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Cizzo posted:I really want to think this is a Parks and Recreation Tom Haverford reference. http://tomhaverfoods.com/ I bought four ounces of peach oolong for ~$5 bucks! e: not from Tom Haverfoods, Teavana. Hummingbirds fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 02:55
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Hummingbirds posted:
I have a Teavana like 20 minutes from me, I don't need shipping 
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Feb 15, 2012 08:07
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Teavana has free shipping today!! Use code TREATYOURSELF
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Guess who just got the tiniest, chintziest little tea set at the corner store? The set was only $20, so I figured that even if everything about it sucked, at least I wasn't out much money. The set came with 300g of vacuum-sealed oolong tea, and judging by the size of this pot, that's enough to last forever. Leaves, before and after:   This is a decent tea, but nothing spectacular. Maybe it'll get better if I keep brewing it in the same pot, but I'm not holding my breath. My boyfriend really likes it so far, though. And holy poo poo, what's this? The cheap print on the sides changes color based on the temperature?  I think my cafe tea pot and demitasse cups in the background are getting jealous. 
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Feb 17, 2012 09:23
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I seriously love starter sets like yours. In a pot that size you should use 5grams of leaves and gong fu brew. The leaves should pretty much much fill the pot up as your brew. Also clay pots tend to brew hot, so you may steep a bit less rather than too much. And it changes colors?? I'd buy it just for that. Did you know it did that or was that a hidden feature? I didn't know one of my tea pets had a 'spit' feature when I bought him. I noticed a couple of times a weak there'd be drips of water on the floor but figured it was just splash. I finally saw the little mother fucker do it..I poured tea over him and a stream of water flew out of my little frogs mouth. It was really a good laugh.
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Feb 17, 2012 14:35
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Thanks, I'll give that a shot! The first batch I tried didn't have enough leaves, but I did notice I liked it better on the second or third brew. I'm trying it again, but it's a bit hard to judge how much tea to use, since the leaves expand so much. I had no idea it changed colors when I picked it up. I just went "ooh, tea set!"  I was also kind of excited because I saw a very similar set at a shop down the street the other day, but it was more expensive, didn't come with tea, and I think everything was glazed inside. I think glazing a clay tea pot kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
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Feb 17, 2012 16:45
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What is a tea pet???
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Feb 17, 2012 17:58
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A tea pet is probably a little piece of kitsch that is there mostly for aesthetics. They are typically made out of clay or other ceramic; some have the ability to identify when the temperature is 'right' by submerging the figurine in cool water. Pouring hot water over it will cause the cold water to come out, like uh http://imgur.com/4s4tR
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Feb 18, 2012 03:14
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surrender posted:Happy Valentine's Day to me I enjoy their Ceylon Sonata, but wasn't too fond of the Irish Breakfast for whatever reason (I think I'm moving away from it in general). How's the Earl Grey?
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Feb 18, 2012 11:38
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Mizufusion posted:Thanks, I'll give that a shot! The first batch I tried didn't have enough leaves, but I did notice I liked it better on the second or third brew. I'm trying it again, but it's a bit hard to judge how much tea to use, since the leaves expand so much. yeah, you just learn by experience. Small sized clay pots generally hold 5-7 grams of leaves and will be pretty packed when it all unfurls. It'll give the tea a nice rich taste for 4 or 5 steeps and then it starts to lose flavor. Still delicious of course for another several steeps though. You should see all of the tea sets out here where I live. All shapes and colors. There's also several stores that have substandard product bins and you'll find hundreds of clay pots in there at about 2 dollars each. They're machine made and not really good quality clay but they look good and will make you smile just seeing them all piled up in bins like bargain DVDs. Tea pets are ceramic or clay knick-knacks..small sculptures to help ornament your tea tray. Frogs, tigers, cows, fruit, nuts, and all manner of Chinese lucky symbol. Some of them absorb water as they cool and will spit, pee, or otherwise spray a stream of water when heated up. One of the most expensive I've seen is a girl curled up in an egg shell(maybe she is a small fairy) and if you pour hotwater on her, her breasts spray water. It's about $85 US because the detail is pretty fantastic. I'd have bought it but when your average tea pet is less than $10 it's hard to justify spending a bit on clay porn. It helps set a theme for your tea and people will always enjoy looking at them. I have some melon shaped pots and I have tea pets of various fruit and small animals on the tray to make it like a pond or natural setting. Or I can set out traditional luck symbols like Money frogs and Qilin for good luck with money and chasing away bad influence..it's just all for fun and show. Not long ago in China, if you didn't know how to pour a good cup of tea you weren't poo poo, but times have changed and it's just a hobby thing and is considered an old tradition.
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Feb 18, 2012 12:54
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I'm having tea pot issues now. Had some goji berry and jasmine tea in my pot, it got left and there were small bits of mold floating in the water. Now I've been paranoid about using the tea pot, and definitely haven't been drinking that flavour of tea since it's just not appetizing to me right now. Should I just use some soap and really hot water, let the pot soak for a bit and give it a good scrub?
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Feb 23, 2012 06:03
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Toriori posted:I'm having tea pot issues now. Had some goji berry and jasmine tea in my pot, it got left and there were small bits of mold floating in the water. Now I've been paranoid about using the tea pot, and definitely haven't been drinking that flavour of tea since it's just not appetizing to me right now. Don't use soap, just some vinegar and a bottle brush then let it air out for a few days.
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Feb 23, 2012 06:11
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What kind of pot is it? Likelihood is that very hot water (even submerging the pot in boiling water for a period) and scrubbing then a long drying out would suffice for many pots for which soap would not be appropriate. If it is a porcelain pot, or the surface is otherwise sealed, use food grade alcohol to sterilize it after giving it a good scrubbing, and then wash once more. So I went to that Lily's Tea Shop in Oakland that some folks earlier in the thread recommended. I bought a cheap gaiwan, as I only really have pots to make English style tea, and one small pot with a filter built into it which I use to make green tea for my fiancee. I also bought some Iron Goddess Oolong. The oolong is revelatory. I thought I didn't like oolong tea. I thought I only really liked black tea! I hate this loving thread, the oolong was like $40/lb and on the cheap end. I'm reading tea blogs now.
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Feb 23, 2012 06:14
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It's okay, sometimes I hate this thread too. I just bought a jar of mini pu-erh-style cakes. I'm brewing some right now, but I honestly have no idea how it's going to taste. They brew a cup that looks more like coffee than tea, but it looks like it's made from leftover dust and trimmings. It's like I've found the Lipton of pu-erhs, except I know there's worse out there because the corner store offers pu-erh in tea bags. I think tomorrow I'll visit the actual tea shop and buy something nice, instead of loading up on things for the kitsch factor.
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Feb 23, 2012 17:49
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A friendly reminder to all those in the San Fransisco Bay Area, the first ever San Fransisco International Tea Festival will be happening this Saturday 2/25 in the San Francisco Ferry terminal. Tickets will not be sold at the door, as I understand it, but you can purchase them online! I will be volunteering at the event during the daytime, you can look for the huge Filipino guy doing Exhibitor support. Admission gets you a gift bag with tea samples and a tasting cup suitable for use throughout the entire event, and I believe there's going to be about eight to ten exhibitors in the hall. http://sfinternationalteafestival.com/ for more info!
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Feb 24, 2012 02:46
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aldantefax posted:A friendly reminder to all those in the San Fransisco Bay Area, the first ever San Fransisco International Tea Festival will be happening this Saturday 2/25 in the San Francisco Ferry terminal. Tickets will not be sold at the door, as I understand it, but you can purchase them online! I will be volunteering at the event during the daytime, you can look for the huge Filipino guy doing Exhibitor support. Admission gets you a gift bag with tea samples and a tasting cup suitable for use throughout the entire event, and I believe there's going to be about eight to ten exhibitors in the hall. Would totally be there if I was in the Bay Area. Next year, definitely. Looks like a really cool event.
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Feb 24, 2012 02:55
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So I want to try my hand at getting some good quality tea to start drinking. Can anyone recommend some green teas to try out? Either ordering online or I also have a Teavana nearby I can pick stuff up from. Much appreciation!
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Feb 24, 2012 03:51
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pork never goes bad posted:I also bought some Iron Goddess Oolong. The oolong is revelatory. I thought I didn't like oolong tea. I thought I only really liked black tea! I hate this loving thread, the oolong was like $40/lb and on the cheap end. I'm reading tea blogs now. Confusingly enough, not only are there many many different styles of oolong, Iron Goddess itself is a name that is applied to teas ranging from pale yellow (barely oxidized), to reddish in color. If you tell me which kind you have, I can give you a more specific recommendation for further oolong exploration. If yellow (less oxidized), try Taiwanese high mountain teas like "DaYuLing" or "LiShan" (not the similarly named ALiShan, which can be good too, but is much more likely to be shwag). Those two teas have the highest elevation for growing. The best leaves are certified grown above x meters. Sometimes 2800m+. If you like oolong that is on the bleeding edge of green tea in terms of processing, the most popular mountains are the tallest. If red (more oxidized), DaHongPao and other WuYi rock teas are popular. Also try Oriental Beauty, and other Honey oolongs. They don't use honey to make it. There's a little bug that starts eating the leaf (whose body transfers some pollen onto the leaf). Also, the tea plant releases a chemical to repel the bug. The good-tasting chemical ends up in the tea. Also consider aged oolongs...
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Feb 24, 2012 05:37
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Thanks! I am pretty sure I am going to that tea festival thing al dente facts recommended, so will probably try to explore some different options then. The tea is actually called Elegant Iron Goddess, again, probably not super helpful. It yields a pale yellow liquor, the dry leaves are tightly rolled into a ball. Oh, and it's absolutely delicious. I'll probably go back to the same tea shop and say that I liked it, and I want to try a few others that are similar. etrips - my fiancee likes Japanese green teas very much. These are some of her favourites: https://secure.uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?itemID=TJ30 (produces an interesting cloudy liquor and infuses multiple times very well) https://secure.uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?itemID=TJ88 (great quality straight green tea) https://secure.uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?itemID=TJ21 (the tea she drinks the most of, benefits from slightly shorter infusion times than recommended) pork never goes bad fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Feb 24, 2012 |
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Feb 24, 2012 06:50
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pork never goes bad posted:etrips - my fiancee likes Japanese green teas very much. These are some of her favourites: https://secure.uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?itemID=TJ30 (produces an interesting cloudy liquor and infuses multiple times very well) excellent! I think I'll try some of these out, very excited! Thanks much pork
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Feb 24, 2012 14:19
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Does anyone know of a good site to order mugi-cha (roasted barley tea) and/or soba-cha (buckwheat tea) from? I've gotten the soba tea from a local tea place a couple of times, but their price per volume is kind of high, and I'd like to also try roasted barley tea, which they don't carry.
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Feb 24, 2012 16:23
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Mugicha is available on Amazon at a good price, they have the Home brand which is what is at the asian grocer I go to somestimes. I also found a cool-looking set of links where people roasted their own barley for mugicha on google. If you have a local asian grocery, they will probably have both available as well - at least, the ones near me do.
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Feb 24, 2012 19:15
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I'm really liking Twinning's Lady Grey, basically an Earl Grey but with some orange and lemon flavor instead of entirely Bergamot. Can anyone recommend some other black teas along that line?
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Feb 24, 2012 20:07
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For making tea Gongfu style, is there any common household dishware that can replicate a Gaiwan? And for a person who is not a SUPER tea snob, how much difference does a actual Gaiwan make?
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Feb 28, 2012 01:16
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Dick Smegma posted:For making tea Gongfu style, is there any common household dishware that can replicate a Gaiwan? My. To answer your first question, you can do what you want, but the results will probably not be the same as purchasing a gaiwan for five bucks and trying it out the 'proper' way. If you don't have the proper equipment, you're probably better off just preparing tea normally instead of trying to jerry-rig up a solution. Certain parts of the gongfu brewing process can have substitutions, but the 'core' would lie in the gaiwan. I'd hope that you are just being facetious regarding the "Super tea snob" comment, but gaiwan are specifically made for brewing small amounts of tea and concentrating flavors. You can certainly do without, but the experience will be different enough. If you're still on the fence, just make tea in a normal cup and go to a place that has gaiwan and ask for a demonstration, if available. Otherwise, it's up to you to come to your own conclusion.
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Feb 28, 2012 02:25
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Dick Smegma posted:For making tea Gongfu style, is there any common household dishware that can replicate a Gaiwan? You can't replicate a gaiwan, but you'd do well to enjoy your tea Grandpa Style.
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Feb 28, 2012 03:33
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Dick Smegma posted:For making tea Gongfu style, is there any common household dishware that can replicate a Gaiwan? Yes. Just take a regular coffee cup, put your leaves in. Pour in the hot water. Then when you pour the tea from the cup, use a large spoon to hold back the leaves. Any leaves that make it past the spoon into the tea cup, just use the spoon to pick them out and put them back in your brewing cup. There will be a lot of particles polluting the tea you're drinking if you pour without a filter. It's not pretty but it works in a pinch. EDIT: As for how much difference a gaiwan makes? Not much. If you pour with a gaiwan and no filter you have the same problem as a coffee cup and a spoon. The filter gets rid of the fine particles and makes the tea taste a lot better. ZombieParts fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Feb 29, 2012 |
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Feb 29, 2012 02:46
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 A gaiwan is a cup with a lid. If you've got the typical kind of little teacup and a little plate, you can put your tea in there and place the plate on top to make a lid. Pour through a tea sieve, dump your leaves back into the brew-cup.This is a kinda awkward method yeah, but if it's hard to get a cheap decent gaiwan in your area you can use it to see if you like gongfu style. (Feel free to enlighten me if gaiwan really do have some kind of special tea-improving physical properties) Even with a gaiwan though, gongfu will always be more pain-in-the-rear end than western style. Only something reasonable to do for your most fancy teas (not saying this because of  , it's just a method generally meant for stuff that rebrews lots of times and isn't going to go bitter/astringent when you concentrate it; nobody gongfus earl grey), and even then only if you particularly want to milk concentrated shots out of them. It's pretty interesting though, if you're at home and feel like piddling around with it, but you're not some kind of "tea poser" if it doesn't do anything for you either.Grandpa-style seems like a curious in-between, I'm gonna have to try that out.
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Feb 29, 2012 02:58
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Double post. Quote is not Edit.
ZombieParts fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Feb 29, 2012 |
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Feb 29, 2012 02:59
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Cpt.Wacky posted:I'm really liking Twinning's Lady Grey, basically an Earl Grey but with some orange and lemon flavor instead of entirely Bergamot. Can anyone recommend some other black teas along that line? My order of loose leaf Lady Grey came in. It lists the ingredients as black tea, orange peel (3%), lemon peel (2%), cornflowers, and citrus flavoring (bergamot I guess). Good stuff, even better than the bags (of course).
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Mar 1, 2012 17:53
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Cpt.Wacky posted:I'm really liking Twinning's Lady Grey, basically an Earl Grey but with some orange and lemon flavor instead of entirely Bergamot. Can anyone recommend some other black teas along that line? Upton has some great options here. http://uptontea.com/shopcart/item.a...0&categoryID=43 http://uptontea.com/shopcart/item.a...0&categoryID=43 http://uptontea.com/shopcart/item.a...0&categoryID=32 http://uptontea.com/shopcart/item.a...0&categoryID=32 Early Grey with Lavender is one I would recommend as an Earl Grey-like alternative to regular Earl Grey.
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Mar 1, 2012 17:59
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Pork, I'd just like to thank you and your fiancée for the green tea recommendations. Loving the Gen-mai Cha!
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Mar 1, 2012 18:27
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A few years back my dad got hold of some sort of tea, i think it was lapsang souchong but i could be mistaken, which, when brewed, smelled EXACTLY like cafeteria hot dogs. Is that normal, or was it a weird screwed-up batch of it?
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Mar 1, 2012 23:10
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Anyone else pick up some of the Brigadoon Breakfast tea from Adagio yesterday? Supposedly it's a blend they did just for leap day and will only sell every four years.
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Mar 2, 2012 01:32
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Zelmel posted:Anyone else pick up some of the Brigadoon Breakfast tea from Adagio yesterday? Supposedly it's a blend they did just for leap day and will only sell every four years. I ordered one, alongside some more samplers I'd been meaning to try.
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Mar 2, 2012 02:53
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So I got into tea a couple of weeks ago thanks to one of my friends and I bought a few different types of tea to try and learn what I like and don't like. However, I would like to greatly speed up the process of trying all the different "styles" of tea (not really sure what term to use), so are there any "standard" teas I should try? That is to say, can I get recommendations for tea that exemplify a certain type of tea so I can see if I would like that kind in general? So far, I've tried a darjeeling, an oolong, and a green tea. I love the darjeeling, don't really like or hate the oolong, and find myself disliking the green tea, but mainly because I get a lot of "sediment" (once again, not sure what term to use here) when the more fine particles get through the strainer. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth for some reason. I would really like a different darjeeling to try along with some different styles I haven't tried yet experienced, so any sort of direction would be appreciated 
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Mar 3, 2012 05:13
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enthe0s posted:So I got into tea a couple of weeks ago thanks to one of my friends and I bought a few different types of tea to try and learn what I like and don't like. However, I would like to greatly speed up the process of trying all the different "styles" of tea (not really sure what term to use), so are there any "standard" teas I should try? That is to say, can I get recommendations for tea that exemplify a certain type of tea so I can see if I would like that kind in general? You might like a yunnan gold or Adagio's golden monkey; to me they have a similar character to Darjeeling although the flavor is not as delicate. Don't discount green tea so quickly -- in my opinion it is the hardest to brew correctly. What temp/time did you brew it at? As for the sediment, maybe go for something with less dust (perhaps jasmine pearl?)
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Mar 3, 2012 05:47
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Hummingbirds posted:You might like a yunnan gold or Adagio's golden monkey; to me they have a similar character to Darjeeling although the flavor is not as delicate. I'll definitely give the golden monkey a shot, it sounds amazing from the description alone! As for the green tea, I just followed the directions that came on the package, which were 180 degrees for 3 minutes. However, this does bring me to another question. Should I heat the water to a few degrees above what is recommended so that it while I'm transferring the water into my thermos it will stay closer to the 180 degrees I want while it's steeping?
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Mar 3, 2012 07:00
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Pour hot water into your brewing vessel without any tea and let it sit for a while so that it warms up. Dump the water out after a bit and brew as normal. This prevents the vessel sucking up a bunch of the heat from the water you use to brew with.
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Mar 3, 2012 17:15
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Also, it's OK to adjust water temperature by using cold water to cool down water from a boil, just be careful of how much you use. Generally the most useful for greens and whites, but it is useful for oolongs as well. So the SF International Tea Festival happened last weekend and I totally didn't talk about it, so I'll probably make a post soon with a trip report and a sneak peek into what the organizer, Roy Fong, wants to do for next year!
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Mar 3, 2012 20:42
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^^^ I think I saw you there, and very awkwardly did not introduce myself. At least it felt awkward to me! I thought to myself - what if there is more than one big Filipino guy helping here, and psyched myself out. Either way, thanks for pointing it out. I got to drink a lot of really good tea, listen to some very interesting people talk, and found 2 new suppliers that I will be ordering from soon. (Fox and Moon had an amazing blend of green tea and mint, and some nice Oolongs; and Glenburn tea direct blew me away with some fancy Indian teas). enthe0s posted:So I got into tea a couple of weeks ago thanks to one of my friends and I bought a few different types of tea to try and learn what I like and don't like. However, I would like to greatly speed up the process of trying all the different "styles" of tea (not really sure what term to use), so are there any "standard" teas I should try? That is to say, can I get recommendations for tea that exemplify a certain type of tea so I can see if I would like that kind in general? Re: Green tea - I have a post I think on this or the previous page where I recommend a few green teas from Upton to someone based on my fiancee's preferences. She is a big green tea drinker. You could take a look there for some suggestions for green. Looking at your black tea preference, though, I can make some suggestions for Indian tea exploration, as it is much more where my interests lie. I'm going to talk about it a bit, and then list links at the bottom to what I recommend. You tried a Darjeeling blend made predominantly of second-flush Darjeeling. Darjeeling tea is harvested primarily in four flushes. First flush is just after the spring rains, second flush early summer, monsoon in the rainy season, and autumnal late in the year. Monsoon tea is less commonly exported as it is often considered of lower quality. Autumnal tea is more exported, but it is the first and second flushes that are typically considered best quality. Upton doesn't really have a good, inexpensive first flush. They have many excellent second flush teas. The Tindharia estate in particular is really nice, and they also have an Autumnal tea. This would let you try a pure second flush and autumnal flush Darjeeling from the same estate. It appears that they only have samples of the Autumnal, but they will almost certainly be restocked later this year. One thing to note about Darjeeling tea is that most of it is not completely oxidised. What this means, essentially, is that Darjeeling tea is technically Oolong tea. India has three main tea districts. Darjeeling, which you have already tried and which is most delicate with a characteristic "Muscatel" flavor, is probably the most famous. The other two main ones are Assam, and Nilgiri. In Assam and Nilgiri the tea bush that is grown is usually of the Assamica variety, rather than the Sinensis variety grown in Darjeeling and China. This generalization is not universally true, and there are clonal differences as well, but it's alright as a heuristic. Assam tea is much more robust and malty than Darjeeling. Nilgiri is somewhere in between. Tea in Assam is often produced by the CTC process, or crush tear curl, which results in more complete oxidation than the orthodox process which is usually used in Darjeeling. Orthodox produced tea is certainly made in Assam and Nilgiri, as well. For Assam, the Belseri Estate organic CTC is my favourite by a long shot. I drink a cup or three most days. I take it with milk, and it really works that way. It also makes excellent chai. For an orthodox produced assam that is great plain, with no milk, the top level Dejoo Estate is nice. For Nilgiri, Upton doesn't have a great selection. That said, the Craigmore is nice and displays regional character well. You could buy a sample of each of these for $6, and get a very well rounded look at Indian tea. There is also tea made in India in Sikkim, Dooars, Kangra, the Himalayan mountains, Kerala, but these are much smaller districts for tea production. I believe Sikkim has just one producer. Two other things to mention with respect to Indian tea are Earl Grey, and Chai. I recommended some Earl Greys in a previous post, but suffice to say, Upton has good quality and good selection. For Chai, I prefer to make my own either with whole spices, or with a tin of chai masala from an Indian grocer, and use a robust tea (usually an Assam CTC or BOP, or even Fannings). http://www.uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?itemID=TD30&from=search.asp (the FTGFOP1 CL is the best second flush, but you can search Tindharia to find others as well as their Autumnal) https://secure.uptontea.com/shopcar...0&categoryID=17 (Belseri) https://secure.uptontea.com/shopcar...ype=new&begin=0 (Dejoo) https://secure.uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?itemID=TN77&from=search.asp (Craigmore) Edit: Fixed link pork never goes bad fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Mar 5, 2012 |
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Mar 3, 2012 21:43
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