Hey Teaheads. This is Don from Mei Leaf. In
this video: Brewing Hou Kui, "Grandpa" Style.
In this video I'm going to introduce you to
this tea, we're going to SCOPE it, and then
we're going to taste it, "Grandpa" style.
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So, some of you have already heard of Hou
Kui. Hou Kui is also known as "Monkey King",
or "Monkey Picked" tea. It's a relatively
new tea, invented around a hundred years ago
- so the early 1900s in An Hui province. This
tea has a few legends behind it, in terms
of its naming. One of the legends is that
a farmer discovered a monkey that passed away,
and he buried the monkey, and that monkey
blessed the farmer by giving him some visions,
when he was sleeping, to go into the forest
and find this special tea plant to produce
this amazing tea.
The second story is that birds were flying
and they dropped seeds from the heavens down
onto the mountains of An Hui province for
this special tea plant. But the farmers felt
that the trees were growing in areas that
were too dangerous for them to pick, and so
they sent specially trained monkeys - with
their perfectly padded fingers - to scuttle
up the trees, pluck the tea, and bring it
back to the farmer. Again, that's not true.
Anybody who tells you that it's really monkey-picked
tea is telling you a lie. But "Monkey Picked"
became designated to high quality tea, and
especially this Hou Kui tea. Another story
is that this tea comes from Hou Keng village
- or area - in An Hui province, which is true.
"Hou" means monkey in Chinese, and the farmer
who made the recipe to make this tea had the
name "Kui" in his name, and so the two are
put together, "Hou" and "Kui", and therefore,
that's how it's named.
It's a relatively new tea, but it has quickly
become one of the most revered Chinese green
teas, and is often given as gift tea to businessmen,
politicians, etc. It has something of a cache
about it. It has something very special about
it. When you hear people talking about Hou
Kui, and when you see these beautiful, amazing,
leaves - which I'll show you very soon - there's
just something very special about this green
tea. Anyway, let's SCOPE the tea. The season
for this is - obviously, with all green teas,
the high quality is - spring picked. There
are summer-picked Hou Kui. I would avoid them.
You need to get spring-picked. However, the
growing season for this plant is a little
bit later than normal green teas, so around
the middle of April the beginning of May.
The cultivar is the Shi Da Ping Zhong cultivar.
This is quite a special cultivar. The leaves
are pointed, and they just grow slightly larger
than the average Sinensis tea cultivar.
That's the cultivar. The origin, this comes
from An Hui province, and specifically Hou
Keng, which is in Tai Ping county. So Tai
Ping county, An Hui province. Hou Keng is
the name of the area, and there are a few
villages around Hou Keng. Hou Keng means "Monkey
Pit", and so that is really the only place
to get proper Hou Kui. "P" stands for "Picking
and Processing". This is a very labour-intensive
tea. Around one kilogram of this tea is about
20,000 pickings. So it's a very light tea
- and therefore you need a lot of it in order
to make one kilo - but also it is very labour
intensive. What they do is pick the bud, and
usually three of four leaves, they pluck them,
bring them back to the processing area where
they're going to make the Hou Kui. They then
refine the plucking, so they'll pluck the
coarse leaves off.
That usually leaves a bud and two leaves,
maybe a bud and three leaves, depending on
how tender the leaves are. Then they wither
it slightly, to allow it to soften. Then they
pan fry it over a hot heat, but very, very
quickly, in order to fix the green - in other
words, deactivate the enzyme in the leaf that
causes oxidation. Then after that they hand-flatten
them on meshes. Then they cover the mesh,
so you see this criss-cross pattern. I can
quickly show you, hopefully, some of this
criss-cross pattern. Let me see if I can find
one that is particularly criss-crossy. See
if you can see that. You might be able to
get a close-up of that... So what they do
is flatten them by hand - so they lay them
all out by hand, over a silk, or some kind
of a cloth, mesh - and then they cover it
with another cloth mesh.
Then they clamp them together and roll them
with these rollers. What that rolling does
is it starts to extract some of the essential
oils. It makes the tea more flavourful. Then
they dry them. They dry them in racks, at
different temperatures, starting at a hotter
temperature - at 100, or a bit more than 100
degrees Celcius - and then they reduce the
temperature by moving the racks around different
ovens. The whole baking process takes about
an hour to an hour-and-a-half. After that
they will cure the leaf. They'll sometimes
put them in containers to draw more of the
moisture out. But it is a very labour-intensive
tea, and it is all handmade. So the price
of the Hou Kui also represents the effort
that has gone into it. Finally, in our SCOPEing,
"E" stands for elevation. Just like most teas
in this area, this is not a super-high elevation
tea.
We're talking about 350 to 450 meters. What
you really want is to find tea that is picked
from the north side of the mountains, because
there is more mist there, there's less sun
and that means that the tea grows slower,
and therefore can be rich and flavourful,
but without developing too many of the catechins
which make the tea potentially go bitter.
So what you want to look out for with Hou
Kui is long leaves - around three to five
centimeters. You want to see that it is relatively
translucent, or very light. So you can see
how the light can really travel through this
leaf, and you can see that it's a nice light
green. Obviously, where the buds and the leaves
are compressed together it's more dark, but
if you look down at this part here you can
see how light green they are. You can see
how sharp and pointed these leaves are. This
is from the right cultivar, which is a Zhen
Cha, a pointed cultivar of tea.
Okay. So we've SCOPEd the tea. Now, let's
taste the tea. Now, normally, I would be brewing
this Gong Fu style. I want to make it very,
very clear, from the outset, that I still
believe that with any teas the best way to
taste the flavour is Gong Fu style. But "Grandpa"
style - or glass brewing - is something that's
very popular in China, and there are some
teas that I think are suited to "Grandpa"
style, or glass brewing, and this is one of
them. The reason is because this tea is grown
in relative shade. As I said, it's mostly
grown on the north side of the mountain, where
there's a lot of cloud cover, and so it doesn't
get a huge amount of sunlight. Because of
that, it is more delicate. It is more light.
It hasn't developed those catechins that are
in other green teas - especially teas from
Zhejiang, or from Sichuan, or from Japan - and
therefore it is less susceptible to going
bitter when it is kept in hot water for a
long period of time.
That is why this tea is suitable for "Grandpa"
style, or glass brewing. Let me show you how
to do that. For Gong Fu style I would be recommending
around 2 grams per 100 ml. But for "Grandpa
Style" we are going to be using about 300
ml - 400 ml up to the top, but we're not going
to fill it to the top - so about 300 ml, and
I'd be looking at something like around half
a gram to a gram per 100 ml. So I'm going
to eyeball it here and say this is probably
about 2 grams. One of the amazing things about
this tea is that the leaves look very large,
but because - if they're good quality - they're
very, very thin, and extremely light.
So this quantity here is around 2 grams, and
I would say that's around eight leaves. Now,
hot water. We're brewing with about 85 degrees
Celcius here; so green tea temperature - 80
to 85 degrees. Pour in a circular motion,
if you can, just to try to agitate the leaves.
As I said, we're not going to go straight
to the top. Immediately, you can see that
the leaves are starting to soften up, and
the liquor is starting to change colour, but
it's very, very light. It's a really, really
light tea. This is what I love about this
tea. The reason I love Hou Kui is it’s lightness.
If you look at provinces in China, Zhejian
and Sichuan province and the other green tea
growing provinces, they differ from An Hui.
An Hui teas just seem much lighter, much purer.
I don't mean the others are not pure. I just
mean that the taste is very elegant, very
delicate, and very pure. It's almost like
taking water and purifying. You're not getting
a huge amount of complexity in flavours, but
what you're getting is a delightful elegance
that comes from An Hui green tea. So if you
look at like Huang Shan Mao Feng, or "Misty
Peak", that's another really lovely green
tea from An Hui province, which is, again,
very light. You get the fresh notes, and you
get less of the kind of umami, astringency,
and the depth of the other provinces. This
has been, I would say, about a minute, and
you're ready to drink.
So, with "Grandpa" style - or glass brewing
- you're leaving the leaves in the water,
and then you're just topping up with water.
What you want to make sure you do is not finish
the tea. You drink up to about a third, leave
some of the liquor there before you refill.
That way you're not starting from scratch,
in terms of brewing process, but you're taking
the concentrated tea and basically diluting
it and allowing it to brew again. As you get
further on with your infusions you can cover
the glass, in order to try and extract more,
maintain the heat a little bit more, because
obviously, as it brews it will extract less
and less, as it's been infused more times.
Okay. Cheers. Let's taste this "Grandpa" style.
So, you can see the colour. It's very light.
It's a nice, light, vibrant green, and obviously
that's going to change as it brews longer.
One of the wonderful things about this tea,
and other Anhui teas, is that you have the
purity of taste, but you have a wonderful
aroma. A very floral aroma. I'm getting a
lot of orchid aroma here, so a lot of fresh
floral. Fresh grassy aroma but the taste is
very gentle. There's no bitterness. There's
not bite. It's very, very soft. If you are
somebody out there wants to drink green tea,
but find that green tea can be a bit too strong
for you - maybe you feel that it's too strong
in effect, it's too strong in flavour; maybe
you feel it's too vegetal, it's too umami,
it's got too much of those savoury notes,
or too much intense grassy notes - then I
would really, strongly suggest that you start
to explore An Hui province, and the two teas
that you should explore are "Misty Peak" - of
Huang Shan Mao Feng - and Hou Kui, or "Monkey
Picked" or "Monkey King" tea.
You're going to get exactly what you want
out of a green tea, which is lightness, freshness,
aroma, but without that heaviness that can
come from some of the other green tea provinces.
What I'm smelling, and what is coming through
my nose when I breath out, is the orchid and
the floral. The texture is quite light, relatively
thin, but the taste has got a slight spice
to it. I would refer to a kind of nutmeg spice.
The tea also has a very light creaminess to
it, similar to... a milk, or egg, custard,
but very, very light with a sprinkling of
nutmeg over it.
I'm talking very, very light. The predominance
of the taste is very pure and refreshing.
It's got grassy notes freshly cut grass. It's
got some green bamboo in it, but it's all
really, really light. You can see that this
leaf is sitting in here, and it's honestly
not going bitter at all. It's maintaining
its freshness. Now, as I said, I would always
recommend Gong Fu style over any other style
of brewing. If you brew Gong Fu style you're
going to get the ultimate freshness. There
are not going to be any stewed notes as this
moves on it'll start to develop a bit of a
stewed note, which some people like and some
people don't like. But it's a great way to
drink tea, because there's nothing to it,
right? You've got your glass, kettle - or
thermos - of hot water, you just keep refilling
throughout the day.
This is often the way they brew in China.
If you're traveling around with tea leaves,
you go into a taxi, you see people with their
thermoses and leaves just sitting there refilling
with water. So this glass brewing, or "Grandpa"
style brewing is certainly something that
is done a lot in China, but not when you want
full tea appreciation. It's something that
is just an enjoyable, simple way to brew tea.
Storage of this is really important. Make
sure you keep this out of the air. This is
one of those teas that will change very, very
quickly, so keep it sealed very, very well.
Ideally airtight, in foil packages. Really
take care with this tea. What you'll see starts
to happen is the size starts to shrink, and
everything starts to get darker, and you know
that you're losing some of the freshness of
it, and those aromatic bright notes will start
to deaden down slightly.
Not a big deal, but obviously you want to
drink it in its prime condition. This is one
you want to make sure you drink as fresh as
possible. Okay. I hope that that has introduced
you to this incredible tea. We'll put a link
to purchase this tea in the description below.
I hope that this interests you in Grandpa
style brewing. It's not suitable for all teas,
but certainly for Hou Kui it definitely works.
That's it Teaheads. If you made it to the
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them over. Other than that, I'm Don Mei from
Mei Leaf. Thank you for being a part of the
revelation of true tea. Stay away from the
tea bags, keep drinking the good stuff, and
spread the word, because NOBODY deserves BAD
tea. Bye.
