We Are Screwed

Where is all the panic? Massive tariffs loom before us in buying tea direct from China. You'd think puerh heads in the US might take out a 3rd mortgage to buy up whatever last of the Lao Ban Zhang or the 2020 anything they can get their hands on, in shipping multiples of $800 orders or less to avoid the previous set of tariffs upon which the new 125% will apply. One expects the Yeeon aficionados to order extra boxes of basement dirt from Hong Kong to flavor their own stashes extra dank, all before slow-boat shipping is officially halted and before the private courier just isn't worth the expense, never mind the bother. Even though the latest memes give every indication of the dire need for the slimming effects of shou in the west.

I don't hear any complaining. Not seriously. 

Well, students always complain their tight budgets prohibit full indulgence of their puerh habit, but more on that in a minute while Old Cwyn sorts out this mess.

On the top end of tea, no one really cares. In fact, at the top end, tea buyers can think of the savings on tariffs as a beautiful justification to fly to Guangzhou and buy in person, or a lesser excuse like my ex getting a nice hotel in Huizhou while stalking an old girlfriend. Once in China, just courier everything back. Dirty tea tourism.

The top tier buyer probably doesn't sweat an extra $200 or $2000 tea premium and they got courier all along and first name basis with their tea pimps. If they don't like the tea, it's expensive compost. Although I am certain whole offices are dedicated to crunching numbers to see how much the buyer can tolerate on price increases or whether the blends will be sprinkled with a bit more Myanmar leaf than before which is probably cheaper although one hopes not. Or whether the warehouse in Canada is now a bad idea with double tariffs to consider. In any case, the actual buyer at the end of this chain worries about precisely none of this because they have multiple tea sources and multiple couriers ready to deliver. It's a business matter on the factory end to figure out how to sell to rich buyers.

Same deal for the mid tier junk tea buyers on Taobao. By now the lesser endowed but still fluid guys have at least 3 agents who no doubt quickly pivot to cover any customer situation with private courier, and to mark Gift and Happy Birthday Uncle all over the box. Is it really a problem?

I feel pretty sure Uncle John Kingteamall and Uncle Scott at Yunnan Sourcing will sort things out in western retail for our middle wallet tea basketeers. These guys are one fewer middleman cheaper than your other favorite curators. 

Buuttt, then again, don't most middle tea basketeers already have all the tea they really want? I don't see the panic here, instead I see these people trying to sell. Some perhaps overbought in the early throes of puerh enthusiasm. Others are holding tongs that well, they no longer like so much. Their palates changed, maybe. Did they get bored of the hobby? Annoyed with the storage issues...I have heard that often enough. Or do they view the incoming tariffs as a boon to make a "huge" profit selling tea at a good margin, but still far less than new + tariff? That is not completely outlandish. Remember when a certain online company (let's nickname as "Foggy Mountaintop") offered to buy back their tea when the price at the tea farm went up? Can't complain about a real opportunity for resale and trade. We still have threads on Steepster! 

Now we arrive at the budget buyer whose dusty little tuos just got more pricey, and aspirational tea even further out of reach. We are a little bit screwed, at least in retail,  and words like fu brick are not comforting. But in the after market, with middle buyers starting to sell off tea, we might find tea otherwise long sold-out. Or sample bags destined for the bin given a new life in tea trading. Eh, budget buyers might be surprised that the best market is more local, with stateside vendors selling stock on hand. At the very least, we can comfort ourselves that coffee drinkers have it far worse. At least tea is not scarce.

If wallets really do pinch out, what will happen to all that tea, especially if folks in Asia tighten their wallets too? I sorta see companies storing for 4 years, if they have to, to stave off any major price drops. Make premium product even more at a premium just to find. What was it Herodotus said, the money never stays in one place for very long. The taps will again flow. 

But now is a time of dribbles and drips. If a US Dad is sitting on a nice tea collection, this 4/20 day he may enjoy what he has, justified and ancient with fat knowledge of riches acquired long ago, in the "before times." Knowing that at least 50% of his neighbors don't give a shit. One less thing to worry about.

3 Reasons to Make Shou at Home

Long time readers of this blog may remember the batch of shou I made back in 2015. Hard to believe three years have passed since I finished that shou. Over the first year I continued to taste the tea every six months. Later I sent a sample to a vendor who tried the tea, and sent me more maocha to make another batch. I have just completed one of these new batches, and still have maocha left over.

The super exciting part for me is recently trying the first batch again. When shou is freshly made, the brew will start out a little cloudy, requiring several steepings to clear. As my first batch is now at the 3-year mark, it shows clear on the second steeping, rather than on the 8^th steep. I also noticed that the tea now smells like every factory shou I own that is younger than ten years, it smells like regular shou. In early months, the tea had a musty, funky smell. All that is now gone, and I cannot tell the difference between this shou and those I have purchased in the past. Let's review how the tea changed over the past three years.

You can see how cloudy the initial cup was after I finished the shou. I need to steep the tea eight times for it to clear.

Then, at six months, I needed to steep the tea six times for it to clear. 

Now today, my shou clears on the second steeping. 

At 3 years, the tea has cleared much and is a bit more brown.

My newest shou turned out a bit less cloudy than the first batch. The maocha is also different, and this time I do not know anything about the origin of the maocha. I was also told not to drink the maocha raw, perhaps the tea had some less than clean processing. 

Week 1 of new batch, just starting out.

Any bacteria in raw maocha from unclean hands or factory conditions will work itself out during fermentation and years of resting. In my first batch, I moistened the tea with a premium Yiwu brew, rather than just plain water, and that also accounted for some of the initial clouding, and I can taste a lively-in-the-tongue bitter edge to my first batch, indicating more aging potential.

After a few weeks, I could have stopped but felt the tea was
a bit uneven due to some spots drying faster than others.

For my current batch, I just used plain water to moisten the tea leaves. I do not want to drink my current batch yet, for it is too fresh and musty, but I brewed up a couple of steepings, and here is the tea after two rinses, with two brews poured in the same cup. 

At 9 weeks today, the tea is finished and much more evenly fermented.

Obviously I did not want to use much leaf just for the sake of photos, so I need to pour two steeps together to get a cup for the picture.

Today's first two brews of the tea in the last photo above.
Not bad looking at all! Smells musty though, so I
do not want to drink it yet, just a smell check.

I have learned so much about puerh tea from this process of making shou and resting it, which gives me the most important reason to make shou.

Deepen my understanding of puerh tea aging and fermentation.

This is the best reason to make shou. I get to smell this stuff and experience how funky and almost nasty smelling puerh tea is during the shou making process. I get to see what happens when I spray or pour more water into the batch to continue adding moisture, the water seeps a little liquid to the bottom of my crock bowl and I can check the color. This tells me when the shou is done, the liquid goes from a dirty yellow to reddish brown. I can watch tiny dots of white mold form on the tea. I turn my tea daily and work in the moisture evenly.

As the tea rests, I can check every six months to see how the rested tea tastes and looks in the cup. I can see how my first batch of shou tea clears first around steep eight, then six, and now just two steepings. My vendor friend assured me the tea would clear, and this has indeed happened.

Using up sheng I probably will not drink.

Making shou is a great idea for tea that I doubt I will drink and probably should not try to pawn off on someone else. Most of us have at least some tea that we either wish we had not bought, or maybe our tastes have changed. A bitter, smoky puerh in particular will make a decent shou. You can always steam apart a cake or brick to use in a shou batch.

Earning myself a decent drink after a few years!

This is the very last reason to make shou. Who cares if I drink it or not? The point is, I got my head further into the puerh I enjoy so much. I really do not think I can decide on the “quality” of my shou until the tea rests, and even now shou continues to improve with more years. I have learned that shou older than 10 years is the best. Hard to say if I will last out my current batch of shou, but I am okay with that.

Anyone can make shou. I really believe using some sort of crockery, glazed stoneware, makes the most sense for shou. We have all seen photos of shou on a cement factory floor covered with a browned tarp, so we know just about anything goes for shou. A small amount of tea can ferment in a glass jar with a cloth over the top. The main ingredients aside from the tea are water and heat.

I find the heat the tricky part. Right now we have very frigid cold weather, so my cast iron radiators are hot all the time and this provides the heat under the crock bowl. In Yunnan, the weather is warm and muggy during the summer. For me, summer is not ideal because we get high heat and then cooldowns for a day or two, I cannot guarantee the conditions for the 2-10 weeks required for making shou. In winter, my radiators provide the conditions much more reliably.

Aside from the heat, we also have dry air. I run a humidifier and use pans of water on each radiator. Despite this, my shou batch will dry out within a few days and so I need to check it. I also need to turn the tea and mix it, I usually find some dry spots and some wet spots. In the crock bowl, the tea on the bottom can compost quickly. Turning the tea prevents that. I use plastic gloves on my hands to turn the tea.

If you start a shou batch and do not turn it often enough, you will first notice blue/green mold and affected tea must be tossed. Dots of white mold are normal and okay, and these will seem to disappear when turning the tea. Turning the tea and airing it a little daily, or as often as I want to, allows me to look and smell the situation. Shou smells funky and musty, all that will eventually clear out.

Remember, if you make your own shou, taste and spit for the first six months. Your sense of smell will tell you when to drink it. 

On Drinking Shou, a 7581.

The winter is nearly over, and I realize I did not drink much shou this year. In part, my edema just is more noticeable and I find sheng gives me a bit of relief whilst shou seems to exacerbate the feeling of too much water in my arms and legs. Also I’ve had more than my share of gut bomb shous over the past year, teas that are likely to age out well because they are so strong, but not so wise to drink young. Yes, I do well in buying shou but not so well in waiting to drink them. All too easily I get entranced at the idea of well-aged shou, a delicious drink, and keep buying what I think will turn out well with some years on it. I delude myself that my son and sister will continue drinking my collection after I’m gone, even though I know my son will happily call a tea vendor and tell him to come get Mother’s tea.

But giving more thought to the issue behind avoiding shou, I remember now that I drank shou happily for years. In fact, I bought shou cakes and 7542 back in 2009 and dipped into my shou cakes regularly for years. So what happened? Suddenly I realize that I used to grandpa my shou, rather than gongfu brew. I never had a gut issue during those years. I also know that I tend to leaf heavy in the gaiwan, and probably my strong shou teas are just that, too strong for heavy leafing and probably tending toward medicinal strength. I admire strong sheng and shou puerh teas at what I consider to be medicinal strength because of my decades studying and using herbal tisanes as tonics and light medicines. In fact, these teas are stronger than so many tonic herbs, and as I am accustomed to caffeine and theanine, it is easy for me to take for granted how strong puerh teas really are.

So I find myself digging in the cupboard today to find a forgotten shou mug. After a couple of years drinking tea, I bought this Yixing mug specifically for shou. I liked the idea of not washing the mug, just a good rinse and wipe and all set to dry out for the next day. Also, shou stains regular mugs as you probably know. Confining my shou to one mug rather than muck up mugs others in the house wish to use is a good rationale to shop for tea ware.

Yixing tea mug with cover.

This Yixing mug is one I bought from Enjoying Tea for about $24, and isn’t the best Yixing as you can imagine. The clay is a bit muddy smelling at times, but is fine for heavy shou teas. Maybe the extra mud actually helps me digest the shou better. I need to remember how I used to brew shou, and try this old ritual again with a brick of 7581 shou.

Bricks like this are easy to find for about $10 with shipping incl.

I got this 250g 7581 brick over a year ago and cannot remember where, EBay or Aliexpress perhaps. I know I bought a couple of these and paid $9.99 and got free shipping. I know I was mentally ill at the time in my tea over-buying habits which is probably why memory is fuzzy on the details. In defense of my purchase, the 7581 brick is a favorite of many people. Our Steepster friend Yangchu once wrote something like “if you don’t like a 7581, them’s fightin’ words,” a rather…strong endorsement. Seems this tea is a staple in many puerh cupboards.

The bamboo is folded around the brick,
easy to put the tea back in and slide the ties on.

Back to recalling my old ritual. I chip off a bit of shou about the size of an American quarter coin and place it in a hand strainer. Then I rinse the tea in the strainer under cold water. This will remove any fishy or dusty dirt flavor without activating the tea and losing any brew. Then I dump the tea in the mug and do two boiling rinses and pour off the rinse into the strainer to catch any stray leaves. Sticks usually will float out readily and I can toss those. Then I fill the mug with boiling water and put the cover on.

Yes, yes this tea will make me lose tons of weight
lower my cholesterol and prevent diabetes,
as well as recover from hangovers and improve my sex life.

The first half of the mug is on the light side as the tea slowly releases itself. The second half gets sweeter and more densely flavored. This particular tea has a very sweet huigan, and also some astringency.

Rinse shou in cold water
using an ordinary kitchen strainer.
Then rinse with boiling water twice.

When about 1/3 of the brew remains, I refill the mug with boiling water and continue drinking. This 7581 has a nice chocolate smell. I usually go for yet another refill before discarding the leaves. My Yixing mug gets very hot to the touch, except for the handle, and nice for cold hands but not so much if you have small children around. This mug is good to keep at work. Nobody else is likely to borrow it.

Hey, it's not how we brew, but how much we enjoy.

I suppose if I return to drinking shou mostly by grandpa style, I will still need to assess a shou using a gaiwan. But whatever works for tea is all good, however we drink it. Bricks like this 7581 are very inexpensive and are not a huge commitment for someone just getting started with shou puerh. A regular ole coffee mug works just fine, no special equipment needed. 

2004/2009 Jin Hao Feng Huang Ripe

As a tea drinker, I’m fortunate to have tea friends with a variety of tastes. While I have settled my preferences into mostly puerh, I do drink a number of different teas and I’m always exploring. Tea friends are explorers too, and I can count on them to recommend teas that I would never find on my own. While tea forums receive a fair share of hate from tea heads, still they are the best place to find tea friends. Every day I enjoy chatting with people about what they are drinking, and more often than not I make a purchase based on a recommendation from a friend. I keep my friends in mind too when I’m writing. My blog is most often inspired by tea friends, topics we’ve discussed or they’ve posted, or just things people say in passing. Or I might say something that ends up turning into a post that would never be written except for the conversation. If you are a blogger and feel blocked on what to write, a tea friend will unclog your mental tea pot every time.

This post is for my shou puerh drinking friends. I don’t know what I’d do without you all. I have a number of tea friends who either prefer shou puerh, or drink it because greener teas are too harsh for them. Shou puerh demands an experienced palate. When you drink primarily green tea, like sheng, shou is a big change to your palate. It blasts the palate in early steeps, and if you are accustomed to finding subtle flavors in tea, you will miss them in shou without consistent experience. And if you have friends who cannot tolerate green tea, finding the best shou puerh for them means relying on experienced palates for advice.

Lately I’ve been on a bit of a shou buying trip. I send my sister a box of tea several times a year. Now, my sister has some heavy physical conditions that affect her stomach, her breathing, and her digestion. She cannot tolerate green tea. She is also the opposite of her older Cwyn sister, she is a cool Yin to my overly warm Yang. Because of her health conditions, shou puerh is among the teas I send her. And I make sure that the tea is completely cleared of any wo dui fermentation funk, and cleared of any green leaves. In fact, most of shou puerh I send is at least 3 years stored by me. Recently I’ve been sending shou stored by me for seven years, a 7572 that is completely clear and she tolerates it well.

But now I need to plan ahead and make sure I’ve got shou in advance, because my supplies of clear tea are running on the low side. Sister and shou pals are on my mind as I write this, because I’ve been asking around with my tea friends what shou they might recommend. I buy shou for myself as well, and unlike my sister I drink the funk and strong flavor. So I have to sort out the teas I own now for ones that are candidates for her. That means I have two needs with regard to shou, teas for me and teas for sister.

Older sample on the left, 2009 sleeve on the right.

Recently I ordered a sleeve of shou tuos, 2009 Jin Hao Feng Huang 801 from Chawangshop. These 100g tuos cost only $6 a piece, so makes sense to me to order a full sleeve of five for $30. Now, along with my order, Chawangshop thoughtfully enclosed a sample of the very same tea, but a 2004 Jin Hao Feng Huang. This tea, at five years older, costs significantly more at $21 per tuo!  Of course older is usually better, justifying a price increase, but more than 3x price increase?? I wonder if any other reasons exist for such a price difference.

This tea recipe supposedly won an award in 2009, but not the teas in my possession. For one thing, my 2009 tuos are actually dated as packed in September 2010. So they probably weren’t ready for the 2009 competition. And we know that awards don’t say much anyway about the quality of the tea, so many factors are involved. One key feature of the recipe, however, is that it is a more “tippy” shou, younger and smaller tea leaves, a Phoenix golden buds type of tuo. I have a number of tea friends who like Dayi Phoenix Golden buds, but I haven’t tried that tea myself.

The tuo at the bottom right has a little weakness in the paper.
So I decide to use it as my control sample.

I aired out the 2004 sample for a couple of weeks and speculated with my friends which tea might be better for my sister.

“The older one, for sure,” said my friend Paxl13, who drinks primarily shou, and is a go-to tea friend when I need advice on comfortable teas for my sister. He might be right. But my 2009 tuos have seven years on them already, a decent amount of time for a tea to clear. I cannot tell which tea will be better until I drink them.

Not much visual difference between the two teas.

The two samples appear similar with lighter gold buds, and darker, more fermented tea making up the base. In fact I can't tell the difference in age just by looking. Breaking up the 2009 tuo, I notice that the younger tea is not difficult to pry apart with a pick. In fact the tea separates quite easily. By contrast, the 2004 chunk I received is extremely difficult to pick apart. I manage to break it into small chunks and decided brew the entire 11g I received, along with 11g of the younger tea. The chunks of the 2004 tea compared with loose leaf makes quite a difference when brewing, however. Chunky tea takes longer to open up, whereas loose leaf tea gives up more early on.

I used about 100 ml of water for each sample. Doing the two rinses I can smell a big difference between the teas. The older 2004 tuo has a strong nose of mushrooms and port wine, rather like Lao Cha Tou teas. I can smell a bit of this profile in the 2009 tea but nowhere near as intensely. On the other hand, the differences in the soup are minimal if any. I think maybe the 2004 is a tad bit more reddish, but as I brewed more steeps and tried to keep them as evenly steeped as possible, this difference disappeared. To get this similarity, I had to give a second or two longer to the chunkier 2004 to make up for the compression.

Early steeps on both tuos have a sourish aftertaste, evidence of dry storage. This is likely to fade with a bit of humidity to work out. These tuos haven’t had much, if any, wetter storage so that sour note in early steeps is what you get. The teas are both very clean in that the brew is clear when a strainer is used to catch the tiny bits and tea dust. I didn’t continue taking photos of the steeps because of little to no discernible visual difference in the cups.

2004 on the left. 2009 on the right.

The sourish taste disappeared after steep 3 or so. Overall the younger tea is much more lively on the tongue, it spreads throughout my mouth with zing and minerals, a touch of port wine flavor and mushrooms. The older tea is not as lively, but the mushroom wine profile is more pronounced. Further, the chunks in the older tea don’t break up on their own, they remain intact unless I want to separate them. Both teas have a slight pile flavor, typical shou taste. I got a good six steeps from the 2009 before the tea needed steep time. I continued brewing the 2009 until 8 steeps, when the tea needed even more time to brew. I figure a good 10 brews and maybe a little more from this one.

The 2009 tuo shows a number of still-green tea leaves in the gaiwan. This tea still has much more room to age. But will it turn into the chunky stronger profile of the 2004? The 2004 also has a few thick sticks, not many sticks at all in the 2009. I tossed the 2009 leaves to continue brewing on the 2004.  At steep 10, I’m brewing around 40 seconds and stirring the leaves with a spoon in the water. These leaves have a lot to give but they are sleepy, wakey wakey the spoon gets them moving to release more. I’m well caffeinated now after more than 1000 ml of tea in the afternoon.

2004 on the left is chunkier, more compressed than the '09 on the right.
The 2009 has more green leaves.

Later evening steeps on the 2004 have a more woody and old book flavor, and a bit more lively on the tongue now that I have the remaining wet pile flavor brewed out. Both teas are cooling on the throat, but incredibly heat-producing on my body. The weather now is not ideal for drinking shou, not for me, the temps are warm and a bit muggy outside. I turn into an overheated, bloated sponge after a day of drinking 1300 ml of shou. I’m so overly warm that I can’t sleep until well after 3 a.m. And these 2004 leaves aren’t done yet.

After dinner the following day I continue my Yang torture with the 2004. I really need to confine shou to the winter months, but I know my sister over in Milwaukee probably feels freezing cold right now. So I persist. The tea is woody, dark leather and still has two chunks that don’t want to separate unless I force the issue. You know what this means, right? This tea is a boiler. I can boil up these leaves when they stop producing flavor and get a whole pan of tea. I’m at 12 steeps and then a boil.

Boiling the tea sample brings back the mushrooms and port wine in the nose. Gotta boil them sticks. I don't mean steep in boiling water, I mean boil. At least five minutes or more.

Prego in  Tea Italian means puerh in my spaghetti jar
and no, you can't have any.

I easily got well over 3000 ml out of my 11g sample. I love puerh. I really do.

I think you can get an idea now of which tea is the better buy. At triple the price, I didn’t get triple the steeps but the 2004 is the better tea. Maybe I’m wrong, and perhaps the green left in the 2009 tuos means early days yet. I just don’t think the 2009 is going to turn into what I’m getting in the 2004, a much more powerful tea leaf. Years can differ, some years are rainy, a drier year produces a stronger tea. And we all know how over-picked puerh tea got after 2008, sapping the tea trees of strength. Still, do I want to pay $21 for a small 100g tuo?

Probably my puerh friends will prefer the 2004 for the stronger, more flavorful profile. Someone who plans to drink shou over a great number of years, looking to build a stockpile, has to consider prices across the board. Right now shou tuos from the 1990s are going well over $100. I’ve seen some over $200. Not that anyone wants to spend that much, but I’m sure around year 2020, any tuos pre-2005 are likely to get fairly pricey, most of these teas will be consumed and gone by then. This makes the $21 now seem like a decent price if you want add one to your collection.

As for my sister, I think the younger tea is better for her, once the green is aged out a few more years. A puerh lover will prefer the 2004 every time, but someone with my sister’s health issues might need a less intense brew. So, I think my $30 investment now will pay off in a few years when I can give her some pleasant and clean tuos that she can easily separate and brew without distress.  But I might pick up one of those aged and goopy 2004s for myself.

Testing the Crock Shou...Again

Made my own shou and lived to tell about it.

You might remember back in January 2015 I began a shou fermentation project using a vintage stoneware bread bowl and a quantity of “gushu/dashu” I received from a vendor. If you haven’t read about the project, you can follow this link. The original project went about 5 weeks. I posted updates during the 5 weeks to show how the tea progressed. I also infused the tea with 2014 Last Thoughts tea near the end, following a research paper I discussed in one of the updates. Then, after the tea dried back out, I completed a taste-n-toss of the leaves, and thereafter determined to try the tea at six months intervals. My last tasting was back in September 2015, and due again recently in March 2016. So, this post is now a month overdue, although not entirely so because I began a session of the shou only two weeks late, and continued over another two week period hoping to completely steep out the tea and get some photos of the brew as it begins to fade.

Unfortunately, I was not able to fully steep out the tea due to my schedule. Believe it or not, I was still brewing the tea as recently as two days ago to try and get to that point of fading. If you’ve ever kept tea leaves over a period of days you know they start to get a bit slimy. Mostly I can avoid this problem because I’m assisted by the still-dry weather of my climate. In fact, we have fire watches this time of year because the air is windy and dry, and ground foliage dead from last year has a high chance of catching fire until replaced with new spring growth. The weather forecasts are for 20-25% relative humidity. The air is so dry now that rain forming in the Dakotas evaporates trying to get here. So, this gives you an idea how I am able to keep a gaiwan of damp tea leaves sitting out for two weeks and not form mold. But the leaves do start to break down a bit from firm to fairly soft and this can yield muckiness and cloudiness to a brew, even though the tea is perfectly safe to drink. Not helpful, however, when the point of drinking my shou this long was to get some photos of un-mucky tea!

Thus, I ended up tossing the leaves at some point past 12 steeps. And forgot to take a photo.

Now admittedly 12 steeps aren’t so very many, but I skipped a night or two along the two week period to drink other teas based on my physical requirements and one evening I did not arrive home at all until too late to want anything except sleep. I’m sad, however, because this tea had a lot left to give past twelve steeps and only reached a 30 second brew time, nowhere near close to finishing up. Not to mention the boiling in a pan part at the end that I missed completely. Oh well. This tea is stored in a vintage glazed ceramic vase, of all things, covered with a small plate, or with a napkin around the top of the vase during more humid weather just to keep dust off. I measured out about 6 grams of tea and brewed in about 100 ml boiling water, starting with more like 80 ml and adding water as the tea rehydrated. Tossed the first two rinses.

Piping hot, first steep after two rinses.
I definitely want boiling water on each steep of this.

The last time I tasted this tea, I got a bit of graphite and not much else. I didn’t expect much change in the tea after only another six months, and if anything I expected fading. Surprisingly the brew this time yielded much more flavor and in fact the first few steeps had a bitter edge, likely due to the addition of the 2014 Last Thoughts infusion. Another six months in more humid air and perhaps the bitter edge might integrate a bit more if it is indeed not intrinsic to the leaf. I went heavy on the fermentation of the leaf, and the dark almost black color of the wet leaves shows it.

Steep 5

The flavor of the first five steepings was a wet wood, with fermentation flavor like most other shou teas. I got a chicory flavor, and hints of that chocolate cherry I had hoped might remain in the tea. But I can only catch these tastes in the first seven steeps, along with the bitter edge. I also got a lot of caffeine in the first five, and had to stop my initial session at that point as I felt quite jittery. Normally I’m something of a heavy weight with caffeine, but I brewed on fairly strong parameters with less than 100 ml on a couple of those first few steepings. I feel as if the tea will be much better in another six months both in clearing out more of the fermentation flavor which dominates the tea right now, and in integrating the remaining bitterness which might bring forth those nicer, more subtle flavors. Maybe summer humidity this year might be enough. Or maybe the whole lot will just fade out more. Hard to predict what can happen now.

Past seven steeps, I got mainly wet wood and more fermentation though the graphite notes are still there. I really think it’s my water, and filtering the water doesn’t remove all the minerals in the water. I don’t have very high minerals in my local water, not even enough to create much scale on tea kettles, but I notice the flavor consistently in other teas I brew, enough obviously to taste it. Local spring waters here are likely to contain even higher amounts of trace mineral, therefore buying water won’t give me much of a change. I can’t complain about my local water quality because I live on the edge of the Wisconsin sand plain. The water table lies below sand and shale layers overall, and my town has a river and swampy areas that are connected to drainage systems for the large glacial lake nearby.

Steep 7

Tea people sometimes tell me now that they associate me with crock storage. I want to emphasize how this way of storing tea is not related to practices anywhere other than those coming directly from my ecosystem, and from my genetic ancestors with their farming practices over centuries of time. In order to survive in the winter, we learned to ferment vegetables in stoneware crocks. We cured meats. We did this in order to maintain the requirements of the body for Vitamin C and to digest meat fats. Alaskan natives did not ferment vegetables in such quantity or at all, however they discovered that the layer of fat just under the skin of whales contains necessary nutrients, found later to be Vitamin C. People survive on local practices which have sound reasoning, even if we might forget that reasoning today.

It is not I who decided anything about crock storage, but my ancestors who decided it for me. Like my father with his huge crocks of sauerkraut moldering away in the hallway, his horseradish grinding that stank up the house, fermented fish and pickles in jars every year even with last year’s still lining the cupboards. In my family, whether or not a fermentation project turns out well is always a matter of opinion. I raved about my aunt Alvina’s dill cucumber pickles, the best I’ve ever had even to this day. “Oh don’t eat those,” she’d say after I cracked open a jar and start crunching away at those fantastic pickles, “they’re not very good.” One year my dad made a huge weekend production of homemade root beer. He bought brown bottles and even a corking machine. Well that root beer of his didn’t just ferment to make carbon dioxide effervescence, the whole batch turned into alcohol and actual beer! Recently I saw for sale at a grocery store “root beer ale” and thought of Dad’s root beer gone bad, now it sells for a premium sum. A matter of perception!

Likewise, our perceptions of fermented tea may be related to all kinds of cultural tastes. For me, fermented tea fits in perfectly with my cultural food traditions. And like my aunt making pickles every year whether they got eaten or not has that kind of illogic of old ladies gardening acres of vegetables for no reason other than they’ve always done it. My dad got an advanced degree and worked so hard to get away from his farming childhood, but he couldn’t let a spring go by without planting acres of squash or something not possible to even pick much less eat all of it. For me, I think I’m at the point where the process of fermenting tea is more interesting even than drinking it, and like my aunt I’m piling up crocks of tea just to look at them. I think the tea smells and tastes quite lively, but I’m doing all this for me, no one else, and because I’m fkkn crazy.

So people should not really associate me with crock storage, not entirely, because I’m past the point now of making any logical sense of what I’m doing. If you come to my house, instead of pickles you’ll find crocks of tea. When you try and drink any I’ll say “Oh don’t drink that, it not good for you” and I will dig around for an oolong or some such. I will, however, recommend using a stoneware crock to keep tea from drying out and to air and restore tea you might’ve left too long in a dry cupboard or in plastic bags. In truth, crocks need attending at least somewhat, no storage is a miracle when left alone, not even open air in humid climates. But if you have an aunt somewhere in your past who got a little crazy with her cooking and her food was the best you ever had, why then, to you my friend I recommend crock storage wholeheartedly, and pray your aunties whisper in your ear.

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An Old Polish Tea Woman

On Chinese Mandarin...it’s pu, silly.

Stuffed pu. Photo by createdrinkwrite.com

Oh, how tempting it is, looking at all the new citrus-stuffed puerh out there to buy, especially over the winter when local fresh veggies and fruits are difficult to find in my part of the world. Even worse are those massively plump grapefruits sitting in stores, reminding me of childhood boxes received from Texas and Florida where my father’s friends wintered and thought to send us the best of local citrus. I’m a huge lover of grapefruits, and haven’t had any now in more than two years.

No, you won’t be seeing any reviews of mandarin-stuffed puerh on my blog because alas I cannot have any. You’ll have to look elsewhere for lucky bloggers able to indulge at will. I’ve mentioned before that I cannot have this type of puerh, and since several people have asked for a specific explanation, I can clarify the medication interaction issue behind many citrus types which may hopefully inform others in the same non-citrus boat that I am.

I think most people are familiar with grapefruit juice as a caution for many medications. The issue that is very difficult to sort out when assessing other types of citrus is twofold: 1) the taxonomy of citrus fruit is not entirely clear, and 2) the specific piece of fruit staring you in the face may not be terribly clear either. Let’s start with taxonomy.

While citrus fruit in general is one of the oldest foods that humankind consumed, citrus has evolved, morphed, grafted and traveled its way all over the world, changing as it goes. The entire taxonomy of citrus and hybrids is a complicated business, and while a whole branch of taxonomy is dedicated to it. Complicated means something like this:

wut? (deviant art)

Even a scholar who has the potential to sort out this mess won’t have enough funds to do wide studies to work out every single type of fruit available. And, if you live in California or Arizona or some other southern state, you might have citrus in your own backyard that grew there well before you moved in.

Several fruits are on a parallel with each other. Oranges, lemons, grapefruits and pomelos appear to go back to original strains somewhere long in time in southeast Asia. Mandarin oranges are parallel to pomelo strains. Original mandarins are actually green skinned and not the orange skinned ones you find in the stores nowadays to eat around the holiday season. The Xinhua Mandarin grown in Yunnan may well have a number of varietals, but its ancestral relative is likely the pomelo or some grapefruit/pomelo hybrid.

I dunno what all these are, but Ruby takes my love to town. (www.cell.com)

These fruits contain what are called furanocoumarines, which are the culprits in citrus causing problems with drug interactions. “Furanocoumarin” sounds a lot like the blood thinner “coumadin,” and for a reason! Now, fruits vary a whole lot in the amount of furanocoumarin. Some fruits have a concentrated amount in the juice, some may have concentrations in the white pulp. One grapefruit or pomelo may vary a great deal from another grapefruit or pomelo. See the possibilities for a high degree of variability, and why it isn’t remotely possible to test every single piece of fruit?

Calcium channel blocker medications rely on the same enzymes for absorption and elimination that furanocoumarins love to bind with. Specifically, the enzyme known as CYP3A4 and located in the intestinal tract is responsible for slowly digesting and eliminating a calcium channel blocker medication. As with most medications, only a small amount of medicine in a pill you swallow actually gets absorbed and used by your body. Most of the medicine is removed and excreted, usually via urine at some point. Hence why we have issues with our water supplies, people are peeing out medications constantly and we have no idea how many of them are in tap water these days. But as for medication efficacy, pills are designed with elimination in mind, a dosage is based on how much your body will actually “get” once the absorption and elimination process is complete. Pill dosages rely on knowledge of how the body will get rid of most of the medicine and keep only the amount your body weight requires for the desired effect.

Unfortunately, our citrus fruits come along and interfere with this process by binding to the enzymes needed to process and eliminate most of the medicine. For example, I take Nifedipine, a calcium channel blocker designed to lower my blood pressure. I take a 24 hour extended release form of the pill. It goes into my intestine, then hangs on to the side of the intestine and sits there while the enzymes slowly work on the pill. Some of the medicine gets absorbed into my blood stream via the intestinal wall, this is the medicine I actually want to get. The rest of the pill gets worked on by the enzyme CYP3A4 and excreted. Let’s see a Pac Man version of what happens with my Nifedipine pill when I eat a citrus fruit containing furanocoumarin.

My gut on overstuffed Pu. The blue dots are CYP3A4 enzymes

In this cartoon, you can see that the citrus is binding up all the enzymes, leaving none for my nfd Nifedipine pill. That forces it to dissolve in the tract, going nowhere except into my blood stream since it is stuck in its pill state. This means that too much medicine hangs on in my body, and I can get a lethal dose of the medicine as a result. My blood pressure can fall so low as to be fatal. Even worse, this effect lasts for days. Up to five days later, because the citrus removed so much of the enzyme that my body will need nearly a week to make more. Now if I put yet another pill tomorrow into this situation, I can expect never to leave my bed again. You can see from the Pac Man who is going to win and it isn't my pill. 

But you might be thinking, what effect can a small piece of dried pomelo or mandarin possibly have? A small piece broken into a tea cup or a bit of juice in the tea surely cannot have that much of an effect. As a matter of fact, it can. First off, I don’t know how much furanocoumarin is in a particular piece of fruit. American doctors are working with information gained from readily available citrus to American consumers, such as Florida plantation citrus, or maybe Texas citrus. But this information relies on the product manufacturer to be honest. In general, orange juice might be okay, but how do I know that the maker didn’t sneak in some cheap grapefruit juice or pomelo as filler instead of 100% sweet and juicy navel oranges? I don’t know that.

If you live in the UK, your doctor may well tell you to avoid citrus altogether if you are taking a calcium channel blocker. And if you think “well this won’t be me,” think again. If you have African Caribbean descent, calcium channel blockers are an even more effective heart and blood pressure group of medications for you than for someone else, and a doctor will consider these first when you show up with your BP on the high side. 

I would love to ditch this Nifedipine and have a huge glass of grapefruit juice right now. In fact, I won’t allow any in the house because I can’t keep away from it. My mouth waters thinking about it. Even more difficult for me are the tempting photos of stuffed puerh teas. I have that little voice inside me saying “just a teensy, weensy little bit.” I rarely ignore that little voice. I even tried to rationalize saving money for tea by taking Nifedipine only once a week and drinking grapefruit juice on the other days. Nifedipine ain’t cheap. In fact it costs more than the damned stuffed puerhs.

I can imagine what my doctor might say, though, when she hears the idea of a Nifedipine/citrus cocktail and I know where that conversation will go, out the door along with my ass. As it is, she doesn’t know how much tea I drink. She knows the reading on the blood pressure monitor when I go into her office, and I know that look of satisfaction on her face when she determines she knows her medicine well. And she’s been a missionary doctor in Africa and takes no crap from this old nun, which is why I keep her. And why I take my pill as prescribed and avoid any funny business. This is the point when guessing on that citrus puerh is just not worth it for me.

So, you all enjoy your overstuffed puerh! 

I’ll be over here. By myself. Taking my pill.

2015 Shou Fermentation Update

Photo of the finished shou from March 12.

On January 27 of this year, I started an experiment of fermenting shou from raw puerh maocha in a stoneware crock bowl. The purpose of this experiment was mainly to demonstrate the viability of crock storage for long term fermentation of puerh tea. To show this in the short term, pushing tea from raw to ripe is the only possible way to get quick results. Fortunately, I had a couple of bags of loose raw puerh on hand. I wet the tea with water and twice with 2014 Last Thoughts infusion, covered the crock with a wooden lid as you would for sauerkraut, and added heat as needed using my cast iron radiators in my home. I turned the tea every few days. At about the six week mark, on March 12 I stopped fermenting the tea as it had appeared to have changed over.

Sept 14 photo of the same shou. 5g

After drying the tea, it appeared fairly dark and had a rather funky smell as most ripe teas do when young. I did a sip-n-spit at the time, and then put the tea away into a stoneware container to rest for six months. Now in mid-September, six months have passed and it is time to try the tea again.

Over the summer, I occasionally turned the tea in the container, gave it a sniff, and allowed it to sit out on the enclosed three season porch for the hot, humid summer season. At some point I noticed the funky smell had gone from the tea. Now it smells a bit minerally in dry form. The tea seems a bit too dry now, and a little crumbly, possibly because I left the lid off the container all summer in order to air it out, so the tea may be drier now than it should be. But I decided to brew up five grams.

Steep 6.

The good news is the tea is not funky tasting or smelling in any way. I poured off three rinses out of paranoia, tasted the next three, and then started drinking whole cups. The aroma from the leaves is incredibly good, still has that cherry chocolate scent. I don't taste much of that nice smell in the cup though. Mainly the tea is rather mild in flavor, a bit of minerals and just a bit of ripe flavor. Also, I noted still a little bitterness in the tea, so perhaps it is not as heavily fermented as I thought, and needs more time yet to age. The color has cleared up a good deal, but because the tea is a bit crumbly I had more powdery tea in the sieve than I do when brewing up chunks picked off of pressed cakes. I needed to rinse out the sieve a couple of times during the brewing.

Still have "powder" at steep 6.

Altogether I drank about nine steeps, and the tea was not yet ready to quit and I was still flash brewing. I am wanting more flavor in this, and am hoping the bitterness remaining in the tea translates into that flavor. Of course it is not going to be a stellar shou or anywhere near the best teas I've had. But I am understanding more now the reasons why shou is allowed to rest and age. It really does change and is not a fully finished tea, like other red/black teas are. Another six months of storage will surely tell me more. Like whether I want to keep drinking it or if I've killed it.

Washing tea pets in the rinse.

Back into the storage crock for another six months! I'll return to this tea at its one year anniversary on March 12, 2016, the gods be willing.


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