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pork never goes bad posted:For black tea an actual kettle will work better than a water boiler because those last 2-3 degrees can make a positive difference with some black teas.
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Jul 3, 2012 04:13
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surrender posted:Any recommendations for an electric kettle, preferably around $80 or lower and available on Amazon? We ordered this kettle from Amazon for my office/department, three 20-something coffee and tea addicts pretty much had this thing running 12 hours a day for six months with zero issues. Looks like it's going for $70 right now. Amazon's selection has improved dramatically in the last 18 months, but at the time it was one of the best in terms of water volume/power/features (adjustable, accurate digital thermostat). 1.5L is enough water for two personal size french presses.
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Jul 3, 2012 05:01
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I've been using an electric kettle at work daily similar to the ones posted. It seems to have some mineralization or something inside the kettle now after a year. Is there a recommended method to clean it out?
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Jul 3, 2012 06:43
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With mine, I first went for a vinegar and water solution and used the self-clean cycle, followed by a second water only self-clean. Later when I noticed that didn't work I purchased and used a fair amount of food grade citric acid (sold as a powder, bulk is cheaper than the packets advertised explicitly for cleaning) and ran another clean cycle, and finally a water only clean cycle. Came out pretty much brand new on the inside!
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Jul 3, 2012 06:59
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My coworker is anal about the glass coffee pot (needs to be optical grade clear to brew in, apparently  ), he uses this stuff. Website shows it working on stainless steelhttp://www.cleanthatpot.com/Clean_That_Pot.html
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Jul 3, 2012 07:06
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Tried Lapsang Souchong yesterday in a cafe because of this thread: iced, with a teeny bit of agave sweetener. The barrista objected to icing it and wanted to serve it warm with cinnamon and steamed milk... which I may try at home. Very burning-wood-y in smell, maybe a bit like jerky, but I found it really nice and nostalgic-- it tasted a bit like a breakfast tea I have lying around somewhere. I can't shake the taste of it, though, so I may be ordering some today. Azereki: If you like calming, I always enjoy a cup of chamomile or rooibos with honey at night. I also really like earl greys with lavender and or/cornflower just after lunch.
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Jul 3, 2012 17:48
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New to this tea-not-from-a-bag thing, and really enjoying it so far. I've got a big jar of delicious local honey, are there any particular teas that would go well with it?
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Jul 12, 2012 05:14
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:New to this tea-not-from-a-bag thing, and really enjoying it so far. I've got a big jar of delicious local honey, are there any particular teas that would go well with it? Green tea with honey is a nice combo. I prefer my black teas straight but it doesn't hurt to try it once with just about anything. Worst case you dump it and make another cup without.
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Jul 12, 2012 06:22
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Hi guys, new to tea here but I decided to go shopping with a friend and check out some tea shops around LA. Here are my experiences as a newbie. Went to a shop called Bird Pick in Pasadena. I pass by this shop a lot and never bought anything, but always loved looking in because they have massive glass jars and it's nice to see what the teas look like. Well, my friend told me even before smelling the teas that they were probably stale. Made me whiff several and said to remember what they smelled like. Went to Intelligentsia, bought a sealed bag of green tea. Broke it open and smelled it. Somewhat stronger smell. Then we went to Chado. Chado keeps all their teas in metal tins. When I whiffed them holy poo poo the scents were so much stronger than either Bird Pick or Intelligentsia. I was so impressed I bought four different green teas. So I guess the lesson of the day is... keep all your stuff in tins?
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Jul 22, 2012 18:03
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Glass lets UV light in which can contribute to stale tea. I use airtight glass jars but I keep them in a cupboard to keep the light out. Airtight is very important along with a stable temperature. With tea shops you also have to consider the volume they do. A big jar could sit on the shelf for a year or two before being refilled. and the bigger the jar is the more times they open it letting oxygen in. Has anyone done their own tea blending? Is there much more to it than mixing teas and dried herbs together? I have access to a great local herb and spice shop and if I could make anything halfway decent it would be a good way to make a bunch of cheap holiday gifts.
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Jul 22, 2012 19:20
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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 21:06 on Jul 22, 2012 |
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Jul 22, 2012 21:03
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I recently got back from a stay in Georgia, where I drank sweet tea nearly every day. There's something about sweet tea in the South, it has a lot of tannins in it and I think it's fabulous. I've tried making sweet tea a couple times since I got back with limited success. It's okay, but it doesn't have those awesome, bitter tannins. Anyone know how to make sweet tea and make it taste authentic instead of just bland? Any advice would be helpful 
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Jul 22, 2012 23:10
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Steve Yun posted:Hi guys, new to tea here but I decided to go shopping with a friend and check out some tea shops around LA. Here are my experiences as a newbie. Curious, but were the things you were smelling flavoured teas or just straight leaves? I find the scent of flavoured teas quite deceiving as they almost never taste as good/strong as they smell. Anyways here are some suggestions for tea stores to I guess Canadians/Americans that are not in the OP: http://www.urbantea.com/. I went to their downtown Vancouver store and the guy selling tea was very helpful and knowledgeable. Lots of selection of teas, but it is pricier than other stores (at least the ones I go to usually). http://www.chadoteahouse.com/. They only sell traditional Japanese green teas here (nothing flavoured unless you consider genmaicha flavoured). Their stuff ranges from not so expensive to pretty expensive. edit: Look Under The Rock posted:I've tried making sweet tea a couple times since I got back with limited success. It's okay, but it doesn't have those awesome, bitter tannins. Anyone know how to make sweet tea and make it taste authentic instead of just bland? Any advice would be helpful edit2: http://www.lupiciausa.com/ forgot about this place but they have really tasty teas, home of some of my favourites. They seem to have retail stores in California and Hawaii and Japan. They don't seem to ship outside the USA. Dog eats Dog fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jul 25, 2012 |
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Jul 23, 2012 11:48
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I've been using two of the large-sized teabags that are supposedly iced-tea-size. It says to use 2 of them to 2 quarts of water. I'm boiling the water, pouring it over the teabags, steeping for 10-15 minutes, and putting in the fridge to cool. I tried again night before last and still didn't get any tannins, but one of the teabags broke so there's a bunch of loose leaves at the bottom of my pitcher. I poured some this morning, and voila, tannins. Does this mean I need to steep it, like, overnight? Also, funny story: when I first moved into my apartment I was really craving peach tea. This was before I discovered Good Tea, so I bought a box of peach teabags. The first couple times I tried the peach stuff, I absolutely hated it, so the teabags have just been sitting in a drawer for a while now. When I made this pitcher of sweet tea the other night I thought I'd give it a little bit of subtle peach flavor by throwing one of the (normal sized) teabags into the pitcher. Well, one teabag gave the whole two quarts a serious kick in the face of peach. No wonder I didn't like the tea, it's way too strong.
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Jul 23, 2012 13:11
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Look Under The Rock posted:I recently got back from a stay in Georgia, where I drank sweet tea nearly every day. There's something about sweet tea in the South, it has a lot of tannins in it and I think it's fabulous. You can try making it the way folks make sun tea, which is throwing a generous amount of black tea into a glass jar and putting that outside in a hot summer day. In the evening, pull it back inside, strain the leaves, serve with ice, lemon, and a lot of sugar. Some people may say that there's something of a health hazard when making sun tea, but whenever I've had it, I haven't gotten ill from it, but I figure better safe than sorry!
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Jul 23, 2012 16:54
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Dog eats Dog posted:Curious, but were the things you were smelling flavoured teas or just straight leaves? I find the scent of flavoured teas quite deceiving as they almost never taste as good/strong as they smell.
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Jul 23, 2012 17:02
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Here's a basic run-down of the southern style sweet tea that I grew up around: 1. Get a bunch of generic tea bags from the grocery store. Orange Pekoe is typically the only identifier it'll have beyond it being a black tea. 2. Fill a small pot with maybe 2 or 3 cups of water and bring to a boil. Put in about a handful or two of teabags. 3. Boil for 5-10 minutes (or longer sometimes). 4. Drain teabags and toss 'em. Pour the tea concentrate you just made into a large glass jar of some sort. 5. Add water to dilute the tea and lots of sugar (to taste). 6. Serve over ice with lemon slices and fresh mint leaves (bonus if you just picked them out of your back yard). e: You really need to cool the tea down before you ice it. Hence the concentrate and dilution in this recipe/technique. Otherwise the ice is just going to dilute the tea even more when you don't want it diluted so it'll be bland water. You can even hold back on diluting the concentrate very much and depend on the slow melting of the ice to dilute it for you later. e2: I re-read how you said you were making it. It's not concentrated enough for an actual southern-style tea if you're just using two of those large bags for two quarts. You should at least double up the recipe. And boil the water with the bags in it. It's sacrilege to any other method of tea brewing, but that's why southern tea is so tannin-heavy. If it's too strong or too bitter you just add more water/ice or sugar ^^^^ I've heard the thing about sun tea being potentially dangerous before, too. I've never gotten sick from it the times I've had it, but I can see why it could become a health hazard since the water is just sitting out and never brought to a very high temperature. It's also possible to cold-brew tea in a similar style. Pretty much the same approach as sun tea except you leave it in the fridge for a day or two instead of outside for a few hours. DurianGray fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jul 23, 2012 |
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Jul 23, 2012 17:32
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Yep! The difference between hot/sun/cold brewing is how bitter you want your tea to taste. In my experiences, cold brewing restricts tannins from getting out of hand, where as sun and hot brewing release that stuff for a cup with a hard edge to it.
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Jul 23, 2012 17:39
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Steve Yun posted:It was Chado that I was at. Their regular plain green teas smelled stronger than Bird Pick's flavored teas. I guess that bird pick place really had stale teas if their flavoured teas had less scent.
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Jul 24, 2012 01:51
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Bird Pick: big glass jars with not-very-airtight seals in a shop with lots of windows and lots of sun coming in. I'm told hey have a few exotic teas that are hard to find elsewhere, but I wonder if there's any point in getting them if they're going to be stored badly too. Anyways, I have a relatively weak sense of smell but Chado's is very fragrant to me. Made a few practice pots of sencha, going to use it as reference point against green tea variants such as houjicha, gyokuro later in the week. Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Jul 24, 2012 |
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Jul 24, 2012 07:48
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So apparently you can get a lot of adagio teas (maybe all of them?) from Amazon, with free Prime shipping and everything. It's pretty great.
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Jul 24, 2012 21:42
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Anyone got a recommendation on good tea tins?
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Jul 24, 2012 23:11
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Steve Yun posted:Anyone got a recommendation on good tea tins? The Upton tins and bags are excellent, if utilitarian.
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Jul 24, 2012 23:30
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These are pretty good tins. http://www.plymouthtea.com/jaststaiti.html Their tea is pretty good too. I recommend the Friesian, Boston Tea Party, and Scottish Breakfast blends. http://www.plymouthtea.com/bostonteaparty.html http://www.plymouthtea.com/friesmor.html http://www.plymouthtea.com/scotbreak.html
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Jul 25, 2012 00:22
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The Adagio ones are pretty but I got the free red white and blue ones from their 4th of July promotion and the colored ones seem to be way shoddier. I don't think the lid on my blue one is airtight. 
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Jul 25, 2012 00:24
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Steve Yun posted:Anyone got a recommendation on good tea tins? The ones I got for free from David's tea seem to be good. You can buy them for 2.50 separately also. If you want pretty ones, as much as I don't like them, teavanna has a large selection of pricey Japanese paper covered ones.
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Jul 25, 2012 00:46
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You can also get some cookies in a tin from the dollar store like this, wash and air it out then store your tea in it. These tins are air tight, plus you have extra cookies.
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Jul 25, 2012 01:04
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Hawkgirl posted:The Adagio ones are pretty but I got the free red white and blue ones from their 4th of July promotion and the colored ones seem to be way shoddier. I don't think the lid on my blue one is airtight. I was wondering if those were like the regular ones or not. Guess I didn't miss out on much I am glad that I kept all the Adagio tins I got while they were still using them to fill all their orders instead of the bags.
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Jul 26, 2012 02:05
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So does anyone know any online shops that can ship directly from China? Yunnan Sourcing is the only one I know, but it's more of a Pu-erh joint. No Longjing - no deal.
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Aug 3, 2012 10:46
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Life in Teacup was doing a preorder drive for Longjing, I did a post about it in this very thread some time ago, I think! Due to the time-sensitive nature of the leaves though you've missed out for this year and they've cleared out their stock.
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Aug 3, 2012 17:40
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Thanks, the thing is, I live closer to China than to America, so ordering from China just seems to make more sense to me. I'll keep googling around for now, while I still have some White and Longjing left from a visit to Shanghai. Maybe I'll resort to ordering from Europe if that fails. Buying from local suppliers seems like a crapshoot, all stuff I got from them was a bit... aged.
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Aug 3, 2012 18:14
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I was under the impression that the good longjing simply doesn't get exported outside of China by law?
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Aug 3, 2012 18:24
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Hmm, well, good luck on that, woodenchicken! If you do find direct Chinese sources that ship, let us know. I know that there's quite a few on eBay such as ldllu that are based directly in China and ship abroad too, so that might be a thing you'll want to look into.Steve Yun posted:I was under the impression that the good longjing simply doesn't get exported outside of China by law? Not necessarily true. I don't know about the legal aspect of it, but it's more that it's in high demand in their domestic markets and tend to command a better price than abroad. Similarly, due to it being time sensitive, it's quite a bit cheaper to just not ship it (since you'd need to ship by air with all the appropriate packaging) and sell it local. Life in Teacup, however, gets away with it because they have a relationship directly with the farmers, and by taking in preorders they only acquire the stock that will move versus having quickly-staling Longjing that is, effectively, lost money. Most places do something like that that do import.
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Aug 3, 2012 18:29
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Very cool. My friends would always get theirs from one of their moms who would visit China every now and then and brings back some of the higher grade stuff. Now that I'm taking an interest in tea I asked them to score me some from the next trip, but if I can get it through a supplier that would be perfect
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Aug 3, 2012 18:31
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aldantefax posted:I know that there's quite a few on eBay such as ldllu that are based directly in China and ship abroad too, so that might be a thing you'll want to look into. VVV Okay, Idllu looks promising. Thanks for the heads-up! We'll see if there are more. woodenchicken fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Aug 3, 2012 |
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Aug 3, 2012 18:52
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Bob McBob might know some more, but while I was window shopping for gaiwan and the like I came across ldllu. You might try some searches such as "2012 Longjing" or searches for "gongfu cha" or "gongfu tea" might turn up some results.
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Aug 3, 2012 20:52
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You might want to try different spellings too like Lung Ching.
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Aug 3, 2012 23:00
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I'm almost through my tea bags and have decided to go for loose leaf. Anyone in Seattle have experience with Market Spice teas? The lack of any sugar or artificial sweeteners seems to be a plus, and I really like orange & cinnamon. They have a shop in Pike Place and would be a convenient stop when I get off the ferry on my way home.
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Aug 8, 2012 16:06
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Some people love it, some people hate it. A friend of mine opened a sealed jar of the bags, took a big whiff and ended up retching in the bathroom for a few minutes. They usually have a sample station set up in the back so you could start there and try a small box of bags first. You'll definitely want something airtight to store it in since all the flavor and sweetness is coming from the orange and cinnamon oils. Downtown Seattle has at least a few good options for loose leaf so I wouldn't limit myself to Market Spice just for the convenience.
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Aug 8, 2012 16:56
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Some people love it, some people hate it. A friend of mine opened a sealed jar of the bags, took a big whiff and ended up retching in the bathroom for a few minutes. Yeah, Seattle's pretty good for tea. I actually picked up some decent silver needles tea from the spice shop that's about two blocks from Pike's Place, for a rather reasonable price. I forget the name, but it's along the street just underneath Pike's, farther left-ish (if you're looking at the water) from the market.
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Aug 8, 2012 16:59
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