This is marginally on-topic, but a lot of people here seem to be
interested in ceramics. There's a wonderfully twisted story by Jack
Vance call The Potters of Firsk (mis-spelled in one of the URLs below)
that I've shared with some other wheel-throwing friends. Unfortunately,
collections in which it appears may be hard to find, and there doesn't
seem to be a text version on the Web. But I did find it as a radio
drama, linked he

http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=...tters+of+Firsk

http://odeo.com/episodes/23801428-Di...Frisk-07-28-50

One may only imagine the perverse pleasure of drinking tea out of such
radiant vessels, a kind of posthumous refinement of classic orange
Fiestaware (about which, I have personally confirmed, the rumors are true).

ObTea - with the belated arrival of torrid days, I've been brewing
mostly at room temperature after sunrise. After trying a range of shu
and sheng Pu'er, mostly with pots packed as for gongfu, early
observations include:

- The terpenic taste people often describe as "camphor" is much more
pronounced than with hot-brewing of the same teas. The note some of us
experience as umeboshi/plum (or sometimes cherry cola) is entirely absent.

- Unlike rough greens and astringent Darjeelings, sheng Pu'er does not
seem to me to gain any smoothness by coldfu brewing.

- Shengs do not go on forever, which was a real surprise. These are
steeps of 1 minute stretching out to hours, and apparently there's a
more or less temperature-independent aspect to the extraction.

- Though many nice parts of the profile carry through, I have not found
the overall pleasure of either cooked or raw Pu'er prepared this way to
be remotely comparable to usual gongful results. In marked distinction,
many greens and oolongs I've tried are wonderful when so managed, and
(to my taste) rough Darjeelings are at their best.

-DM

dogma_i > writes:

> [...room temp brewing...]
> - Unlike rough greens and astringent Darjeelings, sheng Pu'er does not
> seem to me to gain any smoothness by coldfu brewing.

But your normal, cold-weather practice for sheng Pu'er is to use water
well below boiling, isn't it? Maybe what you've found is that sheng
is smoother the cooler you brew it, but only up - down? - to a point.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html