The waiter brought out a kettle of tea, but Nancy Togami waved him back, asking for just plain hot water. Carefully, she used her thermometer to check the water temperature. One hundred and eighty degree Fahrenheit, too cool to steep…
Tea might bring out the more spontaneous side of me. When I take the bus, I always sit on the right side, no matter which way I’m going, which can be bad when that side gets too sunny. But on…
When I hear charcoal fire roasted, I don’t think of light and floral. I think smoky. That certainly has to do with the Charcoal Fire Roasted Tung Ting, the first charcoal-fire-roasted tea that I ever tried, and it’s everything but…
This tea leaves your palate with the sweetness of jicama, a sweetness that goes all the way to your nose and makes you believe that if you start talking after you take a sip, chamomile and gardenia floats out of…
Friday, Jun 17. 7 PM. Twice a year, Camellia sinensis is harvested to make oolong, but the spring yield is usually more floral than the fall. Winnie started the class with a taste test: between two oolongs, can we tell…
Ten minutes before seven on a Friday night, and Teance was already half full. The guys were handing out Lavender Mint as a preface, which I suppose could make a great palate cleanser. I was focused on snatching a seat…
Tiana, Kristen and I went on a tea date today, the perfect thing to do on a post-finals Sunday afternoon. And we don’t tea-date half-heartedly, we did a flight of 5 teas (people normally do flights of 3), with mochi(*)…
In my mind, green teas are more monotonic and oolongs are more multi-flavored, greens are lighter and oolongs are roastier. I can tell the category of tea from the type of gaiwan/pot that we use at Teance, the water, and…
Sesame mochi is different from the other mochis. The coat is hard and chewy. The black sesame filling oozes out as I press the fork down. The filling, salty, sweet and resembling wet sand, is addictive. It’s a wonderful mochi.…
We had two blind taste tests today to distinguish types of tea. In the first one, I failed horribly: mistaking an oolong (Baochong) for a white tea because it was so light, and thinking that a green tea (Lu Shan)…