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Lew Perin

@babelcarp@social.tchncs.de remote

26w

tired: chicken-fried steak
wired: gyokuro-brewed Darjeeling

Gyokuro is famous for there being strict rules for brewing it to bring out its celebrated umami. Recently I’ve been wondering: what if you brewed other teas that way?

Autumn flush Darjeeling is between first and second flush in oxidation level, and brewed “normally” has a kind of austere quality.

Brewing it at 60°C, 4g/120ml, 2 minutes, it’s totally different: thick, soft, cherry-scented, no astringency at all. I’m baffled by it being more fragrant at lower temperature, but there’s no denying it.

@tea

Lew Perin

@babelcarp@social.tchncs.de remote

25w

More teas brewed low and slow like gyokuro:

Al-Kbous, a CTC black tea packed in Egypt, was much less astringent than brewed hot and short, but that’s all I could say for it.

Mevlana, an orthodox Ceylon tea packed in Turkey, wasn’t bad sans astringency, but too many of the high notes departed with the briskness.

Dancong (lao xian weng) was a winner. It’s delightful experiencing the fruitiness alongside a soft mouth feel, and the scent lingers. I got four enjoyable steeps.

@tea

Replying to @babelcarp@social.tchncs.de

Lew Perin

@babelcarp@social.tchncs.de remote

25w

By yesterday I was surmising that the teas that would be most interesting to brew gyokuro style were those that have a fairly high astringency, because peeling back the astringency might expose something new and valuable.

So I figured I should try a counterexample: a tea with essentially no astringency that would presumably not benefit from low-and-slow brewing. That would be black tea made from C. crassicolumna leaves at 60°C/4g/120 ml/2 minutes.

And…I liked it! Turns out, crassicolumna has *some* astringency at high temp, and lower temp made it softer and fuller in the mouth. And it preserved the crazy long crassicolumna huigan. I found 60°C/5 min was ideal.

Not that I think low temp made this tea better exactly, but it did show enjoyable qualities.

@tea

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