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I should also add that my brewing methods typically come from what I know about a type of tea and what I’ve learned previously. I’m intransigently neglectful of accompanying instructions provided by tea companies, plus I tend to approach many of my tea drinking adventures as science experiments in the first place. In the case of the purple orthodox tea I don’t remember what information I started out with, but I knew that this was not a tea I would want to brew with boiling water. I didn’t want to emphasize the astringency as much as I wanted to bring out the grapy sweetness.

Some of my initial experiments were underwhelming and even jarring, so I knew I had to find better methods. The dry leaf seems kind of like a black tea, and kind of like a green tea, so it was not obvious what variables of leaf quantity, water temperature, or brewing time to choose for it. I could tell that this intriguing tea had the potential to brew into something I really enjoyed, so I set about figuring out how to get satisfying and consistent results (and document my methods to help other people while I was at it).

The Camellia sinensis clonal bush (Clone TRFK 306/1) that produces this purple tea has been in development by The Tea Research Foundation of Kenya for the past 25 years, and has been cultivated to produce unprecedented high levels of anthocyanins, which are the antioxidant pigments that make leaves and fruits red, blue or purple. As a result, the very dark leaf can result in an abrasive and harsh brew. But that same element can produce a very pleasant and surprising wine-like note above the underlying tea taste.

Through trial and error, and retesting my steps, this is what I determined worked for me:

• Pour boiling spring water into a small ceramic teapot (about 6 ounces of water), and then empty the water into a serving pitcher to cool.
• Place 1 teaspoon of dry leaf into the teapot (2 grams).
• Pour boiling water from the kettle onto the tea leaves, filling the teapot about halfway.
• Immediately pour out and discard this initial “rinsing infusion.”
• When the water in the serving pitcher has reached 170 degrees f. pour the water into the teapot.
• Steep the tea for 5 minutes.
• Pour the tea out into the serving pitcher through a fine mesh strainer.

For a second infusion use the same temperature of water and the same steeping time. If you want to try to coax a third infusion out of it, use boiling water and steep for about 7 minutes.

This is what I determined worked for me, but adjusting the variables can result in emphasizing different qualities of the tea, according to taste. Adding a minute or two to the steeping time or using slightly more leaf are possible options. Of course the initial rinsing infusion could be omitted, but I found that it tamed the tea in a way that produced a much smoother liquor, which I liked better.

You can read more about the properties of purple tea on its product page on the Phoenix Tea website.

You can also read about purple tea on Lazy Literatus’ post, Four-Eyed No-Horned Flightless Purple Tea Drinker, and the article on T-Ching written by Joy M. W’Njuguna, one of the founders of Royal Tea of Kenya.

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This past weekend I took the opportunity to try some tea that I purchased from Michael Coffey of Tea Geek quite some time ago. This tea is, in essence, very large leaves from the bushes of a pu’er varietal simply dried and tied into bundles. As described on the Tea Geek blog:

[This] limited availability product tries to reproduce, as well as the tea-makers knew, how tea was made in Yunnan before the widespread use of compression.  This would go back to when tea was considered a medicine, not a beverage.  It clearly draws on how herbs are collected and dried–the leaves are tied together by their stems in little bundles that were hung up to dry.

I didn’t really try to anticipate what the tea would be like before I brewed it. I assumed that it was going to have its own unique characteristics, and indeed it did. Rather than following instructions for breaking up leaf from stem and brewing in a bowl, I chose to brew the tea in a tall tea glass so that the leaves could remain intact, and so I could see them as they infused. I used boiling water and brewed the tea for about two minutes for the first infusion.

The dry leaves had very little scent, but as soon as they began to steep I could smell the distinctive scent of very young sheng pu’er. The taste was also easily identified as coming from the same plants that produce pu’er cakes, although clearly having undergone considerably less processing than any other tea. If an experienced tea drinker were handed a cup of this tea’s brewed liquor without any information he would be able to identify its origin as Yunnan, China easily and immediately.

The tea remained vibrantly flavorful through three infusions, but had mostly lost its punch by the fourth. It was a little surprising that it had as much flavor and personality as it had. With such a humble appearance and primitive preparation of the leaves it would have been unsurprising for it to yield a mild and uninspiring brew. But instead it conveyed the core essence of the pure tea plant. Rather than a novelty experience of what tea used to be before people learned how to process it into the many types of fabulous teas we value today, it really showed how much information is in the pure leaf already, even with so little craft transforming plant into beverage.

Read the Tea Geek blog post to find out more detail on this very interesting tea.

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This particular show of her work is themed around Chado, the Japanese tea ceremony, using the traditional practice as inspiration for the stark metal forms of her abstract steel and aluminum works, and more directly in the pieces that take the form of actual implements of the ceremony.

The tea tools, as re-worked by Ando, become something less and also more than their utilitarian counterparts, made more stark through a shift in their materials. One set has received a coating of graphite, creating a dramatic, fragile black sheen. Another set of pieces is recast in aluminum, replacing the warm organic bamboo with cold metal. In both cases the beauty of the forms of the tea tools is illuminated, while the functionality is absent, which is a curious transformation.

What does it mean for a tool – in this case one designed and crafted for the express purpose of preparing tea using a very specific and measured set of behaviors and protocols – to be reduced to pure symbol and aesthetic object? Does this allow for a more objective perception of the beauty of the object, or does it somehow lose a part of its meaning? It may not be so simple to determine, and it is possible that the symbolic aspects of the tea tools bear the greatest weight for Ando in their place in the traditional art forms of Japan, not in any contemporary application of tea practice.

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In addition to the interviews and photos available on Adagio’s site, a new arm of this project, scheduled to launch this month, is an opportunity for consumers to communicate with the farmers by writing them notes on pre-addressed postcards which are available in Adagio’s retail stores.

The tea selected for this group tasting by ATB members – and currently the featured tea in the Roots Campaign – is a Pi Lo Chun which was grown and produced by Huang Jian Lin in Dongting, Jiangsu, China.

Note that Adagio spells the tea name, “Pi Lo Chun,” the farmer spells it “Pi Luo Chun” and the Pinyin Mandarin spelling is “Bi Luo Chun” (碧螺春). The name translates literally as “green snail spring” and this delicate green tea is universally recognized as one of the historical ten famous teas of China.

Huang Jian Lin has been close to the tea industry his entire life and tea farming has been the only job he has ever worked. His farm near Tongting Lake only produces Pi Lo Chun, so his days are very focused on protecting the tea field from overgrowth of weeds and on the short plucking season in the Spring.

The following brewing instructions are from the interview of Huang Jian Lin:

Pi luo chun is very tender. Do not use boiling water with 100 degrees centigrade. Better use the water with 90 degrees centigrade. Second, use glass cup to brew the tea. Do not use teapot with lid. Because pi luo chun needs more air for brewing. While waiting for the tea to be cool down, you can enjoy the beautiful green soup with pleasant aroma from the glass cup.

I used a couple of different methods to brew this tea, determined by previous encounters with Bi Luo Chun and experimenting with what I like. The first was in a glass gaiwan with cooled water and four steeps for about 30 seconds each. This is generally how I brew Chinese green teas, and it always brings out the best from the teas. The other method I used was to cool the water in a tall Chinese tea glass and add the tea when it got down to 160° Farenheit. This method achieves results similar to what you would get using a traditional glass tea thermos, and the tea does not get bitter even with such a long steeping time as long as the water is not too hot.

This type of tea is one that can exhibit very different qualities depending on how it is brewed, so my recommendation is to experiment until you find what works for you.

Here are links to the posts from other contributing ATB members:

Black Dragon Tea Bar
LeafJoy
Notes on Tea
The Tea Enthusiasts’s Scrapbook
Tea For Today
Tea Pages
Teaspoons & Petals
That Pour Girl
Walker Tea Review

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One highlight among the vast sea of exhibitors on the Expo floor was the Taiwan Pavilion, where Thomas Shu and his wife Josephine Pan [of ABC Tea] hosted tastings and demonstrations. They were aided by their compatriots in the Taiwanese tea industry and at one of the tastings I attended, by Bill Waddington of Tea Source, who waxed poetically about the special Taiwanese varietal developed in Taiwan in the ’80s named Ruby18. A few lucky visitors to the booth were also given the rare opportunity to hear Thomas Shu sing Hakka songs during the course of his presentations, one of which was about Baozhong (Pouchong).

The photo below shows Sunny Tang brewing oolong at the Taiwan Pavilion during this year’s Expo.

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The following three weekends in the greater Seattle area hold opportunities to experience the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland-themed theater in a park setting. Read my article on Examiner.com for details about Theater Simple‘s “WONDERLAND: Alice Adventures”.

The image above is related only thematically to the upcoming theatrical performances in parks. It is a still from the first cinematic adaptation of Lewis Caroll’s fanciful tale, a 12-minute distillation called – like most film adaptations – Alice in Wonderland (unlike the book itself, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”).

The silent film, released in 1903 and directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, captures the historical milieu of the original book in a way that more contemporary adaptations can not. There is only one known print of the film in existence, but fortunately we can watch the film online:

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The steps and the accoutrements:

1. I almost always use Crystal Geyser spring water for shu pu’er (and other teas). It’s affordable and works just as well or better with tea as some of the more expensive spring waters I’ve tried.
2. When brewing shu pu’er I always use the Kamjove electric water kettle for heating the water to boiling.



3. I generally brew at the tea table with the small, blue-green Yixing teapot that has been dedicated to brewing only shu pu’er teas. It is quite small and works perfectly.



4. I use boiling water and rinse the leaves with a very short initial infusion that also serves to warm the cups and pitcher (fair cup).
5. The first drinkable infusion is about 1 minute long.
6. I almost always use a glass serving pitcher (fair cup) because I like to be able to see the rich oranges and reds of the pu’er tea liquor, especially when there’s light coming through it.



7. The cups vary more than the teapot, but the cups I use most often with pu’er are the unglazed plain Yixing cups. They’re small, thin and very nice to drink from.



8. The number of subsequent infusions varies depending on what a particular tea is able to yield, but it’s generally at least 5, and each one is usually also about a minute, but sometimes longer if the tea seems to need more infusion time.

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In my opinion, such a reputable tea needs to be accompanied by preparation vessels and tools that match up with its elegance, so a few weeks ago I acquired the teapot in the accompanying photographs below for the explicit purpose of using it only for Da Hong Pao. I have a different Yixing Gongfu set that I had been using for all types of WuYi Oolongs, but I decided that Da Hong Pao needed its own teapot, and that it ought to be one that was more regal in appearance.

I looked at several teapots, but this was the one that I really liked the look of much better than any of the others. It was also the one that felt the best in my hand. I was told that Da Hong Pao would need a teapot with a broad surface area, and the shape of this one is ideal.

I seasoned the vessel with a small amount of one of the slightly lower grade Da Hong Pao teas that I had, and a few days later the teapot was performing perfectly on the tea table, brewing really well, and looking quite wonderful, especially when the tea was drying rapidly on its surface as it steeped the tea.

As an aside, I don’t know if it’s the time of day or the change in the atmospheric conditions due to the onset of Spring, or perhaps even the shape of the teapot, but the most recent tea session of Da Hong Pao (a very lovely example from Canton Tea Company) resulted in a very impressive display of steam in and around all of the tea objects. Of course, it would not be out of the question that I simply became fixated on steam for a time and thus paid more than the usual amount of attention to it.

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The thing has a number of excellent qualities, including very thick walls and solid construction. It does have a minor chip on the edge of the lip, but it is not prominently visible, especially when the lid is on, and the vessel should not seal since it’s being used for pu’er anyway, so that’s not an issue.

After I bought it and brought it home I scrubbed it out thoroughly and then aired it out in the fortuitous brief period of sun that we had last weekend. It did not have any odors clinging to the inside part of the clay anyway, which was good. I don’t think that it had ever been used for storing anything with a strong, lingering scent.

I broke up one of the Xiaguan shu pu’er cakes into fairly large chunks and now they are occupying this very nice container. The remarkable thing about this excellent storage container is that I found it in a thrift store and paid less than $10 for it!

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• Pure Pu’er
• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• ATB Blog Carnival: AdagioTeas’ “Roots Campaign.”
• How I generally brew shu pu’er