Tea Tasting - Saturday Nov 19th 3pm

Saturday @ 3pm, we will have a flight of teas available to taste from Shin Fong farm in Taiwan:
Fulu Red Oolong
Organic Fulu Red Oolong
Chin Suan Oolong

Space is limited to a first come first served basis so show up early!

Fulu Red Oolong!

Photo from our visit to the farm in December.

We have new crop of Shin Fong's Fulu Red Oolong in shop. Brewing it as cold brew tea really brings out the aromatics and deep candy sweetness. This is amazing as an iced tea.

We recommend a 50g per 1 liter of cold water in a Mizudashi.

First steep in the refrigerator for 18 to 24 hours.

Each additional steep should be done to taste and color up to three more steeps before flavor loss occurs.

If you brew it hot, we have detailed specs on the bags for a 180mL tea pot.

Cold brew coffee and teas

We have been dong a lot of cold brew over the last few years and the occasional cold brew tea. Cold brewed coffee was a big hit when we opened the bar at the roasting location and we fulling expect that to continue into the future. Hi Rise on Brattle St. also does the cold brewed coffee in the summer quite successfully and we feel this will expand to other cafes in time.

What's exciting and noteworthy is how nice our recent attempts at cold brewing the teas have been. The Fulu Red Oolong has produced multiple cold steeps to give an excellent cup and one of the most fantastic iced teas I have ever tried. It has been so delicious that each and every one liter steep has been quickly split among staff and friends before it could be offered to customers. Along those lines, we are going to try a cold brew of the Cicada Honey Black Tea.

The last time I cold brewed this tea was while I was still in Taiwan after just purchasing the Cicada tea. I took some of the samples we had been given and brewed them in a water bottle for what was a beautiful and aromatic expression of the tea. Smooth, sweet, and complex.

As new crop Fulu Red Oolong arrives in a few weeks, it will be one more addition to our menu that gives a reason to look forward to warm weather.

Chia-Ming tea visit

Chia-Ming is a relatively famous tea producer in Taiwan known for it's Honey Cicada Black Tea. In our visit to them, we found out more about this particular tea as well purchasing another pristine Oolong from them.

The Oolong is a semi ball style Dah-Yeh (broad leaf) cultivar. For this elevation, the broad leaf cultivar is quite ideal and produces a sweet clean cup. We were visiting Chia-Ming as this tea was being packed post processing. The leaves are beautiful and unfurl with each steep to reveal nearly perfect preservation of the pick. This doesn't surprise because Chia-Ming is know for it's superior processing skills.



The other tea, Cicada Honey Black, was the byproduct of a unique method noted for it's use of tea green leafhoppers. Normally considered a pest or associated with novelty teas, this particular tea uses these little pests to produce an exemplary experience. The folks as Chia-Ming have learned to identify a specific type of bitten leaf as an ideal pick that when processed to an exacting methodology results in one of the more unique teas experiences you can have. This black tea yields strong aromas, complex sweetness, and a very distinct cup.

I admit being skeptical about this tea coming in. I had sampled it before through other sources and had what I can only describe as skunky results. Once I arrived at the farm and cupped through all of their lots, the distinctions became clear as to our preferences. We took the silver medal competition lot which was picked as the favorite in the competition by the tea research facility manager in the area. Compared to the gold medal lot, which Chia-Ming also submitted and won, it came as so distinctly special that it was better in our opinion than the more singular gold medal lot.

Fulu Red Oolong

Another novel tea process from Shin-Fong, this Fulu Red Oolong (fully oxidized translated directly as red rather than black) is something out of the ordinary. The natural floral notes of Taiwanese high mountain 'terroir' come through the excellent execution of a paochong or 'balled' tea from a chin-shin varietal. What makes it particularly novelty is the full oxidation which provides a beautiful amber hued red liquor and warmth in the cup profile of gentle honey and caramel tones of this semi balled Oolong varietal.

Tea roasting at Shin-Fong

This tea took a little getting used to. We had to find a balance point in how we brewed it. It did not take long for us to figure out that we were treating it incorrectly. Once we tuned in our brew temps, this tea really excelled as one of our favorites.

The cup color is beautiful with amber red hues. Strong aromatics of rose hips and straw flowers dominate the cup profile yielding to a clean and sweet aftertaste. The flavor is warm and invitingly pleasant but the aromas are what make this tea particularly unique.

Tea Tasting - Friday Feb 19th, 4pm - 6pm

We will debut our teas on bar this weekend with an open house tasting. The event will be informal and we will offer up each of our new Teas during that time slot.

Keep tabs on this and mark your calendar to have a chance to taste these absurdly fresh harvest teas.

Chin-Suan Oolong

Shin-Fong submitted this lot of Chin-Suan cultivar which placed with an excellence award in competition. Above and below are photos which show the care given to their Oolongs though this is not the actual section the competition lots came from. This farm is known for consistently producing quality teas for many years and the farm owners have a reputation for hard work and honesty. Their diliginet work shows in the beauty of their farm and the pristine care for their teas. While the lot is not certiifed organic, Shin-Fong grows the majority of it's teas organically with the desire to get certified in the near future. This is a labor intensive process when done the correct way they are doing it but the results show through in the cup.

This particular Oolong is traditional in that like many high mountain Oolongs, it has a distinctive fruitiness. Apricot, peach, and other tropical notes come through from the second steeping on. The natural aromatics known to be a signature of good Taiwanese Oolongs through in it's fragrance.

The first steep comes with fragrant pear and honeyed beeswax undertones. This gives way to defined sweetness, and apricot fruitiness, and balanced body in later steepings. This tea is defined by balanced and freshness.

Shin-Fong Grandpa Tea

Shin-Fong is a small farm in Taitung that does a few very interesting teas. This particular tea is an example of that uniqueness. In our new direct trade tea series from Taiwan, we will be focusing on unique and special teas from throughout the country. Shin-fong is one of our core estates we found in our travels to be exemplary of hard work and good intentions. Many of their teas are grown organically with the intention of getting certified soon.

Known as Grandpa's Assam, this fully oxidized black tea is produced from a traditional Assam cultivar. The trees themselves were planted in 1965, having been abandoned at one time, they were then reclaimed to be grown and cared for with organic practices. The level of care and meticulousness in their farming shows in the pristine look of the trees themselves. At some parts of the Assam grove, the trees have been left to continue growing freely to act as wind breaks as can be seen in the first photo. The Assam picks are rolled paochong style which is not normal for an Assam. This tea however is full oxidized as a black tea which matches well with it's Assam varietal. This combination of factors makes the tea distinct in how it is ideally brewed over multiple steeps, as the tea will need time to open and release it's flavors.

Cup character consists of round caramel aromas that lead into taste notes of candied yam with hints of spice and winter melon. This tea is big bodied with refined tannins but can easily be over extracted due to it's unique processing method. It opens easily in later steeps and is reminiscent of a traditional sweet after a meal drink in that area of Taiwan which consists of sugar and cooked down winter melon.

We have a limited supply of this tea until next pick so move quickly if it sounds interesting.

Iced Tea

If you get iced tea in this area, you get something quite often resembling Lapsang Souchong(aka campfire tea). This is a byproduct of Mark at MEM dominating the majority of the market in Boston and his chosen 'iced tea blend' has been a slightly smoky black tea in it.

I hate it.

No disrespect to Mark's palate but it's horrible. When you get Iced Tea, you get unsweetened plain cold black tea, that's pretty much the New England way and that smoke note is painful. When you go South, at a certain point, you start getting an option. Sweet Tea.

Now, it's not bad when done with care and made fresh but I grew up with my mother constantly making note of the simple fact it's sweetened tea, not sweet tea. She was a teacher, go figure. I had long since broken my habit of putting sugar in beverages but I got a chuckle from this page on 'Sweet Tea'and the Sweet Tea Line.

Someone had the gall and sense to do a paper on iced tea and used it to define the Mason-Dixon line. What it means is that you are in the South when you reach the point that 'sweet tea' is being offered.

It doesn't mention anything about the Great Lakes region and the most disgusting raspberry iced tea phenomenon there but that would be a good followup.

New Cultivar Taiwan No. 18

To most of the tea world, Taiwan is known for it's wonderful Paochongs and Bai Hao Oolongs and for good reasons. Focus on these styles of tea has brought the world some of the best and most interesting teas. While most of the tea produced in Taiwan has been Oolong, The Tea Research and Extension Station located in the hills surrounding Sun Moon Lake has also focused on the development and production of black tea. Producing 11 of the 20 new cultivars since 1969 suited for black tea, a peak was reached with the development of cultivar number 18. Released officially in 1999 this tea is basically unknown outside of Taiwan. Crossing an assam strain from Burma and a local wild tea strain, the Research and Extension station has created one of the most truly unique and quality black teas in the world.

One of the things that makes this tea unique is the fact that it is a cross between an Assam strain and a Taiwan wild strain. The Taiwan wild variety of tea is most similar to the China plant but classified as a separate variety from the two main varieties, Assam and China plants, because it is really a different plant. Number 18 is a strong bush with fairly thick leathery leaves and a purplish shine. It is of much lower yield than the other cultivars created in Taiwan for black tea and has large buds but no pekoe growths. The survival rate is 87.6%, it has strong heat resistance and has a fairly strong resistance to disease, making this cultivar ideal to grow.

Of course, none of this would matter if the taste was not there. This tea is known for its mint and cinnamon qualities and these flavors were certainly present when we cupped it. Not only are those flavors present but we also got rose, molasses, honey and lemon verbena as well. This time when we cupped this tea, we initially did not share tasting notes. Ben C. brought this back from Taiwan and made all of us taste the tea separately and without telling us what it tasted like. Jaime initially got cinnamon and mint, when he and Ben and Hong cupped it. Hong added rose to the notes and then they decided to test the palates of Ben K, Judson and I. Ben, after a long day of espresso shot tasting and barista-ing, still came through with the same tasting notes. That is how powerful and defined this tea is.

Originally when we cupped this tea, from a different batch/producer/farm that was sent from Taiwan, we were not that impressed. It is fairly generic with much more subtle notes and some off flavors. When Ben C. asked the Taiwan Research and Extension Station about this, they said that this was because of the inferior processing of the batch we had received. This just goes to show how important processing is in bringing out the flavor of the cultivar and the end result of the tea.

This is another in the line of many great steps towards the development of quality tea in Taiwan. The Taiwan Research and Extension station plans to further the development of both black tea and wild tea cultivars in the future. It takes them about 21 years to develop a cultivar to the point where it can be used in commercial production and from what I can see, this is time well spent. In the past, the black tea that Taiwan has produced was low quality and exported, and since 1999 one of the goals has been to promote it locally. Promotion for high quality exports of Taiwan no. 18 or Hong Yu (Red Jade) are also on the way.

Tea and coffee: Can I afford the great ones?

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Photo of very expensive tea by Ben Kaminsky

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We typically don't drink good tea in North America. I know Americans don't drink very much good coffee either. The real question is do we have access to good examples of both?

If you want good coffee there are literally a handful of roasters in the US and then it becomes a roast preference to get those coffees roasted the way you like them. You will probably have to pay more for a freshly roasted coffee, spend more on the equipment to brew it, and put some energy into brewing it correctly, but you could find it and it would be affordable to most consumers. The most expensive coffees coming out of the Cup Of Excellence still break down to affordable per cup prices if you brew them at home. A pound of coffee produces a lot of cups making even a $20/lb bag steep but still affordable as a once in a while treat. Even as these microlots creep higher in price, we are still able to access them if we want to pay the price.

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Pulling a double espresso for a milk drink(don't tell)

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The problem with tea is it's a largely inaccessible market. Sure, we can all buy commodity grade tea bags or even pay a lot for a famous named tea, but those aren't the truly great ones. The great teas of Taiwan and mainland China don't make it to the American market. The price paid for them there is so high due to demand, we have little ability to buy them. What we do get is often stale or poorly processed remainders. Even if we had access, the top teas sell for such exorbitant prices, we would never even get a sniff! A competition grade tea in Taiwan of 300g recently sold for $15000. (yes, that's 15k) And to think we still complain about a $12/lb bag of decent coffee.

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Photo of Oolong Tea by Ben Kaminsky

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Right now, we can afford the great coffees coming out. Of course, all of this has little to do with your free refill diner coffee or that phony Starbucks black apron offering, but that Brazil for $50 a pound doesn't sound as unreasonable now. The truth though, is that good teas are much rarer than we like to admit. You can get great herbal teas but you get largely poor grade broken leaf teas for everything else.

Unless you've got a connection in Taiwan or China, it's going to be hard to get that mind blowing Oolong or high grade tea. Want a good coffee, browse the CoE buyers. Until someone truly taps the foreign markets for fresh picked high grade whole leaf teas, a lot for us will have to be content with cupping these CoE coffees. It's rough being a mouthwatering cupper.

Tea: Judging Leaf Appearance

Photos by Ben Kaminsky

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Left: a photo of a single unfurled leaf. Right: A quarter next to a rolled/unbrewed tea pearl with a brewed unfurled intact leaf/stem underneath.

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Leaf appearance is a critical observation when judging the quality of a tea. Just like green coffee to a certain extent, you can judge the quality and the degree of precision in processing just by looking at the leaf. In China and Taiwan, the teas are sometimes named after their dried leaf appearance. In many cases, the leaf appearance cannot tell you exactly what kind of flavor it has, but it can certainly tell you all about the processing, and from knowledge of the processing you should be able to tell where the flavor is coming from. According to the Tea Research and Extension station in Yangmei Taiwan, “As a matter of fact, it is a good quality tea, as long as it looks good.” The idea behind this theory is that the people who are judging the tea train themselves to detect flaws in appearance that parallel those in taste.
When judging a tea by leaf appearance, one must look for several things. In the dry leaf, consistency, degree of oxidation, and roast or firing is evident. Also the skill with which the tea was handled and sorted is evident by the shape and consistency in size. The post steeped leaf can tell you how consistant the grading was and reveal flaws in the oxidation.

For example, things I look for in a Semi-ball type Poachong tea (the tea in the photo) are consistency in size, shape and color. The color tells you how heavy the oxidation and roast are. Size and shape tell you how well sorted the tea was, and also how the leaves were manipulated in the processing. In the wet leaf(after it is steeped), I look for evenness of oxidation, color, and how intact the leaf structure remains. A good semi-ball paochong should have very few broken particles when brewed and for the most part, the leaves should stay intact through the duration of the steepings. If the oolong leaf shows too much brown, this is a sign of too much oxidation and is contributing to the bitterness and astringency of the tea.
Judging what a tea should look like is different with each tea, and should be judged according to what the tea manufacturer was trying to get. In the end, cupping a tea's taste is the deciding factor, but leaf appearance helps explain how and why the tea tastes a certain way.



-Silas

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Also see:

Tea: Processing

Cupping high grade taiwanese teas

Cupping high grade taiwanese teas.

Checking the leaves after the cupping which were very intact, undamaged and pretty. Thy expanded with each brew until being fully unfurled.

Dha yu ling and a Pear mountain tea from taiwan. Each taiwanese tea was high grown and sells for $100 per 5.5oz. These teas were both at the base very sweet and intensely floral.
Fresh crop!
Flavor cuppa notes:
Pear mountain - pear, cinnamon, mint, honey, super creamy, and lemon drop aftertaste.
Dha yu ling - molasses, cinnamon graham cracker, clean cucumber, grape soda aftertaste.
Summary: We don't drink teas like this in the states! Silas needs more of these!
The sweet aftertastes linger in a super sweet clean flavor for many minutes afterwards.
-jaime

UPDATE: I realized that after this cupping we had to rethink everything one more time. If the tea industry is this advanced in Taiwan, then it means this is where the coffee industry should be or will be going. It's scary to think but maybe that's what it's about. The tea's were expressive, amazing, and complex. They were worth getting excited about. They were more complex than any tea I have had. Granted I have visited china and Japan but these blew down any of those expereiences by a long shot. It was strange how you could taste layers of flavors in the cups. Tea has this potential? That's something to think about.

Big cheers to Ben's dad in Taiwan for arranging them!

San Francisco Tea summary

I got back a few days ago, and I am still starry eyed from Bay Area’s essence. The Tea culture and the whole gourmet culture in general seems to be living proof that flavor can exist in a true and accessible fashion. A friend told me that there are about 100 bakeries in the city for San Francisco alone. There are some wonderful food experiences to be had in the area, as Andrew showed us. There are many tea houses of various quality and feel. A few of the more well known ones are Imperial Tea Court, Far Leaves and Samovar. To the best of my knowledge Imperial Tea Court and Far Leaves both source tea directly from estates in China. Another well know tea house is the Celadon Tea Room. They are renowned for their quality and freshness. Unfortunately, I missed my chance to go there because they are currently switching locations.


The Tea Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area is one that is entirely its own. Tea is much more a part of daily life and culinary experience than it is in Boston. This is obviously because of the strong Chinese and Japanese influence. Seeing Tea Houses ranging from good to simple doing well gives me hope for what Tea in the United States could become. As the culinary culture and focus on quality in what we eat and drink continues to grow, it is nice to see a few people paying attention to Tea. I only hope that this culture will continue to grow and the quality will improve. I hope also to see more focus on the flavor of tea as opposed to the conscious altering effects and social aspect of tea.


Lots of inspiration to keep tasting, and a desire to figure out what they put in their water was found in California.


-Silas

Tea Processing

Jaime has been talking a lot lately about the processing involved with coffee. It is interesting to apply this to Tea. Essentially when you roast coffee, you are bringing out the flavor; making it palatable. When you get to a certain point however, you start to kill the flavors by bringing the oils to the surface and scorching them. When you do this with a very flavorful coffee you are simply scorching the flavor, but when you do this with a less flavorful coffee you create a taste with the roast, simply because the bean has little inherent flavor.



Now the question I am posing in regards to tea is this: Does processing a tea, whether withering, oxidation, or firing, impart bad flavors, take away flavors, or add additional pleasant flavors without killing the flavors inherent in the tea leaf? Is it only certain processes such as heavy firing that impart or take away flavors in an extreme way? Do they shorten the life of the tea? Obviously the flavor is heavily affected by the processing and the degree to which it is taken, but at what point are you taking away from the flavor or manipulating it to a point where it has become less desirable? This is a hard question to answer, because there are so many different tastes and opinions on what tastes good. This is a way in which tea is different than coffee. Tea is steeped in so much tradition and ages of thought, that it is hard to say exactly what is good and bad from an objective stand point. When you take an opinion however, you could be simply ruling out a whole different world of taste different than yours. If you processed all the different varietals from the different places that fine quality tea is grown into white tea, would get the “true flavor” of the tea leaf, or would you just get a single expression of that tea?


Processing tea is an art and a science, as is coffee roasting, so is it my job as a taster to judge and simply express my opinion and expression by selecting teas that I like? Is my job to choose teas based on the criteria for that single type of tea? As a tea server is my job to serve tea in a way I think is correct or is my job to serve tea as a way of expressing the taste of the person to whom I am serving?


I think the key to understanding the flavor in tea, is what type of processing is done as opposed to how much is done. The taste of green tea is dependent on the way it is processed, but also on the varietal used. The main difference in taste regarding tea processing can be highlighted in the difference between Japanese and Chinese green tea. The Longjing green tea is the same varietal as the green tea in Japan, but they are processed very differently. Longjing is pan fired; whereas Japanese greens are typically steamed. Japanese green teas are usually very fresh, grassy, and sometimes sweet, whereas Longjing is more fruity, nutty and a much smoother flavor overall.


The best teas that I have ever tried are Oolongs. They are processed just enough to bring out the flavor without changing it too drastically. Oolongs are very specific and often complicated in processing. The truth though is that white, green, yellow, and Oolong teas all have their specific tastes and are all good in their own right. Black and Pu-erh teas usually have their fair share of flaws because they are processed so heavily. Because of this they have created a certain taste based on their flaw, much like coffee that is too darkly roasted or coffee that is fermented in processing the green bean.



-Silas

Profile: Silas Moulton aka 'the Tea Cupper'

Silas formerly was a purchasor for whole foods and also does cuppings with Mark @ MEM teas. Silas currently toils away at Peet's until something better comes along. Silas met up with us shortly after the Globe article hit and has been the most enthusiatic group member. He intially sought me out because he couldn't believe there was a good barista in Boston(his own words there). Silas will begin participating on the blog a bit to touch up his writing skills for his tea blog... I'm thinking... Terroirist tea blog! -Jaime

So a month or so after I met Jaime, I got an invite to taste some coffees with him and "some friends". To be honest, I thought his coffee tasting friends might be old men with mustaches and crazy stories about cupping kenyas in the glory days, when coffee wasn't so complicated. Well, It just so happens, we are all fairly young and none of us really care for facial hair. So after getting off work, smelling like Peet's dark roast, I went to meet up with Jaime, Judson and Ben. Ben was having issues with his tricked out home machine after messing with it too much, so we headed over to Asim's to pull some coffee shots. On the way Ben explained the difference between a chow hound and a foodie and of course Jamie was practically coming to tears of joy over the thought of having tegu coffee shots. They had been hoping earlier to pull some coffee shots on Ben's machine but they couldn't get it working. By now they were anxious for the coffee they had been waiting for all day and I was still curious what the hell these coffee shots were gonna be like. So when we get to Asim's place, we come to find out his machine isn't working either. This kick-ass, awesome $8000 espresso machine just couldn't get enough pressure. So Ben and Asim start taking the thing apart and trying to figure out what was wrong. They found out the thing wasn't building enough pressure cuz there was scale build up. Ben asked Asim where his cafiza was and Asim said he didn't know what it was. So now Ben was scolding Asim and just pissed that Asim doesn't know what cafiza is. They never ended up getting it working, and Asim had other plans. So the whole walk back to the T, Ben was ranting about how Asim didn't clean his 8000 dollar machine. I thought he was crazy cuz he had been practically yelling at Asim about it. We finally just went back to Simons and pulled some shots there. Then I tasted the Terroir yirg (2005) coffee shot..... and I was hooked!!

Well it turns out Ben is a pretty cool guy and Asim should just clean his machine. Now my mouth waters at the mention of coffee shot. We taste coffee pretty often now and I am known as "The Youth Project" or "Silas the Tea Cupper". I think I would prefer Flavor Cupper though...


Silas (flavor cupper)