Ba Bao Cha Year #5

Every year, around Christmas time, I "treat" myself to a gaiwan of Ba Bao Cha (八寶茶) (eight treasure tea) then I blog about it. This year's blend tasted like watered down ketchup mixed with Hawaiian punch and corn syrup. I could only take two small sips. See you next year Ba Bao!

Ba Bao Cha Part IV

Today marks my fourth Christmas as a tea blogger. Ever since my first year I've had a little tradition of drinking ba bao cha (八寶茶) (eight treasure tea) every year around this time.

Since I've already written over and over about what ba bao cha is and how I generally feel about it today's post will be short and sweet.

Dried fruit, sugar, chrysanthemums, goji berries, and green tea.

Looks pretty in a glass gaiwan. Smells like prunes!

Syrupy, fruity, amber liquor.

These 6 things + sugar does not equal 8 treasures.

(...maybe I was supposed to count water as the 8th treasure?)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TEA FRIENDS!

88 Treasures Tea (八十八寶茶)

A week ago, while browsing the tea aisle at 99 Ranch Market in Kent, a little red box of tea caught my eye. It was called 八十八寶茶 or 88 Treasures Tea, and I could see that it was from a tea company based out of Xining (西寧), China. It didn't cost too much so I decided to give it a try. In the least, it would make a good blog post.

You may already know that ba bao cha (eight treasure tea) is very popular in Xining. Eight is considered a lucky number to the Chinese and so the blend will always contains eight ingredients.

I looked closer at the package in my hand... and, sure enough, this blend appears to actually contain 88 ingredients!

I knew it would take me a hundred years to translate the packaging on my own, so I asked a Chinese friend who sometimes visits me at Teacup. He took the box home and then emailed me his translation a couple days later.

Here's what it says: "New Organic 88 treasure tea is the perfect, healthy gift for dad! Our unique blend of herbs and teas contains eleven times the power and longevity of simple eight treasures! Our tea is good for the prostate and vitality. Give dad the gift of life and great taste!"

The box even has a little picture of a young man giving a cup of tea to an older man printed above the product name. At this point it dawned on me that the 88 also appeals to the Chinese love of puns, because 88 and dad can both be pronounced "Ba Ba" in Mandarin. (That's why Chinese father's day is August 8th.)

So what's in the blend you ask? Here's the list that I was given:
Chrysanthemum, Astragalus, Wolf Berry, Jujube, Ginseng root, Tuckahoe, Tangerine Peel, Danshen, Snake Gourd Seed, Star Anise, Common Squill Bulb, Horsetail, Longstamen, Common Smoketree, Fritillary, Wax Gourd Peel, Sweet Osmanthus Flower, Dogbane Leaf, Rock Sugar, Ginko, Pricklyash Peel, Elm bark, Chamomile, Rosehips, Towel Gourd Stem, Raspberry leaf, Korean Monkshood, Loquat Leaf, Papaya leaf, Peppermint, Shanlu Tea, Spearmint, Drug Sweetflag Rhizome, Raisin, Oak Bark, Strawberry Leaf, Bat Guano, Vanilla, Passionflower, Kelp, Red Clover, Wild Cherry Bark, Rhubarb, Peony, Sand Root, Licorice Root, Damiana, Goldthread, Ma Huang, Hyssop, Candied Hawthorn, Stinging Nettle, Dong Quai, Lemon Peel, Puer Tea, Wintergreen, Tuberous Sword Fern, Lavender, Lemongrass, Bombax Flower, Ginger Root, Nux Vomica, Elder Flowers, African Plum, Salvia, Japanese Climbing Fern Spore, Nine Winter Monkey Tea, Echinacea, Marshmallow, Fermented Yarrow Flower, Clove, Lycopene, Water Vapor, Gut Flora, Selenium, Nut Husk, Saw Palmetto, Balloon Flower Root, Gypsum, Zinc, Snow Lotus, Urea, Dandelion, Valerian, Linear Stonecrop, Mustard Seed, Wooly Datchmanspipe, and Green Tea!

Here's what it all looks like:

I steeped it for five minutes in a small ceramic teapot (Chip to be precise) using boiling hot water...

...and here's the result:

So what does it taste like you ask? It's very sweet, with an odd metallic note and a surprisingly mild finish. The most noteworthy flavors were mud and syrup. I did pick up a little bit of gingery-heat in my throat about an hour after drinking.

As for the health benefits of imbibing so many exotic herbs... I really can't make any firm declarations. I feel a little bit light-headed and sweaty and my pee has never looked darker.

I probably won't drink 88 Treasures Tea again.

Ba Bao Cha Year #3

I have started an odd little holiday tradition. I drink a small cup of Ba Bao Cha (八寶茶) (eight treasure tea) and then I blog about it.

As I mentioned in my post Ba Bao Cha Revisited from 364 days ago, my friend Tiffany gifted me 19 single serving packs of Ba Bao Cha. I only drink one pack per year so...

...now I have these 18 packs left.

Besides rock sugar and a scant amount of green tea, every pack is a little different. I chose that pack on the top which appeared to be the only one with an orange slice in it.

The dry contents looked like this.

I steeped it for five minutes with boiling hot water. The resulting soup had an orange color and a fruity aroma.

I asked my wife to try a little sip. She did, and then instantly made a "yuck face." She did not want anything to do with it.

I then asked my almost three year old daughter, who was busy playing by herself in the living room and had not witnessed her mother's negative reaction, to taste it. She did... and had the exact same reaction as her mother.

I, on the other hand, didn't mind the flavor too much (although I'm quite sure that I could never drink more than 2 ounces in a single year). I liked this pack a little more than last year's sample because it was fruitier and less like drinking perfume.

Here is a shot of this year's eight holiday treasures!

Now lets see... I have: two cherries chopped in half / four goji berries / two chrysanthemum blossoms / rock sugar (which I'm not sure I would actually count as a treasure but hey whatever) / some sliced strawberry / one orange slice / and about 1 gram of broken green tea leaves.

1...2...3...4...5...6...7... uh... wait a second now... that's only SEVEN treasures! I've been robbed!

Oh well. I guess it's now time to go and brew some good tea anyway. Maybe next year I'll get eight treasures. Whether or not you even care, you can still count on me to tell you all about it in December of 2011.

Happy New Year!

Ba Bao Cha Revisited

Last year, I chronicled my first experience with Ba Bao Cha (八寶茶) (eight treasure tea). It is a blend of green tea, rock sugar, and eight different fruits and/or flowers and is a relatively popular beverage in certain parts of China. According to Google Analytics, my Ba Bao Cha post has brought more random searchers to this tea blog than any other post.

After reading my original review, my good friend and tea industry contemporary, Tiffany Picard, sent me 19 single-serving packets of different Ba Bao Cha blends. Because I am very seldom in the mood to drink flavored or sweetened tea, I decided that I would brew one packet every year around Christmas time.

This morning I decided it was time to try one, so I fired up the kettle and grabbed a gaiwan. Last year I used a larger teapot and omitted the sugar during brewing... but this time I emptied the entire contents of one small packet into the gaiwan (which is the traditional way to do it).

This was what was in the one packet that I chose to brew.

Steeping in the gaiwan.

I steeped the blend for 3 minutes with boiling water and then strained it into a decanter. I sipped it cautiously and noted its heady, perfume-like flavor. It is very sweet and fruity. My 22-month-old daughter, who is used to sampling a tiny bit of my tea, asked for a taste, so after it was cool enough I gave her a little sip. "Funny Tea!" she exclaimed. That cracked me up and we ended up talking about "the funny tea" for the rest of the day.

It tastes as "pretty" as it looks.

Keep in mind that Ba Bao Cha is not really "tea," it is a sweetened herbal beverage containing a little bit of tea. There are some people who believe the herbs it contains are particularly healthy or curative. While I can't speak to that, I do believe that it is much healthier to have a cup of all natural Ba Bao Cha than it is to drink soda or Kool-aid.

I steeped the Bao Bao Cha one more time and it was not nearly as good as the first brew. After a few more sips I started playing with the herbs to see just what I was drinking.

I found...

...a few chrysanthemum flowers,

some dried strawberry,

one rose bud,

three or four goji berries,

a plum, I think,


these weird little things,

a pinch of sad looking green tea,

one lonely nut of unknown name,

and an empty, mysterious pod, of unknown name.

I look forward to my third cup of Ba Bao Cha sometime in December 2010... but until then I think I'll go make myself a nice pot of Alishan!

Ba Bao Cha - 八宝茶

Last Summer I met a really cool fellow named Marty. He lives in Xining City in China (西宁市,中国*) and studies Mandarin and Tibetan. He is very passionate about improving the relationship between the Chinese, Muslims and Tibetans who all share this diverse region. According to Marty, the most popular tea among the Muslims in this area is called Ba Bao Cha (八宝茶) (Eight Treasure Tea).

A few months after Marty returned to China, a mutual friend named Nicole also traveled to China. She visited Marty in Xining and at his request brought a package of Ba Bao Cha and a package of Tibetan brick tea home for me to try!** (I promise to blog about the Tibetan tea later.)

Ba Bao Cha Front:


Ba Bao Cha Back:

Ba Bao Cha is a blend of: green tea, rock sugar, herbs, flowers and dried fruits. Different people have different recipes for Ba Bao Cha, but each recipe usually has eight ingredients because eight is a very lucky number in China. A recent Internet search revealed the follow ingredients to be the most common: wolf berry (aka goji berry), raisin, apricot, sesame, longan, walnut, jujube (aka red date), chrysanthemum, nasturtiums, honeysuckle, lemon peel, ginseng root, tangerine peel, and bingtang (aka candied hawthorn).

The contents of the package:

I decided to wait until Christmas morning to try the Ba Bao Cha with my wife, my sister and my brother in law. I now know that I didn't brew the tea correctly. I used "Chip" (a 20 ounce teapot) while the Chinese will typically use a 6 ounce gaiwan. Also, I reserved the sugar to mix in at the end because I normally don't like sweetened tea, but the Chinese will put it right into their gaiwan so that it will melt while the tea is brewing. Finally, I only steeped the tea for five minutes. That may have been OK if I had been using a gaiwan but our tea turned out far too weak brewed in Chip.

We decanted the liquor into our teacups and tried it first without sugar. It tasted fine, like a slightly smoky Chinese green tea, plus it had a nice fruity aftertaste. Then we each mixed in a heaping teaspoon of rock sugar. Unfortunately it was now way too sweet for our tastes. The sugar did bring out more fruity flavors but the cloying taste of weak tea and too much sugar was almost unbearable. We then steeped the Ba Bao Cha one more time for about 10 minutes... but the results were the same as our first infusion so we decided to move on to another tea.

Chip (the teapot) and the Tea:

I found the Ba Bao Cha to be a very interesting and pleasant brew. I only wish I had another package so that I could try brewing it again in the correct style. Someday, I may even be inspired to make my own Ba Bao Cha recipe.

* For this post I used "Simplified" Chinese characters instead of the "Traditional" characters which I typically use and study. The reason I chose "simplified" characters is because the Ba Bao Cha's packaging and the city of Xining also uses this system. In the "traditional" system treasure is written 寶 (as opposed to 宝) and Xining is written 西寧 (as opposed to 西宁).

** Dear Marty and Nicole, 谢谢你们. Thank you so much. I was very surprised and delighted by your exotic gift!