Tea Goals – Re-enlivening the practice

Since I began writing this blog, I feel like my tea drinking has entered a new phase. I’ve tried all the types of tea, I’ve tried so much water, I have all sorts of teaware, and I’ve enjoyed thousands of gongfu tea sessions. While in some ways I am not very experienced – I have never been to China, Japan, Taiwan etc., I feel like I am a pretty experienced tea drinker nowadays.

After drinking tea for a while, it can be easy to settle into routines, to literally “go through the motions” of gongfu tea practice. Grab a teapot, grab a tea, weigh it, load the teapot, do the session, dump it out, clean up, repeat. After a few hundred iterations of this, it can become a little routine – less and less exciting over time. I love tea so the practice never loses its charm, but sometimes it feels like I could have gotten / used to get much more out of my hour long sit. Luckily, there are all sorts of things we can do to prevent this deterioration and keep things fresh.

1) Getting new things

Change one thing about your tea practice, and you change everything. A new unglazed clay teapot makes every tea taste different and feel different to pour. A new chabu (tea mat) stimulates your mind and its associations to what you’re doing and feeling in a different way. Even a new waste bowl / jianshui sets the tone uniquely. A new teatable gives you and your guests a memorable setting for everything! So, you can always mindfully choose a cup or pitcher or anything that might make your sessions feel new and exciting.

2) Presence

Zen aphorism: if you drink tea, just drink your tea. Where I work, the tea room doesn’t allow technology at the tea table. When I’m home, anything is allowed, but sometimes I have to set the intention before the session to make this about presence, not about consumption or entertainment. For my sessions at home, the music playlist, cassette tape or vinyl record goes on, and the phone goes face down on the table, the modern gesture of defiance of being controlled by tech.

Then, it’s a matter of being present to my actions and sensations. The experience magnifies – what was once just abstractly/conceptually “drinking tea” becomes a living reality. There is so much going on at the tea table, it makes any possible distraction seem boring by comparison. There’s truly a universe inside each teapot, I mean, not to wax poetic, but you can’t get to the bottom of it. There’s really a lot going on and it’s constantly shifting and revealing new aspects. You miss all of that when you don’t pay attention, and the longer you pay attention, the deeper you go. The deeper you go, the better you feel, and the more likely you are to discover something you’ve never noticed before. Right?

3) Technique

I have to admit, even though I’ve made tea for a long time, because of the person I am, I can be a bit messy and inconsistent. When people do gongfu with a very defined sequence of movements, it looks flawless. I don’t really have that – I go by intuition, so things move around, aren’t set in stone, improvised, done in different orders. Perhaps that’s indicative of a sort of neuroticism. So, I’d like to arrive at a smooth and professional style of serving gongfu that still contains my personal essence. This is a very fruitful development in tea practice: discovering your way of serving and then codifying it into something you can follow consistently. Doing this, you can stop thinking about what you’re doing entirely, and then just move with the tea effortlessly. This probably looks really good and feels very satisfying. So try even writing down a sequence of events, like if/when you pour water over the teapot etc., and try it out/tweak over time until it solidifies.

4) Water (gypsum)

Water is crazy – want to revitalize your tea practice? Move to a new city/country. Everything changes. Water is the communicator of tea. Water expresses tea. The different mineral content and other aspects of the water will change how it tastes and how the mouthfeel is, for every tea you have. It also changes the energy and feeling of the tea. If you don’t want to move, try this little tip. 5-10mg of gypsum in your kettle will intensify and brighten your session, maybe revealing new flavors. Try it! Also, getting a good filter like an everpure will reveal more subtle flavors that were being masked before. Fresh!

5) Friends

Don’t be shy – have friends over for tea or bring your tea to a house party and set up a little tea corner. There’s something about opening up your personal tea practice to others that is very gratifying and helps you look at your own ways of enjoying tea with fresh eyes. When you have sessions with friends, let them make you a pot or two also. Comparing your tea practice to others allows you to learn so much about different perspectives and relationships to tea. Everyone makes tea so uniquely! You might say, wow this tea would never have come out this way had you not come over and brewed it for me. I appreciate this tea even more now. Thank you! Let’s grab some lunch, I’m starving!

Goals:

This is sort of a sixth idea, but also is an overall concept: it’s good to have goals for your tea practice to give it some forward momentum. They can be related to the five ideas above, but also to anything you can think of. For me, my personal examples are:

I want to be more present during my tea sessions
I want to improve my technique to make it more consistent and fluid
I want to test out my presence and technique in front of people and get joy from that

Some other hypothetical #teagoals would be:

make your water more satisfying / find a good brand of bottled water for special occasion tea sessions
find a new piece of teaware that resonates with you
learn how to experience cha qi more intimately
understand the general differences between puer tea regions and how they age
learn which teas will taste good to make for different people

So think about your tea goals! What do you want to accomplish to enjoy tea even more – how can you challenge yourself and strengthen your tea practice? How could your experience be even better, and how do you want to feel when you make tea? With these things in mind, you will have a better time with your tea.

On Britas

Hey everyone! Long time, no blog. Hope everyone’s been enjoying their tea in the meantime – I know I have! I took a trip up to Setting Sun Tea Hut in Vermont, which has beautiful tea, an awesome experience, and great well water for tea – they don’t even have to filter it. There, we had tea with tetsubins, clay kettles (chaozhou and novak), and copper kettles. The differences in each were striking – I had never tried a tetsubin before. I am sure there is a reaction going on in there on the iron-water interface.

Something like this, and this might not be the only one.

In the above reaction, the iron from the kettle binds with the water and releases hydrogen ions. Interestingly, a similar thing happens in a Brita filter, the most popular water filter around.

I’ve been familiar with them for a long time, but only recently did I understand what a Brita filter does. If you have a TDS meter, you may notice that water run through a Brita has around 20% lower TDS reading, and has a more acidic pH. They curiously don’t advertise these two features – probably because “alkaline water” is believed to be better than acidic. But why and how does it do this to the water?

In addition to activated carbon, which improves the water’s taste, Britas contain ion exchange resin pellets. In this case, these are beads that specifically accept a calcium ion (Ca2+) and give off hydrogen ions (2H+). The result of this is twofold. First, the hardness of the water is reduced, due to reduced calcium. Second, the alkalinity of the water is also reduced, because (and this is what I just figured out) the acidic hydrogen ions are neutralized by the HCO3- buffer forming H2CO3, or carbonic acid.

I used to think this was a very mild and subtle change – after all, TDS only goes down 20% on average. But recently, I took very hard, 500 TDS spring water that scales aggressively when boiled, ran it through the Brita, and boiled it. And what did I find? No scale at all. I was shocked! This means that almost all the temporary hardness (calcium-bicarbonate) is taken out. The resulting tea was way different. With the unfiltered 500 TDS water, tea is thick and muted. After the Brita, the water measured only 220 TDS, and the tea was hollow and forward.

This is when I realized that Brita filters radically alter the mineral profile of water. They cause already forward waters to be more forward and hollow out/brighten up, and cause less-present waters to become thinner and milder, but also brighter. Now, don’t get me wrong, they can still make good tea – in fact, I had a great session with an older raw puer last week with Brita-filtered NYC (Brooklyn) tap water. However, it’s definitely worth knowing that Britas don’t just make your tea taste better, they radically alter the mineral composition – and not always for the better. It’s worth testing for yourself – what do you like? Brita, or something like a Waterdrop that doesn’t change mineral content at all? (EDIT – waterdrop now reduces hardness…..) Or even a blend? I personally am still alternating between many different options in order to learn more.

Between (Three) Teapots

I was recently featured on Crimson Lotus Tea’s livestream show, Between Two Teapots! I got to talk about water with Glen, founder of Crimson Lotus Tea and with Arby, my friend and water collaborator. We drank the same tea with the same water recipe that we created, Truth Serum. Two hours long, I feel like we only scratched the surface. Here it is for you to watch!

I found it amazing that Glen noticed an obvious difference in the tea brewed with Truth Serum compared to his normal water. This is due to the Hardness to Alkalinity ratio (see the WIP Water Guide) being twice as high as his usual. The sensory overload of extraction that you can get with TS is really quite fun to explore! I can’t wait to make more waters that are a bit more subtle and subdued, while still delivering plenty of power. Feel free to message me on IG @teasecretsblog with any water questions – I’m here to help you dial in your tea.

Water Filter Advice

Keeping it simple!

There are many water filters out there, from pitchers to RO membranes to charcoal sticks. I have played with a whole bunch, and my favorite kind of filter is this one:

The 1 Micron Carbon Block Filter

It hooks up directly to the end of a faucet. You remove the aerator and screw it on. Carbon block filters also can come as fridge filters. The activated carbon removes chlorine taste and nasty chemicals from the water, leaving the minerals intact. So, if the mineral balance of your tap water is decent, this might be the best way to powerfully clean it up without taking anything beneficial away.

UPDATE: I now prefer the waterdrop brand filter pitcher, it’s slightly better than these carbon block filters and certainly a bit easier.

Beginners and Experts

In the world of tea, what do we gain with experience?

What’s the difference between an experienced tea drinker and a relative novice? I’m not an expert, but I’m closer to being an expert than I used to be. I’ve also interacted with many people I would consider to be experts, especially in certain areas. Here are a few things people seem to collect along the way.

Tea and teaware

I’ve not met any tea enthusiast who does not have a sizable collection. From people with over 100 teapots to those with entire rooms full of tea, there exist tea-fans so obsessed that they have gone beyond practicality. The more you learn about tea, and the more tea you learn about, the more temptation there is to buy it. Marketing is getting better and better, limited releases are everywhere (white2tea, pu-erh.sk, others), and the selection of teaware is unbelievable. It is very difficult to purposefully reduce the size of your tea/teaware stash over time, and the best way is a sale or swap.

The ability to relax and enjoy

In order to fully enjoy tea, one must drop everything else (aside from possibly a good book or album). I mean to say that worry and tea don’t go well together, especially not worry about tea. I see most (not all) beginners quite concerned about if they are making the tea “right.” Eventually, an expert learns to let the tea make itself. This is done partially through development of personal style and habit, and otherwise learning how to relax and make tea at the same time.

The ability to make good tea

Of the ten thousand ways to make tea, not all are good. Making good tea is about maximizing good qualities and minimizing bad ones. It is an iterative process that comes from many attempts. The more pots one has, the longer it takes to learn their nuances, and the worse the available water is, well, you gotta figure out a solution. The better the water is, the easier it is to make good tea. The point is, people usually get better with experience, or at least develop some character and style in their resulting tea.

Positive memories

Some tea sessions stick out over others for various reasons. With experience, the list of memorable tea sessions lengthens. That time I had HK Henry after a long, stressful day. The outdoor session at the pond in the woods. That six-tea marathon session. The tea masterclass where the puers just got older and older. That time the tea made me tear up (it happens to more people than you think!) That first bitter-turning-to sweet taste of raw puer. And the list goes on.

Friendship

I’ve met some people online and offline in the tea community. Some of these friendships go beyond tea, but it’s perfectly possible and okay to have deep friendships entirely about tea. There are one-sided relationships too – some people serve as the experts and others as the novices. The best way to put your own tea journey in context is to show others what you are doing and compare with what they do. This is not to say that people with more experience are necessarily correct, but that they may have reasons for what they do that you can think about as you decide what to incorporate in different ways.

Personal opinions / the (dis)respect of others

The tea culture is a generally polite place full of different opinions. Most tea-learning is confirmed by experience, and people don’t easily let go of that which they’ve learned from experience. There are usually reasons for differing opinions but they are not easy to figure out. So, there are commonly long arguments about, for example, tea storage, unglazed vs. glazed clay, vendor choices, whether a tea is good or bad, and water (this one seems especially contentious). This is what makes tea so exciting to an expert, especially one who is willing to change their mind.

Appreciation of non-tea

The more one learns to enjoy tea, the more that enjoyment spills over into non-tea elements. Whether it’s the world of alcoholic beverages, from single malts to wine to beer to eaux-de-vie, or just appreciation of nature, tea is about exploring the richness of the world to the fullest extent. Eventually, one learns to enjoy simply living and breathing.

Patience and its rewards

Patience is a virtue, and tea requires patience. Waiting for the water to boil takes patience. Waiting for the hot tea to cool a bit takes patience. Waiting for those loooong steeps at the end of a session takes patience. And all that patience is rewarded with a slow, steady adventure. It’s quite uncomfortable to wait so long doing nothing when you are a tea novice, but eventually it becomes clear that doing nothing is the gateway to a clear experience of reality, or something like that.

Learning from mistakes / Beginner’s mind

It’s easy to mess up a session, or brew a tea for a significant other that evokes the reaction of disgust, or spill tea all over your pants. It’s also incredibly common to have your most expensive tea with your favorite teaware and be completely let down by the result. This is learning, and why the best approach to tea is not as an expert, but as a beginner, open to whatever may happen in the current circumstance. The tea experts I respect the most don’t have any pretentious attitude, but simply know how to enjoy and share tea in their own way, and especially are good at listening to experts and beginners alike.

59676321265__B69833B3-DE55-4B9C-83B7-415B88B2D0EF — at puerh brooklyn

P.S. I’m doing a lot of hard, time-consuming, mildly expensive work with water, and plan to share it with the world around March 2020. Sorry for the wait, but distilling water takes many hours, and my glass lab equipment is in customs. Thanks for reading!

One week without tea

If you’re getting tired in the evenings, consider how much tea you drink. I just did one week with no caffeine, when usually I would have around 9 grams of tea per day. Now, with only two grams of gyokuro I can reach my caffeine limit, where I have a sufficient buzz and my heart tells me “no more, that’s enough.” I noticed that now when I have my sessions, since I am more sensitive I am enjoying the sessions so much more. When tea is not necessary in an addictive sense, it is much more of a joy.

Today I had YS 8891 red label in a YS Hei Jin Gang clay yixing. I used to think the pot was terrible (too porous, no flavor) but actually it makes the tea so soft, the notes that are left over are very enjoyable and on average the tea is thicker than in porcelain. Speaking of porcelain, look forward to a post on comparing different porcelain cups.

Since I am so sensitive, I just ordered a 45ml (tiny) yixing so I can enjoy a strong, yet tiny session with only 2.5g of sheng. I have a 50 ml shibo from stefan andersson but it burns a bit when holding it and I’m beginning to see the deep benefits of yixing.

I have yixing pots and european clay pots and it will be interesting to note the similarities and differences. Overall, to refresh your tea experience, go a week without it. It’s the best thing you can do.

Adventures in Water

This post is OUTDATED, but I’m leaving it here for history’s sake! This was very early in my work and play with water.

Around a year ago, I read in the book “The Ancient Art of Tea” that water can be seen as the limiting factor of tea. To paraphrase, if the tea leaves are 10/10 quality, and the water is 8/10, then the resulting tea will be 8/10. It’s well known that water affects the quality of the tea. In fact, MarshalN said that water is more important than tea leaves in terms of potential to improve the quality of tea for your money, although I can’t find that specific post right now for some reason. Here’s some more evidence from the blogosphere that water matters:

http://www.marshaln.com/2016/09/the-taste-of-water/

https://kuura.co/blogs/dispatch/water

https://teadb.org/online-tea-reviews/ (Scroll down a bit to the part about distilled water)

I started drinking tea with friends right when I started thinking about water as it relates to tea. It quickly became apparent that because of my water, my tea sessions at home did not meet expectations. Flavor was muted, body was thin, and instead of enjoying the tea with friends, we felt really unsatisfied and ended up experimenting with water instead. It took many attempts before I figured out a water “solution” that works for me.

First, I tried the babelcarp water app. It tells me how much epsom salt and gypsum to add to my filtered tap water to approximate a mineral water. I added enough to approximate volvic because I had decent results with that brand in the past. It sort of worked, but not really. I could try that again, but the problem is that epsom salt and gypsum are both sulfates. They don’t contain any carbonates, which would help make calcium carbonate, which thickens the body of the tea. So, I found that to be a good step, but not completely what I was looking for. I also tried using sticks of bamboo charcoal in my kettle, but that made the tea lose its vitality entirely. I think it was overpurifying the water and removing dissolved gases.

Then, I tried making water based on this brewing water calculator meant for mineralizing water for beer. The resulting concoction was much too thick for tea, and left a sort of slimy feeling on the teeth, but it was making my tea ultra thick, which was a step in the right direction. Without thickness, tea (puerh in particular) isn’t very fun, and you’re not extracting the full flavor.

I started trying every conceivable brand of bottled water that I could get my hands on. Iceland spring, Volvic, Crystal Geyser, the local supermarket brand, and then finally Nestle Purelife. Some waters were thick, some left a layer of scale on the surface of the tea, some were harsh, and some were quite refreshing. Volvic was thick but muted in taste, while Iceland Spring was refreshing but harsh. Shunan Teng, who runs Tea Drunk in New York City, told me that Nestle Purelife is the only bottled water she likes for tea. So I was using that for a while, with decent results. I realized that I could actually reverse-engineer Nestle Purelife to make my own. I bought calcium chloride, epsom salt, and baking soda, and added it to my filtered tap water with my estimations of how much is in Purelife based on reports on their website. And then, suddenly, my tea came alive.

My tea became thick and full, miles better than the pure filtered tap water without minerals added. It was even coming out a bit better than Purelife. I tried white2tea’s carbolic soap oolong with it, and it was phenomenal. Tried again without the minerals, it tasted weak and underwhelming. These minerals were helping me get what I needed out of $1/gram tea. The water was no longer limiting the tea, in other words.

I have been tweaking my recipe ever since. I have found that potassium bicarbonate and potassium chloride tend to make the tea ultra ultra harsh even in very small quantities. I stick with epsom salt, calcium chloride, and baking soda, because they react to produce calcium carbonate (chalk) to enhance body, and the dissolved magnesium enhances the flavor.

One thing that helped my tea immensely was switching water filter pitcher brands. I had been using Brita and Nakii pitchers, but once I ran out of those filters, I decided to try the Waterdrop. I am in love with this pitcher. Sometimes, I make tea just with the filtered water from this pitcher, and it’s really decent. I decide to use the mineralized water when I just want that extra juice from my tea. This is with Brooklyn tap water, so your milage may vary.

My current recipe is, for every gallon of filtered tap water (you could also try distilled water, but I haven’t done this), add 75 mg baking soda, 75 mg calcium chloride, and 75 mg epsom salt. (UPDATE: My current recipe is 100 mg baking soda, 75 mg calcium chloride, and 50 mg epsom salt.) This results in a water that is still refreshing, with enhanced thickness, taste and throatiness. Hopefully you can try this, let me know if it works for you, and maybe it will save you from the headaches I have had on the way to figuring this out. Water is very very complicated; there are whole books on water and there are even water sommeliers. With water, it’s much deeper than it seems on the surface.