In our conversations, Hun and I have talked about the need to categorize our puerh teas somehow. It is easy to forget a tea once you've put it on the shelf and it gets buried with a half dozen others. Besides, the pleasure of puerh tea is that it ages, and a history of a tea's flavor would be interesting as well as useful. Hun said that he had begun to insert a slip of paper next to each tea brick after revisiting it, and, on the slip of paper, he would write all the information that he knew about its manufacturing and year of cultivation. He also took the time to include brewing as well as tasting notes.
Taking his lead, tonight was my smashing of the champaign bottle and taking the first step of diligence in journaling, for the sake of my future edification, the brewing, tasting, and manufacturing notes of the first of my puerhs. Hun and I like to think of this process as scientific, due to the seriousness of precision, but, in truth, it is as an account as subjective as an oil, landscape painting, which, again, is not the most subjective thing either. Three painters will differ in tonations here and there, a winging bird that one of them captured, while the other was indifferent scratching his butt, and the other taking extra care to ennumerate the trees that flank one hillside, and so on. But hardly will anyone disagree that the three products are anything but the same vision. To re-describe, the difficulty of transcribing onto a page, with an inadequate langauge, what occurs on the tongue drives one to borrow both from science and art. One tries to borrow from the former objectivity, control, and a special attention to nuance. From the other, one hopes to lie upon beauty's wing, a plea to the muse that the indescribable may, this time, be described.
I've also included a photo. Though not beautiful, I hope it is helpful. I call what you see, "my command center;" it is here that I drink tea, write, work on my Chinese, eat, and push the little red buttons that send bombs hurtling to my classroom. One last note, the shorthand "js" means "Joe seconds," which means the amount of seconds of each brew that I counted in my head (scientific?--yes!). Without further ado:
Yunnan Kunming Rulpinhao 38888
Purchased in Malaysia July 2008, puerh from 2007. Seller said that it would be pleasing to the taste of beginner puerh drinkers so long as it was served in quick brews. Also a good tea let age.
10/20/08 Taiwan
2nd break of the cake: The cake, like before, is quite hard, and it is necessary to use a pick to loosen the brick and create fissures. Using my small teapot, and there is one good-sized chunk of tea in there, so anyway it looks like a third pot of dried leaves but it is hard to tell. I flushed it once with hot water to clean the leaves and immediately drained it.
1st brew (14js) - First sense is a shy sweetness, followed by puerh tea's milky flavor with an accompanying slime that coats the mouth; a bitterness hovers like the taste of coffee through milk, but does not get the chance to intrude. I would also add that though the combination of coffee milk may be an adequate analogy to this taste, it is not so blunt and rude as that particular mix actually is, but rather maintains a lightness that is hard to match.
2nd brew (17js) - Sparkling and alive this time, a physical feeling actually spreading right to above my eyes (and brain?), a stronger intensity of the bitterness--not more bitter--but definitely sharper, almost sour, a sour milk or a sour stout beer. Color near that of the teapot but, of course, very bright. (Personal note: the smell reminds me of a friend's--Josh's, for those who know--old house.)
3rd brew (15js) - Absolutely tangy, attacking specifically the top back part of the tongue. Flavor more vegetable, I would say, than anything else.
4th brew (19js) - Noticing a dryness in the aftertaste, especially on my lips.
5th brew (half a minute) - Quite different here. Was really pleasant to swig back. The flavor finally found expression and freedom from the tang, milk, and bitterness as they subside into supporting roles. Really pleasant.
6th brew (half a minute) - Yep, change noted above has fully taken place. As Lateef would say, "the clouds broke," and it's smooth sailing from here on out.
7th-11th brews (indefinite) - Over a coal and/or vegetable flavor. Same as the sixth brew.
Well, there's the last brew still waiting for me at my command center (I just poured the hot water in and left it--at this point it doesn't matter). However, please note that it is the eleventh brew. Try doing that to your earl grey and see if there is anything left. Bye-bye.
