brewing liubao like a maniac at 11g/100ml. this tea, 05 duoteli first grade, is weak enough that it needs it. i dont reccomend putting yourself in the position that you need to brew a liubao at this ratio for it to be good. its thin and steeps out way too quickly otherwise #tea #gongfucha #heicha

twl 80s ripe feels very hard to extract. maybe i just need to brew it at as aggressively as possible for the start, my first steep is never more than 30s. tastes like it needs heat #tea #gongfucha #heicha #teasky

twl 4gc > eot 4gc > pcth 4gc

ersatz coffee made using acorns, light roast and slightly less light roast. need to brew it stronger. tastes like roasted grains, unsurprisingly. #coffee #foraging

smoke extraction appears to be very water dependent! same parameters today, different water, and the smoke is gentle, and more reminiscent of walking into a church that is burning incense. it had a bit of florality and no fruit character. i prefer the harder water for this tea...

new teaware day is nice, but it is especially nice when it's teaware you made yourself. my first ever cup! in it is teaside's lao dongding from 2013. pretty nice grandpa style

today is my first attempt at fixing up my water. thought I'd have an RO system by now, but that didn't end up working out, so I got a zero water in the meantime to get from 200 TDS to 80. 80TDS seems to be pretty good for yancha (below), but i'll need to adjust my brewing to accommodate. #tea

i love the variability in what one considers to be light smoke, because the "lightly smoked" lapsang i have repulses most people from the mere aroma of having the bag open. what is your strongly smoked lapsang? would it kill a dragon, let alone a man?

was bidding on a teapot today, estimated £40-60 by the auctioneer. tapped out pretty early on, someone placed a max bid i couldnt beat. checked back later, after the auction ended. hammer price? £3700

tried an interesting tisane late last night - olive leaf. early steeps have a slightly oily coating texture and the experience is overall like drinking olive oil (spicy, herbal, bitter, etc in the same way) without the consistency of actual oil #tea #teasky

Also tried EoT's 03 Jingmai and their 04 Xiang Yun Hao the other day. Both were quite strange, with the Jingmai being discordant and having a distinct menthol cooling effect and the XYH having a very thick brothy texture and a grain note. Need more sessions to dial in #tea #gongfucha #puerh

It's pretty interesting how much and how little a pot (and your brewing) can make a difference on your tea. Today's session with EoT's 05 Duoteli is a nice and clean liubao with some interesting notes, while yesterday's tasted like carrot cake and was incredibly vegetal

Currently drinking Postcard Tea's Classic Tieguanyin, which has revived my interest in Anxi oolong, which I have generally found to be too green or fragrant in processing to be enjoyable. This one has no such flaws, and an aroma that fills the room without tasting like perfume.

no picture today but EoT's 1999 light ferment shou is real nice. quite clean tasting, thick. no bitterness or astringency, even when overbrewed. has a few lower grade leaves. will let it settle a bit longer but it's already quite promising. good candidate for getting an entire brick

three shuixians from eot 1. 2020 zhang hui chun. strong roast, done well. material slightly weak 2. 2006 seadyke at102. overripe fruits, thick, earthy/aged. sweeter than 1 3. 2016 rui quan. vanillic, mushroomy, hints of chocolate. i would id this as tianjian in a blind #tea #gongfucha #oolong

Essence of Tea are very generous - got a $1/g puerh as a free sample in with my latest order

"between a rock and a hard place" 1oz brandy 1oz shuixian liqueur 3/4oz dry curacao 1/2oz aperol 1/2oz amaro montenegro simple syrup to taste

thai wild single tree oolong. tasty. fruity. thick, sweet, without sourness astringency bitterness etc. not as much longevity as promised - started with 8g, had to add 4g in because it was getting thin. last session had harshnesses but this one redeemed it #tea #gongfucha #teasky

drinking the last of my @onerivertea.bsky.social 2016 Gold Coins; very nice tea. strong floral (fruit adjacent) aftertaste, rich body, some welcome astringency. surprisingly good pairing with Nixing! I wonder what this says about brick tea? #tea #teasky #gongfucha

i dont mean this in a mean way, but if a potter has a particular way of making a teapot spout, you can kinda instantly see that they were trained in taiwan or by someone who was

charged twice for shipping on a tea order...

really cool shuiping located on yahoo auctions

teaswelike 12 cent brick. nice dry storage sheng, clean, sweet, floral, smokey, just a plain delight that can't be argued with for the price. i should get more of them. #tea #puerh #gongfucha

da xue shan wild red tea from essence of tea's club. purple black tea is one of my favourite smells. smells and tastes like a ripe non storebought grape. not excessively malty, chocolatey or hongy. i sniffed this bag daily until it had rested enough for a session #tea #gongfucha #teasky #blacktea

they should make an oolong that gets things going in the same way as a ripe tea

drinking @onerivertea.bsky.social's 2014 Tianjian to beat the heat. sweet, smooth, smokey, and a touch minty today. very nice. i need more tianjian in my life #teasky #gongfucha #heicha

@sky-larke.bsky.social A while ago, you mentioned a Chaozhou pot that you had with a slow pour, which seemed contrary to the 'chaozhou gongfu' brewing that we've been exposed to, as you need the pot to evict contents as fast as possible to prevent overextraction. I've been doing some research since

thank you for visiting my tea blog chiitan

late steep of @white2tea.bsky.social alienist. it was educational. it shows precisely what Granted got correct in terms of roast, being far less integrated, and far harsher, despite more age. I can see what is meant by the pastry dough aromatics - reminds me or a croissant. #tea #gongfucha #teasky

@white2tea.bsky.social's Granted was my tea for today. Sticky thick texture, baked fruit notes, back of throat lingering sweetness, beautiful aromatics. Almost yesheng adjacent in taste? Still a bit ashy, but blame my storage of the sample. Subtle calming mental effect. #tea #gongfucha #teasky

is this that chaozhou gongfu stuff the kids are always raving on about

trying to figure out a boiled oolong-based milk drink with at202 seadyke tgy and @white2tea.bsky.social's dancong chatou. needs a rinse on the tgy, a readjustment of ratios, and a longer simmer time, but otherwise its decent #tea #oolong #teasky

starting my day with twl 4gc, at a hefty ratio of 7g/90ml. this stuff is a real classic and im sad to see it's gone. #tea #gongfucha #heicha

Nope! We layer in the cup. It makes a lovely gradient!

nothing quite like the cooled rinse of a high roast oolong

young white tea + this very muting/underseasoned duanni pot is an unexpectedly good combination. really brought out the sweetness and texture in this gongmei, while only somewhat impacting the aromatics. also wasnt half bad with an aged shoumei. #tea #gongfucha #teasky

i feel like 12g/70ml of yancha is the physical limit for this pot but if i were to use a ball rolled oolong instead..? perhaps i could go much, much further #tea #gongfucha #yancha

i'd pay money for a platform where i didnt have to see ai generated images ever again

bluesky appears to have disabled direct messaging for users in the UK unless they provide their face or card data to "Kids Web Services", who hold and transfer such data to the US and any companies in the Epic Games group this is, suffice to say, a shit thing to do in light of the OSA

my 4g/200ml brewing method strikes gold again today, with the fragrance of this tea a welcome guest rather than an invader to be fought off, and negative characteristics such as astringency hardly present. #tea #teasky #gongfucha #oolong

usually, i tend to clean up my plate, cup, and pot before i take a picture, because it's polite and pretty to do so. today i had a pretty sloppy day, so decided against it - here is a yancha-adjacent thailand dongding that i loved and hated simultaneously #tea #teasky #gongfucha #oolong

any aged oolong drinkers here able to provide insight on when "aged taste" kicks in?

1988 hong tai chang sheng. pretty disappointing tea - just aged taste, wood, and a bit of bitterness at the start. no mental effect, no real strength. not worth $2/g #tea #gongfucha #puerh

Interestingly, it appears that 3 is a magic number for tea. In Chaozhou and Fujian brewing methods, it's commonly been accepted that 3 steeps ought to be the limit. In the earliest accounts of brewing tea in the UK, you stop at 3, and add more leaves if you want to continue.

anyone want to try and guess what this tea is based on the dry leaf? left pic is 7g and right is 5g

I have recently made the discovery that my sense of taste is entirely detached from the standard sense of taste that other people may have. if you drink a tea that I have, and disagree with the notes I've stated, it is probably because we are having entirely different taste experiences to each other

the last of my purple cloud tieluohan, just in time for a large oolong order to arrive. was a nice solid yancha, glad to have had it. #yancha #oolong #gongfucha #teasky

the nice thing about brick tea is how cheap it is but the disadvantage of that pricing is how much sediment it produces i have a fu sample that is just entirely fibrous mess, it instantly disintegrates as soon as you even look at it

what is a bluesky post called a beet? a skeet? bleet? bost? skost?

@white2tea.bsky.social's 2016 Fade probably the only puer i drink with any enthusiasm or regularity as of late. good stuff - sweet, pretty good longevity, surprising power for a huangpian. solid displacing body feel. might tong it. #tea #puer #gongfucha #teasky