Wrong Fu ChaLost in a sea of tea.

The sec­ond meetup was hosted by Tim in his spa­cious studio.

Tak­ing a page from Tai­wan tea eval­u­a­tion, we used a com­pe­ti­tion tast­ing cup and spoons to dis­trib­ute the tea. Brewed tea from the pot or gai­wan was decanted into a com­pe­ti­tion cup, and passed around. Each guest ladled 3 sips of tea into their tast­ing cup using their own spoon. The spoon could be used to judge the aroma by smelling top and bottom.

Tie Guan Yin

Mike was first up at the brew­ing table with a packet of jade TGY from Ten Ren. Sweet and flo­ral, good opener while other guests shuf­fled in.

Feng Huang Milan Dan Cong

Mike reprised his role as tea mas­ter to brew this Feng Huang Dan Cong. Fear­ing bit­ter­ness, we took it a lit­tle too easy on this tea. It can be pushed much harder than some Dan Cong.

I sug­gested brew­ing a few rounds with spring water, which pro­duced a thicker and sweeter mouth­feel ver­sus the fil­tered water.

1990’s Aged Tai­wan Oolong (Si Ji)

I took over to brew two aged oolongs. The first I brewed mod­er­ately, and I believe it was met with unan­i­mous approval. Most com­pared aspects of the tea to cedar planks, which was more enjoy­able that it sounds.

15 Year Aged Tie Guan Yin

Dry leaf in the newly opened bag had a strong cin­na­mon smell. Some guests smelled cocoa. I decided to brew this sec­ond oolong to my own tastes, mak­ing it much stronger. Many peo­ple pre­ferred this brew, but a few found it to be too strong.

1980 Mixed Ripe and Raw Puerh

Tim flaked off some tea from this 1980 brick to brew in a gai­wan. By now all of the guests have arrived, so he decided to do dou­ble brews. Two infu­sions were com­bined in my favorite fair­cup, and passed around in lieu of the ear­lier spoon solution.

The aroma was described as wet straw, bark, and all the famil­iar attrib­utes of cooked puerh. The taste was also stan­dard fare. The qi how­ever was very calm­ing and man­aged to reset the hearts and minds from my aggres­sive brews.

Lao Cong Shui Xian

The puerh was a segue into a very lim­ited Yan­cha from Tim’s col­lec­tion. He care­fully demon­strated how to build the pot in three layers.

The desired amount of tea was laid out on the first sheet of paper, and whole leaves were selected and moved to a sec­ond sheet. A hand­ful of whole leaves was crushed to form the bot­tom layer of the pot. Reserved bro­ken pieces formed the next layer, and the rest of the pot was filled with the remain­ing whole leaves.

This was a very exclu­sive tea from a farmer who pro­duces 2 to 4 lbs of this tea a year. It was roasted 8 times, and the taste is very unlike any Yan­cha I have pre­vi­ously encoun­tered. I don’t know whether to attribute this to the skill in roast­ing, or the age of the bushes.

The pot of leaves was left in my care along with a chal­lenge. To brew the tea for 5 min­utes each morn­ing, and to refill with boil­ing water to sit for the rest of the day. Two infu­sions are to be drunk each day for as long as the tea will last.

Depart­ing

Any­one who could stay joined us for din­ner — we rushed to the restau­rant to beat clos­ing time and ordered plates full of “Chi­nese” food — beef and noo­dles, seafood pad thai, a deli­cious egg­plant dish and more. We returned to the stu­dio to clean up and called it a night.

Inter­spersed Events

Before the start of the event, Mike and I ate for lunch at the Bay Leaf and headed to Chi­na­town for some trea­sure hunt­ing. We each bought Yix­ing tea boats and some inex­pen­sive hong ni pots. I found a cast iron trivet
to go with my tetsubin.

We ate ice cream waf­fles from the freezer in a Japan­ese mar­ket before meet­ing up with Tim, who served us large pas­tries from a Hong Kong style shop.

The next morn­ing, I tor­tured Mike by mak­ing him wake up at 6:30 to resume his kung fu cha train­ing. We drank dan cong from a new Chi­na­town pot, and the first of the pre­scribed 5 minute Lao Cong brews. Before we could brew much more, I had to catch the sub­way towards Penn Sta­tion and make my way home.

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