03 April 2016

grit

Good to be back having a proper tea session after only drinking Lipton bags in Charleston @_@"
(though the bagged black tea that Georgia gave me is perfectly fine, Lipton is barely drinkable)

This weekend's theme is clay pots, with last session's sheng in my lion pot and some DHP that I bought from Zen's Tea (intended to give to John as a thank-you, but ended up picking up a bag for myself as well) in the little hongni shuipin.


This pot may now be dedicated to shengs...which makes sense as it looks to be zhini (but all my talks of clay is only a barely educated guess at best). The tea did brew up exceptionally smooth. Not too much body, but I don't have notes on that from the previous session to compare. Going to repeat this set-up next weekend with the last bit of my sample to explore further.

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I don't recall if I ever posted about my first visit to Zen's Tea and the excitement I felt when I tasted this DHP. The taste was identical to how I remember my first ever DHP that my dad brought from China, probably the tea that kickstarted this (expensive) obsession with yancha. That particular taste is always what I look for in subsequent yanchas and unfortunately did not encounter until that visit to Zen's Tea.
But now I'm realizing that the taste is more likely to be the result of brewing parameters than the specific tea, since I flash-brewed this and it tasted so strongly of stone-fruits and somewhat bitter, aka nothing like that taste. The shop uses more western parameters in a glazed cast-iron pot, which retains heat like a beast compared to this hongni pot. Perhaps I'll try grandpa brewing this next time since that's the likeliest method that I used as a kid.

Psst I'm also really liking the soft shadows. It's similar to vsco cam's fade slider.

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