‘Hung’ Over?
WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHS OF OVER-BREWED HUNG CHA (BLACK TEA) THAT MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME VIEWERS! IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YRS OF AGE, HAVE A HEART CONDITION, OR ARE ON MEDICATION OF ANY KIND, PLEASE D O N O T R E A D F U R T H E R ! ! !
Hah! I KNEW you’d read it anyway!!
It all started innocently enough. I’d had a long day brewing tea at the 2008 Expo (there’ll be a separate post on that later). When I got home, I thought I’d unwind, do some calligraphy, and have some organic black tea from Master Tsai. I set up my brushes, inkwell, and paper while the water was boiling.
There was just a bit of tea left in the bag (so I thought), so instead of measuring it into my bamboo scoop I just dumped it all into my small gaiwan (that was my first mistake). Turns out there was enough dry black tea to pretty much fill my gaiwan! I considered taking half the tea out, but I lose points for that, so I decided to soldier on (that was my second mistake).
Oh, I quick side note – the picture at left shows how I set up. Most of my tea trays are with Aliang for the Tea Expo, so I just used 2 thick tea towels as a base, and poured my ‘waste water’ into the red pot shown (that pot is part of a full set I have for more formal tea sessions – any large bowl or vase works just as well). It’s a quick easy layout, and about as cheap as you can get really.
Knowing the brew was going to be extremely strong, I did 3 very quick steeps (average of about 3 seconds, which was how long it took to set the lid and lift the gaiwan over my pitcher). Let’s just say, I’m not a coffee drinker, but I now know what the word ‘espresso’ means! It was the kind of drink that, as my father would say, ‘puts hair on your chest.’ To make matters worse, I’m also a Leo, which means I’m stubborn and proud, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let a mere cup of tea get the better of me (will I never learn? – this was my 3rd mistake).
It actually tasted much scarier than this photo shows, but by the time I got around to taking this shot I was having difficulty keeping my hand steady!! Here’s a shot of the gaiwan. You’d think I was pouring baojong from the
amount of leaf I’ve got in there. You can also see lots of small particles and ‘grit’ from the bottom of the bag (you can see how much excess ended up in the slop bowl – I’m not a big fan of filters or screens!). All in all, a pretty nasty brew.
It took about 10 very quick steeps before the brew was down to ‘stronger than usual’, and I didn’t waste any of it! Master Tsai always says that a good thing about quality organic teas is they are more ‘patient’, which means you can re-steep the leaves many more times. This means you get twice as much actual tea from the leaf, which helps justify the higher price. I guess you could say that I’ve had too much of a good thing, and it’s a safe bet I won’t be hankerin’ for black tea for awhile! I ended up not going to bed until 2am (I get up for work about 6). How did I get through my Monday morning, you may wonder? By drinking lots of tea, of course! Duh!
The lesson to keep in mind is to always check your tea carefully before just dumping it into your pot. Especially at the end of a bag, there is lots of ‘dust’ and smaller particles which can make the tea very strong and bitter. It’s better to mix these ‘fannings’ in the last 2-3 pots you brew so that they don’t all end up in one pot. If, (like me) you don’t generally use a filter, you end up picking grit out of your teeth for the next few days.
Also, if you find you’ve got much more leaf than you should have and it’s not practical to remove it from your teapot, a better method than the one described above is to brew 1 or 2 strong pots of tea (say a minute or more in this case) and then throw it out and start from there. Some people will suggest just adding hot water to the tea and thinning it down, but my experience with that is it pretty much ruins the tea, and I would end up throwing it out anyway.
Also, the general rule with loose black tea is to use a very small amount – maybe 1/5th of a pot or less, depending on your tastes. I hope you made it through to the end of this post – thanks for sticking with me, and I hope you never have to go through what I did!!! Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go shave my chest!
UPDATE!! UPDATE!!
WIth some good quality organic teas, it can be OK to let the leaf sit overnight in the pot and re-steep it the next day. Since I had so much of the black tea, I decided to try it again today. First, I transferred it into my largest gaiwan, which I should have done yesterday! I let the first steep sit for about 10 seconds to warm up the leaf & gaiwan, then poured it out. This also removed any ‘sludge water’ that had been soaking overnight.