Drinking Costco Matcha while Cranking out Elves

After being sticker shocked by a price increase in the local grocery store matcha, I finally sprung for the giant bag of matcha from Costco. It's an epic good deal at $18 for 12 ounces and I'm here to say it's pretty good. I can unequivocally state it's better than any I've drunk in any boba joint or tea house.  I quaff it by the gallon these days in matcha lattes but when I do drink it straight, this budget matcha from Sencha Naturals has a pleasing sweet lingering finish. 

Twin Elves from the East

After being disappointed by the unelflike elves in the worst Tolkien adaptation that has ever existed, I spent all week trying to generate sketches of convincing elves with my magical AI image generator.   I am not a long hair purist. It's entirely possible that after a Balrog yanked down Glorfindel by his long tresses that warrior elves might choose to keep it short.  You don't want orcs yanking your ponytail in battle. Those elves from that unworthy production had more behavioral issues and acted like short sighted mortal humans. 

I was curious what AI training data considered a canonical elf and it's predictably a long haired pointy-eared pointy-faced pretty boy of European descent.   I prefer my fantasy races to look different from the human race like the drows of D&D or the dunmer of Morrowind. It makes more sense to me that fantasy races would look nothing like existing human ethnicities. But fantasy content is created by and for humans.  For kicks I tried making elves of various human ethnicities to see what makes an elf visually an elf.  Elves don't have to be ethereally beautiful, ugly elves work too. Actually anybody that's played an Elder Scrolls games knows this.  Bearded elves and fat elves are a harder sell and bearded fat elves, well they simply cross over into dwarf territory.

Samurai elves are a thing in fantasy games...

My husband charitably said these portraits were convincing, these were not just characters that appeared to be cosplaying.    In the portrait above, I've taken out the ears of the left twin mainly because they were hideously large donkey ears. It actually feels like he should have elf ears.  Regardless of race, it's a fiddly affair trying to get AI to put in elf ears which are often garishly proportioned, no doubt skewed by enthusiastic fan art.  I've only had moderate success with the Asian face types. The other races, I've generated hundreds of variations but could not get them to look quite convincing. I can't decide if long dreads do not look right on an elf or I am lacking the magic prompts to make it look right.

You can enjoy more of my work from my newly minted Deviant Art page:

https://www.deviantart.com/strictlystorymode

Drinking up that 20 year old budget beeng...

Recently, I've been brewing up small chunks of a random 2005 6 FTM for kicks. The only reason I brew such dregs of my collection is because somehow it's the only easily accessible beeng in a tightly packed closet. For probably about ~$3 for the entire beeng, it's decent enough and I'll save my analysis for the end.

I was going to take a classic photo of puerh in a gaiwan but I thought why not let those new fangled AI image generators show you something more interesting.  I've been laboring all morning to get my beefy GPU to cough up images of a balrog having tea with Sauron at the foot of Mount Doom. 

What AI thinks when "Sauron drinking Chinese tea with a Balrog"

The AI doesn't quite get it and the best I could do is summon vague copies of Sauron with some tea paraphernalia.  Critics might say my prompts are not refined enough or my sampling inputs need adjustment but it's not quite time yet for AI to conjure up the subtleties of true tea enjoyment in a dark fantasy setting. Nonetheless these images are infinitely superior to what I myself could draw from scratch.

AI rendition of Sauron's tea party

I give up forcing the dark lord to enjoy tea and now contemplate this brew, the '05 6FTM Yinji Yibang of the green wrapper.   I was foolish enough not to gird my stomach with a proper pork lunch and sheng even aged two decades on still gives me that familiar stomach ache. Let's be real, it tastes more like an 8 year old, if that.  I may simply wait another few decades.

While home aging in Berkeley overall has yielded expectedly subpar results(nothing new to report here), hoarding early has at least saved me a lot of money in this dreadful age of inflation. I was in line at the grocery store where the grandma in front of me paid $10 for 4 organic onions.  I guess inflation is the true evil of not only this world but of other realms. Inflation must have been pretty crazy at the end of the Hobbit with Smaug's hoard of gold flooding Middle Earth. 

AI does not quite get "Sauron enjoying tea"

Some answers in case you are curious:

• Yes the Rings of Power is an atrocity that can never be forgiven. Everybody knows the real romance is between Sauron and Celebrimbor.
• I am using Stable Diffusion open source 1.4 version with Trinart model
• No I will not buy a RTX 4090, just on principal.

Mystery of 2008 Rose House Tea

 My mother received two canisters of loose black tea for Christmas last year which she dutifully handed over to me. To my very surprise, the expiration date was 2011, the tea being from May of 2008.

What's the chance that this kind of inadvertent black tea aging experiment would land on my very lap. The fact that someone hoarded(?) and re-gifted this tea 14 years later boggles my mind. The gift came from a kindly professor in his eighties who had recently moved.  Despite my burning curiosity, my mother declined to get more information about how long this tea had been in his possession or if it was part of a long chain of regifting. It could be that if you have that many decades under your belt, a single decade feels like a year.

The tea is not spit out disgusting but fairly drinkable. I've had much much worse at museum shops and on airplanes. The underlying blended black tea is still bright. Unfortunately, it's the rancid botanicals(orange blossom, rose petals) that ruin the flavor. Otherwise, I could have happily drunk this decade expired tea without trouble.

What to do? Order another boatload of Assam from teabox.

Winter Tea Reflections

Of all the sensual experiences available, I don't know why I have fixated on tea as my vehicle for pleasure and stimulation. In middle age, some choose a young mistress but me, I yearn for certain kind of leaves in a teapot.  I'm not looking for a perfect cup of tea as much as where the brew will take me. 

Just as certain music can induce complex moods, certain cups of tea have brought indescribable reverie of complex emotions. I haven't written about it much because, well I resist writing such intimate tea thoughts for any random stranger to chance upon.  But what is a tea blog but the very place for sharing tea thoughts.  So here goes. Sometimes the mood is joy, sometimes it's sadness, but mostly it's many emotions fused in inseparable ways. These feelings are very different from the usual wellspring of emotions that bubble, much more existential but not angsty. It's purer, less clouded by my individual self.  

But unlike music that will naturally pull from you as a passive listener, finding this altered tea state requires a bit more active engagement.  I have to be attuned to it to be carried in and I have to make a conscious effort not to think which will carry me out.  I imagine wine and scotch are much less finicky to bring about this type state with the aid of alcohol or certain drugs but some how I desire this specifically from tea. 

I don't know what brew of brain chemicals is exactly triggering these episodes and why I think tea is the conduit.   I've thought perhaps because I drink tea often and it's incidental that I wrongly attribute tea drinking to be the vehicle. But definitely puerh brings about this state than most.  And I need the tea as the doorway for now.

Winter is upon us at least in the northern hemisphere. Dear reader, I hope you are bundled up and warming yourself up with a hot cup of tea.  From my favorite games, I've made a quiet playlist for you that is suitable for carrying you to sleep. Enjoy.

Shu oatmilk latte + other abominables

A few years ago when I used to prance around downtown Oakland for noodles and bobas, a new boba joint was offering puerh macchiatos. At the time, I was curious (and somewhat disgusted)  but not enough to forgo my usual matcha latte.  And now that cafe is long defunct and I no longer frequent boba joints. 

A few months ago, I had been quaffing some pretty good shu ('09 YS Lao Cha Tou Sheng Yun) and it was not flagging anytime soon.  There's only so much straight up shu a girl can take.  At the 5th brew, I decided to switch it up with some oatmilk remembering my missed opportunity.  It wasn't so bad and soon this combo grew on me that I finally finished last of my brick that I opened in 2017.

Whence came mold?

I went to fetch a new brick only to find white mold spots on the outside wrapping. The brick underneath appeared to be unharmed. It's been a really humid week with the pineapple express drenching the Bay Area with buckets of water.  Inside the teacloset it's 41% RH right now. The shu is stored outside in the overflow area which is at 50%RH.  I guess it's good that there's humidity enough but one doesn't want a mold outbreak either.  I'll have to do a complete inspection which I haven't done in several years.

This lao cha tou and my other shus in general has not aged well, the exception being the lighter shu with a sheng blend. The earlier lively tastes from a few years ago are no longer present.  There is some controversy over whether shu can age and I would say paying a lot for aged shu is probably not the best idea.  

So what to do with a cabinet full of badly aging shu? It's definitely drinkable and at worst I'll have it as latte. The oatmilk really rounds out any off fishy flavors. There are purists who think milky additives are an abomination on proper tea. While I wouldn't defile high quality leaf this way, I'm going to take any route that makes my  shu more fun to drink.

Coffee Drinking PSA for Teaheads

I've been struggling to push off coffee yet again and dear readers, I no longer have the will.  When I last kicked the habit with double strength assams, I perhaps could have stayed clean permanently had I lived alone. Yet I live with another coffee drinker and seeing a loved one constantly and enthusiastically extoll the delicious virtues of coffee every morning makes my abstinence nigh impossible.

It's not that tea vs coffee is some analog to weed vs cocaine. But the higher levels of caffeine combined with the easy delicious taste entices you in such a warm embrace.  I'm a mere mortal buffeted by various whims and desires and I have to utilize my precious and limited will-power on things that are life critical.

I can't seem to resist the bean especially if I have not had proper sleep which is a lot these days.  Why would somebody like me consistently stay up all night for? Well, mostly gaming  but yesterday I tried my hand at choreographing a machinima music dance video.  Making modded characters dance was definitely worth the relapse in coffee.  Enjoy the 3 minutes of pure entertainment!

If you love Skyrim and the Witcher...

Taboo of Reroasting Coffee Beans

Early this year I chanced upon two pounds of "artisanal" coffee beans that my husband had completely forgotten about under his desk.  Often he will be gifted coffee at work which he promptly deposits at my bean bank. But this one being an undesirable light roast somehow languished hidden for about a year.

To a puerh drinker, a year really is a blip in time and the beans grind up to a better than expected highly drinkable brew.  But these Honduran beans are exceedingly lightly roasted barely past first crack giving me the jitters.  It's too old to giveaway to anyone and I can't drink anything this light so I had the notion to just re-roast it to a darker level.

Anytime anybody asks about re-roasting on a forum,  roasting snobs come out of the woodwork to naysay re-roasting, a technique they haven't ever tried.  Given there is precedent for re-roasting in oolongs, a far more delicate brew than coffee, I could see a re-roasting home experiment was in order.  I found mention of a Swiss technique of double roasting for a more low acid smoother brew. Lo and behold a cafe chain in Hong Kong serves double roasted beans:

"the new blend Double Roast are roasted until its first crack, then left to cool down for 48 hours, and thereafter roasted again until the desired roasting level is achieved. The cooling phase in between the 2 roasts causes the sugar in the beans to caramelise without burning, allowing the transformation of the beans to evolve into a sweet, deeply rich finish with low acidity."

I know there is a wide gap between 48 hours and a whole year of resting but where is the fun in life if you don't try.  In the end, it's me and my husband that will be quaffing this suboptimally roasted coffee and only the results down our throats will confirm whether it's a viable technique.  At worst, it would still be leaps better than coffee on an airplane and superior to anything a field solider would have gotten during the Civil War. 

Not having my hands on a more convenient popcorn popper,  I  first opted for the simplest frying pan method, not really ideal with surface heat. I've since tried a closed pot that I shake vigorously at higher heat every 5 seconds that works much better.  In my first attempt with the fry pan, I was timid with the heat and was whisking these beans for over half an hour. Even with the vigorous shakes and thorough whisking, it was an uneven roast with a few burnt beans.

Nobody will lend me their popcorn popper...

How was the end result? Pleasing. The coffee is smooth and drinkable with the taste even nuttier after a few days of curing. I guess it might be an affront to coffee snobs as the more delicate flavors of this Honduran has been burnt out.  The single roasted brew had fruity notes and a light sweetness on the tongue.  Honduran coffee tends to be mild, sweet, and offends no one so it's hard to say what of the unique characteristic it lost during it's year of sleep.  The bag did not specify the varietal and I'm not one to notice the taste difference in taste between the arabica varieties. 

I'm not going to serve this to guests and enjoy it as a breakfast brew.    Given the dramatic price inflation of boutique beans (these would have been $20 for 12 oz which seems steep for a Honduran),  I'm happy at this fortuitous experimentation.  Before when the roast in the bag is lighter than expected. I've often given them away but now I'll just re-roast. 

*Yes, from this post you may garner that I am back on the coffee train after weaning off.  I was drinking Assams daily and puerh occasionally during 2020 but it was the fraught elections that sent me seeking something more robust and non-complicated to carry me through. 

Garden Tea Party, agedness of '04 Yiwu Purple Changtai

For the first time in a long while, I invited a tea guest to my back yard, a dear friend I had not seen face to face for more than a year. Being way past mandated isolations, vaccinations should have ushered in a more joyous return to gatherings. However I find it harder to loosen my grip on my hermit ways.  

I brought out a '04 Changtai Hao Yiwu Purple remembering it to be a pretty tea worthy to serve.   Whether it's purple leaf that doesn't age well or bad aging in the arid confines of my Berkeley home even with a decade in Guangdong, I'd wager it's a combination of both.  August is Fogust in the bay area but somehow the dry zone inside my tea closet doesn't relent holding tight to 45% humidity. I didn't have the foresight to condition the leaves beforehand in a ceramic jar.  But the occasion being friendship and company, any tea might have done.

After party for 1

Even though the teapot was crammed full of leaves, the taste was indistinctly mild with a huigan so imperceptible to declare this brew was definitely not to pleasure our senses.   Yet the brew exerted enough potency to knock down my coffee loving husband.   

It didn't seem right to take pictures during our tea session so the above photo is  after the party, I soldier on past the 8th brew trying to recapture some of my earlier fonder memories of this cake from 6 years past but my mind is too preoccupied by my first tea party of the decade and news of friends.

I brew up this Yiwu again this afternoon having left a chunk in a ceramic jar for a few days.  Due to the caution of the times, I had refrained myself at the party from sniffing deeply the leaves and the teapot lid which is one of the great pleasures of a good Yiwu. So brewing solo now, my nose happily sniffed away at the brown sugar scent.  The signature Yiwu huigan is definitely there, light and pretty but... but accompanied by a mouth drying astringency which wasn't so prominent before.  

I half-heartedly vow never to waste money on aging purple cakes again and to serve purple teas young and lively.   For the curious, I sent away an entire hundo for a 200g mini beeng 7 years ago for the vain hope that purples age well enough to justify the steep cost.  The personal answer for me in Berkeley is sadly nay nay. I wish I had spent that sum for a terabyte of SSD instead.  Sigh.  How have I gotten so sensible to prefer NAND disk over leaf disk but one really can never have enough solid state storage even if one's m.2 slots are full up.  

But an hour past my first sip, a pretty lingering sweetness gets stronger in my tongue and left throat making me smile, but not enough to reverse my last sentiment. The best Yiwus can tingle obscure parts of the mouth. I've had dormant tastebuds in the undersides of my tongue sparkle. I should have listened to Jakub and gotten that 2010 Hai Lang Hao Chawang Yiwu. 

Did the conditioning of the tea chunk in a ceramic canister improve this tea or is this Yiwu too delicate to be appreciated as a back seat tea where there is too much other stimulation? I'll put this Changtai Yiwu down as being a finicky shy tea needing full attention to enjoy.  More than half the Changtai beengs and bricks I have tend to be a rugged lot asserting their shengness in mouth punching ways although no where near as brawny as the mouth kicking Menghai newborns.  

It's been almost a year since I've brewed a Yiwu.  Truth be told, I've fallen back to drinking coffee midway through as the pandemic which demanded something more robust and less complicated.  But now as I'm sipping this Yiwu, I feel entirely ready for a change back to checking out aging of my other beengs.

Off the Curb Nilgiri Shiva: Opening the 3rd Eye

Knowing how much I enjoy a good cup of Nilgiri, my husband picked this perfectly good bag of Nilgiri tea off a free box on the curb in front of the bougie brick lofts facing his workshop. Why anyone would throw away a perfectly good bag of tea? I sniffed and it smelled fragrant and most assuredly tealike. I looked it up on the internet and this tea boasted "Appropriate for opening the third eye".

Who would throw away such a bag?

What else to do but brew up a tea with such a lofty claim. I've only taken lemons off free boxes on curbs but there's nothing like adding some excitement to your tea session. It wasn't a suspicious baggy of illicit substances for which purity cannot be guaranteed. It was most definitely 99% tea with some twigs. My suspicion would be that it be weak and stale.  This Nilgiri was packed 3/27/20 but definitely last year's tea.  

The tea brews up definitely more refined than grocery store bulk tea and sometimes  you need  a weakass and mild tea to just barely prop up an afternoon. For the retail price of $7 per ounce, it definitely would have been a disappointment but who buys teas at that price without knowing the tea estate or proper tea leaf grade?  I'm assuming something not too much above FOP. 

Still for free, I'm happy as a clam. The original owner barely cracked into the bag which is more than full so it was rejected early.  Friends, there is nothing wrong with weak teas as they have their time and place. The problem with the single estate teas is that they are way too potent leaving me wide eyed until 2am.  So weak teas are welcome. 

Yes the third eye is definitely all marketing drivel.   

 (I've gone from tea hoarding to digital game hoarding which definitely is easier on the wallet and household clutter.)

Overcoming Tea Greed

Many years ago one November, I got certified for basic first aid/CPR training and completed a driving school contrition course.  Our excellent first aid trainer was a retired Marin firefighter who spouted tales of life and death at every turn- the most noteworthy of which involved a man who miraculously survived a bullet to his throat only to die years later choking on a blueberry.  Most of us hope for a peaceful end but the cold hard CDC statistics and the scare tactics from my driving course indicate otherwise. But before you feel too down about the eventually pending medical emergency that will cut our ropes, let us take cheer in our present circumstances that we are not dead yet. (Can ghosts access the internet is a metaphysical debate for another time.)

In my youth, I used to be quite contemptuous of Seneca's pat wisdom when forced to translate them in Latin class. But after a few decades of living, despite Seneca's apparent hypocrisy, his words ring true.

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. ”

Kayak full of crabs. Crab hoarding is not a thing...

Hoarding puerh tea at the core is motivated by a not unreasonable fear of scarcity that is confirmed each passing year by the puerh tea market.  If I could readily procure desired tea at a decent price at any time like supermarket tea bags, I would not have compulsively crammed our china cabinet full of beengs.  The DIY fuzzy warm feeling from aging one's own tea or having enough to share, they are all secondary supporting rationalizations. 

Barring global nuclear fallout or a super volcanic eruption, some type of tea will always be available to consumers at an affordable price range. From a stoic point of view,  there is no reason one could not happily drink grocery store teabags as billions do every day.  Or I could be even perfectly contented drinking merely potable water. But mentally acknowledging such truths is different thing altogether from controlling one's rabid impulses.

Less than through emotional maturity and disciplined will, a collusion of factors has progressively detached me from the need hoard more puerh for the last few years.  The first big hit of a sledge hammer came from periodic fasting, my compulsive connection to food got crushed.   But already the deeply unfavorable economics of  buying newborn sheng compared to my existing hoard had dampened and killed purchasing for many years now.  The beengs I bought nearer to $100 range were really not that much better than my $10 beengs from 2005, and definitely inferior to my $20 beengs.   The smug hoarder devil sits on my left shoulder and says "See, your early hoarding saved you money so you can sit back."  Maybe so.

The home aging experiment while not a definitive failure has not been entirely a success either as the two moving targets-the aging tea and my desire for their particular taste at a specific point in time rarely overlap.  Still I'm grateful for the tea I have regardless of the collection's mediocrity.    There's nothing wrong with mediocrity as that's where most things lie.

If I learned anything from covid times,  it's to be constantly grateful.   I am grateful I can brew tea everyday while knowing when one is truly thirsty, the humblest cup of tap water sparkles in one's mouth.

 “True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing." 

a New Husband-made Tea Shelf

 I hope you dear reader are faring well and looking forward to physically commingling with beloved friends and family once again.  By the gods, is June already passing by.  It seems an eternity ago that I was laughing and dining on tasty weiners and fried apples in Vienna, sitting elbow to elbow with friends and strangers.  After months of home isolation, I wonder when I will ever share a bowl of tasty Guilin noodles in Chinatown with friends again. I've been boiling up lamb necks with noodles to serve with home made pickles but it's so not same. But I sit with my lone cup of tea with hopes of normalcy.

What is at the other end of this shelf? You will never guess...

Last week, my sweet husband built me two shelves out of 2 inch thick teak.
One is above my desk to to protect teacups and devices from the utter mess of cords. Now I will never have to wipe milky tea from a tangle of cords again. Although my hoarding habit makes me want to fill this shelf full of tea boxes, I've thus far resisted the urge and have kept it free only for immediate tea. And at least having one clear surface gives my cluttered mind a resting place.

But there is something special about having a space no matter how small reserved just for your tea service.  I had some plans or fantasies rather of building a tiny tea hut on my tiny plot of land, but one has to start small.   And even this one shelf end brings me daily joy.

When bloggers present their tea sessions, one rarely sees the surrounding clutter.  Although I have a feeling Matt and MarshalN are vastly more tidy than I am.  For me, keeping clean surfaces is a daily losing battle so this one shelf is symbolic.

On the gaming front, I've been enjoying the gorgeous artistry and heart rending narrative of Gris, a platformer from Spanish indie Nomada Studios. It's on steam summer sale and for those whose eyes crave a more stylized beauty, this would be one of the standout titles in all gaming. Stay safe everybody.

Winter Frost Havukal Black - 2020 Pick

(Dear Readers, I hope you are are still holding up during these times. I read this morning one of the Boba Guys founder had to let 400 employees go and that he never cried so much in his life. I also read an ice skating rink was turned into a morgue. I feel numbly paralyzed reading the daily news and have relapsed to obsessing about tea. Continuing with old tea rituals is some measure of comfort. I hope you allow yourself some daily reprieve doing something that eases your burdens.)

Dried peach the perfect  accompaniment

Last year, out of the twenty odd teas from India, the Winter Frost Havukal Black struck me as the most intriguing. The tea body was light yet with an intense floral profile. I don't like oolongs that are too floral but this tea made my palate curious. This example of a high-grown Nilgiri winter flush lies somewhere in triangulation between oolongs and darjeeling muscatels but is distinctly it's own genre.

Given the mild climates of southern India doesn't vary as much, it's not clear whether or not winter flush is more of a marketing designation.  Even the teabox blog states:
"Observed almost exclusively in the Nilgiri mountains of southern India, these teas are harvested from December to January. In Nilgiri, the term winter flush is used interchangeably with autumn flush, since there is no distinct autumn and winter in the south Indian tropics."
  
I am a complete noob to the nilgiri winter flush genre and now will have to hunt around for more examples as I don't know how this tea compares to it's peers.  It doesn't matter in the current enjoyment of this tea but for curiosity and for future procurement. If you have a particular nilgiri or winterflush that you enjoy, please let me know.

When I saw the February 4, 2020 pick was available, I confidently ordered a 100g packet last week to compare with the 2019 pick along with more Glendale nilgiris. (I sighed about the 3 cups of stale bagged teas I drank at European museum cafes that cost more than the 100 grams of this compelling tea. Although one can theoretically order 100 grams of this tea for $4 direct from Havukal's site, the shipping came out to a prohibitive $67 dollars even though the site promised free shipping on all orders over 1000 rupees or $13.) 

Last year's pick had overwhelming orchid(?) aromatics with a long long lasting finish, but this year's pick is slightly more muted which makes me wonder if some aging time might be good for this tea. The 2020 pick is not without it's charms.  Although it's called a black, the tea genre is quite green and new greens are always bothersome to my system so I will put this 2020 pick away to revisit this winter. I regret not buying up more of the 2019 to drink now.

The lovely game I'm lucky to play this week is 'Ori, the Will of the Wisps', an absolute visual feast but a devilishly hard platformer that is punishing my poor stiff fingers.

Thoughts on Virus Prepping and Buying more Tea

Dear readers, I hope you are taking comfort in drinking good tea and finding ways to keep health and spirits up. The economy is in a bad way world over and many humans are facing hardships even if they manage to dodge illness. I guess the only thing we can try to have control over is our emotions and state of mind. And tea can be an alleviating brew suited to help us do such lifting.

The Bay Area has been ordered to shelter in place yesterday.  I'm exceedingly grateful my husband and I made it home last week in health and we are avoiding any close social interactions as is prudent for having been through the germ vat of airports. (Our exit from JFK was extremely easy and uncrowded last Thursday.)

Our fridge had been emptied out for our European journey so I had to make two emergency trips for the family provisions.  I normally do my procurement at Berkeley Bowl which would have been a nightmare due to it's vast footprint and massive inventory.  I had to forgo hopes of replenishing our boar/duck bacon and lamb neck supply to make do at a Trader Joe's.   I know TJ's limited inventory intimately and was too jet lagged to attempt anything else. Since I normally have a full box of lamb necks/elk/bison/deer/salmon in the freezer, we could get by for now with basic staples. By the way, lamb necks make excellent stews, a nourishing broth, and is economical to boot.

I queued up last Saturday morning before opening and everything was available at TJs without rationing.  When I returned yesterday for a second round right after San Francisco announced stay-in-place order, the shelves had been emptied out of essentials such as eggs and beans.   Unless you wanted a carton of egg whites or pre-boiled eggs, you were out of luck. I was trying to snag a few items for my neighbor and could fulfill only half her list.

Beans have never been so popular

Ironically while some of the shelves were bare, quinoa was abundantly available as was various gluten free products. I guess people prefer beans over quinoa during a zombie apocalypse. My highest priority items were

• avocado oil, eggs 
• almonds, almond butter, almond milk, pumpkin/ sunflower/chia seeds
• celery, brassicas, granny smith apples, citrus 
• pork products

We don't eat much grain except for popcorn but I loaded up on gluten free pasta products and all kind of high carb snackages I strategically avoid in normal times. If I did get sick, I'd probably crave spicy salty carby junk food.  I was so happy to see shishito peppers that I sprung for lamb chops to accompany them.  Mostly, I was so flustered, it was the only time my grocery cart was not organized by category.

In my rush, I mistakenly bought standard heirloom navel oranges instead of cara cara. I know. That sounds totally stupidly bougie but one of the benefits of being a Berkeley housewife is that one has the pleasure of browsing the acre of produce at Berkeley Bowl with dozens of citrus varieties. The Bowl's blood orange selection is top notch. Last month, I snagged in the budget produce shelf, a 3.5 pound bag of perfectly juicy Tarocco blood oranges for a dollar but this week I'm reduced to an overpriced bag of dry fibrous Moros.

 

I have been fortunate to be habituated to a life of excessive plenty in the United States.  This was the only time in my life I had to queue up for going into a grocery store. Yesterday TJ was limiting the number of customers in the store so it was quite chill once you were allowed in even if third of the shelves were bare. I remember a colleague telling me about scarcity in Soviet controlled Uzbekistan and how toilet paper was so scarce that when someone would get some, they would proudly wear it around their neck as sort of a trophy. 

I have vague memories that the Korean military would issue these thin booklets of toilet paper, kind of a stiff waxy affair.  Civilians would use books and newspapers while country folk would resort to leaves. Running out of toilet paper probably is not the worst scenario if you have running water and soap. I am a long time TP hoarder for a different reason- inflation.  I buy 100+ rolls of it when it goes on sale on-line.  I'm sure a sociology grad student will do a full study on why TP puts people's hoarding instincts into overdrive. Every human has their particular hoarding tendency and of course tea is the anxiety inducing item in the tea closet.
 
Although I could be drinking a different puerh every day before summer hits and not put a dent in the supply, I decided to put in another order of India teas from teabox.  (Those other teas are not quite ready to drink or so I tell myself...) I had grown fond of a black tea from Mouling in Arunachal Pradesh, north east India.  The distinctive dusky floral profile I instantly liked more than the rather similar assams I'd been chugging.  I ordered a pound more assams to tide me over till summer. The straight forward maltiness of assams make it a better tea for mental comfort.

We will see what this month brings for the world. Stay healthy everybody.

Traveling in These Times

I returned a few days ago from a 10 day jaunt through Munich and Vienna where my lucky eyes laid on spectacular and wondrous examples of human ingenuity and creativity. The excellent Deutsches Museum is pure pleasure for anyone with a love of engineering and science. We were traveling with a friend who is writing a book on automata and she generously let us tag along on her meeting with the curator of clockmaking. He showed us his workshop as well as introducing us to artists from the diorama workshop- this behind the scenes tour was a cherry-on-top of an already super trip.

Fascinating power tools exhibit at Deutsches Museum

I could have happily spent all my time in this vast temple of current and past technologies as a day and a half was not time enough to appreciate the enormous collection of power engines and turbines, a bathysphere, tide predicting machine, Wright biplane, a floor of room sized ancient compute devices. I truly hope to return there again once the world normalizes. 

After a full day of gawking at the various treasures of Munich, I joyfully stuffed my face with delectable edibles of the porky variety.  Being fond of blood sausages, I was stoked to find Munich's Ratskeller served them in a traditional dish "Himmel und Erdem"-  Heaven and Earth. Actually my body sadly cannot eat butter any more so these pillowy mounds of buttery mashed potatoes tasted even more heavenly.  (OMG so tasty I almost cried.)

Himmel und Erdem

While I rejoiced at every meal with such hearty fare, my choices for imbibing were sorely crimped. I was served such insipid tea at most establishments that I gave up. Either the water was not hot enough, the water chemistry wasn't good for tea particularly in Munich, or the mesh teabags had been exposed to air constantly and hence gave a stale brew.  Non-dairy options at cafe's were not a thing in Europe so pretty much espresso was the only thing I could order. 

The day before our return flight, a European travel entry ban was announced and Vienna had started to close all her museums. In hindsight, we were exceedingly lucky to have reentered the States on Thursday before the airport chaos on Saturday. For the first 8 days of our journey, we barely noticed the impact of covid-19 except for the few odd tourists (mostly Asians) that wore face masks.  Actually the lack of large Asian tourist groups would have been the biggest difference.  Also the top of my hands became dry crusty tortoise elbows from excessive hand washing and hand sanitizing. The last few days of our trip, anxiety creeped in with a fierce desire to return home.   

The last Viennese museum we visited before country wide closures was the extensive Imperial Armory which was almost empty save for 2 other visitors.  These exemplars of centuries old metalwork puts to shame any gaming armor in craftsmanship and intricacy.

I had returned to Vienna with the hopes of showing my husband the fabulous room of meteors at the Natural History Museum. I don't know why I get so excited looking at hunks of extraterrestrial rock but I do.  During my first visit, Europe was suffering a historic heat wave and the NHM, lacking any air conditioning, turned into a sauna of sorts. With my parents wilting in such heat, we had less than hour before we simply had to abort for gelato breaks. As we had saved the best for the last day this trip which was start of museum closures, we had to go home without having laid eyes inside Das Wiener Naturhistorische Museum. Still I have no regrets and feel extremely grateful we were able to see so much and returned in good health without any hassle in the airports.

Everyone I wish for your health in mind and body.  

Easier Paths to Imbibing Pleasure Than Aged Sheng

For my husband's birthday, I nicked off a few chips off my airport/turnpike municipal fund earnings to treat him to the peaty end of scotches. Even with each bottle being had for so much less than a quality newborn beeng and a fraction of aged beengs, I hate to say these scotches beat the pants off any aged sheng I have including LBZs. You are hit over the head with the obvious depth, complexity, deliciousness, golden mouthfeel in 3 seconds or less.  (My beengs feel sad...)

Aged sheng not scotch in the glass

These peaty scotches from Islay and Skye all have their unique charms and the Ardbeg Uigeadail was the most memorable for me as you can taste the glowing embers of a large stone fireplace deep in the recesses of a dark mysterious castle.  All these esp. the Talisker takes you straight to Skellige. (Solly, Witcher refrence.)

But the key is that you don't have to think much at all unlike a sheng tasting, these examples of intense liquid gold goes straight to your pleasure centers. Journey of a puerh lover has many struggles and I've fallen off the path many a times.

I work hard, many late nights to install boob physics and bikini armor for this Skryim video. Please enjoy.

Extra Dry 06 Menghai San Ji Pu

When I visited my parents over the holidays, I was confronted with the box of various puerh samples I had left for them to drink in 2014. Unsurprisingly, none of it was consumed so I flew it back across the country. The desert like conditions of my parent's Virginian heated home in winter is epic, I've gotten a nose bleed from the dry air.  Needless to say, I got an unintended 5-year experiment of XXX extreme dry storage for shu.

In this motley collection was one of my favorite Menghai ripes- the 2006 San Ji Pu, a special batch produced with mostly grade 3 leaves. Alarmingly, the texture of the extra dry beeng pieces are different than the one stored in Berkeley.  It's got a disturbing hollow crunchiness like layers of dry husk. It barely smells. I should condition it in a ceramic jar but I'm curious how it tastes now.

The tea brews up tasty enough with that unmistakable Menghai quality you can trust. I guess it's harder to kill shu with just aridity. Unlike the silky feminine charms of the Golden Needle White Lotus, the San Ji Pu after the initial brews develops  a more stately profile like mahogany. The lovely lingering licorice finish of the 5th brew makes me immediately want to procure another cake.  I know Scott still sells it so I run to the website.  I actually growled.  To use a Hobbesian phrase, it's now sporting an eye-watering price tag of $95.

Bagging pretty satisfying shu for $16 a kilo makes you forever an unsufferable shu cheapass.  Considering I still have 10 kilos of pretty good shu crammed in the tea closet and my rate of consumption being less than 1/4 pound per year,  I'd have to be pathological to want to order more shu at a premium.  (I hope my husband appreciates this reformed sensible turn to purchase maturity.)    Actually if I had a choice between overpaying for aged sheng vs shu, I would go for sheng every time. I've enjoyed plenty of above-average aged shu, but have yet to encounter aged shu which makes me close my eyes in rapture or have the tea linger on the palate hours after a tea session in a way that aged sheng can. No surprise for a refugee in shulandia, I'm here until I can start drinking my aged shengs.

I got my original San Ji Pu from YS in early 2007 for $28 during the '07 run up.  Considering HLH Lao Banzhang was $40 in 2006, $28 was a stinging crazy price for shu.  This was one of my last puerh orders for many many years.   Do the elevated prices of even my ripes make me  behave differently as a shu drinker?

I also had brought back a 2009 Menghai Dayi 99 Square still unopened. I was going to just let my husband take it to work as the chocolate bar form of individual squares would be convenient for him to brew.  Out of curiosity I looked it up and was shocked, just shocked to find it selling for $380HKD or USD$49. It mentions being a lucky collectible for numerology reasons.   I got it for $6.50 from China Cha Dao but now I'm definitely going to store it away.  As my husband grumbled, "What, I'm not worth it." I gamely insist we must enjoy it Sept 9, 4719(2022 in the Chinese calendar) to obtain heightened numerology benefits.

Was going to let husband take this little guy to work for casual convenient drinking...

related posts:

• Remember when I gave away kilo of my gross shus.  
• 06 De Hong High Pleateau $16 a kilo
• all shu posts

Coombergram Direct From India, Malt and Fruit

(This post was languishing in my drafts from early December...)

We take a break from our usual puerh musings to enjoy the box of teas from another vast populous country that is not China but India. The main purpose of this tea load was to procure some dark malty assams that will wean me off my stubbornly persistent morning coffee habit.  And friends, it look less than 3 days of STGFOP assam to fade coffee.  Success!  I guess it was the caffeine all along because these here higher grade assams literally make your hand shake. I guess the grocery store assam that is heavily fermented floor sweepings in convenient sachets could not do the job for lack of fire power. The China black teas I have on hand are too mentally stimulating to start the day.  It's was combination of a robust non-distracting cup delivering enough buzz that was the key in kicking coffee to the curb.

For India teas which are fairly well-known quantities, selection and price are often the consumer driving factors. It must be challenging for vendors striving for customer stickiness as frequent buyer programs goes only so far. I used to get my darjeelings from Vahdam Teas formerly Golden Tips.  Teabox currently offers a more diverse collection in assams and nilgiris and they were holding very aggressive Black Friday sales. This kilo of mostly quality tea set me back only $66 with free shipping.

Teabox is backed by venture capital and having raised ~$5M this summer, they may be absorbing some of the cost to grow their customer base.  $8 for 100g of Castleton muscatel 70% off is a crazy low price and in hindsight, I should have just bought a motherlode.  But the secondary teacloset is already crammed with darjeeling part of a 3 year aging experiment.   A savvy consumer should take advantage when investors are providing such subsidies.

I've easily spent upwards for 10+ hours agonizing about a puerh tea order. I take a much more relaxed approach to India tea purchase as navigating the inventory is refreshingly manageable. There is nothing like the risk and drama for gambling on a single $80+ beeng that may end up as musty leaf clippings.   Since most of the Darjeeling tea estates are a familiar product- Goomtee, Castleton, Giddapahar, Jungpana, one can buy confidently based on flush.  Because the tea prices on the whole tend to be reasonable(compared to puerh) and the expected enjoyment factor moderately assured, you can casually load up your cart.  Also more friends and acquaintances drink India teas so it's easier to share excess. (Try off loading some tongue scraping plantation bulangs or a barnyard shu to a friend...)

I'm not as picky about Assam tea estates as I've been treating assams as more of a commodity tea. I've had Mangalam, Harmutty and other estates but none had been memorable enough to imprint a preference. It's a bit like paying for the best dianhong where the premium after a certain level has vastly diminishing returns in enjoyment.

When trying to get a grasp on a new tea vendor's inventory, even if assams tend to be low risk, one still has to parse out code words for less attractive traits.

• "unripe tree fruit", "unripe fruit"=astringency
• "raw fruit" = tartness(?) 

But to a puerh drinker, the astringency and bitterness in India tea doesn't even register on the low end of the scale.  I pick unripe apples off my tree because I just don't like it when fruit gets sweet so I'm not daunted.

The first of my low to mid-range assam selections- the Coombergram promises a "full-bodied, well-rounded, fruity" cup.  I've mixed feelings about high-grade STGFOP  assams.  For being a STGFOP1,  this Coombergram lacks golden tips and is reflected fairly in the price.   I'm hit with the same adjustment my husband would not make with coffee- after decades of dark roast, he refuses to drink floral fruity light roast Ethiopians.  Floral fruity notes I enjoy most in oolongs, darjeelings, and purple leaf but when a meaty roasty assam shows up with such a fruit patterned dress, my palate is flummoxed. I love the pairing of malt and dried fruit flavors but higher notes of raw fruit was not a match I instinctively liked.  As in such cases where I'm unsure, I served the Coombergram to my man.  He really enjoyed it but would not say much more. I guess when you are relaxing in front of your wood stove, one doesn't want to be tea interrogated.

The second assam I pull out- Dikom has much more of a sprinking of golden tips and is appropriately priced at $9.99 instead of $6.99 per 100g for the Coombergram.  These two assams esp. the Dikom is very close in taste to Yunnan dianhong.  Because I'm more habituated with the taste of quality dianhong, I initially had a mental block accepting these assams.  Yunnan blacks are like a rich oil painting while the assams felt like a water color that has been too heavily painted opaque like a gouache.  My natural impulse is that I'd rather be drinking imperial dianhong.  (I tried filling up a cart with dianhong from YS but I was struck with such a hard case of decision paralysis while browsing the puerh section that I've given up for now.)

After a month of these assams, I've come to appreciate them for what they are and I've not thought much about coffee- desire for the bean just evaporated.  That was strangely much too easy after more than two years of trying to rid myself of that addiction. Even weirder is that I only require one strong cup of assam in the morning and desire for further tea drinking is quenched. So I can happily go into 2020 as a tea drinker again.

* Dikom has the distinction of being one of the "dry" gardens in Assam.  Early this year 130 unfortunates died from bad batches of illegal country liquor in Assam.  Dikom purportedly banned all alcohol from the tea garden as chronicled in this fascinating youtube video.  But human ingenuity always has a malicious way of defeating limitations for addictive vices.  There is the dark side to tea production that we promptly forget when enjoying the comforts of our favorite beverage.

Related posts:  coffee, darjeeling

Puerh As An Investment

Everytime I check current puerh prices, I run through the same hamster wheel.  I get sticker shock, then I run up to my husband to gleefully tell him that puerh X is now risen to crazy price $Y and what a good investment it all was, also adding just too smugly you can't even buy most of our puerhs now. My husband never fails to get his hose of ice water to spray me. His dismissive reply of "Are you going to sell it? It's not an investment then." is promptly followed by my assertions of his extreme good fortune that he has full and free access to drink all kind of puerh he would not have were it not for my early hoarding. But he never blinks.  He would be singing an entirely different tune of utter gratitude had I been a scotch whisky hoarder.   😤

Friends, the minimum 15 year period to age a new born sheng is a long one and I'm surprised how quickly the years have passed. It's an entire economic cycle and we've had one of the biggest booms and busts known to humankind.  I have to subject myself to the obvious thought experiment what would have been the better investment alternative to hoarding my inadequately aging tea.

All investments attached to monetary value can be simply and objectively judged against standard stock market returns. Compared against two common ETFs for the S&P 500(SPY) and the tech heavy Nasdaq(QQQ), you can see that an initial 10K investment yielded 325% and 555% in the last 14 years.    I'll use the more common S&P 500 returns of 325% as a more reasonable measure, otherwise one could say why not use bitcoin or amazon stock as a comparison.

 Total returns with an initial $10K investment from dividendchannel.com

Purchasers of puerh today know even humble mass factory '05-6 beengs bought under $10 now easily exceed 3X-5X and some Menghais verge nearer 20X+. Ask yourself where can you buy a good full sized 357g 2005/6 sheng beeng for even $80? Exactly!

So would I rather?  If I honestly ask myself would I rather have plugged this money into the stock market with the SPY 330% return than have the collection I've amassed?   The answer is not really.  This is not because of the hoarder's defensive reaction but because of my financial situation.  If I had student debt, car debt, credit card debt or a miniature human sprung from my womb that came with decades of endless expenditures, the answer from a sheer financial prudence perspective must be yes.  But I am thankfully not in dire need of said funds and if I had the money again I would buy tea.  And the tea has brought great joy and moments of calm and contemplation during turbulent times, something I would not give up for money alone.

I have regrets of a different sort.  Puerh collectors know coin is only the entry token but the real investment is paid in blood, sweat and tears.   I don't begrudge spending tea money.  It's the excessive time and mental energy that I should have split more evenly into learning about financial investing alongside junking out about puerh.  For the hundreds of hours devoted to puerh, I still know relatively little about this infuriatingly inaccessible arena of tea.  Even 1/50 of the time invested studying fixed income markets would have had massive dividends over the last 14 years that would have made my tea expenses trivial.  I am making up for lost time and I can enjoy drinking my collection while I do so. I always take the view better late than never and I have been diligently studying preferred stocks, REITs, and closed-end municipal and infrastructure funds like it's the secret to home sheng storage.   Somebody should have just done a PSA and broadcasted the secret, "THE SECRET" if you live in a dry region is plastic wrap.

Unlike my puerh studies, my steady investment into melee and ranged combat has paid high yield dividends almost every week. Shameless plug for my Yakuza 0 video.

04 DeHong Wild Tree Purple Turning a Corner, Finally

In 2012,  I had been exceedingly disappointed that one of my early favorites the 2004 Dehong Wild Tree Bricks had become a ghost of their former selves.  But this morning I have a small glimmer of hope that something more is afoot as the brew gave my jaws an unexpected pull and a squeeze. The tea has a staying power in the upper palate that is not entirely unwelcome but not praiseworthy yet either.  The actual brick is still tight as ever, still don't want to give it up. It's all deliberately chopped up leaves that you often see in XiaGuan pressings and it is pressed tighter than an XG if you can believe that. The ultra tight iron compression has made it age glacially in comparison with my other stone pressed beengs so it may be too early to tell yet.

Mangled brick

The brew has a heaviness of sugarcane that is also paradoxically and simultaneously too light in the way some budget Yiwus are. I realize there are no longer "real" budget Yiwus out there and the budget Yiwus of my youth are probably undeserved overpriced triple digit cakes now. High end Yiwus I've had the pleasure of enjoying have a beautiful effervescent lightness yet surprising strength - like elven swords. (If you are wondering,  I tend to favor the heavier dragon bone weapons but only because I've got a glut of dragon carcass materials cluttering up my smithy.)  But such Yiwu endurance of huigan can be epic sometimes lasting across meals stimulating long dormant tastebuds in long lost corners of the mouth. Budget versions are a bit more heavy handed initially on the tongue yet leave a "lighter" imprint on the jaws. Not exactly the lightness of titanium vs lightness of plastic metaphor but I'll leave it here.

The De Hong is definitely not the young savory yet mouthwateringly juicy sweet brick I fell in love with and the anthocyanin flavors have long departed.  However the lightly lingering huigan growing more prominent on the teeth makes me more than a wee hopeful.   This transition is definitely is a huge improvement from the muted yet bitter brew from 6 years ago.  Perhaps they were stuck in the 8 year awkward phase, neither young nor old.  And as evidence that it's becoming something more interesting to me, even though the sheng tea broth was immediately bothersome to my belly, the brew was compelling enough that I've been drinking constantly for the last few hours.  So I will gladly retaste it in another few years.

This isn't to say I feel warm and fuzzy about cold dry home storage I've got going on in Berkeley.  Don't get excited Cwyn!  But I'm nodding my head that it isn't as bad as I feared- that my sheng are not mere desiccated mummies worthy of scorn.  Incidentally in the last few years my usually dry home had suffered mold issues. It turned out the ancient plumbing beneath our house burst and our dishwasher and bathroom sink were draining straight into the crawlspace creating a moist environment for worms and mold for a few years. I wonder now if this actually gave my sheng a boost.

Breaking my 2019 Tea Purchase Hiatus

Yes dear readers, I did not make it all the way through on my 2019 tea purchase hiatus.  It's not that I drank up all the home supply but I ran out of a particular profile of tea- robust, dark, uncomplicated yet tasty. That sounds suspiciously like coffee and when you've punched the mornings out with the devil's brew for two years, tea grapples to take it's place.  The puerh crammed in my closet I've come to recognize is just not functional enough and is too inconsistent for daily utility. But I didn't hoard all those beengs for utilitarian purposes.

Not a photo... latest Kojima game.

The hiatus was not about saving money and more about simplifying one's life or at least not complicating it with yet more boxes of tea that have no place to go but pile up on one's overburdened desk.  All year I made respectable progress drinking up un-ageable teas(seasonal green teas, lapsang souchongs past due) and I cleared out a dozen random bags of half open tea samples.  There is a refreshing freedom to not thinking about procuring yet more tea and simply drink what you have.

As I've not strained my purchase decision muscles buying puerh, I've diverted my energies to the delight of my husband into buying new issue preferred stocks and municipal/infrastructure funds instead.  I have to admit choosing financial instruments is much easier than selecting a sheng beeng to age. The other day, Fidelity despite their "no commision" switchover charged me $50 international fee to make an OTC purchase of a new Canadian preferred issue.  And this pilfered $50 could have been a decent tea order and definitely a lot of quality assam.  When one leaks money in unwanted fees, one can right this wrong by leaking the same amount into something you do want! Laugh away.

Behavioral economists talk about our completely irrational way of dividing up money as mental accounting.  The most common example is when spouses who pool all their assets together still consider gifts bought with "earnings" from the other spouse more special even when paid from the same family till. I should consider tea my husband bought on his own volition something special except the last unfortunate incident involved gnarly large leaf barnyard shu from Oakland Chinatown. It was an act of complete sincerity on his part. Why oh why except husbands sometimes do weird things with the best of intentions.

I did drink shu this day...

But back to my first tea purchase of 2019, I had a great hankering for assam which I've found to be my ideal base for a brisk morning brew. I find selecting Indian black teas a relatively low stress task. Unlike buying puerh where there is a huge wild card factor involving the underlying tea and it's past storage conditions, I've found the tea grading system to be a reliable gauge for  Indian teas.  Especially with assams, one TGFOP isn't wildly different to one from a different estate and my tea enjoyment can be expected to be roughly the same.  But enjoyment pegged to a vertical price/quality gradient is not as useful as lateral comparisons.  One can expect an GFOP to be more robust and brisk in taste than those higher up the quality/price ladder. GFOP can do morning duty much better than the highest grade SFTGFOP but whether or not one would enjoy the pricier SFTGFOP commensurate with the premium is not entirely assured.  Indian tea market has always been largely a buyers market and tea classification system sure does make comparison shopping easy for the small fry consumer like me. I don't ever expect such efficiencies to enter the puerh market.

I had no shortage of vendor options but ended up ordering for the first time from Indian middleman teabox.  In the U.S., Upton has the largest loose leaf assam selection but teabox had a more compelling assam lineup with better prices.  Most importantly teabox carried a tea in my tea bucket list- a winter Nilgri frost black tea.  I followed common sense that an Indian vendor has better depth of Indian teas than a U.S. based one that carries a world selection  so we will see next Tuesday how this bundle of assam joy from India will shake out.

International tea buying is always a slippery slope. I really only needed ~100g of tea but $50 gives you free shipping and then you want to make a tea haul worth your while.   I pared down the order to a mere nine 100 gram packets of quality assam(2 pounds) $66 free shipping. I'm sure my sweet husband would appreciate my restraint.