Mother

I didn't get my tea review done this week.

But I have excuses! Lately I've been sleeping out on the porch with my sheng crocks. Young people think sleeping outside is a swell idea but the truth is, it's a lot of work. I have never understood the thrill unless the whole point is to pee anywhere you want and give up on bathing. No, I'm in a forced situation at the moment living on my porch because my Former mother-in-law Hildegarde has come to stay for at least a month. Yeppers, Former is past tense and Come to Stay is, alas, present tense.

Facts first. The time period I spent living together with Hildegarde's son was:

A. Limited, and
B. more than 20 years ago. And then we have
C. She has multiple real and actual children to go stay with, including a set of Twins, but
D. She is here at my house instead, and finally
E. She's older than me. By a lot. Which means she's really really old. And she pees even more often than I do which hardly seems possible, but I can assure you it's true. And that means I had to give up my room and sleep on the porch.

Hildegarde lives with my Ex, in a city over 75 miles away which is where she is supposed to be right now. But Dear Ex has decided to head off to the Philippines to meet up with some floozy he met online. He likes Asian girls. I found this out once when he was broke and I let him use my graduate school free ISP addy, and saw the Meet Asian Girls websites pop up under the search bar.

"You can't do that, I could get fired from the university," I told him.

Back in those days the school started cracking down on the "porn at work" types. I wonder if they even bother nowadays.

"Get your own Internet," I said.

So he stopped for awhile in order to continue using my internet. But his interest in Asian Girls persisted. I developed a theory that I made the honorary cut onto the Asian Girl Meter when I was fresh out of the convent, but once with child I got disqualified from the virginal shojo by graduating into the well-seasoned Tiger Mom through very little fault of my own. And now you know what-all went down in that relationship. So it is that over 20 years later I'm required to look after his mother when he's meeting the latest online crush halfway across the world, all the while I'm sleeping out on the porch and re-reading David Hwang's "M. Butterfly."

My Ex and I are actually good friends. Mostly. We met a quarter century ago in an orchestra, where I was playing viola semi-professionally, and he played cello. Divinely. So there you have it. The relationship cost me the viola, no way my screechy weedy musical talent could survive next to a massive and lush magnolia cello talent. And even if mine had barely scraped on by, the final trampling underfoot would have trooped in later with our son's must-be-illegal-it's-beyond-unfair bassoon prodigy, and his scholarships to Aspen and Brevard. By then I was making a career in the theatre instead, and either I had a show, or the Ex had a concert, and one of us always had something going on. He and his mother still come over for holidays. I get to cook and wait on everyone.

The first thing Hildegarde says when she arrives: "I'll be drinking my own instant coffee and heating the water on the stove," which is code for "I'm not drinking that moldy basement tea you drink and I won't be using that Japanese water heater." I had to move out of my room since the spare rooms are upstairs and she can't climb up there. I can't climb up there either so that leaves me with the porch futon. And also huge worries for the tea budget. Now, Hildegarde has other children she could go stay with who have brilliant jobs, large houses and money. So why did she need to come stay with me, an old lady whose two nickels go to tea instead of food when possible?

"I can't carry on a conversation with my other children, " she says. "Half of them are Republicans."

None of this answers the issues around my tea budget after I am required to buy and install a shower bar over the tub.

"I'll take care of everything," my Ex said. He didn't.

Luckily I manage to barge into the Senior Center to successfully coerce a borrowed clip-on tub handle so that defrayed my costs somewhat. But that still leaves the question of where I'm going to get all that food she needs.

"I don't have any money until the end of the month," Hilde states firmly.

I double-check with my Ex.

"It's wrong," he tells me. "She doesn't have any money until the beginning of next month."

Swell, and she uses a lot of toilet paper too. Two days later we've also gone through 2 1/2 rolls of paper towels. My career as a Tea Speaker and Writer is getting more flimsy by the hour and I'm afraid to go and smell my mattress. Her idea of bladder control pads is to steal the blue squares from the doctor's office examination table and cut them up into pieces which fall out on the floor when she walks.

"I drink soy milk, not almond milk," is a typical response to queries about toilet-ing and a dig at what's in the fridge too in the very same sentence. "And I don't think that chair you put in the bathtub is going to work."

Had to move my teaware to the living room.

Even worse, she doesn't get around too good. Arthritis, bad feet, pacemaker, the list is long but after comparing medications I note with satisfaction that my list of meds is longer, hence I outdo her on one thing at least. Another thing, she needs a cane and preferably a rolling walker with a seat but she refuses to use any of these. I've tried explaining all the perks you get with using a cane or an even more obvious walker and what I get for my time on this issue is a change of subject. But so far I've tricked her into using the cane by bringing it along and then when I have to carry the shopping bags I make her take the cane, so we've worked that bit out for the moment.

Hildegarde doesn't entirely disapprove of my tea hoarding but she doesn't approve either.

"What do you need all that tea for," she remarks when another 2 kilos of tea samples arrive in the mail. "Where are you going to put it?"

Good question. Luckily I manage to find a couple of stoneware vases I've appropriated for tea but which aren't currently occupied.

"I don't drink much tea," she says. But she will drink it once in awhile. "I like tea bags," she notes pointedly when I'm crocking up my new acquisitions. Of course.

Aside from all this, we don't have much more to talk about that we haven't talked about a gazillion times over the past twenty years. I've made sure she's heard all my grievances on her son and she makes sure I've heard hers. My Ex is tired of both of us but with him in the Philippines, his vote no longer counts.

"I can't stand dirty dishes," she says. She wants the dishes done three times a day.

"The dish soap makes my hands break out," I counter.

"Not me," she replies. And proceeds to do the dishes anyway and then doesn't know where to put the half dry ones from earlier.

"I'll put them away later, once a day," I have better things to do like playing my Xbox. I'm not going to sit in front of the TV the rest of the day like she does.

"You should do these Word Search puzzles," yet more advice. These are "find and circle the word" puzzle books. I had to walk nearly 3 blocks in blazing heat to get her one of those books, since she couldn't be bothered to bring any from home.

Okay I think I've griped enough. A year ago my own Jewish mother passed away, a good 10 years younger than my German mother-in-law. I loved my mother deeply, but she didn't have much more than a passing interest in my life and wasn't around for the entire time my son was growing up. Whereas my mother-in-law helped raise him, and takes the time to carp at me about my health, when my own mother was too busy looking for young men to go out with. Yes, I am fond of my mother-in-law. I just need to remember that a million times a day for the next three weeks and hope my back holds out.

Requiescat in Pace.

A Few Wrapper Metrics

Ever since white2tea announced the decision to go region-free this year with their tea labels, I've been thinking about changes like this and how they will affect us as tea buyers. Leaving regions out of the labeling reflects the reality that tea cakes are usually a blend of teas and mostly not from the same village. It also signals a departure from the dishonesty that abounds in the tea business as a whole, where faking tea origins happens as a regular practice. In a sense, foregoing region labels altogether is a step toward more honesty because white2tea wants buyers to know that even vendors can't always be 100% sure of the tea they are buying. Tea leaf gets transported from less popular areas to villages that will get top dollar for that leaf. But region-free labeling is also a step away from transparency which is something that we tea drinkers need.

A completely honest teacake should look like this.

Budget Tier.

Maybe not so much.

Better.

Okay, so personal taste but at least we know, right?

Absolute transparency.

Tea drinkers always have cats, so a best seller might be:

My dad's Lhasa Apso Blossom actually had a credit card.

Just imagine the thousands of teacakes with names like this. Setting aside the far-fetched and not-so-far-fetched for the moment, let's consider what the market would be like if the tea business suddenly got honest. If you are looking at tea in 2020, how will you know which tea is worth your money?

Top Tier, no samples.

Surely you'd pay big bucks for any of these cakes. But the current tea cake market situation suggests you need to trust your vendor. Implicitly. Because you know they will do anything to sell you tea. Most tea heads buy from vendors whom they believe they can trust, but then trust is Relative to the individual, isn't it? We're in the Relativist Universe of tea. My friend George might buy his tea from his favorite EBay vendor that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, but he trusts his vendor and he is fine with what he's buying. If that vendor says the tea is 1980s, well then he pays the asking fee and believes he has 1980s tea. I met my Tea Pimp in person, but not everyone has that opportunity, and nothing I say can possibly convey to anyone else any sense of my experience. Unless you trust me implicitly.

Thus tea is word-of-mouth recommendation, and one reason why tea blogs, review sites and videos remain relevant. Recommendations become even more important when or if tea labels become cartoons and decorations rather than actual information. But tea vendors have tried real information in this world and failed, and now nobody knows what Truth really is anymore. Might as well buy the cute wrapper from now on and hope for the best.

But culture always swings from Relativism to Objectivism. Hang around long enough and you'll swing both ways and back a few times. In a way, I view our current phase as the Relativist extreme. Recipe teas were at one time by far more objective and rational than they are today with so much faking going on. Now it's all about reputation, marketing and labeling. Another factor to add on is that making your own label teas is becoming easier to do via the internet. If you think we have too many vendors right now,  just wait 'til next year. I expect to see even more.

So where do we go from here? Is there any possible way to introduce a new system of more Objective data about tea, so that nobody has to buy my cat wrapper? We need Metrics for tea buying. Can you think of any wrapper metrics you'd like to see?

1. Spring, or Autumn, or Blend.

Done. Every tea must be labeled with one of these three, no others. Anything else like "pre-rain" or "before May" is therefore "do you believe it?" and "you're a sucker" marketing. I think most experienced puerh drinkers can tell the difference between seasons and can therefore judge a metric like this.

I'm going to forgo a metric for leaf grade because this leaves too much room for fudging in the marketplace.

2. Fresh

Current calendar year tea. In addition to Spring, Autumn, Blend. Your tea is Fresh if picked 100% and sold in the current calendar year. Anything in that cake from another calendar year means you can't use Fresh. You can still use Spring, Autumn or Blend, but not Fresh. People don't need much puerh experience to distinguish fresh from even 1 year of age, we have green and brown. Shou is not Fresh, just to distinguish the raw.

3. Whole leaves vs chopped.

Imagine someone daring to get really honest about this.

4. Number of steeps.

Now this one may vary in a single tea cake from year to year, but the worst I can think of with this metric is the vendor might have to *gasp* dig through that garage and try the tea every year. A single number of steeps isn't realistic, but how about a range? 5-10, 10-15, etc. This wouldn't prevent vendors from lying about the tea and simply offering a refund to unhappy customers who scream SNAD (significantly not as described). But it would give at least some idea how the price is justified. A tea that is still at a high price with a lower number of steeps must have some other qualification which justifies the price.

5. Bitter.

Well yes, every tea is bitter at some point, but not Bitter. I don't think this is necessarily relative to the individual with Puerh since there is a big difference between "drink now" cakes and the undrinkable except for those folks who like pu-nishment. Bitter suggests a cake for aging.

6. Craft.

Craft is a local or farm product. Now whole foods type people might assume that Craft is better than factory, but we know from teas like the Chawangpu Lao Yun that craft means completely smoked by a wood fire. Another craft product is bamboo-stuffed. On the other hand, factory teas might be more consistent, or cleaner. Wouldn't you like to know what you're getting?

7. Herbal Blend.

Anything that is not tea in the tea cake.

Now, we also have some Metrics that Old Cwyn finds personally useful, but perhaps highly Relative.

1. Laxative.

Okay, does it juice the sluice or not? Some days I need sheng to do a number on the number 2 and on other days I need to avoid it like the plague. Yunnan Sourcing: please label Dehong Purple Raw with Laxative. Mark it with a toilet stamp please.

2. Aphrodisiac.

Self-explanatory. I'd add in some more drawings here, but the nuns have found my blog as of this week. I'm expecting a letter in the mail any day.

3. Sticks.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Sticks need to be boiled for at least 5 minutes to extract any flavor, and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably selling tea. These puppies can dislodge dentures.

4. Allan Keane (AK) Shou bricks above 500g.

We might as well just get this one added in honor of our friend. If you see a shou with these initials, it means store it away for the love of god and don't drink for ten years. After that, you'll have an exceptional shou.

Requiescat in Pace

Tea Sommelier

Last week I decided to apply for one of those hot Tea Sommelier jobs we see cropping up everywhere nowadays. Tea Sommelier seems like a perfect seventh career for me. Imagine spending your day doing nothing but brewing tea, drinking tea, shopping for tea online and drawing dirty cartoons for the company newsletter. Seems like businesses all over are now paying the Help good money for picking tea leaves out of the break-room drain and I don't want to miss out.

I figure my qualifications are as good as anyone else's. I can boast at least as much diarrhea from skanky border teas as the next fellow, maybe more given what I've been chugging lately. In fact, people are complaining to me about my recent recommendation to brew up an entire 20g Golden Melon shou tuo in one session, and seem aghast for some reason that I brewed up all 99 grams of Poundcake sheng. Which tells me that if this sort of drinking is knocking down the younger gens, then I must be the Keith Richards of Tea. So of course everyone wants to hire me. Nobody should risk company assets like CEO's and donut boys when the tea can be tested on a corner relic like Old Cwyn who is uninsurable anyway, the tea equivalent of a wooden cigar Indian parked out in front of the store. All the money I save the company will buy things like more blonde models for the corporate holiday party and upgrades to the next IPhone.

But I hit a bit of a snag when applying for my first job. You guessed it, the Human Resource office pre-screen. The purpose of Human Resource offices is to create online screening tools that nobody can possibly pass so they can avoid the tasks of answering the telephone and reading applications. Now if I were actually talking with a real person, of course they would know who I am and I could skip this part of the hiring process altogether. However, you can't get through to a real person until you complete the application. All is going well until I can't bypass the question of, "Do you have Certification as a Tea Master?" Still, I just go ahead and mark Yes anyway.

Next I must type in my certificate number and the place where I received my certification. I make up a number and then add the name of the nearest resort town. All seems well until I get an automated email saying my certificate number didn't check out. I reply that maybe I'd missed a digit somehow and I would dig out my certificate and get back to them. When an email to the CEO with an offer for a boozy lunch date doesn't materialize into anything tangible, I start looking around for a quick tea class. I'm certain once I spend a few minutes with a real Tea Master, he will see at once that I'm clearly qualified and I will test out of any further remaining studies and go straight to my certificate. After all I'm a Tea Writer already and so therefore Tea Master is a logical next step. Or would I be a Tea Mistress? In that case I'm surely pre-qualified because I've had more cakes of all ages in my bed than Marie Antoinette. But now I need to be both qualified and Bona Fide.

Luckily, tea classes are popping up all over which brings up the question of whether one course is as good as another. Apparently that is indeed the case, which tells me something about the whole racket already. So instead of paying the entire fee up front, I pay the "reserve a spot" $10 amount and figure I'll get a refund on that once I get there and wave my AARP card. With any luck they'll pay me just to stay.

The class is taking place in a town about a half hour's drive away, in one of those resort areas boasting a bunch of those spa-type hotels where People from Chicago visit in the summer so their kids can use the water slide while the adults get drunk. The Elk Hotel seems like a funny place to host a tea class. At this time of the year, the hotel mostly books locals for kids' birthday parties, alcohol recovery and off-the-grid gun conventions. Because I don't trust hotels in general, I brought some of my own tea along just in case. Still, the conference room appears fit for the occasion of a tea class, someone has set up mood lighting and Buddhist-y looking bamboo plants. I sign in and pick up my name tag, and the Registration gal says,

"Welcome to The Elk Hotel Tea certification conference. My, you're certainly an...older student. Have you been here before?"

I feel like bringing up the gun conventions, but that might be a bit of a mood kill, so I just nod.

"The rest room is just around the corner to the left," she chirps, clearly because older ladies pee all the time. "I'll need the rest of your $300 registration fee as well."

"Oh, I left my checkbook in the car."

I brandish my cane and sigh tiredly to emphasize how clearly too winded I am at the moment to make any effort besides sitting down.

The Tea Master looks surprisingly normal in a suit, not too expensive, and rather disappointing. I want to see the flowing robes and whatnot that I will earn the right to wear after paying good money for this class. After all, people won't think you have any special esoteric knowledge unless you are wearing some sort of costume. But he has on a pink tie. I don't know how I'm supposed to impress the corporate types as a Tea Mistress without an appropriate outfit. Then again, I can always just throw on my academic attire or perhaps the Franciscan nun's habit if I'm feeling frisky. Check Outfit off my list of must-haves for the new job.

Naturally the class starts with meditation because we can't possibly brew tea otherwise. I play along, even though I've already done my meditation today in the car while driving. Obviously the Master thinks none of us novices have the requisite number of Oms in yet, and then too the gods always find ways to punish me whenever I'm anxious to get on with it in terms of tea. This is why, if you simply must drink tea with other people, you should be the person in control of the gaiwan.

Mr. Tea Master begins a brewing demonstration. And it...can't be...but it is...Nuclear Green Oolong. Seriously, this is what the Tea Master is drinking? Not even an aged Dong Ding for my $300 fee...well, my $10 fee at the moment, because I'm not going to pay a dime more unless and until he coughs up some of the good stuff. I didn't drive all this way for nothing. But evidently this green oolong is his personal specialty. The Master explains his reasoning.

"Fresh tea. Always serve fresh tea to your patrons. Is much more better when you buy from us."

Of course it is. And I had hoped to learn something useful, like whether Rave hairspray on tea tastes as good as Round Up in case my boss turns out to be an ass. The Tea Master goes around and fills our little cups. I sip mine and nod with the other suckers in the room and then dump the rest in the bamboo plant. Nothing is more disillusioning than when the people you hope to admire exhibit an enthusiasm for aesthetics you passed by two decades ago, and nothing is so reassuring as when the snake oil game remains so deceptively simple.

The day continues with lectures on tea types and brewing techniques. At one point I must have fallen asleep from low caffeine because Registration Girl has to wake me up for the short break, as if she is worried I'm going to tinkle on the chair. I make sure to look too drowsy to get up, which isn't hard to do. The final lecture rounds out with our Dear Leader wanting to meet with us individually, to see if we scrubs are worthy of the Tea Master title. Nothing to worry about for me, so I sit back behind the invisible barbed wire trying to look Busy and important by pecking at the arrow keys on my clamshell phone, careful not to use any of the 24.3 prepaid minutes left.

Then the first lady up for her qualifier returns to the group and informs the rest of us that the test is on brewing technique, but we can choose the technique we're best at. A few people heave sighs of relief. The man sitting next to me says he is worried because he's never brewed tea before.

"Hello and welcome, I think you're the oldest student here today," says the Tea Master. "I noticed your presence in the back of the room."

"Yeah. I get that a lot." It comes with being a Personage instead of just a Person.

"You intentionally waited until last. Perhaps you think of yourself as something of a standout."

"Well, kinda."

The Tea Master waits expectantly.

"One time my ex-husband wanted to meet Mstislav Rostropovich after a concert," I say. "So I just made myself stick out in the crowd and sure enough he came right on over."

"I see. Are you someone who intends to stand out?"

Clearly he wants to peck away at my ego. The nuns tried that on me too. I explain I am up for a big job as a Tea Sommelier and am hoping to get it, leaving out the part about lying on the application.

"But you were snoring during the Brewing Basics lecture."

He has the face for it, I'll give him that.

"I haven't had enough tea yet today."

"And what sort of tea is your specialty?" he asks.

"Mostly I drink pu-erh tea. Sheng. You know, the raw stuff."

"Ah yes. So you must be proficient at gong fu brew technique."

I hold up my tea stained fingers to prove it.

"Do you know how to remove these stains? If not, I can teach you," he suggests cryptically, in what obviously is a test question.

"Normally I use athlete's foot spray which works pretty well, but I ran out and didn't feel like paying 8 bucks for another can."

"Hm." A blank look. "Well, perhaps we should get on with the questions."

"Of course."

"So what other types of tea do you drink besides sheng pu-erh?"

"Uh..." I can feel a Fail coming on.

"Never mind, what would you like to demonstrate for your final exam?" He's ready to be rid of me.

"How about we steep out my '05 Naka and see who is still standing?"

"As you wish." A very agreeable man.

I set up what looks like a 200 ml gaiwan. With this size I will need at least 20 grams of Naka, but 30 seems better and then I sweep in the crumbs so as not to leave a mess. The Tea Master doesn't have a waste bowl because he doesn't rinse any of his teas. So I go ahead and use the trash can.

"Minimal need for a strainer, very good," the Master approves.

"I usually just chew."

He gives a pained look.

"Well, I had to quit smoking," I explain.

Line 'em up, pour 'em neat, knock 'em back just like a bartender and that ought to get any tea head a job. Five rounds in.

"Very nice," says the Tea Master. "I am satisfied with your technique."

"But we've only just got the storage off."

"You're fine."

"I don't think so."

After pouring three more rounds I can tell he's wanting to leave.

"A few more sir, we're just now getting to the actual tea."

Another three rounds, the tea is really opening up. I try and offer the gaiwan so he can appreciate the big fat leaves, but he appears a little slow. Just a couple more steeps now...

"Thank you, but I really must...I'll be right back," says the Tea Master.

He heads off in the direction of the rest room and then trips on the bamboo display.

"Uncle!" Registration Girl jumps to his aid.

"I'm quite all right, thank you." Woozy.

She takes his arm and escorts him to the rest room. Fifteen minutes later she returns.

"I just checked on the Master and he's staring at himself in the mirror with his pants down."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Is he sick?"

"I don't know. What on earth did you give him?"

"Just tea. Want some?" I'm not wasting a $300/beeng tea.

"Pass."

Two more rounds for the road. I dump the leaves out into a napkin and then in my purse to save for later. I feel I deserve the gaiwan too, and so I tuck it away as well. Then Reggie Girl says the Tea Master will mail me my certificate, and she walks over to hand me a slip of paper with the number on it to use for my job application.

"We will require the remainder of your fee."

"I really do have to pee now. You wouldn't want the hotel to think you're responsible for the upholstery."

In the stall I listen to Reggie trying to get the Tea Master out of the men's room. I wonder if she helps him zip up. I best skedaddle now that I have my certificate number in hand and get back home to my stash because I'm feeling the Naka wearing off already.

A few days later my certificate arrives. Proudly, I show it to my daughter. I've been talking up this new job with her for a couple of weeks now.

"No one is going to hire you," she says.

"Of course they will." She likes to be negative with me.

"Mom. You wear boxer shorts and slippers all day long. Your idea of dress-up is pulling on a nylon sweat suit before driving to the grocery store."

I'm miffed. "It's about the tea, not about what I look like!"

She enjoys inflicting these petty tortures on her elderly parent, which I keep track of for the county, but she has a point. More shopping. I spend some time at Kohl's online looking at bras and men's briefs before navigating over to see what's new at Yunnan Sourcing. After all, I need to keep up on my tea knowledge now. I use the opportunity to buy a few shou cakes since the daughter thinks I'm buying clothes with her credit card.

Later on during my nap time I dream about a corner office and custom stone tea table desk with real hose drainage. A cute young guy in a pink tie dinner jacket and no pants serves as my secretary. No doubt in my mind this is meant to be.

So if you need a real Tea Sommelier, you know who to call.

99 Grams of Poundcake from white2tea

this shape and I have a past.

I hadn't planned on reviewing the new white2tea Poundcake gourd but it is a week already since it arrived and no one else has. The gourd is just such an enticing shape I can think of several uses for it. Originally I thought I'd pass on reviewing this since I have no way in hell of breaking this thing apart. Recently I got a pick injury trying to pry apart a tiny sample, so I worry over the dangers I might face. But what the hell, I might as well brew it on top of my car.

30 sauerkraut jar

Now I'm not just about doing crazy shit for the blog. I did my research. Early scuttlebutt on the Poundcake is the first three steeps are incredible. Seems reasonable to me therefore that I want those steeps as long and as large as possible. So the only solution here is to steep the whole 99 grams at once. Sometimes you gotta go big or go home, baby.

A wise teapot choice, the double-wall.

Big tea calls for big equipment so I drag out a Bonjour borosilicate double-walled 30 oz honker. I don't have a gong bei this size, so instead I am using a 30 oz sauerkraut jar which luckily nestles my strainer quite nicely. Right away I can see that I am going to need to refill and heat the kettle for each steeping. I start out with two rinses and photographed the second one because I don't think I want to stop for photos on a real steep.

None for the neighbors.

Steep number one I use about around 20 oz of water and get a bright yellow brew. I therefore have about 4 cups of first steeping. The brew is entirely honey sweet with no bitterness whatsoever, and notes of nutmeg and cloves, suggesting that "cake" image the tea is named for, and the motor oil thickness that all of white2tea's house label productions seem to give me.

First steep of oily goodness.

So yeah. I drank the entire first steep in one go. I have sheng literally down to the inside of my ankles. If I stand up now I will slosh. Really should be taking my time but instead I gulp the whole thing. Now I'm sweating with dry mouth but not so dry that I need water. In fact I kinda want more. Thought I'd  wait til tomorrow for a second steep, but might as well keep going.

Rinse photo again.

Second steep I moved indoors to use my Zojirushi water heater which keeps my water just under boiling. I must remember to use my Bonjour pot on puerh shapes like this, sheng balls and whatnot. The double walled insulation really keeps the tea lightly steaming for a bit in between steeps which helps to open up the gourd. I really don't need to use a puerh pick after all. The tea is really starting to kick in now and I'm feeling decidedly woozy in a happy way.

Have you ever noticed when green tea really hits you that your eyesight improves? I don't know if this is the actual tea or the effect of hydrating the eyeballs. Or, in my case, floating the eyeballs. I check the scent on the leaves which is rather vegetal, a swampy vegetal since I'm brewing so much tea all at one time.

I've heard this tea will brew more bitter as time goes on and people are reporting a good ten steeps so far. I'm sure other reviewers will be there for you with deeper exploration than I'm providing here. I think the flavor really does have the sweetness of cake and suggests to me that Poundcake is one of those teas for people who really enjoy their young sheng, that the leaves are chosen for this particular flavor in their fresh state.

Right now I've got my Son posted for sale on EBay so I can afford all of the white2tea productions this year. So far a lot of lookers but no takers. In reading all of the Yunnan travel logs from western puerh vendors, I can say that Twodog spent more time in Yunnan sampling more young tea, drinking more alcohol with farmers, eating more insects, and plucking more lunch chickens than any other producer. You all know this is true. We've heard there is still one cake left to come in the 2015 Collection, and that a few of these gourds remain if you contact white2tea.

I'm glad I decided not to hoard the gourd and instead went all out for the huge brew pitcher, just like some people might drink lemonade or beer in the summertime. Come winter when I'm steeping away at shou, heicha and oolong teas I will have a wonderful summer memory of this huge pot of tea. As for now, you know what I will be drinking for the next five days while I steep this one out.

Requiescat in Pace.

Improving Character Recognition

Deciphering tea wrappers is one of the challenges all Tea Heads face. While some of us might choose to study Chinese or Japanese, the vast majority of us will spend our time pleasantly tea shopping until we hit a brick wall with the languages. Is there any way to improve our ability to read Chinese or Japanese without spending years studying the language?

The first difficulty we English speakers face is Visual Discrimination. Visual Discrimination is the ability to detect small differences in details between one item and another. Our language has only 26 letters, some of which aren't used very often, so our Visual Discrimination skills aren't very developed. Our worst problem in English lately is the correct choice between "their" and "there," and "your" and "you're." This issue is nothing compared to the seemingly tiny differences between Chinese characters, which contain huge differences in meaning. Until we can learn to SEE differences between characters, we can't begin to decipher them. The problem is, Chinese characters look like a mishmash to most English speakers.

Another problem is the abysmal pedagogy in self-taught books and online apps. These materials often start out in very unhelpful ways, either by focusing on tourist reading like renting an apartment, or the book goes straight into full sentences. And no matter how the books start out, they all end up relying on the same method of memorizing dozens of characters literally by rote, via flash cards or by smart apps which re-test on your mistakes. What the English speaker really needs is help in Visual Discrimination first, a method to decode what the characters are really about.

A hanzi or kanji character is really just a stylized picture of its meaning. These pictures started out on clay tablets, and the original Simplified form looked a lot more realistic. Later on, calligraphy and ink brushes led to characters looking like they do today. But the very early Simplified forms aren't so hard to distinguish and help make sense of what today's characters mean. And the Simplified forms are nearly the same as stylized Simplified characters you see on Tea Wrappers and Tea Ware stamps.

I'm going to recommend two small books which are a good introduction to someone who is interested in learning basic characters, and just to improve in ability to discern one character from another. The books cost a penny each on Amazon, which won't dent the tea budget. These books are: Understanding Kanji Characters by their Ancestral Forms, and Understanding Chinese Characters by their Ancestral Forms by Ping-gam Go. These books are only around 75 pages long, are excellent bathroom reading and you can open them to any page, any time. The Japanese Kanji book is a good first read because it spends more time on basic characters common between Japanese and Chinese. The Chinese book covers more complex ones. In addition, the Chinese book has a full section on Good Luck characters that you often see on teaware and other art works that we are likely to buy.

Here are some images to show you how the books work, and with images we avoid the problem of Character Encoding on internet browsers.

Man.

Notice how the head and arms were originally in the character, and over time the legs and part of the torso remain. Ink and brushes making straight lines allowed the character to be written quickly.

Woman.

With the Simplified form of Woman, you can decode and interpret my silly cartoon at the top of the post.

Tea.

Notice my red lines, how the Simplified version of Man is part of the character. The "grass" is the tips of the tea leaves above the man's head, and the bush itself is both above and below him.

Mouth.

How a smiley became a character. :D

Ten.

Not so obvious, but easy to memorize.

Old.

Here we are building upon having learned Ten and Mouth. How word of mouth over time became a representation of Old. All of humanity's ancient texts including the Bible were passed by word of mouth for many generations before being written down.

Hui Gan.

Notice the words for "mouth" here, and something inside the mouth. Tea is held in the mouth, and then becomes "sweet." Hui is also means to return, to go back, to recollect thoughts we have held. So too the sweetness of tea is the memory of the initial bitterness. Here I can appreciate how these characters function as language and meaning together. In English, our word like "sweet" looks like sweet because we have learned to see the word's meaning. In Chinese characters, the words actually mean what we see, form and function.

Raw.

The word Raw also means uncooked, and unprocessed and is taken from "green" and green comes from "earth." If you look up Green and Earth in the books or on Google, you can see how part of the character for green was adapted for the word Raw, which is pronounced "sheng." Again, form meets function.

Cooked.

This is a more complicated character, but it shows how simpler characters are stacked and arranged to produce a new character, and add to the meaning. This one is pronounced "shu." You can start to "take apart" the pieces of the character visually in order to get the meaning. Notice cooking is done over the "flames" of the fire, seeing this helps to remember the character.

Okay I got the Books, now what?

1) Chinese: I really like the app called Pleco, which is a user-friendly dictionary of sorts. Download Pleco and start typing in words. Try typing "raw" and "sheng" and "shu" and "cooked" and "green" and "Puer." Explore reading the results the app gives you. You can click/press on characters for more information.

2) Japanese: Get a Playstation 3 or 4. The controller has "smart" Japanese keyboarding built in. Press the Select button several times in a Chat box to see the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets. Typing in these will get you a list of characters on the Right to pick from. Use Google Translate to get both the Kanji and the Hiragana for the word "tea." Using the controller, type the Hiragana and see if you can find the character for Tea popping up in the list of choices. Pick up a game that is available in English and Japanese. Play the English one first, then the Japanese. Many people around the world play games in Japanese because the games aren't available in their own language, and because the online servers they have access to are Japanese.

Final Note.

Americans are often rightly criticized for lacking any ability or interest in languages apart from English. Now I don't speak Japanese or Chinese, but despite this we, and many people around the world, can learn to read a little of these languages in order to chat, play games, navigate websites and buy what we want on the internet. I've learned to type a basic conversation in a Japanese gaming room on the Playstation, and I've played Naked Avatar hide-and-seek with my Chinese guild mates online. While Japanese gamers are quick to boot English speakers out of an online gaming room, they are on the other hand warm and friendly to English people when you make even a small effort to cut-and-paste or type characters. You've improved your Visual Discrimination ability just a little bit by reading this post. Anything else you learn will allow you to meet even more Tea Nerds online, and make your tea hobby all the more enjoyable.

Example of one of the Good Luck character pages.

Everything I need to know.

Bad Girls 1997 7582

Some days I wander around the house wondering what to drink. That's the downside of having so much tea. Once the tea collection gets large enough, choosing a tea is like finding a snack, opening the refrigerator for something to eat and then shutting the door again. Especially if the tea is also in a refrigerator, the lines between eating and drinking begin to blur, plugged or unplugged, tea or sausage. I keep tea samples in a 1970s record case and my vinyl records in a milk crate. Anyway I dug up a sample of white2tea's 1997 7582 that I've been hoarding since last year.

1997 Light Green Private Order White2Tea 

Lately I'm not in much of a hurry to drink up aged tea samples when they arrive. Most of them need significant airing and this 7582 is no exception. I've had the envelope open during the past months and this amount of time wasn't long enough. Honestly I should have put this in some sort of crock situation or a clay pot rather than leaving it in the envelope. I got a bit of the center hole of the beeng with this sample, and stabbed my finger with the puerh pick trying to pry off 5 grams, drawing a tiny drop of blood from my ring finger. This tea is something bad, New Orleans bloodsucking vampire bad out of an Anne Rice novel. She's a Private Order to be sure and someone naughty had her made up special.

The tea retains significant storage odors and tastes despite my half-hearted efforts to air it. Not the most humid tea I've ever had, but there is a dusty/dirty humid dry-sticks-in-the-mausoleum taste in the initial steeps that I'm certain I could air out given enough time and attention on my part. This tea clearly passed out during all that humid storage and isn't in any rush to wake up. My Yixing worked it and worked it and all the tea gave up for NINE steeps was storage and a yawn. Clearly the Yixing was a mistake on my part, the tea is mineral enough already, I got triple minerals by using the pot. However, the tight fit of the leaves in my tiny 60 ml steeper seemed to squeeze out the wheezy storage without giving the old girl much of a kick in the behind, but rather like pulling the strings on a vintage corset, giving one last tug before finally letting go. Ten steeps in I am getting sweet honey nectar which fills my mouth and clings to my lips. She's a bad one all right and I roll her over into the gaiwan now that the party is getting started.

Sixth steep or so.

Two more steeps of honey nectar and the leaves are fully opened, and they are definitely plushy and big just as the description on white2tea says. Unfortunately my photo of the steep is taken from my bedside because I've gone all day long and now well into the night with this one. Instead of the coffee colored soup, all the brown storage is out by steep 12 and the tea is more orange-y amber which is the true color.

It's not very often I get a tea that seems older than I am. And boiling water isn't enough for her. I have to let the tea actually steep for a minute or so to get all that sweet thickness going, she likes it long and slow and hot to be sure. She needs to be rolled over several times in the gaiwan to change her position occasionally. It's clear she hasn't stepped out in a very, very long time, and I'm really with her instead of feeling sorry for myself for a change. I don't care about the bad photo you're getting, because the party is at the hazy stage now where I've had too much to drink and can't move.

12th steep, yeah it's my bedside table. Feelin' foggy.

This seductive old temptress costs $225 if you want all of her and she's worth it. Why can't I just throw hot water on myself and look this good? Plushy leaves like fat lips so unfair, but if I can't look this good at least I can drink Miss Pretty and pretend I'm her. Make sure you say nothing while she is waking up: if you try this tea right out of the wrapper wait 10 steeps before beginning your assessment.

If I had a whole cake of this I would break it up and crock it. Then I would add more humidity to wake up the entire cake again and let her soak it in for awhile before beginning the airing out process. Might take me a year, but I feel fairly certain I can work out these stale bed odors with enough time so that I can get the storage out by steeps 7-8, a more normal amount, rather than steeps 9-10 that it took me today. This would give me an additional two steeps to enjoy the promise of a stronger nectar buried within, as yet unappreciated. I definitely recommend an attentive airing of this cake, 'twould be a waste to just drink it up without paying the proper amount of respect for what this is. I'm not sure she's too terribly deep, but sometimes a old sweetheart for the night is all anyone needs. 1:00 a.m. and the moon is full and high in the sky, she's near 20 now and not done yet, and neither am I.

Requiestcat in Pace

Wisconsin Pu Heads

Lately my online tea buddies say they feel sorry for me because I don't have a cadre of real life tea friends. Of course Wisconsin is not really a tea place, but more of a beer and sausage place. It's true that I'd have an unlimited social life if I enjoyed bar hopping, instead of the solitary life hunched over a gaiwan which I'm sure nobody around here can understand even if I admitted it publicly. But I gave the idea of a local puerh community some thought, and I know how this would pan out.

First, I'll have to put up with a whole new level of conversation around here, a nightmare to contemplate. If you don't know what the rural central Wisconsin accent sounds like, well it's close to what you hear in the movie "Fargo." The guy who gives the "up at da lake" monologue is pretty close, and the wife who gets killed is a dead ringer for the feminine nasal, "Daad, you stayin' fer supper?"

Now transpose all that onto a conversation about tea, and you'll hear something like "Now yas just don know where 'is tea's been'n'at, he's got doze ya know goats in de house all winter hey," and "it tastes like 'er basement and she's got back-ups donchaknow, I seen dat truck around."

For sure Zen-inspired tea meditators and "masters" will permanently lose every exotic oriental wet tea dream they've ever cherished, and you too if you hear a Rural Wisconsin person talk about your Qi. There is a reason I don't make tea videos. people. We can ruin your Tea Fantasies the moment we start talking. Trust me, no one wants to hear it.

On top of the bad accent, a new puerh culture in my area would unleash yet another host of local nightmares. For instance, let's start with any given Sunday where I happen to see pu drinker Susan in church. Last week was her turn to host Sunday dinner. Catholics play "pass the priest" seven days a week, and for some reason fight over who gets to have Father visit for a meal he isn't required to pay for. By Wednesday I find out that Susan happened to mention to Father the pubic hair she found in my shu pu, and that she discussed at some length why she'll never swap samples with me ever again. After that social disaster, I can expect to lose my part time substitute teaching job at St. Patrick's because now the entire parish thinks that Susan and I...well you can fill in the blank.

Next we have the local businesses where I buy foods and the pharmacy where I get my medications. The pharmacist will now include a lecture on sheng consumption every time I get a prescription refill. I go to great lengths to keep my doctor at a 75 mile distance where she can't find out what I'm doing in my copious free time. Once puerh goes local, every busybody I see on the street will be happy to tell me how I'm living my life wrong in my tea hobby along with every other facet of my life.

And then we have the meth heads. These are folks who steal anything not nailed down, and they'll steal the nailed down stuff when they find the time. When you put the trash out Sunday evening for Monday's collection, pick-up trucks hauling trailers stop at every curbside trash pile to take away the aluminum cans and anything else of value. Around here you can leave your house for twenty minutes and all your copper water pipes will be gone from your house when you get back. Most people finally got wise to all this and started using PVC plumbing instead. All that accomplished was leaving the meth heads looking for something else to steal. Imagine what will happen once sheng puerh becomes all the local rage. Fewer beer cans in the trash. So, talk about stealing... I'm gonna have to start watching my stash.

Instead of the peaceful existence I have now, my naps will be routinely interrupted by people stopping by for tea. I'll actually need to answer the door which will mean needing to install a doorbell and fixing the outdoor lights that never work right. I will have a revolving door of neighbors who expect to be served, instead of just my ex-husband and his mother once a year. And oh, "can I take a bit of that cake home with me?" If I don't say yes I can expect Mr. Stickyfingers to slip some in his pocket anyway. And forget about bringing anyone home for the evening. All it takes is one bad break-up and there goes my tea ware when I'm not looking along with my collection of boxer shorts and push-up bras. The cops won't give a tinker's dam about tea ware and so the only recourse I will have is haunting EBay, waiting for my stuff to get posted so I can buy it back.

So to sum it up, if puerh catches on big here I can expect to lose my job and whatever shreds remain of my reputation along with my entire collection of sheng and teaware. Eventually that will translate into a bad social life and rocks through my porch windows. I suppose my view of the locals isn't as positive as it might be. But just to be prepared, I'm gonna start packing up the house.

Requiescat in Pace.