A.C. Perch's Thehandel

Decupboarded.
Had it standing with some other teas at my parents for a time. They got sick and went “ninja” into my cupboard (I don’t mind really – the more teadrinkers in the family the merrier). Mother swears she had some kind of “highs”. I think she steeped some of my pure herb bags.

Anyway, they tried almost everything until they found my ceylon and my darjeeling. They confessed with guilt when they returned my tea: “We’re sorry, but we drank all of it.” (The ceylon and the darjeeling)

I was almost rolling around on the floor with tears of laughter.
They are really the opposite of me – I couldn’t stand those two cans of ceylon and darjeeling. Father loved the daarjeling from a No-name-brand and mother loved this ceylon from perchs.

… I tend to forget that I don’t like these kind of teas.
It is as if my mind block for bad memories, to protect my naive love for “all teas”…

But I really, really, must admit that this tea does nothing to me.
Literally nothing. It dosn’t smell, it dosn’t taste and the color is kind of blah. I don’t think it’s this brand, that makes it bad.
Maybe it’s just my uncultivated tastebuds. Just call me savage.
It’s very easy to oversteep to me… After three tries, I feel myself giving this tea up.

Maybe I should try this again in two years?

Looks into the can
Yummy berries. Good leafs. Is that strawberry? YUM… and that looks like orange.

Wait.

What’s that?! Is that a… PEARL?!
A jasmine pearl???

Stares

Wonder if it’s part of the blend or a mistake. Found four pearl in total. I don’t mind. I love pearls. There is nothing wrong with the tea either. It’s a fine yellow liquid. Bought a kettle so I can boil the water to precise 80 celcius. Good result… The small dusty things are dancing slowly to the bottom. Some of them stand still for a while.

I like that. It’s like matrix.

Smell of heaven. Sweet and flowery.
The taste is sharp but sweet. Can’t taste the berries, can’t taste the pearls, can’t taste the leafs. Why? Because it’s blended into a symphony. Perch does that a lot – I don’t mind.

I LOVE IT!

I like this tea.
The color is light yellow, It’s smell sweet and “clean”, and then it tastes good.
Sadly enough I overstepped the steeping time. I like to just dip the tea lightly in the water and then fish it out. One of my friends calls it “Sweet water” but this is how I prefer it.
And I normally like my teas strong, so I guess it’s just this tea.

While waiting for my other cup to cool of, I can tell you about the tea I wrote about before “Pukka night time”. I left the teabag in the mug yesterday, only to discover it ripped open with it’s contents scattered all over the table this morning.
To people with cats, please keep the package of this tea out of cats way
… Or don’t. They really seem to love it and it it’s kind of fun watching them roll around the tea.

Now to the tasting notes:
It’s sweet and bitter. I can see pieces of fruits and so, but I can’t taste them.
Maybe it’s so well blended that the different ingredients become one taste. I don’t mind, I like this tea. Guess it’s fitting to drink after a sweet dessert.

Lapsang souchong in the house!

Oh yes! I don’t even know the last time we had an LS in the house, but it has definitely been quite a while. A looooong time. So when I was buying tea for the boss and me at work anyway, I decided to stock up since it was from the same shop. Husband agreed with my assessment that this was a necessity and therefore not a frivolous purchase. So 200g of LS and 200g of two other favourite fruity teas. That should last us a while, and I’m sure you will all agree with me that this was hardly excessive. Nothing new, only old favourites. Unfortunately we are still living in the Age of Frugality. (Although there are good omens regarding the Age of Frivolity at the moment. Well. Better omens than before, anyway. We’re keeping everything crossed here.)

So I’m having the first cup of my Perfect LS in a longer time than I can remember. It’s like an old friend come home and it beats the Lapsang Bohea Husband and I drank at the meeting with Roughage yesterday by several horse lengths. Not that there was anything wrong with that one. It just wasn’t this one.

Actually, while we were there, Husband asked me what the difference was between a lapsang souchong and a lapsang bohea. My initial reply was something along the lines of, “uuuuuhh…”

Eventually I came up with an educated guess that it probably had something to do with the leaf grade as I know souchong refers to the rougher older leaves on the bush. I figured it was possible that the bohea would have been made using younger leaves.

Turns out I was completely wrong in my guess, but the basis for it wasn’t far off.

Regular old LS does use the older leaves (unless otherwise stated, of course), but bohea refers to the Wuyi mountains where the type originates. For this reason lapsang bohea is often more expensive because the growing area is so small and the demand is growing.

So while many do consider bohea superior to any old lapsang (and it probably is too), it’s not really anything to do with leaf grade as such.

So there you see, Steepsterites! The sort of trouble you can get yourself into when you think you’re smart.

Pamela Dax Dean sent me a box of tea. A massive box of tea. And when I say ‘massive’ I mean ‘enourmous’! Like… HUGE!

In other words, I had 68 items in my Steepster cupboard. When I’m done adding all this stuff, I expect it’s probably doubled. Or nearly so anyway. I don’t think my Bits’n’Bops Basket is big enough anymore, it was fairly full as it was.

So, I’m adding stuff now. Given all this new stuff, I probably ought to have made some of it, but I really need something familiar and fortifying while sorting.

Disclaimer At this point let me just say that I officially give up trying to keep track of who sent me what. I know I still have stuff that Jillian and Wombatgirl specifically sent me and some stuff from some of you others as well, but I don’t have the brain capacity to keep track of where this much stuff came from. Forgive me.

Right. Back to work…

EDIT This is NOT the TTB.
And that was 57 new items.

Chi of Tea and their coupons are totally leading me astray! Was that a paypal button? Oh OOPS! :D

This is bad, because finances are a wee bit tight this month, but I’m staying within my weekly allowance, so I can justify it to myself like that. And also the fact that I could have placed a twice as large order, but decided to save some of it for later.

Clearly this calls for a cup of tea, something that feels thrifty, which means we’re delving into the Standard Panel. Smoky is good. Very smoky is very good. Hello Lapsang!

I’ve used plenty of leaf this morning. Plenty. Because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. Luckily my average steep times are so short that it doesn’t really seem to have made a difference. It’s a little smokier than average but underneath all the smoke there’s plenty of the fruity sweetness.

I’ve had a Lapsang from TeaSpring, which is otherwise a wonderful company, I think, when it comes to chinese teas, and that one didn’t really develop that fruit note until the second steep. I think that’s why I prefer the Perch’s Lapsang over that one. I like that note. And I don’t want to wait for a whole new steep to get it. And I definitely don’t want to steep twice routinely to get one cup of tea. The super-smokyness of the TeaSpring one has other wonderful qualities, of course, like it’s a good one to turn to when in the mood for something seriously smoky, but it’s just not quite enough to make up for the subdued sweet note that I would say it was a better Lapsang than this one.

This one is perfectly balanced between smoky notes and substance for me.

(It’s significantly cheaper as well, which totally doesn’t hurt!)

I slept in until nearly 11am today and now two hours later I’m still feeling rather groggy and unable to get my head in gear.

Therefore I picked a tea that can deliver one of the strongest kicks in the rear that I know of. A smoky. And I used a little extra leaf.

The consequence of this is the feeling that there should be smoke coming out of my mouth when I exhale after a sip. It’s super-duper-prickly today.

Underneath that the sweet fruity base of the flavour is thick and strong.

If this doesn’t get me up and going, nothing will.

Good morning Steepsterites.

This tea was literally calling out to me this morning.

“Aaaang!” it said. “I feel sooo negleeected! Whyyy don’t you driiink me any mooore?”

Poor little Lapsang! Just sitting there in the tin being all lonely and unloved. :´(
I can’t have that, can I? So I made a cup, and I made it extra strength too.

The aroma is all smoke and campfire and coniferous trees. There’s a sweet, surprisingly fruity note underneath as well.

Oh yes. The initial mouthful of smoke. The finish of pure sugar (note that I haven’t actually added anything to the cup. I almost never use additives and when I do I say so). Not even the slightest hint of astringency or bitterness or anything in spite of the fact that I used about a third more leaf than I normally would have. It’s just remarkably smooth on the middle.

I’m coming quite close to deciding on this one for my Perfect Lapsang. TeaSpring do carry some awesome LS and they’re fun to try. But this is what I’ll come back to. It’s awesome, it can totally measure up to TeaSpring’s LSs in my book, and it’s somewhat more cheaper only having to travel from Copenhagen to me and not all the way from China. (Even if I do think it’s a little bit fun to get mail from China)

Oh my little nomsang souchong! Please forgive me for straying!

I’ll be of traversing the Wild Abroads in a few hours. I thought something strong and heartening would be in order.

Well, I say strong, but this isn’t really a strong tea, is it? It’s just the smoke that gives it the illusion of being strong. It looks, smells and sounds like a lion but underneath the smoke, it’s sweet as a fluffy kitten that likes to get its tummy rubbed.

In a moment of distracted lazyness, the water cooled off a little before I poured it on. It’s beginning to seem to me like no matter what the literature says, a large group of blacks, particularly chinese and flavoured, perform best in not quite boiling water.

Right here, what I’ve got is a mouthful of smoke and underneath a touch of caramel-y sweetness. Soft and smooth as velvet. Perfect.

Right. I’ll go and start finishing getting ready. I don’t know if I’ll have computer access much while I’m away, but I’ll return on the 18th, so I’ll see you all then. (and yes, there will indeed be an extensive trip report available upon my return)

I’ve made a tough decision about a few samples I had lying around this morning. I didn’t like them much and I wasn’t likely to ever get around to finishing them off. So I finally got rid of them. It was a hard decision but it felt good and freeing to do it.

I need something to pick me up again after this, and as I have this morning caught up with the follow list, I’m letting myself be inspired by those who had smokies lately. I had almost forgotten I had this nice little Lapsang in my possession and when I opened the tin and saw how full it was I went O.O and then :D

Yummm the smoke fills my nostrils and make them prickle almost as if I was about to sneeze and the aftertaste lingers in my mouth as if I’ve just bitten burnt toast. And yes, these are good qualities.

This newer steeping pattern of mine has brought out the sweet note a little more, I think. There is also a smoothness underneath the smoky prickly that wasn’t as pronounced before. At least not that I remember.

It’s just right.

It would appear that overnight I’ve gone off smokies completely.

In the future I’ll only drink herbal infusions. Preferably with tons of hibiscus in it.

;)

Wait a minute…

Is that…?

Can it really be…?

YES!!! IT’S THE ELUSIVE SWEET NOTE! I’M NOT CRAZY!

confetti

Once upon a time I found a very sweet note in this tea. As if sugar had been added to it when I hadn’t actually put anything in it at all. I’ve been trying to find that sweetness again, but I just can’t. I feel a bit like Sophistre in the quest for caramel notes in her Jackee Muntz from Andrews & Dunham. Only not yet as frustrated with the lack of success.

Keyword here is “yet”.

How the heck did I do that?

I do hope I’ll figure it out. I know it’s there. I know I didn’t dream it up. I’ll just have to play with temperature and steeping time a little more. I’m beginning to suspect the secret lies in the temperature, because altering the steeping time hasn’t really yielded any results. Or, actually, that’s not true, there has been some results. A fair number of yummy cups, yes. Sweet notes, no.

If the temperature is indeed the key to this puzzle, then I guess I’ll have to invest in a thermometer of some kind. Just… counts money Not right now.

In the meantime, I can bypass the frustrating hunt for sweet notes. Yes, I know this pinch of cane sugar is cheating, but it gives me (almost) what I want without the hassle. So sue me.

::Sips::

::Stares at cup::

Sugar? O.o I did not add anything to this cup, where did that come from? In a lapsang?

::sips again several times::

Yes, there is an undeniable sweet note there. I didn’t brew it differently or anything. Weird. It wasn’t there before, I could have sworn! Or was it, and I didn’t notice?

I’M SO CONFUUUUUUSED!!!

(I’m also a bit over-tired at this point just in case you hadn’t guessed.)

ETA: Also, I did not ask for that bit to be in italics, what’s going on? O.o
ETA again: Evidently you can also make italics by use of double ?s…

After steeping fail on both teas I’ve had today, one of which I’ve documented, I just needed a proper cup of tea. One that can’t go wrong. I had a funny feeling that it was a specific one I wanted but it wasn’t until I saw the tin that I knew which one it was.

It’s funny with this one. When I was first introduced to lapsang souchong, I thought it was a really harsh and rough sort of flavour with smoke all over the place.

Now, the more I drink it, the milder it seems to become. The aroma is still the same. All rough and tough and smoke and manly. But the taste seems to have smoothed out for me.

If I pay attention and seek it out the smokyness is there in spades. But it seems to be a bit shy. If I don’t speak to it first, it doesn’t speak to me. The rest of the tea seems surprisingly smooth and mellow and with a round sort of feeling to it, as if I had added milk. I haven’t actually added anything, and I’ve only used the cup for the white pomegranate earlier today and rinsed it out in between.

You all remember my black powder blend, the one I recently bought a huge amount of. I’ve filled my tin at work with that so I have a good amount of that four days a week. It has lapsang souchong in it, the smokyness of which I think is part of the reason for the name of the blend, so could it be that I’m getting so conditioned to lapsang now that I’m having this experience of it?

The first time I had lapsang souchong, after I had first got into the black powder blend, I found it strangely lacking. Watered down. I was expecting the fuller flavour of the blend, not just one of the ingredients in it. I was afraid lapsang souchong as a plain tea had been ruined for me forever. I’m pleased to say that this is definitely not the case, as what I’ve got here tonight is an extraordinarily pleasant cup of tea.

Oh my Steepster account, I hearts you like air. And like tea. And like my LJ account. Which says a LOT. You inspire me to do experiments with long forgotten samples like today, which is loads of fun, even when largely unsuccessful in finding undiscovered diamonds. And on top of that I get to babble about each one at length which makes it even more fun. Never leave me.

Right, so I’ve made an emergency pot of Lapsang Souchong. I need it on top of all this experimenting. Especially that last one there which I think must have been the worst of the lot. (Especially because it could have been avoided if I had not stupidly decided reading the info on the package regarding contents was unnecessary)

This is a stable. This is always a great cup of tea. Smokey and rough and JUST right. Enough experiments for me. I’ll stick to this for the rest of the evening.

I haven’t logged this one before? WHUT?

I likes me a good Lapsang. Don’t get me wrong there. But the lack of logging (ha! say that ten times fast!) might have something to do with the fact that I bought this one primarily to give my boyfriend when he’s here and secondarily for myself.

Right now though, I’m having the hardest time focusing on NaNo and I need a bit of a kick in the rear. Caffeine me. My green semi-spree is not going to cut it here. I know the amount of caffeine is the same, but the black tea just feels like it has more. Also this place, with the introduction of comments and liking and interaction, has became bloody addictive! Just the other day I discovered that on the front page that you get to when you’re not logged in, there are featured posts and featured users if you scroll down! I’m a featured user, apparently! It made me go WEEEEEE!!!! and immediately add all the other featured users to my follow list. You lot are all to blame if I don’t reach the 50K this year, I swear. Either that or I’ll start counting words on tea posts and include them.

The leaves smell all nice and smokey and with a hint of tobacco, which is something I’ve just recently learned to pay attention to in aroma. I get inspired when I see how you others describe these hard-to-describe things. The steeped tea is less smokey in scent and it has an underlying note of something sweet. I want to say caramel but I’m not really sure that’s the best description for it. Definitely tobacco too. Now that I’ve noticed, it’s really clear.

I think I’ve understeeped it a bit because I got impatient, but I made it good and strong with more leaves than usual. The flavour doesn’t have so much of the smoky flavour in it, but I expect the next cup with be better on that aspect. I think I might be getting the ‘pepper’ though. A sort of prickly flavour at the very back of my mouth like black pepper. But again, it might be because I used more leaves. This may not have been the most ideal brew, but it’s one of my black favourites, and aforementioned boyfriend is a good excuse to keep stocked up on it.

Right. I have my caffeine kick now and I need to get back to my pretense at novel writing. I’m going to take 15 concentrated minutes of writing and then I can slack off for a couple of minutes more. (This doesn’t sound like much, but it totally works. A short spurt of concentration, a couple of minutes break. Easy to over-look. Not so scary. And if you disregard all typos you can get a decent amount of words out in 15 minutes.)

I’m posting this at 6.28 pm my time. If you see any activity from me at all before fifteen minutes have passed, come by and kick my butt.

The genmaicha that wasn’t genmaicha! I could have sworn it said ‘genmaicha’ on the label at the bottom of the tin when I got it, but now it says Japanese Emperor Blend. Odd. I can’t understand why I didn’t initially add it as such. It never even occurred to me to go to their site and see if they had a regular genmaicha as well or not. Which, as it turns out, they had. That should all be taken care of now though. This is the genmaicha with matcha powder in it.

This one is also in the to-be-finished pile. I got the tin as a free present from A C Perch’s when I bought their book because I ordered on the day that it was released. I didn’t even know they offered this, so that was an awesome surprise. Anyway, I used it sparingly and eventually forgot about it, which was stupid, because it’s A C Perch’s! It’s not like I can’t get more.

Down to one more serving of it though. I thought that was what I had left before making this pot. I’ll never get through that pile…

Second steep of the leaves from last night this morning.

You know, I think I really like the first steep better. It was much more buttery this time around, and rather too much so. Not nearly so far as to be greasy or nauseating, but definitely headed in that general direction. The chameleon colour shifting is gone too.

I will say this about it though, it has a certain snacky quality. For me it works remarkably well as a way to avoid those naughty little snacks during the day. Chocolate, biscuits, popcorn, pudding, whatever. Have a cup of this instead. It doens’t work every time when I’m craving something, but it’s close enough.

A ton of people posted Genmaicha or Genmaicha-type teas and it reminded me that I still had this tin which has been untouched for a while, so I thought I’d join in. It’s been so long that I have to do a post about it with all the details in it.

It’s magic colour-shifter tea! Immediately after brewing and pouring, it was a brilliant sun-yellow. After a few seconds of standing in the cup untouched, it’s turned that funky radio-active green colour. It’s funny because if you remember the blustery-day-on-the-beach kind of green tea bag I had the other day, that one was the other way around. Neon-green first and then yellow.

The name, Genmaicha, is actually misleading in this one, because it’s one of the ones that also contain a small amount of matcha powder, so I know from experience that it should have a short steep. I counted 30 elephants.

The aroma is primarily popcorn and just a little bit of nut-like sweetness. It’s funny how it can smell so strongly of popcorn and taste completely unlike same. It tastes like rice, but with the sweetness from the green tea. I’m also getting a strong hazelnuttish note from it which completely blindsided me. I had not expected anything like that. No notes of saltwater or seaweed which had been feared given the colour.

Again, it’s showing some chameleon-ish tendencies. Colour is now back to yellow, but a darker, warmer and more brownish sort of shade. I wonder what sorts of colours it might turn if I left it long enough.

I’m in a green mood this morning. A lot of healthy stuff comes in the shade of green. That’s why call them greens. :)

I was originally amused by this one. I’d never seen a genmaicha before where puffed rice were all coloured green. I thought it looked hilarious, but figured it might have been done for the decorational value. Next, it surprised me by being very sensitive to steeping. If you brew with the leaves floating loose in the pot like I do, it MUST be decanted after steeping, because it will turn ridiculously bitter if left to its own devices.

Over on LJ, though, a resourceful person known as Iguanahey looked into it a bit and found that it was actually a variation of Genmaicha called ‘Uji Genmaicha’, in which a measure of matcha was added to the usual mix of sencha and rice. This would explain the mildness of flavour and the sensitivity to steeping.

I think I prefer the ‘usual’ Genmaicha that I had before, but this is really really nice too, and I’m dreading running out.

I think I should have let the water cool a bit more before brewing today. The rice of course have a toasted flavour, but it seems a bit more burned than usual this morning. Eh well. That’s what you get when you don’t have a thermometer and go by gut (and memory. Many’s the time where I’ve had to boil new water because I’d forgotten the kettle and it had gone way too cold) when brewing green and white.

I’m very fond of Genmaicha. It’s one of my favourite greens. This one is from A. C. Perch’s in Copenhagen and a completely unexpected addition to the cupboard. I bought a book from there, which I think I mentioned in my previous post. It’s partly about tea in general and partly about the history of the shop. Apparently, as I discovered when I got it, when ordering the book on the publishing day they added a tin of Genmaicha. Freebie tea! I’m a fan. :D

It smells lovely. A delicate fragrance that smells more of tea than it does of rice. It’s been a while since I’ve had any Genmaicha, so it might be that my memory is playing tricks on me, but it looks to me like there are more unpuffed rice in this one. I’m rather amused by the fact that the puffed rice are actually green too in this one. Never seen that before. It looks funny. :)

The steeped tea smells more or less like the dry leaves. Delicate and mild and more tea-like than rice-like. I like that. It rather pale in colour too.

The flavour seems very mild to me. It’s been a while since I’ve had any green, or white for that matter, so my tongue is probably temporarily ruined by black, oolong and pu-ehr. After a few sips, I stareted getting over that, though, and I started picking up a little more flavour. At first it’s mostly just the flavour of the tea, and then when swallowing the rice comes into play. It can’t under any circumstances be allowed to over-steep though, because it turns bitter really quickly.

I like this Genmaicha a lot, and I’m very likely to come back for more. And I’m not just saying that because it was free and came in a nice tin. Win!

Also, it feels absolutely wonderful for my mysteriously sore throat. Double win!

Good morning Steepsterites.

I’ve made this a bit unpleasant today. The tin I keep it in is tall and narrow, so it’s a bit difficult to get the scoop in and get a proper spoonful of leaves. I think I used too much leaf today. I tried to compensate with a shorter than normal steep but it hasn’t really worked. Not short enough.

It has that nutty bitterness that just sits on your tongue and constantly reminds you that, “I’m drinkable, yeah… But I’m not supposed to be here. Oolong, ur doin it rong!”

And that’s really distracting, you know? It makes it impossible to taste around it like you can with some other mistakes. Or maybe it’s just impossible this morning, I don’t know.

Either way, I surrender. Now I want something else.

Anything else.