Assault rifle use in hunting

 

from an article cited here on scopes for AR-15 for different uses (photo credit)

Kind of a strange subject to take up in a tea blog, right?  Lately I've decided that if some other subject I'm reading about is interesting to me I'll share it here, and if my political bias offends people (moderate but to the left, really) then they can miss out on the rest about tea.  

It's not as if that many people read this blog either way, or that it makes any difference how many do.  It would be easy for someone to skip the off-tea theme posts, or getting offended and checking out is reasonable, even for a liberal who hates the idea of mixing subjects.  

I'm not that liberal, as I see it.  Political correctness and the rest seems strange to me, for not being in the US for the last 13 years while it all ramped up to where it is now.  And I lived in Hawaii before that; it's coming up on 16 years since I've lived in "the mainland."  "People of color" were called black people then, or at least the set who had been referred to as "African Americans" back in the 90s were.

I'll not debate whether assault weapons, with a main focus on the AR-15, should be banned or not in this.  Obviously the main prompt for even reading around related to this was the recent Boulder shooting, that killed 10, which followed an Atlanta mass-shooting about a week prior.  The Boulder version followed the typical form better, someone walking into a random place to kill lots of people.  Of course both individuals were quite unbalanced; how could they not be, given what both did?

Even though this is going in a strange direction, focusing on whether or not the AR-15 plays a natural role in hunting, which includes a tangent on media bias in reporting on such issues, this particular gun is a variation of a military assault weapon.  Gun enthusiasts and groups use such terms in whatever ways suit them best, assault rifle versus something friendlier sounding, but this Time article, essentially supporting AR-15 use in hunting, covers the real background:

Marbut, 69, first used the AR-platform during three years he spent in the military. Adopted by the U.S. military in the 1960s, the M-16 is the fully automatic version of the AR. The military still uses a variant of the gun. The familiarity Marbut developed with the gun in the military prepared him to hunt with it when he returned home to Montana.

Let's back up a bit related to that source:  it's a 2016 Time article titled "Here Are 7 Animals Hunters Kill Using an AR-15."  A political position is clearly implied in that article title, but only implied, which becomes more explicit in the article opening:

After the Orlando nightclub shooting, Democrats criticized the routine sale of the type of semiautomatic rifle used by Omar Mateen. Hillary Clinton called them “weapons of war.” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said that if you used a gun like the AR-15 — or the similar Sig Sauer used in Orlando — to go hunting “you should stick to fishing.”

But many gun owners say they use semiautomatic rifles to hunt regularly.

In interviews with TIME, leaders of 15 state shooting groups said semiautomatic rifles are popular with hunters in their states. Hunters say they favor the gun for its versatility, accuracy and customizable features for shooting animals. The semiautomatic feature, which allows these guns to shoot up to 45 rounds a minute, is not always necessary, but useful in some situations, hunters say...

45 shots per minute supports potential to kill a lot of game (hunted animals), or humans.  A bit more background cited soon after allows the article to move completely past the political divide in perspective:

Despite the criticism of semiautomatic rifles and their use in high profile mass shootings, gun control advocates say they are not focused on banning them, as they were during the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban. Stacey Radnor, spokeswoman for Everytown for Gun Safety, said that they are more focused on strengthening background checks and closing loopholes on sales than on banning specific guns.

So it's a non-issue on both sides, at least as far as that source goes.  Then it's onto which animals it makes sense to hunt using a weapon with those features.  

The main problem with the article is that almost half those animals aren't being hunted with that weapon in that article, as they normally are configured, with 2 cited using larger variations (one a different gun entirely and one other a modification).  One case is about someone using a 22 instead, a completely different thing.  Maybe the rest actually works, or maybe it doesn't.  For hunting wild pigs / boar the claim is that it's safer to have semi-automatic capability for self-defense, and tied to another case that same function helps you kill fast moving jackrabbits more effectively.

A bit of an aside:  one might wonder, is Time a conservative news source, as all this implies?  Sure, but only moderately so, according to this 2018 Market Watch source:

One of the main references about media bias (I think?) from Ad Fontes Media left Time off the latest version, but had them in the center in earlier chart versions:

Justifying AR-15 use as valid for hunting is definitely a conservative theme, but I suppose it would be possible for an outlet to judge different topics in different lights, to be conservative about hunting rights and more liberal about human rights issues.  Then again who's kidding who; it's conservative media.

But then that's not clearly identified in Time's most recent story line on this theme, Mass Shootings: 'This Is What Normal Has Come to Be Like in America'.  Either they've shifted political inclination or that's so obvious now that we can all finally agree on it. Fox News didn't put any interpretive spin on this Boulder story, they just described what happened.

So are those guns every really used for hunting?  Sure, in some cases by some people, but speaking as a former hunter from a rural Pennsylvania hunting background myself no, not really.  What would you use a semi-automatic weapon to hunt?  It's too small a caliber for deer, and for a really small animal you could just use a 22, as the guy did in the Time article on using an AR-15, who killed seals with one.  For rabbits and such you typically use a shotgun.  

In that Time article hunters really were using AR-15s to hunt feral goats, feral pigs, jackrabbits, and coyotes.  Maybe the pigs would really attack a hunter, bringing up a self-defense issue requiring 45 shot per minute capability, but any moderate sized rifle would probably be fine for the rest.  As a hunter you shoot to kill animals, not to wound them, so the idea of spraying lots of bullets towards pigs attacking you might be fine but shooting randomly at jackrabbits running around just isn't how that works.  Lots of them would run off wounded, dying or blood loss or infection after however long that took, or they would live out their lives with a wound that had healed.

But still I looked through a gun enthusiast ("Gunbacker") guide for AR-15 equipment to get more input on that, BEST AR-15 SCOPES AND OPTICS: TACTICAL REVIEWS.

Although its roots are military, the AR-15 platform has become one of the USA’s most popular hunting rifles. In the standard .223 caliber, it’s ideal for small varmints and predator control. The AR-15 is a reliable, light, and inherently accurate weapon. Still, we needed to find the best AR-15 scope to match.

When paired with the right accessories, the AR-15 is perfect for the job of bringing down a wide range of game. 

Back to that then, that "home defense" and tactical role playing aren't the only uses for this kind of weapon.  After describing some scope basics (the sighting optics familiar from action movies, what hunters and snipers use, and what I spent my childhood learning to use, after practicing on open sights), the article covers range of applications:

AR-15 optics are not universal. You need to plan for how you intend to use your rifle, and sometimes owning multiple scopes makes sense. If you intend to use your rifle for tactical urban warfare drills in a survivalist training camp, a Red dot scope like an Aimpoint or a holographic scope like an EoTech are your best bet. Even for short-range varmint hunting, a red dot or holographic sight is perfect. For longer range, you want something with magnification settings that you can adjust depending on your windage and elevation, just like other long-range rifle scopes that may outfit a 30-06 or a .308.

Clear enough.  A conservative read is that the gun has multiple valid uses; a liberal take would be that this is all pretense for owning a war-games / people-killing weapon.  That source's review of the first category, and then of specific scope versions (optics, they call them) is similar in that regard:

BEST AR-15 OPTICS: EOTECH HOLOGRAPHIC SIGHTS

Holographic sights are used primarily in close-quarters combat. They are used primarily by military personnel and law enforcement agencies. They have also gained an incredible amount of popularity over the last few years as a close-quarters sight for anyone that likes to hunt varmints at a closer range. The biggest advantage a Holographic sight has over a red dot scope is that the reticle is much bigger and the MOA is provided better range precision.

It keeps going like that from there.  The hunting theme never completely drops out but repeated mentions of military use, durability, and tactical warfare context seems to speak more to a "defense oriented" audience.  If you see someone doing "tactical urban warfare drills in a survivalist training camp" learning self-defense skills, that is.  Any handgun would be fine for home defense, or a shotgun, and the 22 target rifle I shot as a kid would kill zombies, with no military style training required for that.

I suppose it's time to talk about restricting use of these weapons again.  A waiting period and additional review step will come of that, at most.  For whatever reasons it's impossible or impractical to connect gun ownership restrictions to any degree of risk assessment or control.  Some people must already be denied ownership related to some existing checks, but in general the US population is arming themselves at record rates, per that recent Time article:

About 22.8 million firearms were sold in 2020, compared with 13.9 million the previous year, according to estimates by the Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, an independent research firm. In 2020, the FBI conducted more firearm background checks than any year on record—more than 39.6 million, data from the agency shows. More than 8.4 million people in the U.S. became first-time gun owners last year, the National Shooting Sports Foundation says, adding that record sales have sparked ammunition shortages across the country.

Scary.  I was raised with lots of guns around, a hunting tradition, and gun safety, so I don't have a one-sided take on this issue, but that's a lot of people preparing for the worst.  For sure some of them are no more stable than the two people who just murdered 18 people in those two incidents.  In at least a limited number of other cases the preparation will lead to a different negative outcome, because gun accidents and use for suicide are also significant causes of gun deaths.  It's possible to commit suicide with whatever is in your medicine cabinet too, maybe, but it's potentially more reversible to take some pills than a bullet to the head.

One strange part is that I never knew anyone who had an accident with a gun while growing up, or that committed suicide, or snapped and "went out with a bang."  This horrible trend has nothing to do with real hunting culture.  I don't think people owning AR-15s does either though, myself.  A friend and cousin owns one, and he loves the gun for the same reason the guy familiar with it from military service did, having served in the military himself.  If someone breaks into my friend's house he should be able to shoot that person 45 times in the first minute.  Unfortunately people on a very different page can also walk into a grocery store and do roughly the same thing.  Comparable carnage would also be horrifying using a handgun; the US needs to find multiple ways to reduce this trend.

Trident Booksellers Long Feng Xia, compared to two other oolongs

I recently tried the last tea sent by Trident Booksellers (surely a decent place to try a cup of tea in Boulder, Colorado) as an extension of discussing teas with their knowledgeable tea procurer, Peter.

This Long Feng Xia lightly oxidized Taiwanese oolong was great, a very nice example of the type, and really of Taiwanese oolongs in general.  I'm too new to tea to place it in relation to other Long Feng Xia oolongs, since I'm only three years into making an obsession of tea, so to help place it I'll mention a couple of other teas that I've recently tried, Thai and Chinese oolongs.  The styles aren't so similar, with the point being to identify the variances through comparison.

Long Feng Xia review

The tea is lightly oxidized, as it was described (winter 2015 top-grade light oolong). The first taste relates to a normal lighter oolong profile, with a couple of exceptional characteristics.  The basic tastes are mineral and floral with a bit of vegetal scope, complex with different elements that integrate well together.  There is a notable fullness to the feel of the tea and a nice sweetness.  That mineral element is a bit hard to place, maybe in between granite and slate.  There's just a bit of butter, different than the expression of butter in a Jin Xuan, which can be stronger.

The floral element is more subtle and integrated than those sometimes come across.  I'm not so great with floral scent memory but the range might be lotus, sweet and rich, a little subdued but a nice complement to the other flavors.  It's hard to fully appreciate but there are no negative flavor aspects, no apparent flaws in the tea, and it all really balances and works.

A green vegetal flavor element gives the flavor range a fullness that reminds me of a Japanese green tea, just at a much lower level, the umami aspect.  It's not a principle component of the tea flavor or experience profile, but that bit of extra range stands out when tasting it initially.  After just a few sips it seems familiar and not so noticeable.  That component joins with the mineral tones in this tea, and doesn't extend to accompany seaweed or other vegetal aspects as might be associated with it in Japanese green teas.

Is that general point clear?  Umami is a savory taste, picked up by the tongue, overlapping quite a bit with MSG (it's an effect from glutamates; MSG is mono-sodium glutamate, one of those).  I wrote a lot more on that in reviewing a Japanese Gyokuro green tea (from Trident, as it worked out) in an earlier post.  Other vegetal flavors can seem to pair up with it, since seaweed and Japanese teas can express a common range related to umami and also other separate vegetal taste elements, more like spinach, but really most like seaweed (which of course is circular, saying that seaweed tastes like seaweed).

Brewed a little stronger the vegetal elements really stand out, and the flavor shifts a little towards sweet corn, towards a typical Tie Kuan Yin range.  Of course there is no astringency in the sense of other tea types, just a bit to give it a full feel and a hint of dryness.  After some infusions the taste gets richer yet and softer, with the fullness remaining, and after many more some of the aspects fade while the mineral element stays strong.

Compared to two other lightly oxidized oolongs

I've been trying to get in the habit of writing simpler, more basic reviews, and that would have been one place to leave off.  But it sounded a little to me like I was describing a standard high-mountain lightly oxidized Taiwanese oolong, without the full effect of how such a tea really comes across.  I've been drinking a couple of other lighter oolongs that will help place everything that goes right in setting up that standard experience, which really only typical in better examples, so maybe atypical.  These other teas just happen to be from Thailand and China, so not exactly comparing apples to apples, but the point is more about traits that come up, that compare or contrast.


I picked up a Thai Jin Xuan in passing very recently, the kind of thing I usually try not to do, since without proper version screening that tends to lead to an ordinary tea experience.  But I was at a local Chinese elementary school where we might send my daughter for pre-school, and they had a small Chinese cultural center or sorts, and I couldn't resist.  My wife reminded me that I tried the tea before (my son did a Chinese-theme summer camp there awhile back) and said it was so-so, and indeed it is.


It's typical for Thai Jin Xuan to have a bright, sweet, floral nature, with a distinctive buttery flavor aspect.  Better examples have nice clean flavors, and some degree of fullness, and worse examples just taste off.  This is in the middle, with an unusual wood-tone aspect dominating the flavor profile.  There isn't so much butter to it but under that there is a nice honey sweetness, which shows up better in smelling the empty cup than it does in tasting the tea.

Jin Xuan, but the label is in Thai and Chinese

It has a floral element, a bit soft and subdued, maybe along the lines of a light lavender, a bit less "bright" a floral component than many lightly oxidized oolongs exhibit.  It's not bad but it doesn't really fully come together; it doesn't click.  To use this as comparison for the Long Feng Xia, it's hard to fully appreciate that clean presentation of complex, positive taste aspects that does balance well, but easy to notice the lack of all that.


I've recently been drinking Tie Kuan Yin that Tea Village provided, one of the nicest vendors in Thailand, along with teas I ordered.  Tie Kuan Yin could get some negative exposure for showing up as a commonly available oolong, for turning up in grocery stores, but it comes in a range of different quality levels.  It's a plant type grown in Taiwan, China, and Thailand, maybe the most commonly seen prepared in a lighter style (although here Jin Xuan is more common).   This version is from the Anxi area in China, the origin best known for this tea type. The best examples have an amazing floral sweetness that words couldn't really do justice to, in bright tones like orchid.  Mid-range versions can also be very nice, as this one was.

nice and bright green

This version stood out for being very clean and bright, and relatively sweet.  The primary taste was closer to sweet corn, mixed with a vegetal element like fresh sugar snap peas or fresh green beans.  That doesn't sound as nice as it comes across, like nice fresh versions, nothing like frozen vegetables.  That clean, bright effect is really what the Jin Xuan was missing, relating to the effect and general quality level that such teas should have.  The other Taiwanese oolong was really on the next level, different in character, but also adding complexity, structure, full feel, and more subtle taste components to it, in addition to a lot of mineral range.


I guess to some extent this maps back onto a warning about sourcing, something along the lines of "you get what you pay for." Or maybe it's just that you can only trust sources to the extent that they actually try to find and sell you better teas.  Some random stall in a traditional market here is a gamble (not where I bought this Jin Xuan, but that has come up, with mixed results), with more consistency in shops you already know.  Finding rare, better teas doesn't really work well by chance, unless you happen to be in the place those are made, and even then maybe not.  Tea quality doesn't necessarily map directly back to cost but tea producers and vendors tend to sell teas for going market rates.  That Tie Kuan Yin was nice, for what it was, but I'd have rather paid twice as much for the Jin Xuan to get a better tea.

Two classic oolongs from the Trident Booksellers and Cafe in Boulder, CO

One thing I haven't been able to master in blogging is writing a short, simple tea review, the standard form for most such writing.  I'll fail here too, but since Peter Jones of the Trident Bookstore was kind enough to share some exceptional tea samples it's a good opportunity to practice towards that.  I'll review and compare two very different standard oolong types, one from China and the other Taiwan, a dark roasted Tie Kuan Yin and medium-level oxidized and roasted Qingxin.  In an earlier related post, on a Gyokuro Japanese green tea, I definitely drifted way off on a tangent about a scent-based taste element experiment.

The general point here is that better teas are out there, with a context of oolongs being my favorite general category of teas (for some reason for most tea enthusiasts it usually seems to be those or pu'er).  The idea isn't to provide an in-depth analysis of either tea, or to do justice to describing the origin locations and types, since that would take the usual wordy in-depth review to even start on.

There are places in Bangkok (where I live) where you can walk into a cafe and try some nice tea, many more than existed two or three years ago, but it's still not a universal thing here.  A cafe has to really work at it to identify and offer good versions or else selection can be spotty at best, and Peter has obviously put the work in.  He also sent a sample of a good Longjing (Dragonwell), which would be hard to review since the list of flavors approach doesn't capture what a good Longjing is like.  To some extent the flavor can be described (related to toasted rice, or nuts, maybe an element of fresh cut hay, etc.) but the effect of freshness that comes across is hard to capture.

Most of the original supplier information is missing, who actually made the teas, which is fair for sales from a cafe, a different sourcing paradigm than online sales where comparing this information makes more sense.  It's odd reviewing teas sent as samples that isn't under that typing but as mentioned in that first review this was more about sharing tea, an outgrowth of ongoing Facebook tea group discussion than a marketing initiative.  It makes more sense if you know "tea people."

Anyone near Boulder could go to this store, or to another shop on a similar page, and get the rest of the experience, since writing doesn't do it justice anyway.  People living out of range of such shops have their work cut out for them.  They could just stick to coffee, but never mind about tea-bags, which truly are the tea equivalent of instant coffee (which can be ok, but it's not the same thing).

Dark roasted Tie Kuan Yin from Anxi, China (winter harvest version)

Oddly I've not tried many versions of this style of tea, although I have drank lots of the lighter style, and just as oddly the last I remember prior to this was a few months back.  I might start by saying the appearance of the tea is a bit unconventional, as unusually small and dark rolled balls, with more tasting notes following.


The smell of the dry tea is mineral intensive, something like slate, with a lot of roasted element coming across.  One predominant taste element stands out initially:  roasted popcorn.  This is somewhat new to me.  The tea even has a buttery taste and feel to it to go with that, but the next steeps should draw out even more sweetness and complexity.


The next infusion still has that unusual aspect but it's transitioning to a more conventional roasted tea range, with a light, fresh, smooth taste joining in.  This aspect is the same as found in many lighter oolongs, on the less oxidized end of the spectrum, typically prepared as lightly roasted as well.  The flavors are clean and complex, with some floral and light mineral elements joined by traces of what could be fruit.  It's a lot going on for me to express all of it as a list, even with the Gongfu style brewing enabling better experience of the subtle aspects and flavor transitions.


The sweetness really keeps developing through the infusions, with the dark roasted influence shifting to a more familiar expression, one I struggle with describing as other reviews tend to.  It reminds me of black ink, or it could be seen as closer to perfume, even an element found in liquors.  Although the tea is still very sweet and there is more there related to those other lighter ranges the taste of that element is still predominant.  There is still a trace of roasted popcorn but more floral aspects pick up, maybe in the range of a rose. But then I'm not that great with memory of flower scents, so maybe not that.

brewed leaves:  quite dark

An underlying mineral taste is like some variation of rock, never so easy to pin down, maybe granite, and the earth is like a darker wood, maybe not as dark as a mahogany, let's say teak.  It would be understandable for someone else to "get" more floral, since that's still there, or to get hung up on the roast element,  the aromatic component, which really does stand out.  The feel is full and the taste lingers long after drinking, signs of a good tea.  I'm not so sure of the impact of the winter harvest element indicated on the package.


All in all it's a nice tea, interesting, but that heavy roast would make or break it for people depending on their preference related to such things.  Without ever trying one made like this that would be hard to guess at, but trying this tea would let someone know right away.  Dark roasted and lightly oxidized oolongs are not the most typical combination, but this is one conventional style, perhaps most often seen in this form, as TKY.

Nantou Qingxin Taiwanese mid-roasted oolong

There is so much going on with this tea, and so much back-story, that it really deserves it's own post, but in the interest of developing brevity and cutting it back for readers' sake I won't.  But I will start with some background.

Is this Dong Ding, one of the best known types of Taiwanese oolongs?  Maybe.  Per this Hojo (vendor) reference:

The authentic Dong Ding oolong comes from a village called Lugu (鹿谷) in Nantou County of Taiwan. Lugu is a village where the Dong Ding Mountain is located. The altitude of the Dong Ding Mountain is lower than other famous tea growing areas in Taiwan like Ali Shan or Li Shan. However, in judging the quality of tea, altitude is not an important indicator...

I've tried what was presented as Thai Dong Ding before, which is way off, since it's really supposed to be a very limited regional designation, the name of a mountain in a different country.  They must have meant the tea was made from the same plant in a similar style, or something such, but of course growing location does affect the tea.  Sometimes "mountain" in tea region naming is used to describe a narrowly defined mountainous area, not something like Mt. Fuji, so it can just depend.  In this prior post I cover some background on Taiwanese cultivars (really talking about a tea from Myanmar in that, but the plant-type subject overlaps there), and there is more detail in this other post.  That second includes the best reference on Taiwanese cultivars I've yet seen but the site was down at the time of writing this, hopefully just for an update of some sort.


Note that Qingxin is being referred to as Chin-hsin in those post references.  It's very handy how China updated and made their transliteration system consistent some years back, with the only draw-back being that the change-over in convention made reading older materials tricky.  Of course Taiwan doesn't feel a need to be on exactly the same page, so they didn't follow suit.  Or at least that's my understanding; I'm no linguist, and I don't read any version of Chinese language.


Dong Ding, or teas sold as Dong Ding, are typically medium roasted (almost nothing in Wikipedia about them, but maybe it's worth a look, with more about the region).  But this example from What-Cha, described as 30 % oxidized and 50% roasted, looks quite green in comparison, doesn't it?  I can't really fill in the most complete background about conventions from personal knowledge, and can only say that finding a good example of a truly medium level of oxidation and roast is not as easy as it might seem.  This Trident tea should be just a typical example in that regard, but in fact lighter versions can be relatively common.  Finding one with a good medium balance depends on your sourcing choices are working out well.


The tea is very nice.  It's a bit judgmental on my part, but for my preferences it's really on the next level compared to the Tie Kuan Yin, a very well made tea.  I didn't seem to make detailed tasting notes--one tends to lose track--but I've tried it a couple of times now, and made some notes in my mind last time, not really the most secure place to be keeping those.


The tea is rich and full in feel, with a nice flavor profile centered around aspects like roasted almond--the main one--and butternut squash.  The taste actually does have a buttery quality to it, in addition to the feel sort of going there, probably closer to a lightly browned butter versus some lighter oolongs tending towards regular butter.  Those basic tastes are not that far from sweet potato but I don't really get that, and it seems more common to notice it in black teas.


And that's about it; not much content in the mental notes.  As I tried this tea I didn't notice a lot of range of different flavors in terms of a long list, with aspects coming across as an integrated but limited range of different flavors.  What was there was complex and very pleasant, if all that makes sense.  It struck me as the kind of tea one wishes they could find and drink regularly, a step above what most might consider everyday tea.  In some regards it reminds me of one of my favorite teas, the Red Buffalo roasted oolong from Hatvala in Vietnam.  That tea's taste range is a little different, more cinnamon and cocoa than roasted almond and butternut squash, probably with not quite as rich a feel, but the general range and effect related to the oxidation and mid-roast could still be comparable.

This kind of tea works well for lots of types of brewing.  Prepared Gongfu style one could coax out some additional aspects and witness some degree of flavors transition, although perhaps not as pronounced as some other types would enable.  The nice feel and flavors comes across well prepared at different strengths (I checked), and it wouldn't lose much for preparing it Western style compared to some teas that do better with a more limited range of preparation parameters.

brewed leaves:  a little dark

It seems insulting to a tea this good to say it but it would hold up to brewing Grandpa style well, being prepared in a tea bottle and drank at different strengths as unchecked brewing time lets those transition.  For most teas made that way the general point is ease of preparation, not making the most of a good tea, and the main concern is them having limited astringency enabling that to work out.  For this tea one could also appreciate the variation in how it came across brewed differently, and not just accept that it did sort of work to cut preparation steps, or make the tea travel better.


I didn't really notice it changing in flavor profile a lot as I prepared it different ways, with the browned butter versus roasted almond and the rest shifting in proportions to some degree, but the tea was nice enough that it would be a labor of love to become more familiar with it and explore it's potential.  I suppose to some extent my preference for this tea over the first relates to a preference for this style, for balancing a medium level of oxidation and roast versus others appreciating the freshness and more pronounced floral aspects that lighter oolongs can exhibit.

Conclusion

Different teas are different?  Preference dictates which teas one would prefer best, but finding good versions makes all the difference in giving different styles a fair judgement.  Dark roasted Tie Kuan Yin is sort of out of style compared to the "nuclear green" versions (more on that in a related tea blog here, and there are other types he doesn't go into), but for Dong Ding and closely related Taiwanese oolongs being such a standard type finding a good version is not at all a given.  I visited with a tea friend here not so long ago who had just came back from vacation in Taiwan and I don't think we tried any teas as nice as this second one.  At some point it's about both seeking out the better tea examples and then paying a market price for them, since a high demand for good versions is out there.

As a contrast, both the supply and awareness and related demand for those Indonesian teas I just kept going on about is very limited.  Those were the opposite, non-standard types that most people generally don't know exist, potentially much harder to find since there are so few made.  I may have even helped screw that up by spreading the word, but plantations like Toba Wangi will help maintain the balance by producing more of them.  Oddly Taiwan has been moving in the other direction, in related news stories, dropping back production by completely removing some high-mountain farms based on public lands use due to erosion concerns.  This popular article makes it sound worse than it is, and this blog post clarifies the actual status a good bit.  But then all that is tangent, a story for another post, if I even get to it.

For me it's best to not worry too much about which teas I need to try, to take them as they come, but it is nice experiencing both novel teas and good versions of classic types, like these two.

Gyokuro from the Trident Booksellers and Cafe Boulder, Colorado

I recently reviewed a very nice Japanese green tea an online friend sent, from Peter of the Trident Booksellers and Cafe in Boulder, Colorado.  I talk to lots of people from different places online about tea, mostly in one Facebook tea group, and in this case that led to him sending some teas to try out (very nice!).  It's an unusual case because they don't sell tea online, but then different background for sharing tea isn't unheard of.  I lived two places in Colorado for a long time, in the Vail Valley and Fort Collins, not really related, just saying.

A bit of back-story about Japanese green teas:  I usually don't drink them.  That's odd because they were one type that served as a gateway for me to get into loose tea, initially from drinking tea in Japanese restaurants.  And we picked some up tea in Japan a long time ago, and a little there again last year; kind of a shame I'm not more on that page.

There's not really much to explain about that preference.  People seem to get into tea based on trying what they cross paths with, and then later other exposure can help steer them in different directions.  I drifted towards Chinese teas, more to oolongs and black teas, although I drink a lot of different types regularly, and go through cycles related to teas from different countries.

Type reference:

Although I won't get far in identifying the tea trueness-to-type I can give an opinion of the experience, but first I'll start with a little background on the type.  This is from the "My Japanese Green Tea" blog by Ricardo Caicedo, a site that's really worth a look for reference about Japanese teas, really not limited to green teas:


Gyokuro (玉露, literally gyokuro translates as jade dew) is considered to be one of the highest grades of green tea in Japan....  Gyokuro has a dark green color, and when brewed it is slightly sweet, with a refreshing aroma.

How is gyokuro made?

The process to make gyokuro is very similar to sencha, the only difference lies in the cultivation method. At least 20 days prior to harvesting, the tea leaves are shielded from sunlight. Because of the added difficulty in shading, the production cost is higher.

What difference does shading the tea make?

The characteristic taste of green tea is due in large part to an amino acid called L-theanine. This compound intensifies the umami taste in tea and also adds sweetness to it.


The rest is really worth a look, with lots on brewing process recommendations, and more on those compounds in the tea.  The short version for the recommendation is to brew it using very cool water, relatively, but it's as well to read the long version.  I didn't actually read this prior to making the tea but I was already familiar with that being standard related to this type, since standard brewing parameters keeps coming up.

As for description of this particular tea, Peter passed on that it's from Asahina, Shizuoka, Japan, and it's made from the Yabukita varietal, which is the primary varietal used for Gyokuro.

Review:

My first impression:  the tea tastes like seaweed.  That's Japanese green tea for you.  Some might read that as an insult but tasting like seaweed isn't necessarily a bad thing.  There really is a range of what seaweed tastes like though, since it's not just one plant type (but then most people know that, right?).


I don't particularly love seaweed but I have come to appreciate it in limited forms, in sushi, of course, or with miso soup or ramen, or separate as a roasted snack, common in Korea but kind of an Asian thing in general.  In Hawaii they mix it with raw tuna as poke (a different kind than sushi is wrapped with), which probably would have been going too far for me, but since I was a vegetarian when I lived there it never came up.  Anyway, seaweed can be nice, it's just a matter of getting used to that flavor range, and the general idea.  I tried a very nice roasted river weed from Laos before as well, which was relatively similar, but there is no related point I'm headed towards, just passing that on.


I think the tea is probably very good, even though it's a type I'm not so accustomed to.  Past tasting like seaweed the flavors are nice, fresh and clean, with a nice roasted sesame effect coming across "under" the vegetal elements.  The sweetness is nice, and the complexity, and although it's not the same a I'm used to from oolong the feel of the tea is nice.  Once I "got back into" that range a little more I liked it.  The vegetal aspects really stand out but it seemed like a complex mineral undertone really made the balance of the tea work.  The seaweed effect seemed to level off a lot over infusions, but I'm not so sure that wasn't just me adjusting.

I did really used to like Japanese green teas, although I surely wasn't drinking versions as nice.  I've probably prepared Japanese loose green tea a couple of hundred times, although I take tea a lot more seriously than I did years ago when I first started.

Long tangent about tasting process

I just did a post about tasting, and sort of researched the subject a little, although it's a stretch to call the review I did that.  That taste is related to umami, although that's only one component, which of course Ricardo said a little about, surely with lots more on his site about all that.

I don't want to take this to being a research post because I've got plenty to say about it besides that, so I'll just mention the Wikipedia article on umami as background.  From there I'll go into a few points made by Barb Stuckey in a video on tasting.  She wrote several books that cover taste background in more depth, perhaps most completely expressed in "Taste What You Are Missing," but for purposes here only a few basic ideas are required.

It's sort of common knowledge, but umami is one of the basic tastes.  It's sometimes translated as "savory," although it doesn't translate well, the reason for leaving it with a Japanese name for description.  It tastes like seaweed, as much as anything, but really one part of what seaweed tastes like.  One odd part from that video was that it's really tied to a range of glutamate compounds, so MSG--mono-sodium-glutamate--is one of several compounds picked up by related taste receptors on the tongue, along with others for sweetness, saltiness, and bitterness.  Of course MSG is also known as the flavor additive that's perhaps best known for being used in Chinese foods, which gets a bad name because some people are sensitive to it.  It would be interesting to see how those people react to eating a lot of seaweed.

In that video I'd mentioned Barb Stuckey did an experiment that's easy to reproduce that can very quickly help us determine to what extent this is a taste, something identified by the tongue receptors, versus a flavor, a more complex sensation also informed by sense of taste but also related to smell.  The other portion is picked up by receptors in the nose from aromatic compounds making their way through air passages, essentially in the lower rear sinuses (but don't just take my word for that, since this isn't my field, read up if you like).  To determine the difference you taste something with and without your nose pinched shut.  It seems too simple to work, but it does.

For the experiment it might help to have a second type of tea on hand to use as a control, and I did cold-brew the last of a nice (but mid-grade) dan cong I have on hand from drinking it previously, so I used that.  If you try it pinching your nose closed most of the taste drops out (flavor diminishes, really, and the "taste" aspect from the tongue stays the same).  We tend to use the terms interchangeably in ordinary language, but there is a distinction.  So the question is:  does the "seaweed" taste drop out if you try that with this tea, is it really umami, or is it flavor and scent based?  The suspense...

Both, sort of.  It is related to a basic taste, so you still "get" a little of it tasting with your nose pinched, but not much.  A range of other characteristics that seem related do drop out from doing that, and then come back as soon as you stop pinching your nose.  It's kind of a funny experience.  This is not exactly science but it seems to support that the one aspect really is umami, a taste element, but that as I experience it that's very continuous with other aspects that are not that, picked up as scent instead.

Kind of really a tangent but something unusual came up related to the dan cong, the "control" tea.  It was still pleasant without scent-based flavors included but most of the experience of the tea stopped when tasting it that way.  A floral component really defines that tea and it just wasn't there.  But the interesting part related to sweetness instead.  It's a naturally sweet tea, but of course that can't be from a sugar compound.  Per input from Michael Coffey in another post this is what natural sweetness in tea comes from:


Sweetness typically comes from amino acids, but not always.  Amino acids are influenced by a number of factors--for example, the cultivar might naturally produce more than other cultivars, or environmental conditions might be just right for the plant to produce more than usual...


Since the sweetness isn't coming from sugars, what your tongue would pick up, that effect of sweetness should stop if air flow to your nose is completely cut off.  And this happens; easy to check by pinching your nose and tasting.  This also explains why tea tasting doesn't work as well with a cold.

Conclusion

Japan, Spring of 2015

After just a few infusions I was really enjoying the tea; funny how expectations and experience range can come and go like that.  As Japanese green teas go the "seaweed" / umami aspect is only part of what might relate to connecting with personal preference, or not.  This tea reminded me of the other positive aspects, and the better experiences I've had with Japanese green teas, and why those helped get me interested in loose teas to begin with.


I won't be switching back to drinking a lot of Japanese green teas right away but I always did expect to go through some related phase again eventually, and this just confirms that will probably work out.  I think this tea would make for a great experience for anyone, even if they don't like green teas or Japanese green teas, to at least experience some of the novelty and potential in them.