Tea trip and exams

Exams are over! Time for tea again. Not that I've been avoiding tea the last two weeks though. I've drank quite some tea trying to stay awake during studying. I also did something I maybe shouldn't have. I went on a small tea trip. The reason for doing so was while scrolling on a dutch secondhand website. I came across some really nice clay teapots, supposedly yixing. I really liked their shape and colour. But these kind of things are hard to judge from pictures. The person selling the pots lived in Amsterdam, so easy to reach and there were two nice teashops I still needed to visit. So an appointment was made and I went.

Visiting the teapot seller was really nice. She got to know good oolong in Taiwan and brought some pots back. We had some tea in the pots in question to test them out, but it was also just nice sitting down with someone to have tea. I mostly drink on my own. Which is nice but drinking together is very different. Anyway I bought them. Here are some pics.

 

 These are her pictures. My skill are not so good and my lighting is even worse. So these will do. The upper brown pot I will use for yancha and other darker fruity oolong/blacks like oriental beauty. it's around 100 ml when brewed with. I like the size. It pours nice, but does drip a bit. But I use a fairness cup anyway. The lower pot I haven't decided on what to use it for. I did a little test with sheng puehr on which I will write soon. This pot is really small. Maybe a little too small, but for me alone it's ok. It brews up 60 ml.

After buying these two I went on to meet a friend at Tea's Delight. A new teashop dedicated to high quality loose leaf tea. The website looks good and promising. The don't offer a large selection, but nice enough. I liked the store when I went through the door. Simple decorating and really light. When you walk in you are greeted by the tea making table with some tea's on display. Upstairs were teaware and a low table to drink tea at and downstairs the teas and some couches. You can drink tea there or take it with with either brewed or ,of course the packaged leaves. They had their selection on a board. When I asked if I could inspect and smell the leaves, I was told they don't do that. Which I found remarkable. The prices aren't what you'd call low, so some inspection might be nice in my opinion. They had some leaves in glass pots, but the smell was not really there, because they were in there for quite some time. You can drink the tea, but as this also comes at quite a price, getting to drink many tea would take some time sitting down. They do make it gong fu though, which is good to see in the Netherlands. 

Enough about the shortcomings. My friend ordered up Yichu Wild. A tea which they say is from original wild tea trees from Taiwan. It was really good stuff. This I took home. It wasn't cheap: €11 for 20 grams only. On this tea later more. I took a supposedly 15 year old loose sheng. It was nice, but not outstanding. It tasted and looked like shu. Which I don't find bad tea, but I wasn't expecting it. I have never had sheng of that age, so I'm not a good judge of properly aged sheng, but if it's like this I would be a little disappointed. She made it in a yixing pot, but it came out very light. She made it with maybe 2 grams on 200 ml and brewed it a few minutes. I get why they do it in a shop, but it doesn't make a good strong cup of puerh. We had a second steep and left after some conversation with the storekeeper.

I was very excited to move one to the next shop: Formocha. I've read many good things, so I was keen to check it out. But as we approached the store it looked rather closed. And it was. Tea holiday of which I later saw the result. Some really nice teacups and in their opinion good tea. I will be heading over soon as I need to travel in that direction for work.