Minnesota Tea Society

Janurary 18th, 2025. Saturday. 10 am – Excelsior Library

Tea is a life long learning process. With this meeting we introduced our first two slightly more formal teaching aspects. Something we hope to incorporate into each session from now on. We had a bit of a struggle setting up Zoom but once we figured that out we dove into learning a bit about matcha. Some of the most popular matcha tools were passed around including a bowl from the famous Suikaen shop. This shop is very well known for their quality of work on matcha whisks (chasen). They also partner with other companies to make other products like the matcha pouring bowl below.

Designed by Yasaburo Tanimura of Suikaen, this piece was handcrafted by Shigehiko Kawakita-san of Nara Blown Glass Studio

Speaking of which I thought that this bowl was one of a kind but recently found a few like it on Etsy. That being said these are hand blown and as such each piece truly is unique. After a bit of learning on matcha we switched gears to pu erh and a green tea. FaBat Puerh took us on an amazing journey showcasing the unique differences between raw (sheng) and ripe (shou) puerh that they procure and press themselves. We also learned about proper amounts of tea to use in a gaiwan.

Teas Tasted at this meeting:

Tea 1: Ceremonial Matcha – Japanese Green Tea Co. This lushious matcha makes an incredible foam, has a silky mouthfeel, and an amazing umami.

Tea 2: Bi Luo Chun – FatBat Puerh. Trichomes galore! These lovely leaves produced a fair number of infusions and greeted us with delicous vegetal notes.

Tea 3: 2022 Xu Li Shan Tribute Tea – FatBat Puerh. No fishy flavor here. If you would like to try pu erh but don’t know where to start shou is a good category to begin. And you’re really getting bang for your buck as these can be steeped multiple times. We truly enjoyed seeing how this one changed with each steeping.

Tea 4: 2024 MiDi Imperial Tribute Tea – FatBat Puerh. Sheng pu erhs can be a bit daunting for people that haven’t stepped into the dark tea category before. This sheng taught us to not assume anything. A dark tea doesn’t have to age to be good. Each infusion offered not only amazing flavor but nice texture as well.

Thank you to everyone new as well as previous members who showed up today!

Our next meeting will be:

Saturday, Februrary 22nd, 10 am. St. Louis Library in St. Louis Park. 3240 Library Ln, St Louis Park, MN 55426

And as always please support us by visiting our website: https://mnteasociety.com/shop/

We’d also like to give a shoutout to Mr. Johnson again for being our first donor of 2025!