Aged white tea Gongfu Cha tasting with #FINDMEINSEATTLE

Yeah, so hi everyone. I'm Rennie. I'm the owner of Serene Tea and I'm here today with Connor who is on Instagram as FindMeInSeattle. If you want to give a quick introduction of yourself. Hi everyone, my name is Connor at FindMeInSeattle. You can find me all over the internet at the same name, but my job is to explore our beautiful city, tell stories about entrepreneurs and businesses and food, artists, and of anyone who has an interesting story here in Seattle. So today we're drinking some tea. I prepared this aged white tea. So it's a tea cake actually, instead of just loose leaf tea. Here, you can take a look. Beautiful. And there it is. So this aged white tea is actually the second grade of all white teas, which is known as white peony, or in Chinese, Bai Mudan. Bai Mudan. Right, have you heard of it? No, I haven't. Oh, okay. Basically, the second grade has a lot of, as you can see here, the buds, as well as small tender leaves. However, because this is aged tea, so the color is tremendously darker compared to a fresh one. A fresh one, yeah, is usually pretty white. Exactly. This one comes from Fujian in China. So Fujian is the birthplace of all white teas in the world. This aged white tea is from 2015, which marks it as five years old. I'm going to give a quick rinse since it's aged tea. So you do tea yourself, right? Yeah, probably not as much as you. I've got multiple Gong Fu sets, I've got multiple different Gaiwans, I've got a couple Yi Xings, because it's so calming and relaxing to go through the process and prepare and serve. It's a really good way to come out with people. It is, and time can go by real quick when you're really enjoying the tea and trying different flavors, especially when you experiment across different teas and you're introducing people who've never experienced it before. You've never really met each other before, but it's something to have in common that facilitates conversation and you can always come back to the tea even when there's a lag in the conversation. I hope you don't mind the tea leaves. No, not at all. I know some people do. Yeah? They're intimidated by it, but no, I'm very used to it. Great. What is your initial impression? You know, the fragrance or the taste, first sip? Well, still pretty light on this first one. Okay. It's the second steep, as you can see. Yeah, it's a lot more. It's a lot more darker. Yeah. Right? Okay. So let's give that a try and see if you can find some notes in there this time. I don't know why I'm going... You're thinking very hard. It reminds me of hay for some reason. Okay. Yeah, like, I don't know, like, when I close my eyes and I drink it, for some reason, I feel like I'm sitting in a barn. I mean, I don't want it to sound like that's a bad thing. But yeah, I feel like it's just got a lot of... Maybe like herb? Yeah. Herbal, earthy? Not earthy. Yeah, I would call it earthy. Just kind of grassy, but like dry grassy. Dry grassy, yeah. Okay. Interesting. So what do you smell or taste? I smell peach. Peach? Right. Wow, okay. It's like a very strong note of peachy fragrance in there. I feel like I get the texture, but like, you know how peach has the... I don't want to call it furry outside, but it's... Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. It feels like fuzzy on my tongue. Exactly. That's very good. Okay. Because, like I said, because it's second grade, it has a lot of those, like, white... What? Butts there? And they have those hairy feel to them. So you're tasting the exact right thing. Okay, so it is very similar. It is very similar. And to be honest, not a lot of people... This is a type of taste that's not tailored to everyone, because it's very new. I mean, how often do you drink? Like, do you make water? Do you infuse water with, like, you know, like... Like, yeah, the skin of a peach. Right, exactly, exactly. So it's a very particular taste. You either really love it, or maybe you're kind of like getting... You need time to get used to it. So I smell... I feel like I'm playing this game, like... I spot with my little... Yeah. I smell... So I smell peach and kind of honey, but very mild honey notes. Yeah, okay. But you don't necessarily taste the peach. It's more in the fragrance. Yeah. And I taste... So there's this one particular taste maybe you're not very familiar with, which is bamboo leaf. Bamboo leaf? No, I don't think I've ever had a bamboo leaf. I've had bamboo shoots, but that's probably not the same. Probably not the same. A little different. Where can I try a bamboo leaf? Very good question. Dim sum. Dim sum? Okay. They wrap the rice in it? Exactly. Can I eat the leaf? No, you cannot eat the leaf. But I would recommend you to go and sniff the leaf just to get a sense of it. Okay. Right. So with a lot of HYT, not just white peony, also the Shou Mei one, there's this one particular note of bamboo leaf in there. They all have this. Oh, okay. Just one might be a little stronger than the other. And why is that? Are they always growing near bamboo? No, I think it's just the aging process. Maybe not necessarily the first grade, which is the silver needle one. Yes. And I actually don't recommend people to do silver needle HYT cake because economically speaking, it's very pricey. Yep. And secondly, again, because it's silver needle, it's just all buds. It's that very strong flavor of that hairy, you know, like peach skin that we were talking about earlier. Which is like a note that's not necessarily could be found off by every single person. Yeah. Because I think I've had silver needle before because when I'm looking at this white tea, yeah, it's all very thin. It doesn't have the larger leaves on it, correct? Yes, exactly. Like if you have like a fresh silver needle, that's great because it has a very particular freshness to it. So Shou Mei is very honey-like. Honey-like sweetness and honey viscosity of the liquor is more likely to be accepted by people. Yeah. And so do you brew each cup for the same amount of time? I don't. I increase the steeping time for each steep. Yep. So the first one was the quickest because it's just a quick rinse. And then first one, I start usually with about five to six seconds. Okay. And then I increase five seconds with each following steep. Okay. Yeah. Is that what you normally do as well? Yeah, I've never sat with a timer. Yeah, and I've always progressively gone longer. Right. And sometimes I forget. Yeah. Right? And it's like, all right, this one's not going to taste very good. I'm sorry. And then I used to get into, if I was brewing tea late at night, I'd always leave one at the end. Okay. And leave it in the gaiwan overnight. And when I'd wake up in the morning, I would drink that one the first thing in the morning. Oh, wow. And it would be like really, really, really strong. Yeah. Probably didn't taste very good, but it was always just like this. I don't know. I thought it was interesting to wake up and then like, kind of make the connection between the last day and my current day. And like, start my day with like, take that sip. And a lot of times it's just like, all right, it wasn't very good. But I don't know. It's just like always made me create this connection between the two days and wake up and kind of get started. And yeah, just always want to try. You're always trying to experiment the extremes of the tea. I bring it for a real long time in a short amount of time just to really learn as much as you can about the tea. And it's always this weird thing that I always tried and never really tasted very good. But it was fun. I might start doing that. I like the idea behind it. It almost sounds a little bit like philosophical. It's very philosophical. Yeah. It didn't have as much to do with the tea as much as like, I felt like it connected my two days within one experience. You're bringing tea to one extra level. You almost sound like a Chinese philosopher from ancient times. Well, I think I learned a lot more of that from this. How many steepings have we had? Is this five? I think more than that. Six or seven. Okay. Right. I trust you. I'm tea drunk now. So now I don't know. Well, I'm glad you get there. Oh, yeah. So that's our tea tasting session for today with Connor. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you very much for coming. Yeah. I hope you have fun. I did. And I hope you have enjoyed the tea. I will. I'm going to drink more tea now. Exactly. And I hope this will inspire you to get back to your tea routine. It definitely will. So again, my name is Rainy. I'm the owner of Serene Tea. And I'm planning to do this kind of tea tasting video maybe once a month. Please follow us on Instagram, which is Serene Tea Cha. And you can also check out Connor, which is finally in Seattle. He does a lot of cool stuff. Check out a lot of cool spots, restaurants, shows. Pretty much everything in Seattle. Like I said, he's the big local culture figure here. So if you go and check out his Instagram and follow him and check out his video later, there should be a promotion code as a little incentive of 15% off if you get some teas from Serene Tea Cha. If you check out my video later and if you spend more than $30, there will be a free gift that comes with the order. Cool. Yeah. So that's pretty much it. And again, thank you everyone for watching the tasting session. And thank you again for Connor for being here. Thank you very much, Rainy. This was awesome. I didn't know what to expect coming here. And you know, I know a little bit about tea. But I was kind of just like, I don't know what I'm doing today. I'm going to go meet this person I never met. We're going to drink tea and share a conversation. But thank you for sharing with me. I learned so much about tea. And thank you everyone for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe. Check all those things out and go buy some tea from her. If you got any tips or questions about Gong Fu Cha or tea in general, Rainy's your girl. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Bye. Wait. I can't say that. So who are you and what do you do? Yes.