Let's boil leaves: Tea and things that aren't technically Tea

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > Let's boil leaves: Tea and things that aren't technically Tea

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Does anyone have any experience with Verdant Tea? Their Tea of the Month club looks like an interesting way to try out a big variety of different teas, but then every shop will try to make their stuff sound like it's awesome quality so I'm wondering if anyone has any personal experience or better knowledge.

Enfys fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Feb 22, 2014

# ¿ Feb 19, 2013 19:12

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:19

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

I've also ready so many different things on brewing temperatures and times that I'm not quite sure what is best.

Enfys fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Feb 1, 2014

# ¿ Mar 15, 2013 00:14

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Interesting, I have a milk oolong and a lapsang that I might try blending now as an experiment. I got the lapsang after trying it in a tea shop and loving it, but I just can't get it to taste the same. The smokiness seems to have a more chemical aftertaste to it that I just didn't get when I tried it in the shop. I'm not sure how I feel about the milk oolong. I quite liked it the first couple infusions, but after that it just got much less appealing each time and had an increasingly 'gone off butter' taste, but that could well be because I screwed up making it.

Enfys fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Feb 22, 2014

# ¿ Mar 22, 2013 23:39

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

I really love green teas, but I have tried a sencha that I got a couple of times now, and it just tastes, looks and smells like stewed grass clippings each time. I've been steeping it at ~80C for 3 minutes. I tried cold brewing some earlier today as suggested a few posts up just to see what iced green tea would taste like, but it was still so grassy that I couldn't finish it. I tried again with some bancha that I have, and that is much better. Never really been into iced teas, but this was nice and didn't have that chemical sweetness I associate with them.

Enfys fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Feb 1, 2014

# ¿ Apr 14, 2013 03:05

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Different tea bags can give a different taste to the tea, and there have been times where a company has changed the paper manufacturer that made their tea bags, and people thought the tea itself had changed. Then again, I was just reading an article yesterday in the Atlantic about possible PET leaching problems with silky teabags. I'm not sure how big of a potential concern this is to people, but might be worth a mention. A lot of paper bags go through chemical processes that involve bleaching them and other fun stuff, so it might be a toss up which is worse.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2013 13:45

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

I still can't figure out if I like sencha or not, or if I am doing weird things making it sometimes, or what. The first couple of times I made it, I really didn't like it. Then I decided to try it again, and it was absolutely fantastic. It seems like it's a total hit or miss tea for me - either I can't stand the taste, or it is perfectly lovely, and I have no idea what it is as I'm keeping the water temperature and brewing time the same :confused:

# ¿ Jun 19, 2013 20:10

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

I have a couple oolong and yixing questions. Would Oriental Beauty tea be catagorised as a high mountain oolong or more of a roasty variety like dong ding? It says it is non-roasted, but then it is also apparently grown in lower elevations. I'm mainly asking because I was given a few yixing pots, and I was thinking of dividing my oolongs into high mountain and roasty varieties - or would there be a better way to do it?

Also thanks to DurianGray and ntan1 for the advice about the sencha. I wasn't really paying that much attention to how much leaf I was using. Using a bit less leaf and preparing it as ntan1 suggested has resulted in consistently lovely tea

Enfys fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Feb 22, 2014

# ¿ Jul 6, 2013 20:45

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Swagger Dagger posted:

I'm drinking Verdant's Laoshan Black and there are just a ton of tasting notes on the website that I'm not getting at all. I followed their instructions to the letter (just boiling water, 3 minutes), but I'm just not getting any of the flavors it mentions.

I like the tea a lot but there's no chocolate or malt or whatever. It definitely has a honey smell but nothing's coming through to the actual taste. Is my palette just bad, are their instructions bad, am I loving something else up?

I really like this post from a tea blog I started reading when someone linked it earlier in this thread. It discusses tasting notes a bit and also has a link to a youtube video on a guy talking about tasting notes in whiskey which is really interesting as well and can be compared to tea in many ways. It also made me feel a lot better about my own experiences with drinking tea and what I would taste when compared to what I would read in reviews, where some people have these insane lists of sometimes bizarre things they pick up in teas, like passionfruit or tree bark or apricot preserve or calfskin or other weirdly specific things. Then again, I probably just don't have a well enough developed palette.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2013 01:54

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

hope and vaseline posted:

Help, my Twilight TGY from Adagio is almost out and they're out of stock online and in store. What are some good vendors for both iron goddess and the greener TGYs? My go-to vendor for Alishan has a 2009 fall roast of TGY, and I don't know anything about aged oolongs.

Edit: currently looking at Silk Road and Verdant Teas. Verdant's price point seems to be about twice as expensive as comparable ones with Silk Road, is that because it's a higher grade or something? :/

Mandala tea has aged TGY in little packs here.

One of my favourite places is Life in a Teacup. I've gotten some really fantastic TGYs and other oolongs there.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 11:12

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Shnooks posted:

DavidsTea has all the "fun" teas. I like to see what creative teas they come up with. I recently bought their Pumpkin Chai and Alpine Punch from their new Winter collection. The Pumpkin Chai is nothing to write home about - a few hints of caramel but not very spicy. It does have adorable pumpkin candies in it . The Alpine Punch is pretty good. It's got a wonderful scent with an interesting smell, but is very good before bed with a bit of milk.

They also have adorable cups and mugs.

Was the pumpkin chai only available for a little while? Everyone who loves David's Tea seems to go on about this one every winter, but I can never find it on their site. Somehow I must be missing its limited availability window? I'm not all that fussed about most of their teas or flavoured teas in general, but I do like chais and am curious about the raves this one seems to inspire.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2013 19:01

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Grrl Anachronism posted:

I'm not in the market for an electric kettle, but are kettles that whistle still a thing that can be bought? I drink almost entirely black tea so I guess I'd want something that would whistle when the water was boiling, but I have no idea how that works. My current kettle starts hissing when it gets remotely steamy and has no lid so I have to either stand and constantly monitor it or have it boil over.

They definitely still exist, but I guess it might depend on where you live. If you want one, camping/outdoors equipment stores tend to have them. I have a really fantastic one that I adore that was randomly found in a pound shop. I do have an electric kettle with different temperature settings that I use often, but if I'm making black tea, I use the whistling kettle on the stove (or the wood stove in winter since it has a place for a kettle, and it's handy when there's already a fire going anyway). It might be ingrained from childhood, but something about hearing a kettle whistle says "Tea time!" to me more than anything else.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2013 16:23

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

hope and vaseline posted:

Wow, 10 oz, that's pretty dang big for a yixing isn't it? And speaking of puerh, what's a good way to get into it without breaking the bank?

If you want to learn more about puerh (actually tea in general, but he posts quite a lot about puerh), I recommend reading through A Tea Addict's Journal as he has a lot of really great information. I know various posts have been linked to in this thread already, but it's worth mentioning again in relation to puerh.

As for buying some, it depends on what you consider breaking the bank. You can definitely get good puerh without having to spend lots of money, but beware of your sources. Try both sheng and shou, but know that really young sheng tends to have a fairly sharp flavour that isn't always nice (or indicative of its future) while shou that has just been processed can be unpleasantly strong.

I've recommended Life in Teacup before for other things, but I've also really enjoyed the puerh I've gotten. You can get various sample bits if you aren't sure what you like and want to try various different things. It's easier to start shopping puerh vendors once you have a slightly better idea of your tastes.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2013 19:16

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Lapsang is also the perfect tea for having with a Saturday morning fry up or the like, though I usually do have it in the evenings as well.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2013 00:06

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Nephielle posted:

I also bought something called Matcha iri Genmaicha, which is genmaicha dusted with matcha, and that is another fantastic tea that I've purchased. It's so rich and yummy.

Ooooh that sounds really interesting. I absolutely love genmaicha but have never really tried matcha. Was this also Harney & Sons?

# ¿ Dec 6, 2013 16:09

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

hope and vaseline posted:

I got some puerh mini tuocha samples from Teavivre in the mail today and brewed one of them up. Are the leaves supposed to be this small and broken up? It pretty much disintegrated after a rinse. The tea comes out a very, very dark brown color and is like a kick in the face. Leather and earthy notes.

That's the big problem with those mini tuochas; they're often just the really broken bits, and they are so small they just crumble really easily. It definitely shouldn't disintegrate after a rinse, and that's going affect the taste quite a bit.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2013 06:48

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

aldantefax posted:

Spinning tipped it over while empty and uncapped to a 3 foot grave on office carpet. Oh well! At least I was able to clean up the glass because it didn't explode very far.

Ever since I read about Teavana having to recall their glass tumblers due to them breaking and burning people, I'm always a little worried about breaking mine and getting hot glass everywhere. I don't even have a teavana tumbler and absolutely love mine and have never had any problems with it, so it's not the most reasonable or logical worry...but it's more having thought about the consequences of it shattering after I've poured boiling liquid into it, and knowing there have been problems with some.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2013 00:58

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

I really love mine, but it makes me quite the subject of curiosity. I drink a lot of green/oolong tea and just put the leaves in and refill it when I'm out for the day, and people find this completely bizarre. I suppose part of it is that people here tend to mainly drink tea black, bagged, and strong enough to float a dead mouse in before adding milk, and there is the prevailing idea that the only reason anyone would drink green tea is for some strange cultural health thing rather than actual enjoyment.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 15:37

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Sencha appears to be my green tea achilles heel or something. Sometimes I make it, and it tastes fantastic; other times, I do the exact same things and it tastes terrible. I don't get as many unpredictable results with any other tea as I do with sencha, and I've never quite figured out why.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2014 23:31

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

BBQ sauce recipe with lapsang souchong? Intriguing.

I love drinking it, but this morning I didn't have time to wash out my glass tumbler. I'm not sure I'll ever get the smell of lapsang out of the plastic bits of my backup thermos now.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2014 19:13

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Does it taste like coffee? I really love cherry type drinks and teas, but I'm not a coffee fan. Sounds really interesting though.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2014 00:32

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Definitely going to have to try the cascara now, excited to see what it's like.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2014 19:22

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

It's always good to pre-warm whatever you're brewing tea in because it can change the water temperature quite a bit (depending on the size and material of whatever you pour the hot water into). You don't necessarily need to fill the entire teapot/whatever to warm it first. I usually just pour some hot or boiled water in, swish it around, etc then dump it. I don't see the extra bit of water to be that wasteful, but I don't brew in huge pots.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2014 20:33

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Archer2338 posted:

I know it really isn't the season for it, but what are some basic recipes for brewing iced tea (ala Lipton or whatever)?

I was gifted a big tin of black tea from Upton, but I'm not a fan of drinking black tea hot. I much prefer oolong/greens. So I need a way to use these black tea leaves for something other than hot tea, since what black tea I drink is the iced kind.

Cold brewing is my usual method for iced teas (well, it's not really iced I guess). Stick double the leaves in, put it in the fridge. Black tea takes a long time since it's so oxidized, so ~12 hours or so.

Or put the leaves in half a pitcher of boiled water, remove, then add ice until it's full and put it in the fridge. If you want sugar, add it to the boiled water while steeping and stir.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2014 04:40

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

areyoucontagious posted:

I usually leave my tea bags in (I've been doing the Twinnings thing for a while) so both my breakfast and earl teas steep for probably 10ish minutes, but to tell the truth I don't find them that bitter. They're actually pretty delicious! Maybe I'm just ignorant of how delicious tea can be? For adding milk, do you guys put in skim, 2%, whole, half-and-half, cream? Also I had a coworker bring in some smoky tea (what he called it) and it smelled delicious. Are there trusted varieties that have that flavor? Do you add anything to smoky tea?

I wouldn't add milk to lapsang souchong as that will take away from a lot of the smokiness. There are different kinds of lapsang, generally depending on what it's smoked with/over and how strong they are. Taiwanese lapsang (or Formosan lapsang) is usually the strongest, especially the tar smoked ones. So if you really like the smokiness, go for those ones, but you can also find much milder ones.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2014 00:22

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

BrainParasite posted:

Do you have a link to a place that sells this black tar tea?

(PS. Don't use your usual infuser for Lapsang Souchong unless you want all your tea to taste smoky for a week.)

I get mine from Taiwan so I haven't tried any from online sellers. If you look for Formosan Tarry Lapsang you should be able to find some. However, not everything called Tarry Lapsang is going to be tar fired like this though as sometimes it is just a taste description of Chinese lapsangs with a stronger flavour, so tarry vs a milder smoky.

Chinese lapsangs are generally smoked over pine, while Formosan lapsangs use spruce (especially for tar smoking), cypress, or a mix of woods, which is what makes them taste so different (and stronger than your average lapsang). So you can also look for a mention of spruce in the description of a tarry lapsang or see what kind of wood was used for smoking.

also yeah, be careful with whatever you brew lapsang in or where you keep it because that smell and taste sticks.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2014 02:21

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Niemat posted:

Does anyone have any blooming teas they enjoy? Might be a bit of a silly question, but I got a clear glass teapot as a gift with a few starter balls, and I've grown to like watching my tea bloom. I also couldn't remember if anyone had this asked before.

Mandala tea has some blooming teas, as does David's teas I think (or they used to). Palais des Th�s sells some nice green tea ones in their shops (and probably online, but I always find their online shop annoying to search for specific things).

If you like watching tea in your glass teapot, you should look into more greens and oolongs as well because they are fun and beautiful to watch. Jasmine pearls are lovely to watch unfold, especially with the smell.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2014 22:18

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

I've been drinking a lot of moroccan mint tea. Not sure what is with the mint kick, but maybe it's the summer.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2015 15:46

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

aldantefax posted:

I drank some duck poo poo yesterday it was pretty tasty

http://yunnansourcing.com/en/dan-cong-oolongs/3500-king-of-duck-poo poo-aroma-dan-cong-oolong-tea-spring-2015.html

mmm. duck poo poo

Never thought I'd want to drink duck poo poo before. Might have to try that as I've not had a dan cong before

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 23:17

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Happy International Tea Day!

Today, I will drink tea...as I do pretty much every day. But today it's posh, and the internet is full of clickbait articles promoting the health benefits of "herbal" green teas etc.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 13:13

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Someone gave me decaffinated tea yesterday and said it tastes pretty much like normal tea. The only way I could really describe the taste was "burnt water", but I didn't want to be rude so added lots of milk and drank it down.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 21:53

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

Sanguinary Novel posted:

It's been a month of poor tea decisions. First, the Teavana experience, and then I bought some tea from David's Tea for the first time. After disliking three bags of tea, I have a deeper appreciation for Adagio selling sample bags. All of the teas seem to have a really weird texture to them, like the flavor is really muddy. It's hard to describe. It's probably the flavoring that makes the tea so weird. I'm going to try the weird teas iced or maybe with a little milk, just to try and not waste anything. Next time I'll just stick with Upton and Adagio.

Yeah, I know exactly that weird texture/flavour you describe, even if I can't put words on it very well myself. Every once in awhile, I'll order a few flavoured teas from David's or similar, but I almost always regret it. It might smell amazing, but that weird chemical taste just makes it increasingly unpalatable with every sip. I always swear I have learned my lesson, but a couple years later will see something else that sounds nice.

My general tea preferences have swung from mostly light greens to mostly strong blacks lately, no idea why.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 11:52

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

That is a beautiful and amazing set up. If I had something like that, I would want to spend all day drinking tea.

Your dog is also really cute :3:

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 15:32

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

I'm guessing there's a reason for only herbal teas, but you could try peppermint and licorice as well. I love lavender (for culinary purposes in general, not just tea), so would second that recommendation.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 22:37

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:19

Enfys: Feb 17, 2013; The ocean is calling and I must go

MrSlam posted:

That's the way I feel about fruit juice. In my quest to lose weight I've had people tell me not to drink juice since they claim it's practically sugar-water. It's juice! It's loving good for you! And if it's not, at least I'm not guzzling down liter after liter of Mountain Dew.

It is literally sugar water. It has more sugar than soda, and ounce for ounce, more calories. The sugar contained in fruits is fructose, which spikes your blood sugar and causes insulin resistance over time, etc. You know that the F in HFCS in soda stands for fructose, right? Fructose by itself is brutal on your body. It's not usually a problem with fruit because you don't sit down and eat 10 oranges in a row, and fruit also contains lots of fibre and other nutrients in the pulp which help keep you from sugar bombing your blood stream, forcing your pancreas to dump everything it has into your sweet syrup blood and stop producing/regulating other hormones until this insulin crisis is over, overtaxing your kidneys that now must filter the sugar blood that is shredding your circulatory system into ribbons, etc. Eating fruit helps your body absorb the fructose slowly, in a way your poor pancreas can manage in insulin production so that all those other bad things don't happen and you aren't regularly forcing your blood to circulate what essentially acts like tiny glass particles through your organs and veins until your body can catch up.

Juice just squeezes all the sugar out of fruit and delivers it straight into your bloodstream. It's horrible for you. Your beleaguered pancreas cries every time you drink fruit juice, and eventually it will just give up. You'd probably be better off guzzling soda because at least you recognise that as unhealthy, whereas drinking fruit juice allows you to cheerfully wreck your endocrine, renal and circulatory systems while thinking it's good for you.

The only real health benefit of tea is that it hydrates you. It's so much better for you than fruit juice, though.

Enfys fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Apr 7, 2016

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 20:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > Let's boil leaves: Tea and things that aren't technically Tea