This episode, Denny and James celebrate TeaDB’s five year anniversary with some extremely old tea. Huge thank you to Su as well as Peter for very generously providing the tea. Complex, earthy, and immaculately stored this is one of the best teas we’ve enjoyed on the show!
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Sounds like you guys had a great time! I enjoyed seeing you pushing the tea so that you can really explore its depth and potency. No doubt I would also be looking to extract every last bit of goodness from such rare leaves. That said I find boiling the leaves in a pot makes the brew rough and less pleasant (even for old teas such as this) compared to steeping the tea leaves in a thermo for a few hours or even overnight. Although the leaves may appear exhausted you should be able to get at least one amazing last steep this way. I’ve experimented with many different varieties of bottled water myself and I believe they make a difference. It’s definitely worth the effort for special teas. My favorite is Iceland Spring so if you guys haven’t drunk the Liu An samples yet, I highly recommend using Iceland Spring 🙂
Thanks Varat! I’ve used that water before, will look out for it.
Cheers!
-James
Its nice to see some more Hei Cha making the cut. I have to say that for younger Liu Bao (5-10 years) I have found that a higher TDS is better for bringing out the typical nuances of this tea category (sour,cereal,betel nut flavours), also ceramic rather than clay. However all respect to Su as I think as Liu Bao ages something interesting happens and a softer relaxed approach is required, for which I reserve a clay Fang Gu pot and use softer sources of water.Soft water is much more efficient at dissolving the flavour compounds of tea and I can only think with the older teas such as Liu Bao that have been long stored the chemical compound changes overtime are more responsive to this process.
Thanks for sharing Jonny. Water is a vast and interesting topic that a lot of people know way more than me. I’ll note that lower TDS water was only recommended for very old teas.
Hi guys, I just caught this one. 🙂 We normally discard the first 1-2 steeps. And I normally brew with a tetsubin n hotplate. Glad u guys liked the tea. Will send u one brew for brewing with something other than an electric kettle. :-)I really enjoyed watching both your reactions to the tea. You both looked rea drunk. Cheers!!
Thanks Su and thank you for the wonderful tea. One of the best we’ve had on the show.
I also normally do teas like this with a Tetsubin, but it’d extend the episode since it’s more of a process heating and re-heating. It also messes with our sound. Maybe I’ll fuss with it and see if I can find someway to do it on an episode.
Also, did u look at the dregs? They show that this tea is not a shou cha unlike newer liubaos which often are, ripe tea