Brandon Tea Club

Oh, hi there! Were you waiting for me to blog all this time? Heavens, I’ve been so busy, and when I’m not busy, I’m tired. All that hampers my blogging ability a bit. Do forgive me?

Anywho, here’s a tea I’ve had for awhile, and, sorry to say, you can’t buy it. It is the ever interesting Wild Orchid Fairy Twig from your friend and mine, Gingko

Here are some pic-a-tures for your gawking pleasure:

You look good, but a little hot water and…

There! Much better!

Worth waking up for

I believe I first had the WOFT (a good acronym!) two springs ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Something about its subtle and quiet character and underlined by a rugged toughness ( @gingkoseto says to use boiling water with this (green!) tea, and of course she is right) wormed its way into my brain and settled down to stay.

I’ve noticed in my past reviews that I did the usual tea-blogger thing where I tried to pick out different flavour notes. Over the last few months I’ve kind of realized that a) It doesn’t jive with how I myself experience/think about a tea when I’m drinking it, and b) I really that that sort of review style can get boring and/or out of hand, and lends itself to florid reviews that are unhelpful to anybody who feels intimidated by all “notes of elderberries” bushwa.

So here’s a simple rundown of how this tea feels to me. It’s vaguely fruity, fairly sweet and fresh, but the star of the show is the mouthfeel. This is a very juicy tea, something you can slurp on endlessly and not get that dry-mouth sensation that “tannic” drinks like coffee, wine, or other teas can bring. It’s like drinking what a watermelon feels like when you bite into it on a hot summer day (no, it doesn’t TASTE like watermelon, it FEELS like watermelon). It makes me salivate for the next infusion like not that many other teas do…heck, I’m salivating just looking at the above pictures. Guess what tea I’m looking forward to waking up and making tomorrow?

GO ON, GUESS DO IT

Thanks to Gingko for bringing this tea west (although technically it traveled east). I don’t think you can buy it anymore since it was a pre-order special, but maybe she still has some lying around that you can beg off her?

-Happy G

POINT FORM GO:

-Got a job! It’s in a pet store! It’s okay. It’s money.

-Got some tea from @gingkoseto ! It’s…well, wait for the review I’m gonna write!

-It’s looking unlikely that I’ll go to PEI in the fall. Maybe January. I dunno. Probably January?

-FERRETS ARE CUTE

Hope y’all are doing awesome!

-Happy G

A MONTH WITHOUT A POST WHY YOU LAZY NO GOOD PUNK BACK IN MY DAY WE BLOGGED…

The above has doubt been going through your mind pretty much constantly (even while you sleep) for the past 4 weeks or so. All I can say is “Sorry, I haven’t had any tea things happen to blog about.”

And that still holds true. I will have ONE tea coming in from @gingkoseto at some point in the coming months (Wild Orchid Fairy Twig OH YEAH), and even that is a financial risk at a mere 20 bucks. Yeah, it’s dire straights here. I can’t pay for gas, my phone will bankrupt me before too long, I can’t do anything fun and MOST OF ALL I can’t buy any tea, to drink or to review. So all this stress is weighing down on my back and it’s starting to get to me. My formerly sunny disposition is now quite stormy. “Happy” Gaiwan, indeed.

I will admit to not looking that hard or being “too selective” with jobs. But I don’t want to flip burgers and flipping burgers doesn’t pay well enough to get me to where I want to be. I went to school, I want a job that reflects that. Even the crummy jobs I’ve applied to have turned me down. What can you do? It’s getting discouraging.

Some good news, though: I was accepted into the University of Prince Edward Island, possibly to go into radiography, which would be a boring but lucrative career choice. Neither of my parents felt this was good news, though, even though they told me to apply and to “go back to school while we can still pay for it.” Talk about mixed messages.

So I have that to look forward to, but the next weeks and months are going to arduous to say the least. I’m not the worst off person I know by far (one of my best friends is sitting around right now while his father dies of cancer) but man, waking up every day is a chore.

The thing about the future is that it is guessable but never knowable, said the noted philosopher Karl von Obvious. We know the sun will rise tomorrow. But on what kind of day will it shine?

-Happy G

Following a short break from tea drinking for various reasons, I’m back into the game, sort of.

I don’t have anything new to review or talk about, but here’s what I’ve been drinking…

Huanghsan Maofeng from PeonyTS: Really good green (no duh!) tea that evolves over the infusions from titillatingly bitter in the first to juicy sweet in the fourth. A fine example of Maofeng.

Jun Chiyabari Himalayan Spring Evergreen: I’m getting down to my last little bit of this wonderful stuff. If anybody knows where I can score more from this year or last year, drop me a line. Please?

Tieguanyin from PeonyTS: Another good tea, sweet as all get out, and very long lived.

Jaksul Gamnong: Oh Korean green tea, I love you so. But…well, this one isn’t very good. It’s by Hankook, and I bought it from TeaTrekker. Normally TeaTrekker tea is pretty good, but this one is 30 bucks and is probably worth, in terms of quality, half that. It has good qualities, but the leaves are pretty broken up and thus the overall mouthfull is less full and more chalky and it just doesn’t last through as many infusions as I’d like and it’s not that sweet and yadda yadda blah blah, you get it. A big let down, really.

So that’s it, really. Check out PeonyTS run by Derek Chew; he knows what he’s doing and his prices are pretty fair. Tell ‘em Happy Gaiwan sent ya.

-Happy G

That’s a very good question.

Firstly, I apologize for not being around much. I haven’t had anything of much importance to say, really, and I’m sure you guys wouldn’t appreciate junky posts just for the sake of posts.

I’ve been drinking tea, of course. I haven’t really been enjoying it, though. I think I’m bored of the whole routine, rather than the tea being bad.

I’ve been enjoying green tea, mostly, occasionally Taiwan oolong or Iron Goddess for the sake of variety. Green tea tends to make me feel very meditative, so maybe that’s why I’ve wanted to drink it more: all this sitting around doing nothing makes me want to spend that free time thinking.

I’m definitely bored, and the job market is anemic to put it nicely. I am probably going back to school, in Prince Edward Island. I hope I hear from them soon, because then I could make a definite plan for the next four months, whatever they decide. Being stuck in neutral isn’t fun.

Here are my tea goals:

-Write a tea column for a newspaper-Get more Korean tea
-More yellow tea, too
-Start a new tea club wherever I end up

I might have a lead on that first item, which is why I won’t have any reviews until the deal is done, either for rejection or actually being able to write reviews and columns for my local paper. We shall see.

Anyways, I hope to be here more often and write about tea instead of everything else but tea which has been my MO lately, both here and on the Twitter.

Talk to y’all soon,

-Happy G

PS: Send me a private message if you want one of my drawings on a letter or a postcard. I like mailing things!