Tag Archives: tea
A Handful of Premium Chinese Tea
Yunnan is the southern Chinese province bordering Vietnam and believed to be the birthplace of tea. It produces more black tea than any other part of China. For a unique cup try Yunnan’s black tea version of the popular Dragon Pearl. The large leaves are rolled into firm spheres of brown and gold and as the pearls steep they unfurl and release a liquor that is sweet and smooth with a hint of fertile soil. Deep aromas of malted barley swirl around more subtle notes of cocoa. It’s tasty hot or cold.
From the mountains of Qimen County in the Anhui province of eastern China comes a black tea comparable to the famous Darjeeling. Keemun (the English spelling of Qimen during the colonial era) is the name. Hao Ya A (Downy Buds Grade A) is the highest grade possible and the tea you want in your cup. The tiny black leaves with golden buds produce aromas and flavors that have been described as floral, port wine, pine smoke, biscuits and orchard fruits, in other words, complex. It makes a kick-ass iced tea, too.
Known to embody the essence of Taiwan’s mountains and rivers, Dongding oolong tea immediately engages with a nose of sultry blooms, mown grass and water crackers. Grown in Nantou County of central Taiwan, Dongding is the most popular tea on the island. Only partially oxidized and lightly roasted, the tight, curled leaves expand several times and last through numerous steepings. A cup is clear, pale yellow touched by green. A full and gently sweet body belies its delicate appearance. It makes a fine, balanced iced tea.
Black tea from the Fujian province on the southeast coast of China, Lapsang Souchong is one of the more unique teas you’ll ever come across. Dried in bamboo baskets over burning conifer, it is redolent of sap and smoky campfires. These aromas combined with the sweet and tangy liquor create a sip reminiscent of the wet decay of a cedar forest. A quality Lapsang Souchong is a transcendent drink for those of us captivated by all things smoked. Drinkers into highly-peated Scotch should dig it. It’s also handy in the kitchen for flavoring everything from vegetarian stew to oven-baked ribs.
Since the Eastern Han Dynasty the Chinese have been taking broad leaf tea from around the southwestern province of Yunnan, fermenting it and then compressing it into bricks or cakes. The finished product can be drunk immediately but if made well it can mature into a dark, mellow and unique tea fragrant with dried fruit, mushrooms, camphor and flowers. As with wine, only finely made and properly stored pu-erh teas will improve with age and increase in value.
To sample and learn about high quality tea in a relaxing atmosphere, check out Goldfish Tea in Royal Oak.
Great Green Monkey
Last night, I swung by Royal Oak’s Goldfish Tea to grab some bags of tea to brew at home, and I couldn’t help but order a cup to go. After my typical albeit momentary fit of indecision, I elected to go with Great Green Monkey.
Unusually large, the leaves of Great Green Monkey — also called Great Green Monkey King or Tai Ping Hou Kui — almost look more like dried crab grass clippings than tea leaves. It gives off a very immediate but pleasant sweet, vegetal aroma from the moment the water hits it, and it’s surprisingly full-bodied for such a pale-colored tea.
While the leaf is large, the flavor is not. Instead, it’s remarkably subtle — a bit sweet with little bitterness even if over-steeped.
The unusually flat leaf is apparently produced when the producer presses the leaf between two pieces of cloth or paper, and there’s a great deal more historical and production information available at Chinese Tea Culture.
I saved the to-go bag and re-steeped the leaves this morning to similar effect. It makes a delicious cup that, given its mild flavor and heavier body, seems like a perfect morning or afternoon tea over which to meditate on and hope for the coming of spring.
Lab: More Eventuality than Experiment
Needing a cup of tea a few weeks back, I hopped into a new cafe in Ann Arbor and quickly sucked down a cup of Bao Zhong. The tea, a light Taiwanese oolong, had a delightful fruit sweetness, enough so that one might have thought it had been dried with flower blossoms. Most other tea-friendly cafes in Ann Arbor either serve their tea in over-stuffed bags or brew their tea so long or so hot as to leech all the bitter tannins into the first cup.
That was my first introduction to Lab Cafe. Today, I decided on a whim to give it a more thoughtful visit.
A “friend” of the cafe standing on my side of the counter — a regular customer or off-hours employee, I’d guess — recommended a zucchini muffin. I asked where it was from, and the gentleman behind the register, Toby, replied that it was from a bakery in Kerrytown affiliated with Sparrow Market. Anticipating my next question, he followed with, “I don’t know exactly what’s in it; they keep it a secret. But it’s really quite good, and we get them fresh every morning.” The long strands of green vegetable protruding from the top indicated he was telling the truth, and the giant orange hunks of carrot embedded in the cake made by the same folks counted as a second “yea” vote in my mind.
The poured me a chai as well, which was spicier than some and less sweet than most. And I asked about the yogurt. He claimed that they made it there every day, “Well except for the milk. We don’t have cows, of course.” Having just had some less-than-natural yogurt at another place in town, I pressed him a bit and he also commented that the yogurt is sweetened only with pure sugar, no syrups or additives. I tried the four flavors — taro, honeydew, chocolate, and original — and all were delicious, especially the taro.
They serve Intelligentsia coffee, which had previously been favorably described to me by Gourmet Underground member and Great Lakes Coffee roastmaster, James Cadariu. I’m not a coffee drinker, so I can’t comment yet as to the quality of their work, but if the other products are any indication, I’m sure it’s marvelous.
Walking into the cafe is a bit like stepping out of the midwest — very minimalistic industrial design with plywood chairs, bright green accents, white countertops, and short movie clips projected over the wall where the typical Starbucks customer may be looking for a menu. But it’s nonetheless quite warm-feeling. The menus are adorned with instructional clip art (a little outlined French Press for coffee, et cetera) that I’m positive my wife would find adorable, and the floor-to-ceiling windows allow for a ton of natural light.
Coffee, tea, and yogurt cafes ranging from relatively full-service operations like Lab to tiny stands that are little more than closets with self-serve yogurt handles have been a “thing” in a number of cities, especially in places along the California coast, for a while now. So despite the experimental name, Lab is just an extension of that age-old rule that everything reaches the midwest 3-8 years after it hits the coasts.
But regardless, for those of us who work or live in Ann Arbor, it’s a nice mid-day treat, and for other Michiganders looking to occupy a Saturday, Lab might fit nicely into a stroll through the U-M Museum of Art and around the streets of Ann Arbor.
Crab Leg
I’m swigging crab legs. And it doesn’t involve some sort of new aerosol fish product that you might find on the shelf between Chee-Z-Whip and Krab Stix.
It’s one of the newer tea selections available at Goldfish Tea in Royal Oak. As the absolute pinnacle of what the Detroit area has to offer in terms of tea, Goldfish specializes in Chinese teas. While their extensive menu is generally static, they occasionally have something new and/or truly special that comes through their shop by virtue, I suspect, of their direct importing arrangement.
So today, I’m sitting in Goldfish with my laptop, drinking a tea called “Crab Leg.” The name fits: The leaves are narrow and long, punctuated every several millimeters or so with a joint- or knuckle-like bulbous ridge. There’s a faint mushroom quality to the aroma of the moistened leaves, which gives the impression of a puer-style tea. But its golden, medium-brown color hints at more of a robust oolong treatment, as it is indeed labeled at the tea shop. And its flavor, equal parts medicinal, buttery, and earthy, leaves me fairly dumbfounded.
After a bit of research, it appears that several online retailers qualify Crab Leg (or”char yong”) as puer but offer little detail in support of that. Puer can be tricky to classify, of course, in that its green/raw form is so very different from its richer, earthier post-fermentation “big brother.” If I were to reach into my bag of over-used diagramming tools and pull out a simple Venn diagram, I’d say that Crab Leg tea falls in the middle of an overlap between raw puer, fermented puer, and an oolong.
It’s fascinating stuff — almost as fascinating as the salon job interviews some hair stylists from the next shop over are conducted a few tables over. Give it a try. The tea. Not the salon gig. Unless you’ve been to beauty school and love the word “like.”
Kombucha Tasting Note: GT’s Multi-Green
The fact that GT’s Multi-Green kombucha looks extraordinarily like a vernal pond doesn’t have a thing to do with its flavor, sort of.
It starts with a contrasting sweet and tart fruit flavor, something like unripe apple or green mango without the rawness. Eventually, a wave of freshly mown grass and cut herbs washes through. With the herb you’re expecting a bitter aftertaste but it’s quite the opposite, finishing slightly tart, maybe even a bit soft, even more drinkable than you would expect given the wholesome ingredients.
Ingredients like Klamath blue green algae. Klamath Blue Green Algae is a wild, fresh water algae growing in natural abundance in Upper Klamath Lake, east of the Cascade Mountains in Southern Oregon. The mineral-rich volcanic soil that’s deposited into the alkaline waters is the perfect growth medium to produce the nutrient dense algae containing glyco-proteins, vitamins, minerals, simple carbohydrates, lipids and biologically active enzymes.
Other algae found in Multi-green are Spirulina, a food source of the Aztecs and people of 9th Century Kanem Empire near Lake Chad, and the simple green Chlorella.
Studies suggest that all of these extra ingredients have the ability to reduce high blood pressure, lower serum cholesterol levels, accelerate wound healing, enhance immune functions and help aid dioxin detoxification. Add all this to the goodness already present in kombucha and you might as well be drinking from the fountain of youth.* Never mind the color. Hell, we know people that won’t eat guacamole because of the way it looks.
*No clinical studies have proven that drinking GT’s Multi-green will turn you immortal, though you are guaranteed to get strange looks in the cafeteria. Not recommended for zombies.
Detroit Zen Center Teuk Seon Green Tea
When the students and monks of The Detroit Zen Center in Hamtramck aren’t meditating, they’re drinking and selling organic Teuk Seon green tea. Hand harvested from the Korean mountainside “Bright Eyes” is a high grade tea with a pleasing aroma of marsh grass and honey. A sip is mildly sweet and earthy with just a hint of tannin on the finish. I feel more self-aware merely inhaling the aromas. It’s a quality tea.
It’ll last up to three or four steepings and proceeds go to support the non-profit Zen Center. They offer a total of four grades of various quality and price and even throw this fun how-to pamphlet in the bag.
A Few Tips for Quality Kombucha Tea
I have been making kombucha tea long enough that my mother culture has spawned multiple babies, many of which have gone to friends. I even know of a grandchild. It is one healthy SCOBY, indeed. Initially cultured from a couple bottles of GT’s, I have raised it to the point where each three liter batch I ferment produces a baby at least 10 millimeters thick, if not thicker, and some really tasty kombucha. Here are a few details that I believe have helped me to succeed:
1. Use a fine grade tea: Though I only have anecdotal evidence to support this, using a good, loose-leaf tea has worked amazingly well. Bagged tea always seems to take longer to ferment. Does this mean there are more nutrients in a quality loose-leaf? Perhaps. I like oolong best. The flavor is milder than black tea and it makes for a lighter, better looking product.
2. Be consistent: Though the type of tea might change, I use the same formula for every batch. Each three liter batch will yield…Read the rest of this article at Total Kombucha
A Mighty Fail
It seemed for a while that bagged tea was becoming passably drinkable. Restaurants were carrying Jasmine Oolong and White Tea in little silk bags with extra room to allow the broken leaves the chance to expand a bit and reveal their true flavors and aromas. For sure, no bagged tea will ever replicate the flavors or aromas of “real” leaf tea, but much like well-made boxed wine, it has its place in the market and, in a pinch, it was finally starting to serve me well.
Then tea got trendy.
* * *
Florida isn’t a place I generally like to spend my time, and it’s the last place I think of when I imagine sipping on a hot, fresh cup of tea. But when work took me to Orlando, away from my sizeable office stash of loose leaf, I needed a delicious cup despite the heat. The hotel, better than most, stocked Mighty Leaf-brand tea in pounches. Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Mint Verbena, and Orchid Oolong, among others.
Described on the box as being sweet and floral and presented in one of those pretty, roomy silken bags, the tea nearly moved me to sue for false advertising since it tasted more like Australian Shiraz than tea. Oolongs dried with blossoms still retain true tea flavor and usually have a light, natural sweetness and autumn leaf aroma from the flowers. Actual steeped flowers or sweet herbs can have sweetness, but again, there’s an inherent natural depth. But this Orchid “Oolong” reeked of bubble gum and tasted like tropical fruit, suntan lotion, and pina colada.
Why ruin a good thing? Keep the silken bags, the overpriced boxes, the fancy packaging, the cheesy name, and the consultant-driven marketing plan. No problem. But why concentrate some quasi-natural orchid flavor and soak an oolong tea in it to the point it’s more reminiscent of fruit punch than a quality cup?
The straight black and green teas weren’t bad, but whether I’m in a steamy southern state or staying warm in Detroit, I’ll be avoiding the Orchid Oolong in the future.
Taiwan Dongding Oolong Tea (Light Roasted)
20% oxidized from the Dongding area of Nantou County in central Taiwan. Clear, pale yellow touched by green, Dongding oolong immediately engages with a nose of sultry blooms, mown grass and water crackers. A fullish and gently sweet body belies its delicate appearance. The finish is all floral beneath a medium astringency. Quite gulpable. The tight, curled leaves expand five times when wet and make a perfectly fine second steeping.
