Autumnal Brew

To properly celebrate the autumnal equinox in Berkeley, I rely on pumpkins to signal the end of summer.  Because the seasons can be ambiguous and inconsistent in the Bay Area, we have to make a special effort to denote the seasons. 

Warty squashes thankfully have their admirers and if I had my way, I would fill up my house with dozens of misshapen varieties. Once I had a tower of blue triambles as our Christmas tree.  This year I settled on the blue Marina di Chioggia being more mindful of their culinary ends while my husband chose the peachy Galeuse d'Eysines.  Supposedly sugars leaching through the skin is what causes these peanut skin like protrusions so this beauty must be quite the sweet bomb. We have about six months to keep it so I may not split it open until next year.

In cooler weather, I find the darker roasted brews more appealing- roasted oolongs and yanchas fitting the bill. I find I've become less finicky and I tend to brew what's within easy reach. I've been going through leftover Wuyi Star yanchas from my rock bottom yancha phase.  While I would not bother to buy their De Hong Pao again, it's quite alright on a autumn Sunday afternoon for some warm cozy feels.

Tea Haiku

This clever haiku by a nine year old and made the twitter rounds a while back.

So naturally my mind started syllable counting numbers I know.

Nineteen ninety nine

7542

Seven out of ten

2010 Douji Feng Huang You

Here in Shulandia, we plod on taking joy even in the minutest difference in the shus of this earth. While some might think life is too short to drink shu, I'm in the camp that life is too long not to drink shu.  I still have quite a few random unopened beengs waiting to underwhelm me and I finally gave this 2010 Douji Phoenix Tour a whirl.

Douji's foray into shu must not have been a wild success as the Feng Huang You(Phoenix Tour) beengs boast no tea expo awards of any kind.  Douji appear to have had only a brief stint with making shu (2009 to 2013).  My records show I bought this beeng for $12.99 now to be had for $74.99 from the same vendor making it my best investment from 2012.  After the buckets of ducats I lost last week in the market crash, it's half an ounce of comfort.

The beeng itself isn't the highest quality of leaf with a smattering of token golden buds on top. As with most Douji beengs, the compression is loose and the edges are starting to fray already. I can't imagine they bothered with stone pressing shu and the pneumatic presser was probably adjusted.  The scent of the brewed leaves was a tad more enticing and softly sweet than the actual brewed tea. I've already forgotten the particulars as it left such a non-impression.  When I can't get into a tea, I aways do a test brew alongside with a tea I know well so I know my tastebuds are not at fault. With shu, I normally brew up either the '06 Menghais or the YS 2009 Cha Tou Sheng Yun as the comparison. I brewed up the Lao Cha Tou today and immediately the reference tea is leaps more livelier in the mouth leaving a licorice mouthfeel. I regret having torn open that prim pleated Douji wrapping.

What to do with such a snoozer of a shu- inoffensive and mild.  Shu cola?

I mixed it for kicks but even the pep of CO2 cannot revive this genteel tea.  The tea is decent enough to chill out and relax my mind with my current favorite app- a 3D jellyfish simulator.

Matcha Snow Two Ways

I took a brief break in Los Angeles to visit a dear friend. L.A. for a food loving Korean is a giant candy store.  I am particularly fond of a red bean iced treat called ppatbingsu.  Koreans enjoy this concoction of shaved ice, red bean, milk and mochi in the heat of summer with friends and family. The serving size is such that one never eats a bowl by oneself and indeed I have never eaten ppatbingsu solo.  You can enjoy the usual variations ranging from coffee to roast grain but I had a hankering for matcha this trip.

The version above is from Sul and Beans- a chain from Korea producing the most advanced bingsu I have enjoyed. They produce a special milk snow which is rich but so light in the mouth, it's magical. If you can try only one dessert in L.A., go for it.   The generous dusting of matcha is good but nothing special- it's a nice food grade matcha. I preferred their injulmi bingsu more which had a unique nuttiness. Injulmi is a roasted grain rice cake and their house specialty.

The second matcha version I enjoyed is at Okrumong famous for their red beans which they roast in the old fashion way in giant cast iron pots. They mixed the matcha into the ice so the ice was quite green all the way through and was a tad bitter.

What Okrumong excel in is not ppatbingsu- the ice lumped in the usual way slushies do- but a red bean cake called chapsalltuk. If you are a kpop Big Bang fan, this is the cake they are singing about in Bae Bae. Their version is really the best I've ever enjoyed- it's a novel variation with a breaded cover. The chewiness was perfect and the above photo does not do justice to it's deliciousness. I could eat these all day long and kick myself for only buying 10 of these.

Neutralizing Sheng's Acidity

Peter Menzel is my favorite portrait photographer whose books I go through multiple times a year.  His work is so rich that I see new details or understand something new each time.  Last week, I noticed a curious detail on this portrait of a Bhutanese family (the Namgays of Shingkhey village) in Hungry Planet- a most excellent book which shows families around the world with their week's worth of food.

On the bottom left of the tangerines, I spied a small packet of baking soda leaned up against two sheng mushroom cakes(looks like XG Bao Yan Holy Flame). According the the text, the baking soda is "used to neutralize the acid in tea".  You would think the yak butter would be enough to fulfill that role. The cost of the teas is listed as "$0.76" which also includes the Red Label black tea for "guests only". I squinted quite a few times and finally decided it must be sheng as it wasn't dark enough to be shu. For about $0.25 per mushroom, you can imagine the kind of gut wrenching sheng they drink.

I've long known Southerners to add a tiny pinch of baking soda to sweetened iced tea to get rid of the bitterness of the tannins but I've never thought of applying it to sheng.  Such adulteration is not for puerh purists but I'm all game.  It's one thing if I was unknowingly served such smoothed out sheng at a tea house but I'll totally dope my own tea if it makes it better.

What would I do first if I had a magical powder to take the rough edge off a sheng? Can I really finally drink the Jin Dayi?  Should I? Should I do it? I don't want to take the risk just yet as I am just getting over a weekend bout of food poisoning so I'll just bring out a less punchy but plenty rough and face puckering plantation 2004 Xiaguan tuo to test.  (I don't have a XG sheng mushroom, only a shu to reproduce.)

It's been a long while I've done a controlled study that is lab worthy but today I'm just going for a rough conclusion. Is baking soda an enhancer worth considering like salt on corn on the cob?  Milk and sugar are the universal tea enhancers but since they impact the fundamental taste too much, I would love to get my hands on a more invisible agent.

While brewing up the XG, some questions cropped up:

1. How much should I sprinkle in? A smidgen, a pinch or a dash? In situations where proper dosage is unknown, the standard protocol is to start with the smallest amount and then add in increments. A smidgen did almost nothing so I kept progressively adding more until the taste of baking soda just about ruined the tea. My 04 XG was so plenty bitter than even an eighth teaspoon in a tablespoon of tea did not erase the bitterness. Once you add too much, you get that weird slippery coating in your mouth like you just swallowed swimming pool water.  
2. Should I add the baking soda to the brew or to the leaves? I added it to the brew so I can control it more.
3. Does it just merely taste smoother or is it better for your stomach as well? Given people take baking soda for acid reflux, heartburn, and other stomach woes, I might do well to take a baking soda tonic(one teaspoon per cup) after a sheng session anyway. 

When you add baking soda to acidic liquids such as lemon juice- it fizzes. The sodium bicarbonate(baking soda) reacts with the citric acid of the lemon to produces sodium citrate and carbon dioxide bubbling up. When I added the baking soda to the sheng brew- no such fireworks took place in my teacup, but the color did deepen.  I've read that Tibetans and Northern Indians add baking soda more to deepen the color of tea but I'm not sensitive to tint- I'm only after taste enhancement.  I could dig deeper into the chemistry of sheng but that won't change the face that I didn't quite get results I was hoping for.

The baking soda didn't dampen the bitterness much but subsequent sips did give a sweeter mouthfeel.  It still doesn't make me want to brew up this XG more or drink it more.  I thought perhaps the tea in the photo was shu not sheng so I also whipped out my XG shu mushroom but the baking soda made the taste worse. The Bhutanese family in the portrait are subsistence farmers and cash being scarce- they would not purchase anything regularly unless they perceived baking soda added value.  For me I leave the baking soda for the other 101 uses.