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Ugh, I made the mistake of buying flower scented tea again (Jasmine tea - I hadn't had it and at 50 cents an ounce, I figured it was worth a try). If you haven't had it, don't. It tastes like you're chugging down a cup of hand soap.
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Nov 18, 2011 22:45
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Is there a good cheap gaiwan set that anyone knows of? I was making do with a ghetto-gaiwan, a small mug with the lid of an infuser jammed halfway down to just cover the tea and water, but the cup I was using was just broken like 10 minutes ago and I kind of wanted to get a real gaiwan. I was planning on asking for this gaiwan set but it was put on reddit and then they bought all of them up. I don't want to spend too much more than what that set cost, can anyone point me to a good place?
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Dec 13, 2011 07:55
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:I love Pu-Erhs and greens, but I'm having a hard time finding good pu-erhs in the area. Does anyone have some suggestions for pu-erhs? I think white teas like Shou Mei and maybe even Bai Mu Dan are made of older and larger leaves and so are considered "bad quality" by some, and are pretty cheap but I think they also have a bolder flavor. I haven't tried Bai Mu Dan but I remember Upton's Shou Mei having a sort of spicy, wild flavor that they describe as herbaceous. I followed their recommendation and brewed it 2 tsp for 4 minutes with 180 water, I think, but it has been a while, maybe I had done it wrong? I've read a lot of conflicting things about white teas in regards to how to steep them, although I know it varies.
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Dec 19, 2011 19:44
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GrAviTy84 posted:I cracked a new bingcha last night. Thought I'd write up a picture guide of how to break it up if you plan to use the whole cake roughly right away. The idea here is to loosen the tea cake up while breaking up the leaves as little as possible. Don't do this if you plan on just tasting the tea and want to store it for longer. You can actually steam the cake, as well, if you want to use it all right away, and it will loosen up and come apart in more complete pieces. I've used it on chunks of puerh, and it worked pretty well, but I didn't actually have a steamer and just used a sieve that fit into a larger saucepan half full of water with a lid over it. It's near the bottom of this page, but of course once you steam the tea you have to leave it out to dry.
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Jan 28, 2012 18:21
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Zelmel posted:Is there any advice people can give me on how to approach Darjeelings to enjoy them more? I've had a pretty wide range of them quality-wise, but they always taste kind of grassy and off to me (especially the higher quality ones, the cheap ones just taste like crappy black tea). It sounds like you might be drinking first flushes but other than that the only thing I can think of besides maybe Darjeelings just not being your thing is that you may not be using enough tea for your water. Especially with the higher quality teas, a larger leaf means you are going to need to use more leaves per cup or oz of water because it is less dense, which is why a lot of people measure tea by weight.
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Aug 14, 2012 04:17
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Arcturas posted:My rule of thumb is that the caffeine content is proportional to how dark the tea is. It's not entirely accurate, but it serves me decently enough. Thus blacks are the most caffeinated, oolongs are similar but a little less, greens are in the middle, and whites have relatively little caffeine. Caffeine is a natural pesticide produced by the camellia sinensis plant and so is also in a higher concentration in younger buds, which the plant wants to protect while they are still small and tender and such, so if you have a tea that is "tippy" or includes a lot of tips or young buds then it will be a bit more caffeinated. Because the tips are tender and sweet, they are used in more expensive and higher quality teas, but I think teas like silver needle contain a fair amount of tips, and there is the whole two-leaves-and-a-bud type of harvesting for certain oolongs. I am not sure how much of a difference it makes, but truthfully there is no "caffeine free" tea, at least coming from a camellia sinensis plant. You can drink herbal teas, and they have plenty of blends of flavors to try, but if you are super sensitive to caffeine you may just have to watch your intake, or try the teas that have been decaffeinated chemically. There are also people who say you can brew out the caffeine, but in black teas you are also brewing out most of the flavor - and there are some people who say this doesn't work at all, but you could always try - I think the suggestion is that you brew it for the first 30 seconds, pull out the tea and throw that steep away, then continue steeping.
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Aug 16, 2012 04:07
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glomkettle posted:Out of curiosity, what would you recommend if someone was looking for a more tobacco-ish blend? I can't really picture how that would work or taste in my head but it sounds interesting. A long time ago Upton had a Formosa/Taiwan tea that was just some generic oolong - it had an almost cinnamon-pepper-y herbal taste that reminded me of American Spirits. I do mean a long time ago, though, this would have been around 2009-2010 ish. But it might give you a region of tea to zone in on for that flavor.
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Sep 13, 2015 19:59
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 04:14 |
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There is a lot of crappy tea in the world, and a lot of tea that doesn't fit a "style", it's just tea. That's probably what you've got there - there are markets that exist for people who just buy tea the way Americans buy soda - they just drink it without regard to "the flavor" or mouthfeel or aroma or any of that poo poo -- it exists to be thrown in a mug and have mildly hot water poured over it, and steeped for a bit. You could probably bump up your water temp too, some green teas can withstand it. There's a specific group of people who think green tea should be bitter and astringent, the same dudes who think coffee should be sour and put hair on your chest. I could sperg out and go into more detail on what you're looking at but it's nothing fancy. On another note, I wish steeping tea in a gaiwan wasn't such an obnoxious experience. I have some crappy old tie gan yin - brewed 5 g in a 120 ml gaiwan, with hot-ish water and jesus, it reminds me of why I loved tea in the first place. That spicy aroma, theres flavors of Darjeeling, muscat grape, and caramel, the tea itself has that sweet-spicy honey flavor. But it's SO obnoxious to make about a shot's worth of tea at a time, and I've gotten to the point where I get annoyed having to make sure the water temperature is correct. Devoyniche fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 14:35
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