Moving on to LOTS of One Type of Tea and SALT

So just kidding about going to Boston, apparently. Which is fine by me, because now I get to do all the things I originally wanted to do in the Pacific Northwest this summer! Yes, there is disappointment, but cest la vie. Time to drink some tea!

This summer I've been doing something rather strange (for my behavior). Instead of having a few different kinds of tea in a day, or in a week for that matter, I've just been blowing through one tea at a time. First it was some greens, then I moved on to some open oolongs, and now a puerh while I decide which tea to unseal next. Probably going to be a Taiwanese oolong. I'll drink a little of one thing or another in between the big stuff, I have a lot of samples I need to go through (I burnt my tongue on some stupid coffee the other day and had a crazy bought of seasonal allergies preventing me from being at my tasting best haha), but for the most part its just been a lot of multiple gaiwans or pots one right after another. This has allowed me to make some interesting personal observations.

• Green teas make me very happy, awake, and relaxed. They also significantly reduce my appetite, but if I drink too much then I have experienced a lot of symptoms of very low blood sugar. Of course it was fine when I made sure to eat better when drinking as much as I was. Its impressive how significant the blood-sugar lowing effects of green tea were, though. 
• For oolongs, especially dark Wuyi cliff ones, I really don't recall noticing anything too significant. I don't really think I drank enough in a short enough period of time. I was busier when I was going through my tin of Shui Xiang in particular. I'll try this out with a light Taiwanese oolong when I feel like it later this week or next. (I'm out of darker oolongs)
• I love puerhs. Could you tell from my previous blog posts? Haha. Puerh makes me very, very, very relaxed. I also get extremely focused and creative when I've drunk enough. I wrote over 3000 words of a short horror (I love a good horror/thriller) story last night during which I went through about 3 gaiwans worth of puerh. I like drinking puerh at night because it can also help me sleep (or at least doesn't interfere with me needing/wanting to sleep). Note again that these are all preliminary personal experiences with no control for other food intake... 
• I have not drank copious amounts of either white, black, or sheng puerhs like this as of yet. 

I'll probably keep doing this until I feel like switching it up all the time again. So hopefully more observations will emerge!

One of the other things I've been working on testing out finally is SALTING the water that I use to make my tea. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I'll explain where I got the idea here again anyways. I'm fairly certain we all know just how much salt is used in cooking. Well when I was reading The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu I noticed him describing adding a little bit of salt to his water as well. I tried it a few months ago and failed to remember what he wrote right after talking about putting salt in his tea, which was to be very careful of not putting in too much. Haha. It was disgusting. I've always hated salt water and tea doesn't really do anything to improve the flavor. It was very sad. However in March I found some Lava Salt, or basically salt with charcoal mixed in it. I have used charcoal to purify my water before (and loved using it), and I was curious about salt, so I figured this would be a doubly cool thing to try out. 

I have tried it with both iodized table salt and the charcoal salt, and I think I've noticed two interesting things. (When I get back to school and my beloved glass electric kettle I'll be able to do better controlled testing)

1. The mouth-feel of the teas that I put salt into becomes fuller and smoother. I think the salt takes away a lot of astringency.
2. I don't have to go to the bathroom as much!
3. I'll test this next week when I start summer Bikram (HOT- you sweat like hell) yoga, but I'm pretty sure this is keeping me better hydrated. Haha

Its too bad I don't have my tea club here over the summer. I'd definitely test this all out on them. Hehehehe. Voluntarily, of course... But if any of you readers try this yourself, please let me know what your results are! I don't hear very often about people really pushing themselves to either drink a ton of one type of tea all at once in order to see the results on themselves or salting their water. FYI I don't put in more than a TINY pinch per 32 oz. Maybe 1/4 tsp. (I'll also test that out more accurately.)