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amazon.co.uk carries a fair amount of tea infusers for free or small shipping, though I have no clue how good their overall prices are. As for keeping tea... As with any food it depends on the temperature of the environment and is still a bit of a crapshoot. Personally wet leaves are too much like compost for my taste so I wouldn't rebrew something after about five hours unattended. Depends on the weather though.
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Feb 3, 2014 19:26
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 03:52 |
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Well, you could always get rid of the vinegar smell by following it up with boiling some baking soda... Seriously though, baking soda is great for off smells. Due to a terrible misunderstanding w.r.t. who cleaned what I ended up with some butterfly pea petals left in the tea machine for a week-ish, which at some point turned into thick, green sludge that smelled like hot garbage  . Dishwashing liquid and some elbow grease cleaned everything off proper, but the smell stuck until I boiled/steeped a bunch of baking soda (in water ofc). Then like nothing ever happened. Cleaned off any tannin stains too (this last part isn't guaranteed if enough have built up).
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Mar 7, 2014 04:32
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If your tannin stains are so severe that even baking soda or barkeeper's friend (...rinse well) won't get them off, there's one hardcore option (that may actually be too much on the china). I used the teabot for somewhere in the realm of two years thinking that the stains were just a colour thing that you couldn't do anything about. But then I noticed that all of my teas were starting to taste like some sort of generic black tea conglomerate... even plain boiled water. It's almost like what they say about yixing pots, except it was just this base tone of bland bitterness. So then I started looking into cleaning stuff, and... Well, not even barkeeper's friend worked. But there was one method that did. At some point I noticed that after doing the baking soda boil thing, some areas would come off if I lightly ran my fingernail down them, even though normal dish scrubbers weren't making things budge. So I tore off a piece of a magic eraser and stuck it on a little wooden bamboo skewer (also a toothpick for tiny crevices). It was a bit awkward, but the skewer delivered that pinpoint pressure while the magic eraser would spread it to a more usable area. Got it all new and shiny! IIRC the magic eraser isn't exactly food-safe either, so I rinsed thoroughly and boiled a batch of water to pour out.
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Mar 7, 2014 21:15
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I understand what you mean about flavoured teas that taste "artificial" - it's the problem I have with a lot of stuff like David's Tea. But it's not because of the presence of flavourant ("natural flavour" and "artificial flavour" are pretty much the same thing really), it's in how it's used. I find that teas that smell the most amazing tend to come out overwhelming and "chemicaley" brewed. But there are good, subtly flavoured teas and shops that deal in them (or are at least more hit than miss). They can be really hard to find though. I'd even say it's like hunting for good pu erh, except it doesn't get that expensive. "Brazilian Guava" is one such mix that I've seen at multiple places - the one that has some colorful fruity looking pieces in it. I remember Upton's Earl Grey Creme Vanilla being pretty good, though I'm not a fan of most of their other flavors. Some of my other favorites are pretty cheap stuff I found in some Russian stores. My favorite tea cafe will combine flavored teas with some of the "real thing" to a really wonderful effect. Like mango flavoured iced tea with mango preserves, or a red date herbal tea with some dry dates thrown into the pot, various bits of fruit etc. That's a great way to get a full and very natural flavour to your tea... but I'd still recommend adding this to tea that has a good subtle matching flavour, especially if you're using black tea. Otherwise plain tea can result in two clashing flavours (tea & additives) rather than a smooth gradient from one to the other. But if you're really adamant about avoiding flavourants, then looking up various chai mixes would be your best bet.
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Mar 21, 2014 05:57
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I like to make quick cheater iced tea with a Takeya Flash Chill. I think it's pretty great, although I haven't done a side-by-side comparison with cold brewing. But it's similarly good for using up large quantities of so-so teas. Just get the tall 2 quart one if you're interested, it's surprisingly compact for how much it holds. The short 1 quart doesn't look like it'd have much room when you take into account the ice and any additions you might want to make (cut up fruit and citrus is neat). Plus on amazon it's literally a 3 buck difference.
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Jun 8, 2014 08:16
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For that matter, there is such a thing as good bubble tea. For the flavoured stuff, places that use syrups are way better than the ones that use powders (I don't think I've liked any powder based ones). Otherwise, I've run into one where just pick from a list of tea varieties (some flavored and some unflavored semi fancy stuff), choose if you want milk or not, and they actually served it hot (the tapioca bubbles still hold up the same texture). It was a bit unusual, but pretty good. At another place I regularly get bubble iced coffee 
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Jun 11, 2014 23:46
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If you've got some bagged/baggable stuff that doesn't have any metal in it and you're willing to mess around with figuring out just how much time you need, there really isn't anything wrong with the "bag + mug + water, then microwave" method. You just have to find out how to hit around the temperature you want, and post-steep for very little time if at all.
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Aug 28, 2014 21:41
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 03:52 |
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I actually wouldn't rank either of those above an artificial flavour, even though I recognise that real fruit stuff can be nicer and more complex than a simple flavouring. The issue is FDA legalese. There are very few extracts, off the top of my head malt and vanilla, that legally have to be what you're probably imagining. There are very few oils, for that matter, that are regulated either - again, specific stuff like olive oil... But there's no legal definition of just an "oil", or an "essential oil", or even a "flavour[ing] oil". You can find plenty of _____ extracts, _____ oils, and so on for sale and in their ingredients they'll usually just specify that they're made from "natural flavours". And "natural flavours" is downright meaningless. "Natural ______ flavour" only legally means "something, derived from any organism (bacteria, beaver butt gunk et al), that we can arbitrarily say tastes like ______". This can be down to the same exact single chemical as an "artificial" flavour that just used another (sometimes cleaner/better) method to get to it. Now, I'm not saying the teas you love aren't using the best parts extracted from the actual fruits on the label... But chances are that you have no way to really know for sure. If you do, I'd love to try some. Otherwise, I think it's best to not even read labels (psychological bias!) for flavoured teas before trying them (unless you have some sort of allergy), and just go with what tastes the best. There's wonderful, synthesized but painstakingly assembled and calibrated artificial flavours out there, just as there are bland and gross natural ones that are about as likely to come from test tubes.
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Oct 21, 2014 20:58
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