Peter, a reader  posed the following question -

"I've been to Penang and seen that these giant bricks are very popular with older tea drinkers. Is it because they are so cheap? There are tea shops that seem to only sell these teas."

He was referring to those very heavy (about 1.5kg) bricks that you see in the 2nd pix

Here is my response:

1.  Yes, Peter you are right about black tea is generally cheaper than say oolong or pu erh tea. Gram for gram, those black tea bricks whether the small (1st pix) or larger bricks (2nd pix) are cheaper than pu erh tea. 

2.  One reason is that there is a much larger pu erh (or oolong) tea drinking community than the black tea drinker groups. There is also a very large group of pu erh collectors that buy to store for  investment. It is actual commodity trading except this time its pu erh tea. It is interesting to know that many limited and high end pu erh factory productions for the past 10 years are often sold out at product launch. These tea are never drank but are bought and sold like trophies. As far as I know, these black tea bricks are mainly purchased for drinking. Yes, there are collectors that aged these black tea bricks to sell but these resold black tea are usually bought up to be consumed. 

3. Black tea includes other fermented tea that include liu bao and ripe or shou pu erh. Older versions of these tea can be quite expensive now. 

Who knows. Black tea bricks may be the new investment tea in the next few years. 

A Crash Course On Black Tea

I was in Penang, Malaysia last week.  I was at the food fair and there was an area in the food expo devoted to Chinese tea. There were not many tea booths there.  A little disappointed but the fabulous local Penang food made my stay there very enjoyable.

I was fortunate to meet a hardcore black tea drinker and I learnt many things from this new tea buddy. Here are the things I learnt about black tea.  

1.  The local tea community here in Malaysia called Black tea as dark tea than black tea.  Dark tea is considered Chinese tea that had undergone deliberate fermentation during tea processing before the tea is sold.  Hence, according to my tea buddy, tea like ripe/shou pu erh, liu bao,  Si Chuan Tibetan tea, AnHua gold flower tea and the famous BaiShaXi famous black tea bricks are all regarded as dark tea. It appeared to me the dark tea categorisation of fermented tea is quite broad.

2,  I was told dark tea in Malaysia are brewed 2 ways. The first is kung fu cha style.....add tea leaves in a tea pot and brew as you would would with other Chinese tea like oolong or pu erh. The 2nd way is to boil the tea. I was told to brew 8g of tea with 500ml of water.  Boil the tea at a slow simmer for 5-10 minutes and the tea is ready to drink.   This is similar to Chinese herbal brew where you add 3 bowls of water to a bag of herbs and boil till about 2 bowls of  herbal tea is left.  The dark tea will be extremely aromatic and strong and the taste is more complex. I cannot wait to try this boiling method. 

3.  I was told that dark tea needs a minimum of 5 years of storage before the tea is ready to drink. I was taken to a Chinese tea shop in Penang and bought some tea to start my dark tea adventures. The 2 bricks in the 1st pix are at left a 2015 Baishaxi 1.6kg black tea brick, The yellow box is a year 2000 Si Chuan Tibetan 1,7kg brick. The 2nd pix showed a 2019 gold flower Anhua tea. This tea has gold flower mold introduced to the tea during processing.   The white wrapper is a 500g slice 2021 Chian Liang Cha. This is an actual slice from a 30kg tea log.  I also managed to get a 2kg bag of black tea stems. I was told boiling these stems would give off a very strong Chinese herbal medicinal taste. 

I look forward to start my dark tea adventures.    

2021 Xiaguan Raw Tuo

 

A new local tea buddy recently contacted me telling me that he wanted to buy some tea to age at home.  He was thinking about buying Xiaguan and wanted to buy a carton of tuo to store at home.  He asked me what I thought about the new Xiaguan raw tuos

It so happened I had bought a pack of 2021 tuo. This is the 'te tuo'. The name, I conclude is a shortened name version of their popular 'te ji' tuo. 

As you can see.  the packaging had changed. The 'palace and lake' illustration was gone......all words now.  The tuo wrapper is a white wrapper. These visual changes are not important to me. The tea itself is more important. 

Here are my observations and thoughts

1.  The smoke level of this tea is low.  Really low. I could detect a very faint smoke in the 1st two infusions before the smoke fades away.  The early versions I own (pre 2007) was more smoky.  I remembered when I had opened my first te ji tuo (2007 version), the strong smoke caught me by surprise. 

2. The floral aroma and lightly sweet aftertaste is pleasant.  The tea brews reasonably strong. 

3. This tea will age but the results of aging will be very much different from that of the earlier productions of te ji tuo due the very light smokiness in the production. 

4.  I would advise my new tea buddy that there is no need to buy a carton of this tea to store away......but instead buy a variety of Xiaguan tea or even other brands (4-5 choices) to fill a carton instead.  In 10-15 years time, your box will have a good variety of aged tea to drink and enjoy. That's my 2 cents worth.