Hi,
let me share my standard sampling ritual with the group before I post
some of my ehem ... "reviews".
Sampling gear: some 4 and 6 oz Gaiwans, lots of chinese 1 and 2 oz
sampling cups, chinese aroma cups, 3 oz "cooling" cup, strainer,
porcelain "boat" to keep the temp. of the gaiwan stable (if needed), IR
thermometer, digital scale, immersion heater, hiking stove & titanium
spoon (travel gear), ...

Initial sampling routine:
- taking a digital pic of the dry leaves for the records
- give them a "dry blow - DB" - put about 3-5 g leaves in the palm of
your right hand, place left hand over right hand to form a cavity for
the leaves, hold your hands thumbs up, blow between your thumbs or the
left thumb and left index finger in order to slightly moisten the
leaves so they release a bit of their flavour. Open your hands and
sniff away. Write down notes.

- weighing the necessary amount of leaves
- boil water
- prewarm gaiwan
- empty gaiwan into s. cups
- put leaves in G.
- watch the water temp. and pour water into gaiwan if ready
- slightly agitate gaiwan and pour samples into sampling cups #1-4
after (2.5)-3-3.5-4-4.5 mins., if I'm in the mood I use my chinese
aroma cups
- now I first sniff the wet leaves and make notes. When the tea has
cooled down a bit I start slurping away, beginning with the shortest
steeping. Depending on the tea I sometimes transfer the contents of the
sample cup into a 3 oz "cooling" cup, or make use of my titanium spoon,
shhhhhllllllllp (producing sounds like a Japanese on speed slurping
soba)
Then I move to the next cup and so on. After finishing the sample cups,
and writing down some notes I sniff the now slightly colder leaves and
make notes. I usually leave the leaves in the gaiwan (lid on top) and
come back later for some more sniffing and a picture of the cold leaves
(again many a surprise here). Sometimes I also leave some of the tea to
cool, to gain additional impressions of the teas spectrum, especially
after I found that some few Darjeeling Oolongs lost almost all of their
flavor when allowed to cool down, tsk tsk ...

I really don't know if anybody else samples Darjeelings or other teas
that way but this has always worked fine for me and some of the local
professionals here enjoyed the show :-). Alternatively, with enough tea
at hand I sometimes play around with my trusty old 10 oz silver teapot
and use 4 of the chinese 3 oz cups as sampling cups, everything else
done the same way. This pretty simple brewing method allows for
parallel tasting especially of those complex high grade Darjeelings
like some of the 2005 seconds and Oolongs I had the pleasure to try.
The best set of steeping times to start with would be 2 min 45 sec,
3'15'', 3'45'', and 4'15. [Sometimes when I'm through with the first
session and look for the "optimum" steeping time for a high grade DJ I
switch to intervals of 10 - 15 seconds].
It escapes me why the professionals still exclusively focus on single 5
minute steepings. I talked with some guys in the beezness and it
appears that the reason mainly lies in tradition and of course the
sometimes countless number of samples they have to manage. I have
however sampled quite a few Darjeelings that shone at 2'30'' or
generally much shorter steeping times than 5 minutes and lost all their
personality and charme when steeped longer than say 3.5 minutes, not
necessarily because of overwhelming adstringency but of something i'd
like to call "magic time windows" in lack of a better term. The finicky
characteristics of Darjeeling teas, on rfdt often described as
"mercurial" or something to that effect ask for really tight controls
of the main brewing parameters for single steepings or a refined
gong-fu technique in order to successfully turn those leaves into
amrita. Even then, armoured with digital scale and IR-thermometer, and
as Holly and other esteemed reviewers have pointed out so often, I too
rarely get that "same" experience twice, but exactly that finicky
character is one of the main reasons I love Darjeelings so much, they
are challenging and always good for a surprise. If I don't have the
time for the proper ritual they demand I simply stay away from them and
head for some Assam (at one of the teastalls) or indulge
in my rapidly dwindling stash of golden Yunnan, Oolongs and Pu-Erhs.
As Darjeelings do not automatically qualify for Gong-Fu the
aforementioned method gives a good impression of how aroma and flavour
develop over time and if gongfuing that tea makes any sense at all,
especially if I only have a small sample of that special tea available.
If I find the tea to be suitable for Gong-Fu (...) and there's enough
leaf at hand I usually get really excited and do it right after
finishing the initial sampling.

Sorry for the long post, does anything of that make sense to you ?

Karsten / Darjeeling

writes:

[...]

Sorry for the long post, does anything of that make sense to you ?

I'm not nearly so systematic about it, but what you do does make sense
to me. I agree completely that the 5-minute steep doesn't show
Darjeeling tea to its best advantage. I nearly always brew Darj in a
gaiwan in what Joe Kubera has dubbed "wrongfu" steeps: 1g leaf per 30
ml water, starting with *very* short steeps (maybe 15 or 20 seconds)
and gradually lengthening. In my experience, a good Darj merits as
many as 6 of these steeps.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,
let me share my standard sampling ritual with the group before I post
some of my ehem ... "reviews".

Enough details .. let's have the reviews!

Will they be at any web site as well as here?

I think it is a great idea for us to share our experiences with different
plantation products for different harvests (flushes). The quality varies
from year to year and we should benefit from each other's trials and
travails.
--
Aloke
----
to reply by e-mail remove 123 and change invalid to com

Karsten,

I enjoyed your post and look forward to developing a routine based on
your wonderful descriptions.

I am a morning coffee drinker and then drink tea all day. Until
recently I have been drinking supermarket brands but went to a tea shop
two weeks ago and would never drink supermarket brands again. And I
love the soothing rituals with tea...warming the cups, smelling the dry
leaves then smelling the tea asit is brewing. So you have opened a
whole new avenue for me to explore. Thanks for that.

Where did you find the aroma cups? I saw them on the web and now can't
find them. The ones I saw are small, tall cups. What are yours like?

Also, please tell me about the use of a titanium spoon.

Loved your post.

Cynthia

Hi Cynthia,
Where did you find the aroma cups? I saw them on the web and now can't
find them. The ones I saw are small, tall cups. What are yours like ?

I picked them up in China, Kunming if I remember correctly.
My ones are small too, about 1 3/4 inches wide and standing about 3 1/2
inches tall.

Also, please tell me about the use of a titanium spoon.
Ah, that's just a piece from my hiking gear. You can of course use any
common tablespoon, I use it to take samples from the gaiwan
"sluuuuuuuuuurp" (or to stir up the sugar in my CTC chai :-)

PS: This morning I tasted some Oolong I bought in China with a local
professional teataster. He wasn't too familar with Gong-Fu and while I
was gong-fuing away he watched me closely and more than often took
samples from the gaiwan - using a non-titanium spoon. Finally he
examined the leaves and told me that he couldn't imagine that anybody
in Darjeeling would pluck leaves that "very sloppy" way (a bud and
three leaves with a bit of the twig attached).
We had a wonderful time together and I guess I learned more about tea
in those 30 minutes than in the last 6 months before.

Karsten / Darjeeling

snip snip snip

[Karsten]
This morning I tasted some Oolong I bought in China with a local
professional teataster. He wasn't too familar with Gong-Fu and while I
was gong-fuing away he watched me closely and more than often took
samples from the gaiwan - using a non-titanium spoon. Finally he
examined the leaves and told me that he couldn't imagine that anybody
in Darjeeling would pluck leaves that "very sloppy" way (a bud and
three leaves with a bit of the twig attached).
We had a wonderful time together and I guess I learned more about tea
in those 30 minutes than in the last 6 months before.

Karsten,

I was going to ask, tongue in cheek, what a tea taster is, but I realize of
course now that you are in India where tea taster is a real function. The
discussion between you and him, not to mention that his revelation regarding
Chinese tea, must have been fascinating. And it sounds as though he learned
as much from you as you did from him.

Are you using those heavy white cylindrical tasting contraptions with the
lid thing you turn over for the spent leaves?

Michael

Michael wrote:

The discussion between you and him, not to mention that his revelation regarding
Chinese tea, must have been fascinating. And it sounds as though he learned
as much from you as you did from him.

All I can say is that he was 100% concentrated on the job, Nepali way
that is, he was joking and laughing all the time.
Heck, I was born and raised in Germania, one more reason I LOVE the
people here.
Back to the tasting, we probably spent most of our time bowed over the
leaves, discussing the way they might have been grown manufactured. I
bought this special Oolong in Kunming, the seller sold it as Tie Guan
Ying, but the leaves are only slightly fermented, the taste constantly
changes between two poles, a fairly spinachy, sweet Gyokuro taste and
that of peaches. My friend was pretty confused that the aftertaste
lingered for more than 5 minutes.

Are you using those heavy white cylindrical tasting contraptions with the
lid thing you turn over for the spent leaves?

No, just one of my gaiwans.

BTW: has anybody heard of a shade grown oolong ?

Karsten /Darjeeling