We are also going to carry ChaTei brand teas, and the prices & descriptions for those will be added soon. ChaTei is the flagship line of Master Aliang’s Hsi Tang Tea Company. They are all hand-selected personally by Aliang to meet his high standards, and  include:

          Alishan and Shan Lin Hsi Oolongs

          4 Seasons Oolong

          Jade Oolong

          Jin Xuen (Silk or Milk Oolong)

          Wen Shan Baojong

          Oriental Beauty (Dong Fang Mei Ren)

          Mucha Tie Kuan Yin (Aliang’s signature tea)

I’m very excited about these new additions to the website, and I’d like to thank all of you who have supported the Teaguy since it’s inception. Your comments and patronage have been a great inspiration to me, and I look forward to expanding and developing this site. I look forward to helping you with your tea needs in the coming year!!!

Ran across these photos the other day, and realized I hadn’t posted this up from last June! The Mucha Farmer’s Association sponsored an event to showcase the area’s agricultural goods, so of course Aliang and I were there representing Tie Kuan Yin (Iron Goddess) and Bao Jong teas.

Our event was just inside the entrance to the zoo, where were last year (click HERE for that report). They had a local drum troupe perform, and a few dances, along with snack foods from famous local shops. We basically talked tea and passed out samples, as we weren’t officially supposed to be selling anything there, but it was fun to hang out at any rate!

 Chinese peanut brittle 

Tea nougats - yum!                                                                  

Aliang in his natural environment

Mrs. Aliang

They were taking turns giving rides in a kind of Taiwan-style rickshaw, and many of the local politicians and officials (like this one) were on hand to press the flesh and kiss a few babies! Being the only foreigner participating in the event, I naturally was dragged into a lot of photos, but it wasn’t that bad. I’ll do anything to get people to drink more tea!

The biggest surprise for me was the poster Aliang had made for the backdrop - it was from a lecture he gave at the Wenshan Public Assembly Hall a few weeks previously. I suppose I don’t mind being famous, but you’d think they would at least have had the decency to airbrush a bit more hair on for me!!

We were there for about half a day. I don’t get paid anything for helping out, which is OK because I get to practice my pouring techniques, and of course ‘all the tea you can drink’ isn’t a bad deal either (the public restrooms are just behind our booth). Here’s a couple of shots of my ‘advanced gaiwan’ technique - a bit tricky to get used to, but handy when the gaiwan itself is a little too hot to handle. The trick is to set the lid, then scoop

the entire set (saucer, cup and lid) off the table with one hand. When done smoothly, it’s really cool, but I need to find a saucer with a higher base so I can get my fingers under it.

I also experimented a bit with different grips and pouring styles on the ‘Hsi Sz’ (beautiful girl) pot - we have quite a few of this particular style, which we use for a lot of our Oolongs at the shop, and I find the balance to be slightly tricky for some reason. By the end of the day, however, I pretty much had it under control.

*By the way, don’t let the fact I spend hours handling my equipment fool you into thinking I’m some kind of ‘tea nerd’ - I’m actually a pretty cool dude!     

I was quite excited about getting to watch my first real tea competition, but the reality of it was, it was kind of like watching paint dry. The judges are in an enclosed area, with the numbered samples laid out in front of them (the samples are randomly assigned numbers, so contestants and judges have no idea which tea is whose). They meassure out the samples and steep the tea for judging. The standard sampling is 3g of tea in 150cc of water, steeped for 6 minutes.

WARNING: SHAMELESS PRODUCT PLUG APPROACHING!!!!!!!

If you’re interested in getting the competition mug/bowl set (or ceramic testing spoon) send me an email - I’m going to have them available for sale very soon. (That wasn’t too bad, was it? Now back to the competition).

The judges walk up and down the line, checking out the teas (dry leaf, aroma, color, taste, wet leaf). They will then place the mugs in position indicating their standing - closer to the edge of the table means a poor sample, next to the bowl means still considering, and towards the middle of the table means a superior sample. The judges go back and forth, discussing amongst themselves and eliminating/regrouping as they go.  Then they bring out the next batch and start over (for a total of about 300 samples, they spend most of the day sipping tea and spitting it back out again).

For awarding prizes, they have 4 basic levels. Any teas that pass a level are winners. If a tea is considered below grade, it is disqualified in the initial round. Standards are set for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teas, determined before the contest based on the crop quality and growing conditions of the season. So, for example, if last year’s crop was not very good (maybe too hot, or too wet, etc.), the quality of the 2008 1st place teas might not be as good as the 2009 2nd (or 3rd) place teas from this year (assuming this year’s growing conditions were much better, which they were, by the way). If they didn’t do it this way, they could potentially end up with every tea in a good year being 1st place, or in a bad year being 3rd place.

The importance of placing teas relative to the yearly crop is also related to pricing. The association sets the retail prices for the winning teas based on yearly conditions, which helps prevent price gouging. The association bags & seals the winning teas before returning them to the vendors. If someone feels they’ve overpaid for a tea, they can check the serial number with the Association and determine the placing/pricing of their tea.

So, while they may end up with 10-20 samples in the 1st place category, the real prize is the ‘tou deng’ (top tea) and ‘te deng’ (special tea) awards, which go to the best of the best teas (there is only 1 ‘te deng’ award, which is the best 1st-place tea, and is therefore sold for a much higher price).

Aliang ended up with 3-4 3rd place samples (out of 12 submitted). I was going to do a special report on them as a follow-up to this one, but when I got back to the shop that evening to buy a few cans for myself, he was already sold out - a regular customer of his had come in while he was unloading his Landrover, and bought all of it. Damn! (I’ve now left standing orders with him to always save me 1200g (2 jing) of any competition teas  he produces.

While the Taiwan tea crops in general were quite good this spring (we had a wet winter), Aliang only had 12 samples to submit for this year’s competition. For each submission, we have to provide 22kg of tea, and the entry fee for each one isn’t cheap. If any of our teas ‘place’, the 22kg will be bagged up and certified by the Farmer’s Association, and we can then sell it at higher prices (the prices are also set by the Association, and depend on the general quality of the harvest for each year - this prevents the winners from overcharging on the tea or inciting bidding wars).

Our job at this point was pretty straight forward: measure out 22kg of tea into the plastic bags provided by the Association, label them, and put them into the Landrover so that Aliang could drop them off in the morning. If you are wondering why Aliang has a Landrover, by the way, you can read Mystic Grove or Landrover Camping Trip and it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out! 

We also had to remix a couple of  our samples to boost the quality. It seems pretty simple, but it actually takes a bit of time to get it right. You have to make sure the tea is well-blended so that the sample taken by the judges is representative. You also have to keep your hands clean and dry so you don’t add any ’soapy’ or ’sweaty’ smells to the tea (which means - you guessed it dear reader -  that I couldn’t even pick my nose ONCE during the whole process!).

Fortunately I was able to control my more ‘primal urges’ and we successfully completed our bag-up and made it home before sunrise. Another job well done!

I had an email recently from a friend in the US. He was looking for sets of aroma cups to use for tea comparisons, and was asking me if I could find him some. I told him that, for convenience, we usually use ceramic spoons to compare tea, and that gave me the inspiration for this post.

The standard spoons used in Taiwan are deep, ladle-style  porcelain spoons. Plastic and metal versions are also available, but don’t work as well to showcase the aroma of the teas. The porcelain, much like a gaiwan, also holds heat better, which helps maintain the aroma as well. The best spoon to use should be neutral white, as should the bowl used to steep the tea. (As a general rule, always use a white background for comparing tea leaf - dry or wet - or ‘tea soup’ (the liquid itself) so that you can make a better judgement of the color. Also, strong natural sunlight is the preferred lighting).

When preparing teas for testing, get matching bowls for each sample. For every 150cc (5 oz.) of water, add 3g (1/10th oz) of tea.  The important point is to get the same amount of tea (by weight) for each sample to maintain uniformity.

Then fill each bowl to the brim with just-boiled water, and let them sit for 6 minutes. Also, put the spoon(s) into a bowl of their own and fill it to the brim with boiling water. This cleans and preheats them so that they won’t cool the tea quickly  when you dip them into the bowl. During this time you can check the color and the leaf as it steeps.

When you’re ready to start spooning, simply take your spoon out of it’s bowl and gently wipe it sideways across the lip of the bowl. You want to make sure there’s as little water on the spoon as possible so that you won’t dilute the tea you’ve prepared.  Stir the tea gently with the spoon, then lift it out and hold the back of the spoon up to your nose (watch for drips). The aroma from the back of the spoon will radiate out in all directions, allowing you to pick out more delicate nuances as you develop your nasal palate. From the front of the spoon, the aroma concentrates inward and ‘muddies’ the smell, requiring greater concentration to figure it out.

After you’ve checked color and aroma, it’s time to move on to actually tasting the tea. Experts will put about 1/2 a spoonful into their personal cup, slurp it noisily, swish it around, then spit it out. If you are going to be sampling lots of teas for extended periods, you’ll quickly understand why they don’t drink it!  (I usually drink samples - hate to waste tea!).  

So, now you can go out and impress your friends with your ‘professional’ tea-sampling technique! More importantly, you can start comparing and sampling different teas, and ’sharin’ the love’ of the world’s most popular beverage!

For this year, we took a different approach, and decided to give you all a treat - a sticky rice dumpling treat to be exact. A local community center had a dumpling-fest, and we decided to take the Teaboy along and make it a family outing. We were told it was a free event, and all we had to do was pick up the ingredients, do the basic preparations at home, then bring the rice, filling, and bamboo leaves to the center for wrapping. What we weren’t told was that we were preparing 5kg of materials for all the other neighbors to share, and that we were only allowed to keep 6 dumplings for ourselves. Despite not getting to keep enough dumplings to make more than a snack for the three of us, we did have a lot of fun, and the people were very friendly.

The basic procedure is as follows:

Fold 2 bamboo leaves into a pocket.

Spoon in some rice (uncooked).

 Add meat or other filling. 

Then a bit more rice.

Fold the top down, pinching the leaves together (makes a ‘wedgie’ - (snicker)), and then fold the leaf around one side to seal it.

 Tie the dumpling together with a string.

After preparing the dumplings, they are steamed or boiled until the rice is cooked, then eaten.  Yummy!

Here are a few more photos from the event - the Teaboy and myself giving it our best shot, and some of the more ‘professional’ grandmas and aunties in attendance. You’d have thought they were baking pies the way some of them were going at it. Enjoy!

No, I don’t mean lemon and black pepper! New pots need to be cleaned thoroughly before use to remove residuals from the firing process, clean out the pores, and prepare the clay for infusing tea. There are many ways to do this; here I’ll introduce one method that has worked well for me, and is pretty easy to do.

I recently sold a new pot to a good friend of mine in the US, and when he asked me to season the pot for him before shipping, I jumped at the chance to share the process here on my site. You can see more photos of the pot HERE. Keep in mind that this is a new pot, and so needs a bit more attention than a used pot would. If you have a used pot and are planning to continue brewing a similar tea in it, then a couple of good rinsings with hot water should be sufficient; if you want to ‘re-season’ a pot for use with a different type of tea, you might want to check out my posts on Pot Cleaning (Part I and Part II).

We call prepping a pot for use ’seasoning’ because we use the type of tea we plan to brew in it as part of the process. If you buy a pot for brewing lighter oolongs/baojong (like this one), you’ll want to season it with that type of tea. You don’t need to dedicate a pot to a specific tea unless you’re an extreme hard-core tea geek (hooray if you are!), but it’s good to keep within certain ranges. While there are different schools of thought regarding tea classification, for general use there are 4 types to consider:

Un-oxidized teas: green, white, yellow

Partly oxidized teas: Baojong, oolong, Tie Kuan Yin

Completely oxidized teas: Black tea

‘After’ oxidized teas: Puer (means processed, then oxidized {read: aged} )

The first step is to get a pot full of water and put the teapot (lid off) inside. The water should cover the teapot by 1/2 inch or so. Turn on the heat, and add a small amount of tea leaf. For this part, I am using an Ali Shan oolong, because my friend plans to brew High Mt. tea with this pot. Don’t forget to put the lid in the pot as well (this one is attached with a cord, so no problem there!

Slowly bring the  water to a rolling boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes (stirring occasionally, naturally!). Remove the pot CAREFULLY from the water (try to drain out as much water as you can) and allow it to air dry.

Rinse it with hot water, and let it air dry for 5-6 hours with the top off (overnight is good). Then it’s ready to use. As an additional step, you can brew the first pot of tea as you normally do (3-4 rounds is usually enough), but throw out all of the tea. Then you can start drinking from the second pot.

And there you go! All set! The tea in the background is a medium-roast oolong I was drinking while preparing the pot.

Some people have expressed concern that the boiling action may damage the pot, but I’ve never seen that happen. If you put the pot in cold water first and then bring it up to temperature, is should be fine. You can also follow the same procedure for clay pitchers and cups as well - just don’t put too many pieces in at the same time. Also, the amount of tea shouldn’t be too much - you’re steeping it for 1/2 an hour, not 30 seconds, so don’t waste your leaf! about 1/2 what you would normally use in the pot will be adequate - or about 1 tbs depending on the type of leaf.

You can also send me an email at asktheteaguy@taiwanteaguy.com.

If I don’t have an answer, I can check with some of the local experts here and get back to you.

Using charcoal to filter your water is very simple. The easiest way is to simply add 1 or 2 pieces of charcoal to a container of water, and allow it to soak (I usually let it stand covered overnight in my large water pot, but several hours will generally do the trick).

The charcoal will absorb chlorine and odors in the water, giving it a sweeter, ‘cleaner’ taste, and you should notice a difference in your tea right away. You can use 1-2 pieces continuously for up to 6 months, although I usually will rotate pieces about every 8 weeks because I drink a lot of tea. I remove the bamboo, rinse it, and set it out to dry in direct sunlight for 1-2 days, which ‘recharges’ it. I can then continue to filter water with it for several more months, repeating this procedure for up to a year or so. When I’m done with it, I then crush it up and sprinkle it in the soil around house or garden plants, so it’s completely recycled.

Keep in mind this isn’t the charcoal you barbecue with in the backyard. It’s  cleaner, not as sooty, and easier to handle. The charcoal I’m using here is ‘raw’ bamboo charcoal, which is produced by baking the bamboo culms at extremely high temperatures. It retains the shape and look of the original bamboo, making it useful as a decoration as well. You can set out a few pieces to help clean the air in a room, break up a few pieces on a saucer to deodorize your refrigerator (wet tea leaves are also good in the fridge, by the way), or a myriad of other purposes. Click HERE for a link to a site with more uses, or for some Wikipedia information.

I’m currently negotiating with a local dealer to supply me with bamboo charcoal on a regular basis, and will post prices and quantities when the details are worked out.

Pineapple cakes aren’t exactly cakes. They are baked pastry-type snacks with a pineapple filling. Especially around Chinese New Year, local bakeries create their own unique recipes to entice customers. These are usually round, and have plum blossoms or auspicious characters molded into the top to enhance their presentation. They are sold as whole cakes, or in 1/4 wedges. These type tend to have a thinner crust, and a sweeter, thicker pineapple filling. If they aren’t cut up they can last quite awhile, although I generally finish each cake in one sitting. 

The best thing about them is they’re baked fresh daily, so they’re never stale. Way back ‘in the day’, I spent a week of Chinese New Year on my motorcycle travelling around the island, camping out wherever I could find a spot. There weren’t many places to get food, so I picked up an extra large pineapple cake (twice the size of the large one pictured above) and that was all I had to eat for 2 1/2 days. Needless to say, it was also my last pineapple cake for about 6 months!!

 Of the store-bought variety, there are several well-known chain-bakeries that produce them. Although these are considered superior cakes because of their ‘famous’ name and fancy packaging, my extensive research into the subject has let me to the conclusion that most of that reputation is marketing hype. Here are some photos of common pineapple cakes:

I had a chance to watch a DVD at a friend’s house recently, and decided to take a variety of pineapple cakes along to sample and discuss for this article. My original plan was to do a blind taste test, but unfortunately, none of my friends would let me poke their eyes out! (groan!)

The key to a good pineapple cake is the crust. If the crust is too oily or too dry, the tea you serve with it ends up  being simply a means to wash the bad taste out of your mouth, instead of highlighting  and complimenting the flavor of the tea.

Of the 3 samples shown below,  The left cake is overbaked and has an oily, crumbley crust. The middle cake has too much filling, making it overly sweet and chewy. The one on the right (Typhone) is the best. You can see from the lighter texture that the crust is firm, and the ratio of filling to crust is more balanced, giving it a much more pleasant ‘mouth feel’. It’s also been our pineapple cake of choice for over 10 years! They don’t use a lot of fancy packaging, but they have the right formula for producing a light, flaky crust,  balanced with just the right amount of filling to provide the sweetness & consistency desired.