Floating Leaves Tea

When I got back to the states Shiuwen told me I was brewing tea really strong! During my time in Taiwan I really changed up my brewing, and I think it tastes great. Today we drank the King of Teas, Charcoal Dong Ding, and it was strong enough to stand a spoon up in it.

Drinking Mr Chen's Baozhong, one of our long time standards on the menu. It was an excellent season for Baozhong, and we had a great time drinking it and reminiscing about farmer Chen and his family this session.

This was a laid back session. Shiuwen got a chance to brew the new Homestyle Red Oolong for the first time. We are both really excited about this tea! As the name indicates, it's not a fancy tea per se, but it's a satisfying whole body experience. Now available on the dot com site only!

Yes, we're talking about Dong Ding again; the region that gave us Milk & Honey Oolong. Which we are drinking in the episode today. We went back to talk more about Mrs. Su and living up on the mountain. Also, we'll be drinking high mountain oolongs live on YouTube (Tuesday June 8th, 5pm PT). Hope you can join us! Link Here

This episode was basically my first impressions after spending a week up on Dong Ding mountain. The taste of the place is still fresh in my mind! I had such an amazing time, learned a lot and worked hard.

Shiuwen received her Lala Shan in the mail, so this session we decided to drink that tea! New crop of Lala Shan Hong Shui. 

We took some time to explore three of the four high mountain oolongs I've chosen for the website, since Shiuwen's Big Box of Goodies arrived in Seattle recently. We drank Alishan, Shan Lin Xi and the Traditional High Mountain, a tea that I was able to see be processed start to finish. We are both really happy with this season's high mountains! All very fragrant, balanced and comfortable in the bod...

The night before we recorded this episode, I went to go visit our teacher for the first time since arriving in Taiwan. That's the real fuel for why I'm here, to study tea roasting. It's the guiding principle that has kept us on track through lots of craziness. It was a great session, and I got a chance to unpack it a bit with Shiuwen on this podcast. Enjoy!

This episode was recorded shortly after I came down from the mountain, where I saw my first full oolong processing, start to finish! It was amazing, and during the recording I was still full of all that good energy. The style of the episode was more of an interview style. I got a chance to relay lots of information I learned up in the mountains! We will be selling this tea on our website in the ne...

Hello again! This marks our first episode recorded remotely in both Seattle and Taipei! We toasted the near end of my quarantine period with a pot of Charcoal Dong Ding. 

Thank you all so much for your support! We love you :) We're getting ready for Noah to head out in a couple of days, and we're so excited!! The next episode will be recorded long distance, with Shiuwen in Seattle and Noah in Taiwan. We've got to figure out how to do that, so expect some glitches. But it will happen.

This episode we drank a 30 year old tea for the grounding energy, and announced a big upcoming change for Floating Leaves! 

Good session today, but no direct focus. It's the show about nothing! So Shiuwen wanted to name this episode Out of Focus. We decided to drink Four Roast Dong Ding again, for three reasons. You'll have to listen to find out why!!!

Revisiting an oolong that we got three or more years ago in this session. It's not been an easy tea to brew, but Shiuwen was ready for the challenge! Yunnan grown high mountain oolong, harvested from Tie Guanyin cultivar bushes, and charcoal roasted by a master in Taiwan.

This episode we compared the current batch of Loshan Hongshui (which is running low) with the batch that's coming up next. Very fun session, and got us into some good conversations about focus, attention and joy!

This was a powerful session. After listening, we want to invite you to check out this video from the Plum Village Zen Community  https://youtu.be/AxsCainXGMQ After watching, if you want to try Shiuwen's challenge from the end of the episode, please feel free to reach out to let us know how it goes for you. We always love to hear from you! Enjoy!  

This episode we are drinking Dong Ding A again! A new batch is always a great excuse to drink this tea. This time it lead us in all kinds of directions, and we ended up having a great conversation about structure, connection and rhythm.

Year of the Ox is upon us! (And Valentine's Day, and it's snowing in Seattle. Pretty cool.) We decided to start the first podcast of the Lunar New Year with an aged Alishan from 1985. First time we ever brewed it!

Lunar New Year is coming up, the Year of the Ox, and we're taking some time to nourish ourselves with a joyful tea. This episode we spent some time talking about what it really means to nourish ourselves, with tea or otherwise, in order to go deeper in the practice. Wishing everyone a peaceful and prosperous Spring!

This was more of a 'slightly veiled' tasting that a blind tasting, but we came back to taste Alishan and Lishan side by side without knowing which one came first. Really REALLY good session. Both of these teas are fantastic. After the blind tasting in early January we were intrigued by the fact that we couldn't choose a clear MVP of these two.

Once more! we are working with two unknown oolongs for a little blind tasting challenge to see if we can get out of our own preconceptions. This time Shiuwen picked the teas, and it was a blind session for me! (Noah) This was a really fun session to see what we know and what we don't know. 

Just two roasted teas! This session we tasted two roasted oolongs which I chose and placed on the table without telling Shiuwen what they are. We wanted to have a grounded session focused on the sensations of these teas in our mouths and noses. Flavor, texture and aroma. Also, I'm a little obsessed with chili at the moment ;)

We dedicated this episode to brewing Special Reserve Alishan again since the first time we recorded it there were two other teas involved. It deserves it's own session! This pot of tea really guided Shiuwen to explore more deeply her intentions for tea and other things in 2021. The idea : Be softer to generate more energy.

For the first session of 2021 we are revisiting a Yunnan grown high mountain oolong that we've been working on for the past week or two. In the spirit of the practice process, and because 2021 is an Ox year, we drank this Furry Crab while discussing our goals, struggles and successes we've had while trying to fine tune the way we brew this oolong. May 2021 be full of good practice and hard work!

The last podcast of 2020! We drank an excellent high mountain oolong to celebrate, and pretty much all we could say was how excellent it is. I hope you enjoy the episode anyway, because it was a lot of fun to record. We're lucky, as it seems like teas show up particularly well when we're recording. Anyway, thank you all so much for your support throughout 2020. This tea will be up on the site fair...