Streetshop88

From Dexter, so I can decide if I want to buy a cake or not. :) Thank you!

I have an online meeting this morning, and a tea setup on my desk. So of course I had to take advantage and try to gongfu a tea while taking minutes. :D

1 quick rinse, because it was pretty compact. Then it rested FOREVER while my fancy kettle boiled.

1 steep, IDK about 5 seconds. Maybe I’ll drink this. Hmm. Oh hey that’s pretty good. I have coffee lingering still, but the tea is pretty sweet. There’s a bit of that musty-fishy smell in this rinse/steep still, but it’s super mild.

2 steep, whoops I got distracted. BLACK TEA. Smells yummy though. Kinda fruity. There’s a bright bitterness at the end of the sip.

3 steep, distracted again. I accidentally mixed 2 and 3 in my milk jug.

4 steep, … I got busy with typing. But I’m drinking all the tea! Yum yum yum.

? ? ? How many steeps did I get? I honestly have no idea. But so far, so good.

(CRACKLES! http://instagram.com/p/yXXRHbR5A9/ )

Edit: I’ve gone through just about 2 litres of water drinking this today, with about 1 cup of waste product… WHOA.

Wow this is good!!!!
http://instagram.com/p/yGVOtIuE9Y/?modal=true

Edit: I need to write more than just it’s good. This is a perfect hybrid between a fuzzy golden bud Yunnan black tea (malty, sweet, chocolatey, sweet potato) and a really nice smooth ripe pu’erh (earthy and subterranean). There is nothing nasty in this tea. It’s flavorful without being in your face. I love it. Great way to step outside my comfort zone into the wonderful world of shou pu’erh.

You are probably at this point (or even earlier) wondering what happened to Tea Book Sunday, well it has not died, it has evolved to Tea Stuff Sunday to encompass all those things that are related to tea but not exactly tea. I figure I will run out of tea books eventually, and there are some weeks when I am too swamped reading books for review purposes on Netgalley or Goodreads that I just don’t have time to read a tea book (tragic, I know.) So have no fear, there will be more books, but there will also be other cool tea themed things.

Like today! I am looking at the newest addition to my tea gear collection, Jing De Gongfu Porcelain Plum Blossom Bamboo Gaiwan Tea Set from ebay, it was a birthday present (by way of a monetary gift) from my grandparents (fun fact, while visiting them I taught my grandmother how to use a gaiwan, she loves it!) I added this unusual collection to my wishlist months ago, but ended up buying the bat gaiwan instead because it would be more versatile.

This set is very much so not perfect for all teas, well that is not true, the cha hai and cups work for anything, but the gaiwan is more specialized. I bought it specifically for ‘needle’ teas, long curly leafed teas, and basically ones that do not need room to unfurl. Not a gaiwan suited for my much loved balled up oolongs, that is for sure. While some people might consider this limitation a negative, I love it because it means I have a gaiwan with a really unique shape. Also, the width of the gaiwan’s lip means I have not once burned myself with it.

The cha hai might be my favorite part of this set (even if it oddly lacks the red coloring on the plum blossoms) because it reminds me of a calla lily, each time I pour with it I feel like I am pouring nectar from a flower. It adds a bit of whimsy into my tea brewing, which I love. It also has a mostly clean pour, the only time it drips is if I goof and hold it at a weird angle while pouring

The cups are lovely, they are a tiny bit translucent in their thinness, and this is beautiful. It does also mean that the heat transference is pretty intense and they get scalding hot quickly, so I really have to be quick if I am handing the cup off to someone (so far that someone has been my dear mother) and even then there is usually a chorus of the both of us going ‘ow ow ow’ the whole time.

As a fun finish, I am including a video I recorded, fair warning it is not professional quality! I filmed it with my camera which makes mediocre movies, and I have no idea how to edit things so you get to hear instead of just read my rambling. This video shows my gaiwan technique (a facebook friend asked how I do it) and some practice methods I recommend if you are just starting out.

For blog, photos, and video: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/11/jing-de-gongfu-porcelain-plum-blossom.html

Man… Another winner from AllanK.

One rinse only, and this had just a subtle earthiness, definitely not much. It was smooth and lovely. The tea brewed up to a topaz shade. Very lovely.

I had a long and unpleasant Sunday, into today, in a war with an Ikea bed frame. I’d like to say that I won, but it was more of a tie. I’m not feeling super poetic, but this was damn good. I’m just gonna leave it at that!

I am not sure if I should recommend this tea or not and I am pretty sure I didn’t brew it quite right.I steeped it in a 220 ml gaiwan with 8.5 g of leaves. The dry leaves had the smell of tobacco, for lack of a better description. I used boiling water. I first rinsed it twice. The rinses were quite light in color so I steeped it for thirty seconds. This seemed oversteeping so I steeped it again for 15 sec. This steeping came out better. It had sweet notes, sour pungent notes, sour berry notes and an overriding flavor I did not identify. It was my first experiment with Fuzhuan teas and was an interesting flavor. I sourced it from Streetshop88, an EBay tea shop that has sold me some excellent Puerh and Oolong. I think it is worth exploring more in a couple of days or weeks.

This tea has an interesting flavor that is a mix of ginseng and oolong tea. It is not bitter but a little sweet with the pungency of the ginseng. Is is a flavor that is hard to describe but good. I added sugar but I think it has some natural sweetness and little of the wood notes common in oolongs. I brewed this with boiling water because I read that you need boiling water because of the ginseng shell around the tea leaves.

Ah, freshly dyed hair is always such a good feeling, especially when it is a shade of blue. I have spent most my life envying vibrantly blue birds, wishing my drab Peahen ash blonde hair was more of a Peacock blue. Then I grew up and realized, Holy Plumage Batman, I can dye my hair whatever color I want thanks to the art of science…and cosmetics! So having had my hair pretty much every color of the rainbow, I tend to stick with either Grackle Blue Black or some shade of blue, this time dark teal. Rock on my feathered friends.

Oddly enough, for all my rambling about feathers, this review is centered around bats. Specifically my new amazing tea set procured from China by way of ebay shop StreetShop88. This lovely blue set consists of a Gaiwan, a Cha Hai (or pitcher, fairness cup, or tureen) and a pair of cute cups. A little backstory, I have two other gaiwans…my fish themed travel gaiwan and my now quite chipped white gaiwan, I wanted a third one specifically I wanted a third matched set for everyday use. It took me about a month and a half of window shopping till I found the one I wanted.

I had a few specifications: it needed to be 100ml or less, it had to have a wide rim, it had to be less than $35, and lastly it had to have an awesome design. I had originally settled on a Phoenix themed set from the same store and then I saw the bats and it was all over, I had to have that one. Bats and the round Shou character are very auspicious symbols in Chinese art, five bats, according to A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols by Wolfram Eberhard (my go to source for all Chinese symbolism) represent the Five Blessings-a long life, riches, health, love of virtue, and a natural death. The Shou character represents Longevity, it is a symbol that I like to have around.

Symbolism and aesthtics aside, how does this set function? First off, I don’t burn my sensitive little fingers, I love my fish gaiwan to pieces, but its fairly small rim tends to heat up very quickly meaning on steeps that go on a big long end with me going ‘ouch’ a lot. The really wide rim and equally wide and somewhat squat body means that leaves get to really roll around and unfurl beautifully.

This set was put together beautifully, when you pour off a steep from the gaiwan into the pitcher, there is a perfect amount for both cups. No leftover and no one gets left out, this is the first set I have had where I get that result. The Cha Hai makes me exceptionally happy, it pours wonderfully and looks like a creamer. Also I absolutely adore that inside the gaiwan and cups the Shou character is printed inside.

For the most part there are no real flaws with this set. There are a few errors on the printed design of the key pattern on the rim of the gaiwan’s lid, but oddly I find this a bit endearing. The only other problem is it is fairly thick porcelain so the temperature tends to stay pretty warm, this might make brewing green teas a little difficult, but that is easy to adjust with cooler water or shorter steep time.

Over all I love this thing, I recommend it if you are looking for a new gaiwan tea set, especially if you love bats!

For photos and blog (including my blue hair!) http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/07/an-auspicious-tea-set-tea-gear-review.html