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.
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