Inspired by my recent tea experiment with rose puer cakes and an upcoming tea session involving Malawi puer, I thought it would be fun to go back to basics and explore the idea: what is puer? Introduction In many tea books I’ve read, tea is often classified as: green, black, oolong, yellow (sometimes left out),… Read More Tea 101: What is Puer?
Note: This is a follow-up post to my first post on caffeine in tea, which was written about a year and a half ago. Normally, I don’t really revisit tea topics because I don’t really feel the need to re-research everything, but I came across this information in 日本茶のすべてがわかる本 and I thought it was worth… Read More Tea 101: Caffeine in Tea (Part 2)
Since I’ve started working in Malaysia, I’ve noticed that quite a few cai fan [1] places give provide free tea to go with the food. However, unlike Japan, the tea tends to be oolong. Wondering what kind of oolong it was, I asked and was told that it was “中国茶 (Chinese tea)”. On another occasion,… Read More What is ‘Chinese Tea’?
This was one of the tea brands that was at the Singapore Tea Festival! They’re also in the VIP bag, but their teas sold out really fast and the only one that I managed to buy (and hence have enough to properly taste and review) would be their Scarlet Roasted Tea. Arinobu Tea is a… Read More Tasting Scarlet Roasted Tea by Arinobu Tea
This year seems to be the year of oolongs (at least in terms of workshops). I attended an oolong workshop that focuses on Taiwanese oolongs last Saturday and learnt so much. The workshop was hosted by Kenny, one of the tea practitioners in Singapore that I admire, and was chock-full of information. I took over… Read More Taiwanese Oolong Workshop by Kenny Leong
The back of Twinings’ Golden Rose Hearts has the following description to describe the tea: “Handmade using a traditional Chinese technique known as ‘Tuocha’, a single rosebud is placed into black tea leaves and compressed into a heart shape. When infused in hot water, the rosebud delicately scents the strong, brisk black tea.” I was… Read More What is Tuo Cha?
Apart from Duck Shit Dancong, my latest tea haul included Milanxiang, a tea I chose because the name sounded appealing. I’ve already covered the basics of Dancong in my post on Duck Shit Dancong, so I’ll just do an introduction of Milanxiang in this one. What is Milanxiang Dancong? Written as 蜜兰香, Milanxiang translates into… Read More Trying Milanxiang Dancong
Cher and I did our first group tea buy recently! Cher has quite a few suppliers that she gets tea from – what this means is that while her cost of tea per 100g is pretty cheap, the overall amount is pretty high because she has to buy a minimum amount of tea. But since… Read More My First Duck Shit Oolong (+ What is Dancong?)
During work this week, someone casually mentioned that there were a lot more varieties of Tie Guanyin than he imagined. Since I’ve only heard of Tie Guanyin as the tea that comes from the Tie Guanyin cultivar, I was surprised and we ended up looking into what a Tie Guanyin is (perks of working with… Read More Tea 101: What is Tie Guanyin?
When I went for the introductory class on oolong tea, I learnt something pretty interesting about High Mountain Teas: they can be further divided into two different categories. I’ve only ever heard of high mountain Tea as one type of tea, so the idea that they could be further divided was new to me. So… Read More High Mountain Oolong: The Difference Between 高山 (Gaoshan) and 高冷 (Gaoleng)