My friend from Beijing, L, recently took on a job to be an editor for a tea magazine that Zhongcha puts out, and he asked me to try to write a column for him. It's going to be in English and Chinese (the column, not the…

Still kinda busy.... I conducted a taste test just now with my cleaned tetsubin and my regular stainless steel electric kettle... the electric kettle water is, relatively speaking, a little sharper, whereas the tetsubin…

Before I get on to the topic of water... some unfinished business from yesterday. This is what yesterday's tea looked like when I brewed it this morning This is what it looked like late afternoon The top cup is ye…

Well, I went to another tea store today -- Itoen, the Japanese tea store. They are huge, and they make lots of (fairly reliable, in a pinch) bottled teas. I figured, why not, even though I'm no great fan of Japanese te…

The nice thing about crappy teas is that you can experiment with them with impunity. You can play with your brewing technique (or just brew them without too much concentration) and you can play with the amount of tea yo…