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Oh poo poo I can't believe it never occurred to me that there would be a tea thread. I love me some Japanese green teas, houjicha, genmaicha, and probably my favourite is jasmine pearl tea. First off, gently caress kettles, what you people need is a hot water dispenser. I have one, it's always full, and provides instant hot water whenever I want it, so no waiting for a kettle to boil. And even the cheap ones have temperature settings, though I leave mine on the 98 degree setting so I can also make coffee whenever I want. I also have a cast iron pot, and the trick I've found is that it regulates the temperature for you. If you fill a cast iron pot with boiling water, and let it set for about 20 seconds, you're left with water that is the perfect temperature for green tea. To make tea that needs near-boiling water, preheat it once, throw the water away, and fill it again with boiling water. For anyone looking for something relaxing to drink in the evening, I highly recommend houjicha. It's basically leftover stems and some leaves, roasted until they're brown, with zero caffeine content. Pour boiling water onto tea, let it sit for 30 seconds, and you're good to go. You can even reuse it a bunch of times, and it's basically impossible to screw up. I mix it half and half with something called mamecha, which as far as I can tell is just dried black beans? A nice simple flavour, with zero effort. I don't know if this has been covered in the thread or not, but every set of instructions in English I've found, both on packages and online, for making green teas are way off. Use 80-85 degree water, and steep for somewhere under 3 minutes. But according to the one tea shop I went to in Nara, the tea capital of Japan, which clearly makes me an expert, the way to do it is to "steep" it once with 80-85 degree water for about 15 seconds, and then throw that water away, since it's considered more of a rinse, and a way to sort of "wake up" the tea. Then steep it once more, for about 30 seconds, and then pour. If you plan on steeping again, take the lid off the pot and let the leaves sit uncovered. The tea comes out much clearer, and the subtle flavours are brought out more. I thought this might just be a Japanese thing, but I went to a couple tea shops in Vancouver's Chinatown, and also another one in Seattle, and in each one an old Chinese or Taiwanese man made green tea the same way, stressing how important the first rinse is. If you're having trouble getting green tea to come out right, this is probably why. It takes like 3 times as long to prepare, but man is the extra effort worth it. Same thing goes with jasmine pearls: they need to be steeped just long enough for the pearls to open up, then that water discarded, and the leaves steeped properly, again for only about 30 seconds. And actually, most of the time I've found that it's the *next* steeping that has the best flavour and aroma. I'm not trying to be a snob, the best cup of tea is the tea you enjoy, but I've never found instructions like this in English. I don't know if manufacturers/retailers think that people would be put off by how much of a pain in the rear end it is, and it can be a pain in the rear end (the Taiwanese places even had a special tray just for catching all the water that gets spilled from pouring and repouring). But I feel like, at least for the teas I make, once you get it down it becomes almost automatic, and so it becomes like 5-10 minutes of some kind of zen, where I'm not really thinking about making the tea, but I'm also not thinking about anything else, either. For me the process of making is almost more relaxing than sitting and drinking it afterwards. Oh, and on the topic of cast iron pots: before you buy one, check the bottom. Quality ones will have the name of the manufacturer cast into the bottom, if not then it likely came from a lovely factory in China. The tea will probably taste the same, but for me, it adds something that the teapot was made by someone who cared about what they were doing enough to put their name on it, even if it is the company name.
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Sep 22, 2017 08:53
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Trabant posted:Good green tea prep is my white whale. If I'm making tea in the office, is this: That's what I would do. With the added step that if your water is already 80 degrees then I would warm the mug up with it first. I've been told that the "correct" way to do it is to boil the water once, and then let it cool, so if you're doing that then it'll be a matter of experimentation to find out how long to let it sit in your mug before adding the tea leaves. SymmetryrtemmyS posted:That method of preparing tea is called gongfu, and it's my preferred way to drink tea. Try using a much higher leaf to water ratio, you can resteep many times that way. Some teas will go to 10-20. I like to use a 100ml gaiwan that ends up loosely packed with leaves after they all fully rehydrate. Now I have a name for it, thanks! Googling that does indeed bring up some results.
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Sep 22, 2017 17:52
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Undeclared Eggplant posted:I haven't tried the rinse with green tea. Gonna give it a try next time and see if it comes out better. I usually make it at work where I don't have control over the water temp either. Maybe I can bring a thermometer to check it. Patience is the point: stop what you're doing, and for a few minutes just make tea. If your water temperature is consistent, and you're using the same mug, then the length of time you need to let it cool will be consistent as well. Figure out how long that is, and then hit it without a timer or thermometer. Once you're there, then as you make it you can use the time to just zone out for a few minutes (although I'm guilty of playing with my phone more often than I'd like), and when you're done, you get to have tea. I rarely drink tea out of the house because stopping everything for 15-20 minutes isn't usually practical. Who has a nice teacup, or pot? Let's see it.  This is my cup, I bought it around 10 years ago at a local festival for Kutani yaki when I lived in Japan, for like five or ten bucks. It's not perfect, but it's hand made and painted, and I like the picture on the simple background. It's also larger than a traditional teacup, being made for use in a sushi restaurant, which I like obviously because then it holds more tea. Plus it's held up to hundreds of cycles on the bottom rack of a dishwasher, so in my book, that's a quality product.  I got this from Amazon a few years ago. Again hand made, from Iwachu. Satisfyingly heavy, and it came with a mesh net that is almost as big as the inside of the pot so the leaves have plenty of room to expand. The cast iron absorbs enough heat that boiling water drops to just the right temperature for green or jasmine tea within a minute. They're normally fairly expensive but every now and then they go on a random 60% off sale, mine was around the price of one of the cheap Chinese-made ones.
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Sep 23, 2017 05:57
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