The "Mom Test"

Recently in a Slack Chat tea group, I read a bit of discussion about a concept used by the TeaDB guys known in their videos as the "Mom Test." For those of you living under a rock, if you don't know who TeaDB is, run not walk over to teadb.org for a whole wealth of content about puerh tea. But I am guessing most readers here are familiar with the videos by the TeaDB guys and their reviews of tea, as well as the trope the "Mom Test." The relevant discussion in Slack Chat was whether or not the Mom Test is "sexist." I found this very interesting food for thought.

Now, before I get into those thoughts I am grateful to TeaDB for the idea of the Mom Test, because my thoughts about this are not specific to TeaDB nor to the guys, but rather to the social, literary and aesthetic merits of the concept. In other words, I found a lot to think about and at my age thinking is good. So, the Mom Test is very simply an idea of whether or not a specific tea might appeal to a Mom, that is, someone with a limited appreciation of tea.

In fact, the Mom is a character we need to consider here. It's true the Mom is a female, and refers most specifically to the Mom of the young man and also somewhat to the Moms of the TeaDB guys. Though Denny has exempted his actual mom from the Mom Test from time to time, because his mother actually drinks a variety of teas and probably has more appreciation than the trope Mom. But the key here with the Mom is the idea of appreciation. Even if the Mom drinks tea, she is assumed to have limitations in her taste or ability to appreciate teas beyond a certain comfort zone, and sheng puerh specifically and usually lies outside the comfort zone. Sheng is especially challenging when it has strong bitterness or astringency, or very wet or obvious storage flavors, or perhaps a peat-y profile that leads to strong body sensation. The Mom may be sensitive to teas beyond a simple hong or oolong.

The Mom also is likely to reject teas outside the comfort zone based on assumptions from actual past experiences of rejecting teas presented by the son, although not always a rejection. Sheng puerh in particular is somewhat like serving stinky cheeses. Even though a person may not reject the stinky cheese outright, we still have the failure to fully appreciate nuances. So even if the Mom agrees to try the tea, and might not find it completely offensive, she still fails to appreciate fully all of the characteristics the son finds in the tea.

I say "son" as specifically as the term Mom, because I cannot separate the idea of the Mom as sexist without removing the son. To have a Mom, we need a child and the idea of son is as key as the idea of Mom. The Mom Test is a generalized notion of the non appreciative parent, but is specifically mother and son in that the humor or idea here is that of a boy presenting a tea to his mother, not a daughter necessarily. I'm not sure the hubris works quite the same way culturally with daughter/Mom as it does with son.

As an older mother of a grown son the same age as the TeaDB guys, I can respond to the notion of sexism but this is not troubling to me necessarily, at least not beyond an occasional eye roll. My eye roll is more the generalized idea of sheng specifically as unappealing to older women, but I don't feel in the same category as the Mom. In my case, I'm the sheng drinker in the family and I would never serve my son any of the sheng teas because like the Mom he actually fails to appreciate the nuances of the tea, so I don't bother trying. In my world, I suppose I have the Son Test, but this isn't a concept that means anything to me, and doesn't have the hubris of the Mom Test as used in TeaDB. Why not? Because we need to consider the audience.

The Mom isn't necessarily sexist as a trope to me because the hubris here is really more about the sons rather than about the mom. When the videos refer to the Mom Test, the conversation shrinks to boys and more boys with the shared idea of mother of a certain age and sensibility. This is where my eye roll lies, not with the Mom as such, but the reminder that suddenly I'm not in the audience of young men.

I have had this same out-of-audience experience as a gamer, specifically with a Japanese MMO I played with Chinese and Japanese young men who agreed that women over the age of 20 should not play video games. In their view, a woman older than this changes from a child to whatever they associated with wife and mother. At the same time she develops interests such as shopping and laundry. I liked to follow up their gamer trope by ticking the cultural boxes back at them, by saying that I am over 50, have a PhD, career, am a mother to grown son, son is in university, yes all the stereotypical cultural boxes I am "supposed" to have and yet here I am kicking enemy ass all the same. I asked flat outright if I should be gaming, and they all said no. I didn't object to this because the expectations on my performance were still ironically the same as for them. But I never lost the awareness that I am still outside the club of young men even though in reality they probably failed to appreciate me.

So I do not fit the notion of gamer lady any more than I fit the Mom in the Mom Test, and thus I don't object to it necessarily as directed to me and my gender because it says more about the boys than it does about me. But I am aware of the shrinking of the audience for the concept of Mom Test, when the conversation is thus directed at other boys who get the in-joke even as I understand the joke and the failure to appreciate tea which is the general idea after all.

A feminist might confront me outright and say that I deflect what is clearly sexist, or anti-feminist. That I am not owning up to and confronting latent sexism in a concept that is meant to be general about tea. In fact, the Slack Chat conversation had men objecting to the Mom Test as sexist. I could say they confronted sexism for me, if I wish to continue the division here. But I argue the division is not really about male vs. female as it is about an audience of young men, and I stress young. It's as much young vs. old as it is about gender.

Surely the question begs whether we can find aesthetic concepts about tea that are gender neutral, and we have these already which is why the Mom Test is interesting. Not many concepts attempt at any kind of humor. In a way, I started my blog because sheng puerh in particular lacked humor. I have certainly taken advantage of gender at my expense, rather like Joan Rivers did in her comedy which relied on female age stereotypes. I push it in the extreme with my particularly incontinent and tea drunk avatar, and am well aware that I can hardly object to notions that I myself choose to abuse.

If anything I feel a bit wistful when the conversation of the Mom Test shrinks the audience to young men, for I can never be anything but the Mom and am not the Mom. I should have a Son Test, but this doesn't work as a concept and I don't care that my son doesn't appreciate sheng. I personally don't want my son to appreciate sheng though perhaps the TeaDB boys wish their Moms did. This is another reason why I can't object to the Mom Test, I don't need to share it necessarily. The Mom Test speaks of boys who want to connect with Mom in ways she doesn't care to, but she doesn't necessarily feel a lack thereof.

As a tea concept, the Mom Test is supposed to label a tea for general consumption by tea drinkers who are looking for pleasant, comfortable flavors but not anything challenging to the palate. This is where the supposed value lies, though I would argue the main value of the Mom Test is that we have a rich concept here in tea aesthetics, when in general "serious" tea conversation nowadays lacks rich concepts. Today in tea we are constantly looking for specifics, we are trying to pinpoint and want tea to be scientifically "objective," when tea is in fact aesthetic and literary. The Mom Test is an actual literary aesthetic idea and is thus more meaningful than our ultimately futile efforts to "science-tize" tea drinking. Thus the Mom Test is more closely related to older tea writing rather than the type we strive for nowadays, like a painting of tea drinking by the lotus pond rather than data and charts and numbers and how many steepings we made that blog posts are full of. In this sense, the Mom Test more accurately points to the activity of tea as aesthetic pleasure rather than scientific and so doesn't mislead the audience.

So mainly I appreciate the Mom Test as a rich idea, and this is why I hope the TeaDB guys continue to use it both to describe teas and to make a few jokes about tea drinking. They are speaking about their experience as aesthetes. I'd rather leave the gender neutral etc. etc. for another day and another topic and just enjoy. Cheers!

No One Cares What's In Your Closet

Your puerh closet, that is.

I don’t enjoy bringing you the bad news, but no one gives a flying fart what sort of puerh collection you have. Or what sort of puerh collection I have. Too many tea collectors lately fall headfirst into what I consider social media “envy,” or what researchers have dubbed “Facebook envy.” I can adapt some of the research questions used to measure Facebook envy to tea, and let’s see how we puerh collectors fare. I lifted these statements from the peer-reviewed journal Computers in Human Behavior 43(139-46) and adapted them for my use. Do you ever feel any of the following?

My Tea Collection generally feels inferior to others.

It’s so frustrating to see some people always have good tea.

It somehow doesn’t seem fair that some people seem to have the good tea connections.

I wish I could purchase the teas that some of my friends do.

Many of my tea friends have better tea than me.

Many of my tea friends are happier with their tea collection than me.

My tea collection is better than that of my friends.

Chances are, if you spent any time looking at tea photos or time on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or tea chat forums or blogs, either you or others display some of the feelings behind these statements. How many times did you wish you had more money to spend on tea, or that others seem to have more “prestigious” teas, or give the impression they are drinking better tea than what you possess? Or conversely, do you find yourself snorting when some newbie presents a proud photo of a newly acquired Xiaguan tuo and you feel glad because you would never do any of that?

Do you see a culture arising of terms used to judge the tea collections of others? Are you one of the tong people, or stamp collectors? I like to write about tong people in jest, but now terms like this are used to determine whether you are serious, whether you have tongs of drinkers or stamps of single stellar teas. Tongs display your wealth more than stamps. Tongs display how much of a tea you think you will drink.

Are you developing thoughts that special tea buying groups exist that leave you out? At the extreme, we have some idea of “tea masonry” developing, secret clubs for people with money and connections. I am shocked how many people buy into this idea. First off, no one in the west has access to the tiers of tea kept in China, and even at the millionaire level, hell at any buying level, someone is laughing all the way to the bank.

Social media creates foolishness at every level. On the surface, nothing is wrong with enjoying beautiful photos of tea, but any time spent thinking and drawing conclusions from forums, blogs and tea photos that relate to your collection vis-à-vis those of others is time and energy wasted on illusions. Facebook is not a collection of happy people in happier relationships with well-adjusted children taking expensive vacations, they are people in relationships with children on vacation period. Chats and blogs and photos are well-crafted affairs, constructed truth, not real truth. The real truth is people buy tongs they will never finish, tea ware they wish they’d never bought, and people own single teas they try to sell on forums at a loss to raise money. For every tong someone buys, another person is trying to sell that same tea. In other words, people spend at least as much energy unhappy with their tea as they spend in happy moments with their tea. Everyone has teas they are happy to own, and teas that really should be tossed.

More truth: there is always more tea. There will always be more opportunities to buy tea at every level. How much do you wanna spend? The truth is, you can learn just as much putting away a piece of every tea you drink and storing that piece to see how it changes, just as you can from drinking tongs of factory tea. The truth is people posting tea photos of fabulous tea today will post again tomorrow. You can choose to think about those updates, or instead spend time with your own tea collection enjoying the changes. The truth is, the vast majority will never own a 1950s Red Mark. The truth is, at least one tea you own right now will be very nice to drink tomorrow.

No one cares what is in my puerh closet except for me. I clean my own closet and I don’t worry about everyone else.

Personal Puerh Aesthetic: the Why

Why do I drink puerh tea? I approached puerh tea via a long journey through green teas, over a period of years, for health reasons. I find green tea a helpful tonic, along with stress management, to keep my kidneys healthy. This alone is not a reason to spend $200 on a beeng. The Why behind drinking puerh tea, especially in the west where the tea is not easily accessible, is mostly a rabbit hole of reasons, none of which particularly justify the purchases from a financial point of view. Actually, I cannot think of any good reason to buy puerh for health reasons that less expensive forms of tea will not suit just as well, and perhaps better than puerh. The health claims behind puerh are mostly anecdotal, or involve stuffing mice with more puerh than any human can reasonably and comparatively drink. In fact, I could go back to buying gunpowder green tea at the grocery store and come out just as healthy.

Puerh tea also comes with social issues related to coffee and tea consumption in the west. Most people do not purchase large quantities of tea or coffee. They purchase a bag of loose leaf, or a box of tea bags, or a bag of coffee beans to consume and then refill the supply only when finished.  By contrast, most puerh drinkers will need to buy ahead of their drinking because of the aging and resting of the tea. A serious puerh drinker is buying ten or even twenty years ahead of time, and I don’t think anyone who purchased tea ten years ago is regretting it now, given how high prices are today. But the buying ahead comes with social explanations to partners and friends and family, why do you have so much tea? The stockpiling and aging process runs contrary to the more minimalist caffeine approach that most of western society takes with their beverages. Puerh is slow tea, not fast break pick up at the drive thru window.

For me, slow tea is one of the best explanations behind why I prefer puerh. Checking my storage and going through my collections is relaxation time, much in the way a gardener goes outside to check the plants, pull a weed or two, and in general enjoy the fruits of a long season of labor. Puerh tea involves work, which most people in the west don’t associate with a beverage. They get their shot of caffeine on the way to work, rather than take the time to gongfu brew in the morning. No one seems to have time for slow beverages. In my part of the US, slow mornings carry a tinge of lazy morality, not the get up and move common to my culture and associated with success.

One might turn to fellow pu heads for support and encouragement, but even here the urge to keep going is easily stifled. While one might share a common hobby with another pu head, all too often pu heads judge each other based on their own personal preferences. Sure, you drink puerh, but do you drink the right kind? Are you in the club of wet heads, drinking traditional stored puerh, who disdain young green sheng puerh? Are you a factory tea drinker trading Dayi and scouting Taobao, or god forbid do you buy teas from easily accessible online vendors? Do you spend $200 and even 4x that much on a beeng, or are you in the club of people singing the praises of buying a $20 beeng, no matter the quality, and bragging you won’t spend a penny more? Do you merely drink shou puerh, or are you gulping green 7542 without a wince?

Really puerh people seem to have an opinion on everything and certainly I do as well. With so many contrary opinions around, all we can do is have our opinion and feel brave enough to stick to it. In the end, perhaps all we can expect from fellow pu heads is maybe a tip or two on a decent buy, or a swap on occasion. Socialization is somewhat limited in the end if we are all busy criticizing and arguing over storage. I can’t say I am into puerh for the social aspects at all. While we can wax on about how great it is to share tea with others, the reality is we mostly drink alone and get together mainly on the gripes.

Still, something about the depth and complexity pulls at me, the long, deep throats, the custardy thick brews, body feels, whiskey finishes. I taste puerh randomly when I am out in the world, sitting at a stop light in the car, suddenly I feel like I just sipped an old Yiwu. The idea that no two sessions are ever quite alike appeals to me. The fact the my tea changes enough to surprise me puts puerh tea miles ahead of green teas that don’t change, but rather fade in a year or two. I can look forward to more every year from a production well kept.

Puerh is just the most excellent of teas. Can we drink to that?

Personal Puerh Aesthetic: Considering the Where in Drinking Puerh Tea

In considering the “Where” behind my tea drinking, I think about all aspects of my environment. While I do drink tea in the presence of others occasionally at a tea shop, the vast majority of my tea consumption is alone or with family consuming beverages other than tea. As a blogger, I spend much of my time testing teas that are either samples provided by others or my own collection to check storage. I constantly ask myself whether the tea I am drinking is worthy of writing about. These issues are obvious, but the “Where” is more about specifics.

While tea might lend itself to a meditation setting, I find my tea drinking setting is far more spare than a prayer type space. I had to give up incense and even body perfumes because scents go right up my nose and down the back of my throat. Do you find that you “taste” scents? Because strong essential oil products like incense and perfume just wreck my palate, worse than food. Constipation and indigestion also produce vapors that make their way up my palate. If I plan to enjoy a cigar, it must be after the tea and not before. I don’t smoke marijuana anymore, but I find that people who do often report an inability to experience chaqi.

One does not need to be terribly strict with any of these issues, especially with casual tea drinking, but I feel it’s only fair if I’m blogging to give a tea my best tasting. I should at least reserve some judgment and not say “this tea has no qi” if I’m a person smoking doobies every day. In that case, tea is an adjunct, not a main drug. I think for most bloggers tea is the main drug, or should be if they are reviewing, not all bloggers do reviews.

The “where” is also about storage, where is the tea stored? Storage encompasses all of my storage as well as all the many places around the world my tea comes from. Weather too affects my tea, and while I don’t need to dwell on the weather most of the year, I am aware of it and certainly weather impacts the teas I choose to drink, whether more warming or more cooling types of puerh. I find I cannot tolerate warming teas in the summer unless I want to lie awake all night sweating.

Even though I have several tea tables, numerous tea pillows and trays, most of my tea is prepared and consumed in my kitchen. I feel I am “working” or paying attention to food and beverages in my kitchen more so than anywhere else. I might enjoy tea outdoors in the summer, or on the patio, or in my sun room, but mostly I like to be near my hot water source and, well, the bathroom as needed. Tea gets all things moving along nicely.

In the kitchen I can get my head into the tea because I am not fussing with the tea setting as I would outdoors or somewhere fancy. My crocks are extensions of food preservation intrinsic to the farm community in which I live. I feel more local, and less odd or exotic drinking a beverage from the other side of the world. The tea is mine in my kitchen, and I carry my crocks from the next room to the countertop and check the progress. I usually make a mess when breaking tea off a beeng, and my tea mess is just easier to clean up in the kitchen. I get water everywhere too.

Many of my photos show a red laminated table, this is a 1950s café table on a metal pedestal that is secured to the wall, the type of table you would see in a soda fountain shop sixty years ago. Think “Grease” the musical. I have an old 78 record on the wall above a yellow vintage hurricane mushroom lamp.

Then my bedroom is just off the kitchen and so if I overdose on tea, bed is just a few steps away. One never knows with a new tea how to judge the leafing until that first try. When the tea inspires a monologue I carry the cup to the computer and start typing. Everyone I live with ignores my tea drunk giggles and tea habit in general. I usually do not get sheng gut aches, but if I feel a little bit dodgy in the tummy I like products such as Life Saver’s Pep-o-Mints (the large ones), Nabisco Zesta soda crackers, and Icelandic Skyr. These products contain tummy soothing ingredients like peppermint, baking soda, milk and cultures.

So, the “where” is all about the conditions as well as the places of drinking tea. I can understand why some bloggers stop after awhile and just focus on enjoying tea because blogging does affect the entire process of drinking even when the tea is quite nice. In the next few weeks I hope to attend a tea tasting and enjoy tea with others and get outside my blogosphere for a day.  

Personal Puerh Aesthetic: Considering the What in Drinking Puerh Tea

What is a puerh lover? I look in the mirror and know how I got here, a fairly straight path through green teas on a health quest. None of this explains how one acquires so much puerh, beyond that of what I reasonably drink. Puerh lends itself to a constant grail search, the dream of the divine disk transporting me into a state of bliss and youthful glow, dripping with complex spices and fruits, all I need is the golden sofa and grapes. In the case of puerh, the more aged the tea the younger I hope to feel.

What is this magical Yunnan leaf tea I drink? Usually the reader wants a treasure map, a list of names of teas, prices, places to run to and buy wonderful tea. Quite honestly, reviewers provide these lists all year long. Still, the reader is left less than satisfied, or perhaps merely hesitant, thinking that this or that tea is not quite the one. The truth is, if we line up ten collectors of puerh tea along with their current favorites, each person will have a different group of teas to swear by. With my personal puerh aesthetic of who-what-where-why, I divide my “Whats” into drinkers, stunners and untouchables.

Drinkers

Drinker teas are daily consumption teas that require little thought to enjoy. From bricks to tuos, this group is mostly in the lower end of the price list, under $200. I would list nearly all factory teas into this category. Sure a few older factory teas reach a legendary status, but the truth is virtually all of these teas today are likely to leave one satisfied if somewhat disappointed. 

Storages matter here too, I consider flawed storage teas to be drinkers, and that includes wetter stored teas. Wet storage is a flaw, and while such tea is perhaps drinkable, it will never be great tea. I spend a great deal of time on my blog writing about drinkers because so many beginners are looking for drinkers, even though I have plenty of these teas and need no more of them.

Stunners

These teas today generally are going to hurt your wallet, costing $200 or more, regardless of the size of the beeng. I say beeng because any tuo or brick costing more than this is iffy, I would generally not pay that much for a tuo or brick that to me is just drinker even if well aged. A tuo or brick just is not going to blow me away. A stunner is generally a beeng or loose puerh tea. A stunner will not have processing flaws like burnt leaves, oxidized leaves, or anything other than tea leaves, a quality control issue. 

A stunner is dry stored or lightly wet stored, very light. The clue here is price, assuming the tea is priced by someone skilled in evaluating tea. People continually try and find stunners by looking in cheap tea joints, the truth is you won’t find any. A real stunner sticks out with longevity, thickness, mouth and body feel, just to name a few qualities. I might be in the market for a stunner tea if I think the aging potential is there, some uncommon strength to survive the long twenty year haul.

Untouchables

Untouchable teas are frequently unmentionables, alas. Very often a friend or vendor sends me an untouchable, or shares a session, with the caveat that I do not mention the tea on my blog. Sometimes to ensure I do not discuss the tea, I am not told what the tea is. The person does not want others to know of this possession. Blogging does lend itself to more opportunities to drink or acquire this level of tea, along with a very, very healthy wallet. But blogging does not work in the way you might think. People share tea with me almost from a negative contingency. Rather than saying “oh here is a tea you might love,” the impression is “I will give you a tea that is better than what you have,” a bit of a dig suggesting my taste isn’t quite what the person thinks I possess at this stage, and a failure to appreciate on my part will prove a negative point. Perhaps my statements that I will drink anything lend itself to some collectors feeling challenged to send me a tea with grail potential.

Untouchable teas are those without real price, or undetermined price, or so high that, well, don’t ask. The teas are one of a kind, or few of a kind. You need to know someone. For certain these teas cost well over $1000 a beeng, and probably much more. Not all are completely inaccessible, however. TeaDB just reviewed a XiZhiHao this week that is probably attainable, assuming you have the cash and can find a collector willing to sell. But in the case of the review, a friend provided a single session of the tea which in itself is a generous gift. I am always on the hunt for untouchable teas.

How does one get to a place of owning better teas? Aside from the necessary disposable cash, you need to get to know tea people. You won’t find the best teas on your own, even if you travel to Yunnan. Over time you may acquire sufficient stunner teas to trade for a session of really decent tea.

Puerh Across Its Lifespan

My puerh aesthetic is all about drinking teas at various stages during the aging process to appreciate the current condition of the tea. I can taste the differences along the way, and make adjustments as needed to my crocks or move a tea out. I might decide to plastic-wrap a twenty year old tea to slow it down and preserve its current state. Others I acquired with a little dampness might need airing, which I also check. I enjoy tasting how tea changes the longer I have it in my possession. Occasionally I experiment and sometimes end up tossing a tea. All this for me is an important part of appreciating puerh tea.

I won’t be able to drink all my tea. I made plans for it when I am gone. This is the best I can do, and I am okay with what I choose to drink and stopped punishing myself for what I am not drinking up. I am also expanding my palate into drinking more white and red teas, and some oolong teas I have stored for some years. The What is a journey into my collection and beyond, and I don’t expect to find the grail.

Personal Puerh Aesthetic: a Who-What-Where-Why Consideration

Puerh collecting is a rabbit hole of a hobby, whose lemming-like labyrinthine paths toward tea greatness are never-ending tunnels in which we lose ourselves, emerging only to check the position of the sun in late winter to anticipate the coming Yunnan spring tea picking season. Oh, then we find ourselves thirsty thinking of all the rich nutrients in spring tea, or so we hope, and such cravings empty the wallet quickly. Before I know it boxes will arrive at the door, and I wonder what the heck I bought and why, asking “what were you thinking?” knowing full well craving is not the same as thinking. I think, I am puerh collector, and so I am. Perhaps considering more deeply who I am as a collector will not only inform my buying, but perhaps inform not buying, not allowing my cravings to take over my wallet. A Who-What-Where-Why Strategy is a good way for me to flush my hoarder self out into the light of day well before the first signs of spring. This post will consider who I am as a person/collector. What aspects about me personally affect my behaviors with puerh, my aesthetics, if you will?

Who: A Embarrassment of Riches

My own personal aesthetics on puerh drinking definitely have roots in my childhood food and beverage experiences. Specifically, how I approach puerh now probably relates to my father’s foodie tendencies. One might forgive him his approach. Dad attended a seminary school on a poor boy’s scholarship not long after the great War. He starved his way through eight years of seminary and then three years of law school. His stories were filled with bad food, too little food, stealing sugar and ketchup packets from the cafeterias to fill in his stomach beyond the one meal a day he received for years.

Understandably then, my father was obsessed with food. He spent money on little else, and he spent riches. Dad would not accept a meal of a casserole, or something cooked by a child, no, it needed to be rich meat, and the best meat. Not t-bone steaks, but filet minon tenderloins, individually wrapped and ordered from specialty food companies. Not pork chops or lamp chops, but whole pigs and lambs purchased from farm children at the local fair and Dad made sure to overpay so those kids had money in their pockets for college.

Toward his food efforts, Dad bought a fishing boat on Lake Superior, and a hobby farm for growing acres of fresh vegetables and fruit trees. He stopped his car next to canning factory fields and ran us in to grab up armfuls of pea and bean vines filled with pods. He stopped food semi-truck drivers at the bar. Not Maine lobsters, but rock lobster tails ordered from South Africa. Not Gulf crab, but King Crab from Alaska. Not chicken, but duck and goose. Never carp or cod, but fresh Lake Superior Lake Trout and wild-caught salmon. He left behind guns and fishing poles.

“Your dad didn’t own much stuff,” my stepmother said after his death. “He spent his money on food.” Well, and drink too, we cannot forget that. Both killed him early.

All this of course affected me in ways that are not socially acceptable to discuss, really. Who wants to say they grew up dining on lobster tails and filet minon? Who should say that I had enough of steak at age eighteen never to want to eat it ever again? I sound ungrateful if I say I went from a childhood of rich food to preferring simple vegan food for many years, and an interest in world cuisines just to balance out what I grew up eating, when anyone might give their left arm to dine as I did as a child. Even as a nun I could not get away. Dad called me up.

“Go down to Reinhart’s Foods, there is a box for you,” Dad said.

The box contained more special order filet minons and lobster tails, and crab. None of the nuns knew how to cook these things, and they were so pleased and ignored my embarrassment. We were supposed to be poor and eat simply. Dad even sent a microwave to every convent house I lived in. I swallowed my embarrassment because I knew Dad thought I might starve as he had done. He did all that because of his Who-What-Where-Why, and who in their right minds wouldn’t want the best of the best?

So of course this carries over into my puerh collecting. I want to know what the best puerh tea leaf is. I will pay ridiculous sums for the best tea, and yet at the same time I appreciate a craft product, stemming back to the vegetable and canning days Dad put us through, just to make sure we had plenty of the fresh stuff. Dinner started out early with hors d’oeuvres of fresh caught same-day fish filets and fresh veggies, and then we ate a large meal at seven. I was pairing food and drinks and learned the beverage order before I learned algebra, and bought alcohol starting at age ten. What are kids for, after all? We always had guests too.

I approach puerh as a digestif, probably a substitute for the cognac and single malt after-dinner drink set. Green tea started out for me as a way to keep my kidneys running, but so very natural to migrate on to the single malts of puerh tea as a way to end a fine day, and the occasional bender over night, because what else did I see growing up? Drunk people on the rug, passed out from too much good food. A reader told me “you seem to have farm and city sophistication, but you really can’t have both.” That person didn’t know my dad, because he had both and I got both. He was a farm boy, after all.

I had an embarrassment of riches growing up, and so today I am embarrassed at the riches of my tea collection. I am definitely the after-dinner drinker like my father, and he passed on his aesthetic to me. In the next post, I will consider the What of my tea drinking, that is, what I prefer to drink. Perhaps you may wish to reflect along, and consider how you formed your own approach to drinking puerh tea.

Whatever Happened to Bad Tea? A Return to the Outlaw

"Outlaw" Banzhangy-Yiwu-ey--I ain't what I claim to be tea.

Hard to believe this blog is now in a fifth year, though as I predicted at the very beginning, health and medications take a toll on my tea drinking. Today I am glad for the chugging years, all too often now puerh gets replaced by hongcha in my daily cup, yet on the bright side I have some hongs that are worth getting up for. Poor old Lu Yu, he knows that the greatest pleasure on earth is tea drinking, he has no need of it now, but if he has any remaining consciousness I am certain he misses it. Looking back on my older posts, I decided to revisit one of the teas I wrote about very early on. Let’s see how it is doing.

My intention when buying this beeng on eBay was to try and find the worst possible tea, to acquire a bad tea for my collection because everything else I own is so good that surely I am missing out. I failed miserably on this attempt to buy a bad beengcha, others have acquitted themselves admirably in the same task. 

After my August 2014 blog post on this “Overlord Drunk” tea, I tossed this tea into crock storage not long after spending some time in a pumidor I had then. The problem with this tea is the double wrappers were made of rather inexpensive paper which did not stay wrapped up, as rag paper will. Very quickly the wrappers got messed and started shredding, and loose tea began to flake off the stone pressed disk. On top of this, I noticed a somewhat smoky quality to the processing and decided to try and work this out by breaking up the tea into a crock. Thus, this tea made of probably autumn material from 2008-2011 or thereabouts spent about 4 years in a Haeger stoneware “cookie jar.” I tried to get some photos. 

Somebody did not want to move, and hard to blame him given the last few warm summer days when I took these photos (mid-September).

Okay one more for the too-cute factor. 

Winston is my 2 ½ year old orphan kitten who still wants me to hand feed him on occasion. Despite that, he is quite the hunter with some astonishing kills on his CV. He doesn’t like petting beyond a head scritch or two, so I think the very occasional hand feeding is his way of getting some emotional interaction with me.

Here is the original photo of the beeng hole side back from 2014.

Today, the tea looks like this.

Broken up beeng from stoneware jar.

The first thing I notice is the oxidation or browning that has occurred during crock storage, especially on the buds which were silvery white before. This is a stage that happens with any tea stored well. Basically the tea begins to lose color just as fall leaves do, although this is not really much “change,” the chlorophyll simply dies out. Fully oxidized tea is of course hongcha. The cell walls of the tea are loosening up some on this Outlaw tea, which admittedly did have some oxidized leaves on the edges of the beeng to begin with. This explains somewhat the orange color the of the brew back in 2014, and now.

A chunk from the pile, starting to turn brown.

People sometimes confuse oxidation with solid state fermentation, equating the two. Oxidation is a stage that happens most visibly in the first few years in both wet and dry storage. Oxidation is also a problem prior to retail if the tea sat too long before chaqing, or the chaqing was under done (and of course the tea will be sold anyway). But solid state fermentation of puerh tea takes two decades, unless one wets down the tea and quick-ferments into shou. A year, or even four years of storage, no matter how you store the tea is just an oxidation phase, with the tea slowly loosening its walls. The actual fermentation of yeasts and much later the conversion of juices from bitter to sweet are very slow after that. The browning on my cake is really just the start of fifteen more years to go.

Another reason I chose to revisit this tea now is because the origins are similar, in my mind, to the Dark Forest and Yiwu Spotlight which I reviewed in the previous post. The flavor profile is virtually identical, and the color of the brew too. But the eBay tea is much less powerful than the others, a weaker sibling. I brewed this tea in Yixing to duplicate how I brewed it for the older post.

Second steeping, rather orange like the Yiwu-region teas from previous post.

Far from a “bad” tea, I notice how much more thick the brew is now, motor oil thick with fuzzies in the strainer from the buds. The profile is a bit monotonous, lightly bitter and the oiliness settles the bitterness firmly onto the tongue which takes fifteen minutes to resolve into sweetness. Pleasant enough light apricot yogurt. I have to push the tea from the start to get what I consider a nice strong cup, at least 20-30 seconds. I went six steepings and you can see from the leaves they are nowhere near unfurled yet. 

Sixth steep, this tea has nice thickness, but not a whole lot else.

Maybe I am unfair, but like before this guy just doesn’t have what it takes to satisfy me. The tea is basically an experiment and nothing I hope to turn into anything. 

Steeped leaves in 2014.

I cannot fail to note that while the leaves may be less powerful than I would like, the leaf quality is such that the tea would cost far more now. The tea is still available in sample bags, the beengcha have sold out. Of course the price is higher too, but not ridiculous.

Steeped leaves from today, my sunny window
surely washes out the color a little.

Perhaps I will check this one again someday. In the summer it gets the heat and humidity my three-season porch provides, and I remove the lid on hot days, and replace it for any cold or rainy weather. In winter, I wipe the inner lid with a damp paper towel to add a bit of moisture. In the past few years we have had hot, humid summers and humid autumn and spring too, so I have not added moisture quite as much. My teas are still holding quite a bit of moisture through the winter. Fingers crossed, as always.

Re-tastes, and Re-tasting

I just received a complaint today. Yes, I know a week has passed since my last post. Okay, more than a week. How is a person supposed to keep track of time while drinking puerh tea? Truthfully I have been drinking a lot of tea lately, more than usual. Instead of confining my puerh time to the evenings, I now start drinking earlier in the day. Most of my attention lately is on re-tasting teas from my collection. One needs to do this regularly as a way to check on the storage because measuring devices for humidity or temperature do not tell us anything about how the tea tastes. Also, I like to check on my new cakes to discover changes that occur in the first year when puerh tea settles from processing. More changes occur in the first year than in any other time span.

Tasting in the First Year

I taste each tea I buy when I get it, but then I wait another six months or more before sampling the tea again. This applies to fresh, new puerh tea but also aged tea I have ordered. Fresh tea needs time for settling, and aged needs time to acclimate and perhaps air out any storage odors. I might review the tea, but I try and confine myself to talking about the leaf quality and flavors without a big judgment on the tea.

This brings up something that is bothering me over the past year. I see more and more people buying new puerh especially, and then writing scathing reviews at first taste. I do not understand how a person can judge a puerh tea immediately after pressing on any aspect except leaf quality. We can notice much about the thickness of stems, the durability of leaf, whether the cake is poorly processed with too much or too little chaqing. But we cannot judge the quality of the tea brew straight off the steamers! We cannot know how well a tea will age when the tea just came out of the cotton bag!

Yet I see folks posting reviews on Steepster or blogs or Reddit with damning judgments on the flavors of brand new tea. Or reviews of aged tea straight out of the mailing box. Yet how many more reviews are posted over years and years when the writer says something like “I hated this tea at first, what a night and day difference six months (a year, two years, five years) makes.” I have tea friends writing some of these judgments too or posting them in photo form on social media.

I can discern fine leaf quality and clean processing at first taste when I receive a new or aged tea. An aged tea also has a storage quality that I can judge, dry/wet etc. My views of leaf quality, processing and any storage issues are not likely to change. My opinions on the brew, however, will change because the tea is going through stages of change.

The Need for Re-tasting

My dears, we need to keep looking, and keep tasting. Otherwise, we merely look upon a painting and comment upon the image alone, without seeing the layers of paint and how the effect we admire, or not, is created. Some tea writers will say “my tastes have changed,” but the truth is the tea is changing as fast as you are. Who is to say that you might store a tea very well, and find you have a nice one on your hands a few years down the road that you can appreciate all the more?

Perhaps tea reviews give the impression of a constant buying of tea, or constant sampling of new teas and not enough time spent re-visiting stored teas. I suppose blog posts of re-visiting teas are not as exciting to write or read as are posts about brand new teas, when everyone is eager for information. Yet I hope we are as eager to know about teas we are all storing. Now that we have tea clubs, more people together are storing the same teas, in different locales, using different storage methods. We have more opportunity than ever to generate consensus about teas.

2016 Head by white2tea

I first reviewed this tea last summer, and noted that the tea fresh out of the steamer was very green. I and many others noted a vegetal, almost sweet green pepper flavor to the tea. When tea is this new and green, we can note the strength of the leaves and the clean processing but we can hardly judge the brew at this point. I believe I noted that on my post back in July.

I am surprised now to remember from reading my post how Head arrived smelling like a hot tomato vine during a period of very steamy summer weather. For 2016 Head smells nothing like tomato vine today.  2016 Head has changed vastly from when I tasted it nearly seven months ago. I brewed up a pot of this tea and my clumsy fingers spilled tea all over the kitchen counter. From this mess wafted up a smell of a lily of the valley garden patch, and I was stunned at the florals and how sticky my fingers got while cleaning up the spills. The brew is now more golden yellow rather than green, indicating the tea has settled from the “green” tea stage to now a puerh ready to begin slow fermentation.

In the cup, the florals are now at the forefront, and the savory aspect deeper, more of a lower note. Also, the cup aroma after drinking is heavily floral which makes the tea seem more expensive than it is. I normally find the strong cup aroma after drinking in more expensive teas than Head.  I went ten steeps easily and the tea has more to go. I forgot to take a photo.

Afterward, I emailed TwoDog and mentioned the changes in Head. He replied “I know the material well enough to know they should age better than they are…” But even he had not re-tasted Head in awhile. So this confirms to me that teas often change drastically long after first pressing. If you purchased Head last summer, give it a re-taste now. Otherwise, this tea is still only $69.

2011 Xiao Jin Gua Sheng by Verdant Tea

Yes, you all griped about this one that I reviewed last spring, and bought two of. This is an autumn 2010 production. I noticed that Verdant is now selling a 2016 Xiao Jin Gua, which consists (supposedly) of both spring and autumn material. Seeing a new pressing of this production, I decided to re-taste the more aged version. Back then I really liked the storage on this, and I still like it now.

Around 10 steeps. I used a lot of leaf.

This tea was stored by the owner/presser and he sold all but ten of the melons to Verdant. He wanted ten for himself. This storage is what I would love for all my teas, that perfect humidity that pushes the tea a bit but still keeps that “dry storage” aspect lacking in mustiness. The tea brews brown in the early steeps, a color that takes many brews to fade back to a darker golden yellow. I also like the spiciness of this tea. I have tried this tea maybe three times now and I still like it. Apparently so do other folks because Verdant commissioned a new pressing in 2016. 

I cannot vouch for the new pressing because I have not tried it, and part of what I like about the melons I own is the storage so far. I am glad I bought two because I am certain I will drink up one within the next couple of years. Also I am glad I didn't need to spend an entire month's salary to get a drinker tea, but a low $38, and the new pressing is on sale. As always, when buying from Verdant just ignore the photos of anything except the actual tea cake. Their marketing is dodgy but the tea might be fine enough. 

2015 Autumn Bang Dong by Yunnan Sourcing via LiquidProust

This tea is from the Sheng Olympics box that LiquidProust put together. He aimed for depth in the box by including a 2012 version of this same production so that people can do deeper tasting. You get to try a younger version and a five year aged version. I wrote about the 2012 last month. I like the five year stored tea, seems to be aging along nicely. This newer tea is brewing past ten steeps for me, but it needs to rest after two steeps before it will give more. Like the autumn Xiao Jin Gua above, I taste that deeper spiciness. Autumn tea is a nice mild version of puerh that is growing on me, and the advice to try several years of a production more than once is sound advice indeed. The 2015 Bang Dong is a huge 400g cake of tea for $69, and the bargain of the three teas in this post. 

Some big leaves. Steeps nine and ten in one cup.

My teas in this post are all stored in a ten gallon vintage stoneware crock. They have remained fragrant in the crock without much additional moisture this winter, which I attribute to the milder and wetter year we have had. I air the crock about twice a week by lifting the lid. The crock is very full which helps keep the tea water content stable. I rotate the teas a few times a month mainly when I am looking for something so the cakes get naturally shuffled. 

I hope people will write about puerh teas they buy with at least some reservation in judgment until they have owned the teas for a time. I see a lot of flip flopping judgments going on. Deeper notes in puerh change over time, and I want to see writers noting these changes without needing to say “I don’t like the tea” fresh off the steamer, when you have no idea what it will taste like in a few months. Keep in mind other people are reading your notes. If you are flip flopping on your judgments, you either cannot discern leaf quality or you are not aware that sheng tea changes, and changes yet again. I believe that we can firmly judge the quality of the leaf, processing and storage of teas. But the flavor notes are ever-changing and on-going, and judgment of the brew itself is expected to evolve.