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The popcorn is poprice.  You might try hojicha also, which is the Japanese roasted tea. No rice, the actual tea leaves are roasted instead. I have not had their hojicha recently but as a general matter Hibiki-an is one of my preferred vendors for Japanese teas. There are a wide variety of oolongs roasted to different degrees which can also have some of those flavors. I can recommend the 2008 top grade roasted Tie Guan Yin at Teamasters as an excellent example but his prices are on the boutique side of the line.
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| # ¿ Oct 2, 2011 17:29 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 12:56 |
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A quick steep actually doesn't do much to decaffeinate the tea. There's a good article about it here: http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/...nd-reality.html Also in there is some discussion about how black teas do not necessarily have more caffeine than green teas. Caffeine content is mostly down to the varietal used and the growing conditions. There's some small charts in there showing that oxidation actually lowers the caffeine content. Lots of interesting albeit lengthy articles on Cha Dao, though they haven't updated in quite a while now.
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| # ¿ Nov 20, 2011 19:46 |
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Thoht's advice is pretty good. Personally I find that the more leaves I use the less I need to increase the steeping items. If brewing in some pseudo-gong-fu style with a gaiwan stuffed full of oolong or puerh I'll start at 15 seconds and add 5 seconds each time for the first several steepings. On the other hand with sencha, which I use a relatively small amount of and which extracts very quickly, I do the second steep for less time than the first, especially with the really pulverized heavily steamed ones.
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| # ¿ Dec 23, 2011 23:17 |
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"Sakura sencha" is what you are looking for. I don't drink it myself so I can't make a specific recommendation. I used to get a lot of emails from Den's Tea about theirs but it looks like they are out of it until the spring harvest. O-cha.com has one and they are one of my favorite vendors for sencha. Or, you can google it and you'll be able to find a bunch of shops I'm sure.
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| # ¿ Jan 15, 2012 04:01 |
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Water temperature issues: if you are staying in one place, get a good quality electric kettle that lets you set a specific temperature. If you have to take the water somewhere, use a high-quality thermos and preheat it. You should be able to keep it at a decent brewing temperature for several hours. Cheap oolong: My opinion is that when shopping online, don't bother with Samovar, Imperial Tea Court, Red Circle, Mandarin's Tearoom, Tea Gallery, etc (in common: SF or NYC, high-end or at least trying to be); these are all really loving expensive places to buy tea for the most part. I think that high quality baozhongs tend to outperform their prices, but it's kind of a tough time to buy tea since the spring harvests aren't far off at this point. Floating Leaves has a couple winter baozhongs right now which I haven't tried, but I've been pleased with most of her teas in the past. I can recommend from personal experience the 2011 subtropical forest baozhong from Stephane over at Teamasters, but he doesn't have a formal web shop, which I guess might bother you given the recent posts in this thread. He is reliable and has impeccable taste, I really recommend him if you don't mind that his ordering process is stuck in the 90s. Not always cheap but the subtropical forest baozhong is one of his better deals. Last I checked you can get out under $10/oz even after shipping from Taiwan. Might have changed lately, I don't know. If you like heavily roasted oolong the 2008 heavy roast TGY he has is an excellent example of well-roasted oolong and also relatively cheap unless he's raised the price.
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| # ¿ Mar 20, 2012 02:04 |
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If you stick to leafy stuff that makes a decent infusion on its own, you can just try different ratios of tea:whatever until you find something you like. Mint works well, for example. Don't use really nice tea for this, of course, but it's a good way to add some interest to unspectacular tea that's perfectly drinkable but doesn't have much in the way of unique or special flavor. On the other hand, your average strawberry-cinnamon-vanilla fruity "blended" tea is hit with a flavor extract spray and has some bits and pieces in there more for appearance than for flavor. If you are trying for something like this, depending on what particular flavor you want you may or may not need to use an extract, but in any case keep in mind that you might get a weaker/different flavor than what you are expecting if you don't go that route. breaks fucked around with this message at Jul 22, 2012 around 20:06 |
| # ¿ Jul 22, 2012 20:03 |
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My preferred vendor for oolong (mostly Taiwanese in origin) is Teamasters. Not the place to go for bargain pricing, but he's got impeccable taste in tea and very rarely misses with his selections. His 2008 roasted TGY is a very good example of heavily roasted oolong, and thanks for posting and reminding me of it because I think I'll brew some up right now. It's been a little while since I put in an order as I wasn't drinking many oolongs this year, so I can't offer too much comment on most of what he's currently got available. But, if you buy from him you've got to email him for his current price list anyway, and if you ask him what a good intro to oolong type of purchase would be I'm sure he can help you out.
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| # ¿ Nov 28, 2012 02:12 |
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That's around $7/oz for the 2 month and $4.50/oz for the annual. Houjicha, (kyo)bancha, and genmaicha are all cheap ($2-3/oz) teas. The black is unusual because not much black tea is made in Japan, but probably also not expensive. So the annual is a little pricey, which is to be expected with the videos and the way they are marketing it, but you're really getting jammed on the 2 month, which costs nearly what you'd pay for very high quality sencha straight from Japan. Their per-ounce non-subscription prices are outright offensive, I guess they are trying to make the subscription look like a great deal rather than actually sell them. Definitely don't order any that way.
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| # ¿ Nov 28, 2012 03:51 |
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I'd try something like 30 seconds for the second and 45 seconds for the third. Some people will even tell you just to pour water over and then pour it right back out for the second steep. Once it gets going it doesn't take much to get the flavor out of sencha. You might also experiment with going a bit shorter on the first steep, maybe 90 seconds. I think it's generally ok for the leaves to sit for a few hours, but hanging out in the presence of water and oxygen is only going to do bad things to them given enough time.
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| # ¿ Dec 22, 2012 22:44 |
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The Yutaka Midori and Sae Midori are my preferences from O-cha. I stick to the deep steamed stuff from there and usually go to Hibiki-an for asamushi sencha.
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| # ¿ Jan 23, 2013 18:21 |
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In regards to the request for oolongs, try either the Formosa sampler from Adagio or the Taiwanese oolong sampler from Floating Leaves: http://www.floatingleavestea.com/in...&products_id=56 They are both fairly similar in terms of price per ounce. Floating Leaves is sometimes a step up the quality ladder from Adagio, though also sometimes not, I think. My favorites these days generally have a medium or so level of both oxidation and roasting, sometimes labelled Hong Shui/Hung Shui/Red Water oolong, but unfortunately neither sampler contains an example. It's harder to find them and tougher still to find good ones. Floating Leaves has them sometimes, but I guess not right now. In any case both cover the three most common types, baozhong, oriental beauty, and very green balled oolong, then throw in one or two extras. Plenty of good oolongs from China too, but Adagio's out of their sampler for that, and I'm not all that familiar with them so I can't recommend an alternative.
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| # ¿ Apr 10, 2013 02:54 |
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If you're buying bagged tea, do yourself a favor and seek out the ones that come in nylon bags rather than paper. At least to me, all the paper ones impart a cardboardy taste on the tea to one extent or another, whereas the nylon ones don't. I think adagio uses nylon for most or all of the bagged teas they sell nowadays, for example.
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| # ¿ Apr 15, 2013 02:56 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 12:56 |
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For sencha, try about a gram of tea per 2oz of water and adjust up or down from there depending on whether you find it too strong or too weak. This is really a matter of preference, so just experiment and figure out what you like most. Unless your brewing vessel really absorbs a lot of heat, I don't find preheating to be all that important. You can pour in water a bit hotter and aim for the sides of the brewing vessel if you want. When I'm at work and using a heavy 10oz mug I preheat the hell out of it, when I'm at home and brewing in thin, light gaiwans and houhins I usually don't bother.
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| # ¿ May 17, 2013 03:03 |
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