White Peony Cupping Experiment

A couple days ago I conducted a new cupping experiment with a high quality White Peony (aka Bai Mudan) (白牡丹). I thought it might be interesting to stagger the water temperature and the steeping time three ways and taste the resulting infusions.

For this cupping, I used six identical 8 ounce glass mugs. After the cups were cleaned and warmed I placed 2 grams of White Peony dry leaf into three of the cups.

The first cup was brewed for 2 minutes with 200° F water,
the second cup was brewed for 4 minutes with 180° F water,
and the third cup was brewed for 6 minutes with 160° F water.

After they steeped for the correct number of minutes the tea soup was immediately decanted into an empty mug.

200° (left) - 180° (middle) - 16o° (right)

As you can see, the liquor had a very similar color for each cup. They all smelled nice too but 200° had a little less fragrance than the other two.

I sipped each cup carefully going back and forth between them while making notes.

16o° for 6 minutes was easily my favorite. It had the cleanest mouth-feel, a pleasant sparkly sensation in the throat and aroma notes of champagne and fragrant wood.

Predictably, 180° for 4 minutes was squarely in the middle. This cup of tea was a bit heavier and earthier than 160° with some similar flavor notes but also notes of grass and sand.

200° for 2 minutes tasted "cooked" and had a harsh finish. The usual nice fragrance of White Peony was present but in the mouth it was muddy and elusive.

After sipping the 200°, when I switched back to the 160°, the 160° really popped out with a sweet, clean, happy flavor. And of course, going the other way made the 200° taste even worse.

Another point in favor of the cooler water was the look of the leaves after the first infusion. The 200° were limp and dull looking. They did not steep well at all for their second infusion. The 180° and the 160° both still had little bits of dry white fuzzy buds shielded by the top leaf. These cups produced good second infusions.

160° right after the first infusion (left). The white fuzzy bud is still mostly dry.
180° (in the middle) has a little fuzz left.
200° on the right is spent and the bud is cooked to a pale green.

*Like all my casual cupping experiments these results don't really mean anything in the larger scheme of things. This same experiment could have totally different results depending on any number of variables. Even so, it reinforced my long-standing personal belief that most white teas prefer a longer, cooler infusion.

Steeping Clay - Experiment # 1

I once read that if you poured boiling water into a well-seasoned yixing clay teapot, without tea leaves, you would still get a little tea flavor and color. I don't think I have any teapots that would qualify as "well seasoned" but three of my pots, El Greco (aged puer), Sandy (heavily roasted oolong), and Sam (high mountain Taiwanese oolong) have each been used dozens of times to brew great teas.

El Greco (top left), Sandy (middle), Sam (bottom right)

For today's experiment, I filled each of these three teapots with freshly boiled water, covered them with a thick towel, and then waited 1 hour before pouring the water into three separate tea bowls.

Each cup of warm water had the faintest hint of yellow color. Sandy's cup had one tiny speck of old leaf in it.

I started with Sam's water. It had a subtle sweetness and the water felt soft and creamy. There was also a hint of citrus in the water but it hid in the back of my throat and peeked out only when I exhaled.

Sandy's water was soft and thick in my mouth. It had a lick of nuttiness and a floral-mineral aftertaste that reminded me of Tie Guanyin oolong.

El Greco, like Sam and Sandy, also yielded delicate sweetness and substantial mouth-feel. It had a "brighter" taste than the other two pots. While Sam had citrus in the back of the throat, El Greco had an up front lemongrass note.

I was pleased with the results of this casual experiment and plan to repeat it in a few years using this blog post as a baseline. Next time I'll include a few other tea lovers in the tasting to "blind taste test" the water in hopes of limiting the possible effects of "power of suggestion."

Please let me know if you have ever tried anything like this or if you have any other ideas for ways to improve this experiment.

2008 Wenshan Baozhong Roasting Experiment

Back in May of 2008 my little sister Nicole, her husband Justice, Justice's little sister, my friend David, his fiance Gwen and I all spent 8 awesome days together on a tea trek in Taiwan. During our trip, everyone purchased a good amount of fresh oolong to bring back home.

Last week, while spending some time in her sister-in-law's kitchen, Nicole discovered one unopened 300 gram bag of Wenshan Baozhong forgotten in a cupboard! Nicole and her sister-in-law were sad that it was never enjoyed and decided to send it to me for some comments on its current quality.

A few days later I held the neglected bag of tea in my own hands. The vacuum seal on the bag was broken and probably had been for years. The leaves themselves looked OK but they lacked aroma. I brewed a small amount in a gaiwan. It was flavorless and flat with only the tiniest hint of its original Baozhong fragrance. Worst of all was the aftertaste, which was bitter and harsh.

I decided to experiment with my Taiwanese electric basket-roaster (although my hopes were very low that the tea could be saved). I saved about an ounce of unroasted tea in a little tin and poured the rest (about 9.5 ounces) into the basket-roaster.

The basket-roaster (it has a lid) and the tea's original bag:

I baked the tea at Phoenix Tea for 2 hours at 100° C before stopping to mix gently. Towards the end of this period the store began to smell sweet. Then I raised the temperature to 130° C for 1 hour and mixed again. Finally I lowered the temperature back to 100° C for one more hour.

At this point the leaves (and the store) were smelling wonderful. The smell is hard to describe but it's a little bit like I was making candy and baking sugar cookies at the same time.

Unfortunately when I brewed the tea a few minutes later the flavor was still bad. It had a hint of warming roasty goodness but it was bland and the aftertaste was terrible. I decided to roast the tea longer the next morning.

The following morning I baked the tea for 1 hour at 100° C and then 2 hours at 130° C (mixing gently every hour). Once again the same heavenly aroma filled the air.

I estimated an equal pinch of leaf into two bowls and poured in freshly boiled spring water.

Roasted on the Left. Original on the Right.

Interestingly the Original tasted slightly better this morning. Most likely it benefited greatly from 24 hours spent outside of the bag it had been trapped in for 4 long years. It still lacked flavor but it yielded more floral aroma and had an improved aftertaste.

The Roasted tea was nuttier than it had been yesterday which for me was an improvement. Cinnabar, who joined me for this tasting but did not try it the day before, pointed out undesirable notes of cornflakes and straw. We both agreed that the tea was "not good" and had a weird aftertaste (sort of metallic tasting).

After the Roasted tea had cooled down I put it back inside its original bag, a step I now regret because I suspect the bag is partly to blame for the tea's bad aftertaste.

A week has now passed since this experiment began. Today I plan to throw away the original bag, roast the tea for a few more hours, and then store the tea in a special jar for a few weeks. After which I will write a follow up to this post.

Cupping Experiment - Broken Baozhong Leaves

Have you ever notice how the last few grams of tea in any tin or bag is usually a sad-looking mix of broken, dusty tea-crumbs? In my experience this is especially true with long twisted leaf teas such as Wenshan Baozhong (文山包種) or various Wuyi Mountain Cliff Teas (武夷山岩茶).

Case in point:

What you're looking at here was poured from the bottom of an extremely good bag of Winter 2011 Wenshan Baozhong. This broken melange weighed in at just about 8 grams. What would you do with this stuff? Drink it? Toss it? Sift it?

I'm a pretty frugal fellow so I'll use a colander to gently separate the dust from the larger leaves.

This time I'm left with ~6 grams of dust and ~2 grams of whole leaves.

Feeling curious, I decided to conduct a little tasting experiment. I set up three small tea bowls. In one I put 1 gram of large leaves, in another I put 1 gram of broken leaf dust, and in the third I put a mix of 1/2 gram dust and 1/2 gram leaves. Next I steeped each sample for 3 minutes with 120 ml of 180° F water.

Mix is at the top.
Unbroken is in the bottom left.
Dust only is in the bottom right.

This cupping was interesting. Surprisingly, I found myself liking the dust-only infusion (shown above with the brightest yellow color) the most. It was just as buttery as the whole leaf specimen but it had better mouth-feel. It wasn't bitter but I expect it would have been if I'd used boiling hot water.

The infusion made only from intact leaves was the sweetest and the most floral. I liked it quite a bit too. I'm betting it would have otherwise been better than the dust-cup but in this particular instance it was "under-leafed."

The mix was easily the worst of the three. Instead of tasting like the sum of its parts, as I would have guessed, the 50/50 mix of dust and whole leaves came out flat and stale tasting. The balance was off and it was hard to find any redeeming qualities in the liquor.

Like all such casual cupping experiments these results don't really mean anything in the larger scheme of things. It was really just an interesting diversion. That being said, it does inspire me to sift the "bottom of the bag/tin" leaves and crumbs more often.

2006 Rougui Oolong Roasting Experiment

Back in 2006 I purchased a few pounds of Rougui oolong (肉桂烏龍) from Josh at J-Tea. This tea was made either in Taiwan, or mainland China under Taiwanese management (Josh was not certain which). The dry leaves are rolled into a ball shape instead of the long, twisted shape of many Rougui teas. I've always really loved this tea's toasty cinnamon notes and pleasant substantial mouth-feel.

In the years since, I have sold, traded, gifted and imbibed about half my stash. The remaining ~17 ounces have been resting in a plastic bag inside of an old competition Wenshan Baozhong tin in a forgotten corner of my tea cabinet.

I opened the bag on the evening of 12-4-2011 to smell it for the first time in years. The smell is nice, a tiny bit musty and sweet. I let the leaf air out for a couple hours and made a plan to roast half of it the following day.

On 12/5/2011 at 9:30 AM I used my electric stove to bake ~8 ounces of this tea in an aluminum pie pan. I let it go for one hour at 200° F. The leaf was about 3/4 inch deep and was not stirred.

Towards the end of the hour a sweet cinnamon granola aroma started to emerge from my stove. After baking I allowed the leaf to cool completely and put it in a new plastic bag to wait until the following morning.

After First Roast

On 12/6/2011 at 7:30 AM I stirred the leaves and baked them again, this time at 215° F. I gently stirred them every 15 minutes for 2 hours. I choose these parameters based loosely on the recommendations of several tea people I emailed for advice.

Finished Roasting - 9:30 AM on 12/6/2011

After the leaves had mostly cooled, ~10 minutes later, I set up a cupping of the unbaked and the baked leaves. I used 5 grams of tea in two identical glass cups with 6 ounces boiling water.

Unbaked on left; baked on Right.

The two teas were quite different but I didn't prefer one over the other. The unbaked tea was unsurprisingly brighter and greener with more cinnamon notes on the tongue. It still tasted roasty to me and had a slightly sour taste that hinted at grapefruit and clove. The baked tea was mellow and toasty. I was happy that it didn't taste burnt or smoky but I felt that it lost some complexity going sip for sip with the unbaked tea. The baked tea was smoother and more warming with muted cinnamon and whole wheat bread crust notes.

Both teas are great and I feel lucky that I didn't ruin the baked tea. Now that I've finished the experiment I do not feel like the tea really needed to be roasted again at this time. Perhaps the careful airtight storage at my house and the original roast back in 2006 made this experiment redundant. I think I will cup these two together again in a few months to see how they're coming along.

Infuser Basket vs Tea Bag Experiment

Last week, my coworker Elliot and I conducted an "Infuser Basket vs Tea Bag Experiment" while working at the Teacup (a retail tea shop and cafe here in Seattle).

The three products we tested were: a medium Finum brand brewing basket, a Finum brand paper tea sack and a (sadly not compostable) polyester tea bag from Japan.

The Packaging

The experiment was conducted in three rounds with the exact same weight of leaf, water temperature, steeping time and cups used each time. Round #1 was Dragon Well green tea, #2 was Darjeeling black tea, and #3 was Kukicha green tea. I choose these three teas because I drink them often and thus already know them quite well.

Round #1 - Set Up

Round #1 - Steeping

During the first round (the Dragon Well) I knew before I started sipping which cup had been used for each brewing method. The next two rounds, on the other hand, Elliot poured the liquor into new cups while I wasn't looking, so that I was cupping them "blind."

The results of the Dragon Well round were as follows: The Finum basket yielded the nicest, nuttiest flavor with the most color, depth and complexity. The Finum paper tea bag was pleasant, a bit lighter than the basket and had a slight dusty note. The Japanese tea bag tasted like garbage compared to the other two. It was too weak with a very faint unpleasant "envelope glue-like" aftertaste.

The results of the Darjeeling round were as follows (keep in mind that this time I didn't know which of the three methods was used until after I'd formed my opinions): The Finum basket had the nicest, richest, cleanest flavor. The Finum paper tea bag fell flat with and odd sort of "filmy" texture in my mouth. The Japanese tea bag actually tasted fine. It just tasted a little weak.

The results for round #3, the Kukicha, were pretty much the same as with the Dragon Well. Even though I didn't know which method was used to brew each cup, I right away guessed the basket because it yielded the greenest color (the other two looked more yellow). Elliot and I thought the basket tasted twice as good as the others and I even picked up a tiny hint of that "unpleasant envelope glue flavor" from the Japanese tea bag cup.

These results were in line with my past experiences but it was still a great exercise to test them with all the variables controlled.

Cool Monkey

This is the organic Golden Monkey that I purchased from The Meaning of Tea a couple months ago. Like most black teas I brew it with boiling water, about one teaspoon of dry leaf per cup, and steep it for about 3 minutes. It always turns out delicious.

But what if I were to brew it cooler?

Excuse me? Why bother?
Just keep using boiling water.
It is a black tea after all.

Who are you?

I'm one of the voices in your head.
You can call me the "voice of reason."

Uh... alright... but I just have this strange feeling that it might be really good.

You're going to waste good tea.

Yeah, but how will I know for sure if I don't at least try?

OK. Suit yourself... but when you end up with a cup of
"warm swamp tea" don't say I didn't warn you.

Alright then. I'm going to do it!
Let's start with about 155° F for 7 minutes.

Looks good. Smells good.

(sips tea) Whoa... this turned out really sweet.
The peach and honey elements have been turned up to eleven.

(sips tea) You're right. I do like this.
It's mellow, clean and fragrant.

OK. Let's go cooler!
Second infusion will be 135° F for 10 minutes.

It's ready. (sips tea) Yum.
This is even sweeter.
How is that even possible!?

It's pretty good but this level of sweetness should be balanced by something.
I miss the astringent notes in the traditional brewing.

I hear you.
Plus the aftertaste seems to be compromised.

Lets go even cooler.
This time I'll do 120° F for thirty minutes.

Are you insane?

(thirty minutes later)

It's ready! The color is much lighter.

Well this is our third infusion after all.

(sips tea) It's smooth as silk... and has tons of ripe stone-fruit and honey notes.
It almost tastes like a cold brew of silvertip oolong.

I'm surprised that I like it... but I'd still much prefer boiling the water for this tea.
Also, I prefer to drink a hotter cup of tea.

But you've got to admit this was an interesting experiment.
I think it proves my theory that:
"When it comes to tea there are no right or wrong ways to do things."

I'm not sure if I agree with that.

2005 Awazon Sheng Bing Cupping Experiment

Back in 2005 I purchased a couple stacks (aka tong) (筒) of 2005 Awazon (阿佤山) factory sheng puer cakes. I kept two cakes for myself. One, I stored among other random sheng cakes on my puer shelf. Let's call him "Whole Bing."

Hi, I'm Whole Bing!

The other, I broke up into small chunks and stored in a large clay teapot. Let's call him "Pot Head."

Yo.

Today I thought it might be fun to cup them up together. This will be my first experience with this tea in 5 years.

I set up my usual cupping station...

...which looks something like this...

...then I grabbed my notebook, and got down to business.

I used 5 grams of dry leaf to about 8 ounces of boiling water and took my time going back and forth smelling each spoon and slurping the tea soup.

Turns out they taste pretty different!

Whole Bing is on the right and Pot Head is on the left.

Whole Bing was a little bit woodsier, smokier and more earthy. I believe he picked up some of these flavors from the other cakes with which he had cohabited. He was also a shade darker.

Pot Head's isolation in the large lidded teapot seems to have shielded him from most outside influences and perhaps caused him to taste "less aged" to me. He had a lighter body with more grass and herb notes. His flavor was closer to how these cakes tasted five years ago.

I did not prefer one storage method over the other and I do not take the results of this experiment too seriously. There are quite simply too many variables to consider when dealing with puer tea storage. In fact, I believe, this exact same experiment could easily have yielded different results in different places, on different days or for different people. That being said, I still found this to be a very rewarding and educational cupping.

"The Root"

I have recently heard about an interesting, although somewhat uncommon, tea brewing technique. The technique is called "the root" and refers to the practice of leaving a little bit of tea (usually less than an ounce) in the chahai* after each infusion. This remaining tea will end up mixing with all of the following infusions.

J-tea's 1992 Wuyi Oolong (武夷烏龍)
& "the root" left in the glass chahai.

Some people may do this already without even thinking about it, while others like myself have always thought it best to not mix infusions. Each infusion is special and should be tasted in its purest form, not mixed with all the previous infusions... right? Well, at least that's what I thought before I started experimenting with "the root."

Mixing a new infusion with "the root."

Believers claim that "the root" acts as a solid foundation for each infusion, which they say can add character and depth to one's tea. I have found this to sometimes be true for me, especially while drinking aged puer and aged oolong.

Any perceived advantages or disadvantages to "the root" are debatable and, like taste itself, entirely subjective. I will never claim that there is only one correct way to do anything. Experienced tea brewers accept that every tea is different and will behave differently each time it is brewed. Sometimes I'll feel like using "the root" and other times I'll avoid mixing infusions. That said, I would really love to hear from any other tea brewers out there regarding your own experiences using "the root."

* Chahai (tea ocean) (茶海) is the name I use for a tea pitcher. These pitchers are also sometimes called "decanters" or "fairness cups".

Green Tea Flavor Project - SEAWEED

Fellow tea blogger Jason Walker recently came across an interesting research experiment conducted at the University of Kansas' Sensory Analysis Center. The experiment identified 31 different flavor attributes found in the 138 loose-leaf green teas randomly and blindly cupped by the study's participants. These 31 flavor attributes can be seen in Table 1 of A Lexicon for Flavor Descriptive Analysis of Green Tea (I am currently checking if it is possible to link to this study).

After reading the study results, Jason proposed a collaboration among members of the Association of Tea Bloggers to pick one flavor attribute and then prepare, photograph and evaluate an infusion based on the information in the study. I chose SEAWEED, defined in the article as: "the aromatics associated with shellfish, fresh fish and ocean vegetation." The study referenced a specific brand of "brown seaweed" that I couldn't find so I used kombu (which, along with wakame, is a type of brown seaweed). The study goes on to say: "Use 1 gram of seaweed with 300 mL {I'm assuming boiling} water. Let it sit for 10 minutes."

1 gram of seaweed. Check.


Steep for 1o minutes in 300 mL water. Check.


The resulting brew:

In that last photo it just looks likes plain water but it did have a little bit of a greenish-yellow tint when held in the right light. The taste was not nearly as oceanic as the smell (which could be a little hard to get past) but once the liquor was on my tongue I felt rewarded by its thick, umami mouth feel. It had a wonderful buttery, brothy flavor with notes of minerals and sand.

I have cupped tea with people in the past who identified a light oceanic or fishy taste in some teas while I did not. I imagine that if a green tea I was sipping had such an intense oceanic aroma or taste I would be pretty turned off by it. Tea grows in the mountains and seaweed grows in the ocean... and that's the way it should be! But that buttery, thick, smooth flavor (that I found to be very intense in the seaweed infusion) is one I have noted in several fantastic green teas such as high quality gyokuro tea from Japan and super fresh taiping houkui (太平猴魁) green tea from China. I believe part of this may come from a higher amount of theanine in these types of tea.

In closing, I am glad to have tasted an infusion of seaweed and look forward to reading the other bloggers' posts about their own flavor experiments! I will add the links to the other blogs as they are posted.
10/19/09 Walker Tea Review - Parsley
11/7/09 Tea Pages - Asparagus

And after the experiment... I ate the seaweed. Yum.

Blending Oolong: An Experiment

One month ago during an oolong class that I taught at Teacup, I fielded a question from my friend Michael about the possibilities of blending oolong teas. Michael, who already has a great understanding of both tea and coffee, did not seem surprised when I answered something like: "Quality oolong tea should not be blended. These teas are made in small quantities by skilled tea artisans, and the fact that they are produced in one place and at one time adds to their value and allure." For the most part, Michael agreed with me, but there were certain flavors he liked about the Wenshan Baozhong tea (文山包種茶) that he could see pairing well with certain flavors in the Formosa Silvertip tea (台灣銀毫茶)*. We also discussed the importance of blending for many fine black teas and coffees.

Over the next several days I thought about what Michael had asked. I wondered what would happen if I brewed up a pot of tea using half Wenshan Baozhong leaves and half Formosa Silvertip. Would it be greater than the sum of its parts? The next time I saw Michael I decided we'd find out together (for the sake of science).

Spring '09 Wenshan Baozhong

Summer '08 Formosa Silvertip

I brewed an equal blend of 文山包種茶 and 台灣銀毫茶 using a small ceramic teapot. The aroma was light, bright and pleasant and the tea soup was an odd shade of orange.

The Tea Soup

I did three infusions with similar results. Each time the flavors were muted and boring. Wenshan Baozhong's classic buttery-flowery notes were overshadowed by the stronger Formosa Silvertip. The resulting cup tasted like weak Formosa Silvertip with some brisk, peachy, woodsy flavors. On their own, these two Taiwanese oolongs have good body and aroma but in this blend they seemed to canceled each other out. The quality of the individual teas did become more apparent after the liquor had cooled to room temperature. At that point the blend was a bit smoother with a nice hint of Baozhong.

In the end this was a worthwhile experiment. Perhaps if I were to repeat it I might try 3/4 Wenshan to 1/4 Formosa.

茶陰陽

* Formosa Silvertip is a famous Taiwanese oolong that sometimes goes by many other names. My friend Rob recently did a great blog post on that topic. Here is the link.

Microwave Water Experiment

On July 4th, I organized an experiment to compare the flavor of 4 different teas. Each tea was brewed with both microwaved water and electric kettle heated water. Six volunteers participated in the experiment. They were given two cups of each tea and then asked to rate the flavor of each tea on a scale of 1 to 10. They knew what tea they were drinking, but they had no idea which cup held the microwaved water and which held the kettle water. Without talking they wrote their ratings down on a post-it, then I collected the data and prepared the next round.

My lovely volunteers:
Their names (based on their Post-it colors) are:
Ms. Yellow, Mr. Yellow (no relation), Ms. Purple,
Ms. Pink, Mr. Orange and Mr. Blue

These variables were controlled:
1. Style of teapot (2-cup Chatsfords)
2. Same brewing baskets (brand new medium Finums)
3. Weight of dry leaf
4. Source of water (Crystal Springs)
5. Temperature
6. Heating material (Pyrex)
7. Steeping time

Heating the water in microwave:

Heating the water in kettle:

Brewing the tea:

I was not trying to prove anything by conducting this experiment. My goal with the experiment was simply to have a good time and to get some friends together to drink tea in an unusual format.

Most of us agree that natural elements are the key to brewing great tea, therefore, regardless of my results I wouldn't recommend using microwaved water to brew tea. That being said, I am also a big fan of the scientific method, and entirely curious (and clueless) about how this experiment would turn out. My hypothesis going in was: "very close results, slightly favoring the kettle."

The first tea was White Peony (百牡丹), a delicate white tea from Fujian, China.

Taster / Microwave / Kettle:
Ms. Yellow / 4.97 / 4.99

Mr. Yellow / 7 / 6
Ms. Purple / 5 / 6.25
Ms. Pink / 5 / 7
Mr. Orange / 4 / 6
Mr. Blue / 6 / 5
Total Rating / 31.97 / 35.24

The second tea was Joh Sencha, a vibrant, fresh tasting green tea from Japan.

Taster / Microwave / Kettle:
Ms. Yellow / 3.02 / 3

Mr. Yellow / 6.25 / 5.75
Ms. Purple / 7 / 7
Ms. Pink / 5 / 6
Mr. Orange / 7 / 4
Mr. Blue / 6 / 5
Total Rating / 34.27 / 30.75

The third tea was a delicious Spring 2009 Wenshan Baozhong from Pinglin, Taiwan.

Taster / Microwave / Kettle:
Ms. Yellow / 6.5 / 6.52

Mr. Yellow / 7.33 / 5.33
Ms. Purple / 7 / 8
Ms. Pink / 8 / 4
Mr. Orange / 5.5 / 9
Mr. Blue / 8 / 9
Total Rating / 42.33 / 41.85

The final tea was Keemun Hao Ya A, a rich black tea from Anhui, China.

Taster / Microwave / Kettle:
Mrs. Yellow / 6.5 / 5

Mr. Yellow / 1.99 / 1.98
Ms. Purple / 4 / 4
Ms. Pink / 1 / 2
Mr. Orange / 7 / 4.5
Mr. Blue / 7 / 8
Total Rating / 27.49 / 25.48

These results show very close numbers with microwaved water winning 3 out of 4 times and a combined rating of 136.06 for microwave and 133.32 for kettle. Because these ratings are so close and the sample was so small, we cannot make any real claims based on my experiment (except maybe that Ms. Pink hates Keemun)... but they do make you think!

In the end, we all had a fun afternoon and made some new tea friends. Most of the volunteers shared my hypothesis and, like me, seemed to be a little surprised by the results of this blind tasting.