FoodBanter.com - View Single Post

Michael Plant

Space 4/28/06

> White tea has an ephemeral taste. Till you know what it is, brew it
> with boiling water and lots and lots of leaf letting it stew in the pot
> for at least 5 minutes. It can take the abuse. There is no such thing
> as a astringent bitter overbrewed white tea. The white tea that cries
> out for a glass pot is Yinzhen. It will look like stalactites in the
> water. One of my favorite anytime teas is a white tea called SowMee.
> It is cheap and easily found in Chinatown. It makes a mushy pot of
> tea. It looks like autumn leaves after a rain. The other white tea is
> called BaiMuDan. It contains hair particulate which adds a nice foam
> to the cup. I especially like a White tea when I'm tired of everything
> else.
>
> Jim

Aha! Bai Mu Dan has some buds and some adjacent leaves. Sow Mee -- I'm not
sure this isn't Shu Mei -- is all leaf without bud. Yin Zhen is pure bud, no
leaf. I was talking earlier about the latter. While I don't think Bai Mu Dan
is impervious at all to oversteeping in too hot a temperature, it is
certainly more forgiving than Yin Zhen. Yin Zhen and Bai Mu Dan are
completely different animals to my taste. Try them both. I'd leave the Sow
Mee/Shu Mei (or is that Dim Sum?) alone. It's not very good, but this is
clearly a matter of different strokes for different folks. And ephemeral is
certainly the right word.

Michael