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Sekhmnet posted:So I just noticed that my WinCo has actual bulk tea available(in a seperate weird multi dispensor) in addition to the bulk stash tea bags they've always had. I got an ounce of the 'royal earl grey' tea, and its pretty good. My question for the thread is: what are all these blue, red and green things that probably aren't tea? I've mostly been drinking this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00136MKEO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1 Since its a ton of tea and it tastes good. This stuff has more of a spiced flavor, which I'm sure I'll lean into but I like the sort of vanilla cookie flavor of a milder earl grey. Do you have a photo of the loose tea itself?
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Aug 19, 2019 22:03
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effika posted:Do you have a photo of the loose tea itself? Here is some of it on a green plate https://postimg.cc/FfKFVMx1
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Aug 19, 2019 22:22
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Sekhmnet posted:Here is some of it on a green plate https://postimg.cc/FfKFVMx1 With it being an Earl Grey, I'd guess the blue stuff is lavender petals! They add a nice sweetness and floral note to the tea.
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Aug 20, 2019 00:45
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That's Tiesta Victorian Earl Grey. It's Earl Grey tea plus rose, lavender, cornflower, and marigold.
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Aug 20, 2019 01:02
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Hey thread, I've got a couple of questions: I've just been getting back into tea. I drank a lot--in terms of volume, not variety--in college and right after, but just picked the habit up again after a while of not touching tea. Now I can actually buy decent stuff instead of the cheapest bagged green tea I can find! I haven't tried many varieties, though. Are there any good monthly variety box kind of services for tea that would give me a kind of tasting menu over a few months? I'm mostly interested in actual tea, but I don't mind herbals as long as they're not all I'm getting. Also, I need a decent way to brew tea at work. We've got an electric kettle, and I don't really have room to keep a teapot handy, but is there anything that's maybe small-ish but easier to rinse out and clean than a mesh infuser?
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Aug 26, 2019 21:46
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Rather than subscription services I’d recommend ordering samplers from reputable online tea shops. My preferred shop is Tea Masters, he sells mainly Taiwanese teas and stocks quality stuff at every price point he offers, but is on the pricey side overall. There are many other good options for both specialists like the one I mentioned and more generalist vendors. As far as brewing at work, I find the mesh baskets like the Finum ones to be the best option myself. A gaiwan is easier to clean but more brewing effort than I want to put in at work.
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Aug 27, 2019 01:50
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MockingQuantum posted:Hey thread, I've got a couple of questions: I've just been getting back into tea. I drank a lot--in terms of volume, not variety--in college and right after, but just picked the habit up again after a while of not touching tea. Now I can actually buy decent stuff instead of the cheapest bagged green tea I can find! If you have a tea shop in your town you can probably go there and sample a bunch of stuff. That's probably the best way to find what you like. As for brewing at work, there are a bunch of team drinkers on my team so we just have a communal kettle, a bunch of infusers, and a bunch of tea in small containers. I don't think you need much more than that although someone does have the whole setup to do gongfu at work.
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Aug 27, 2019 16:12
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MockingQuantum posted:Hey thread, I've got a couple of questions: I've just been getting back into tea. I drank a lot--in terms of volume, not variety--in college and right after, but just picked the habit up again after a while of not touching tea. Now I can actually buy decent stuff instead of the cheapest bagged green tea I can find! Grab a cup that fits your mesh infuser and use it to help rinse it out after knocking the leaves out. Just stick the strainer in it, fill up with water, and it will help lift the stuck leaves away from the sides. It will go much, much quicker.
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Aug 27, 2019 16:19
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effika posted:Grab a cup that fits your mesh infuser and use it to help rinse it out after knocking the leaves out. Just stick the strainer in it, fill up with water, and it will help lift the stuck leaves away from the sides. It will go much, much quicker. Oh duh, I'm embarrassed I never thought of that. Thanks for the advice! I've got a couple of local tea shops, unfortunately the closest one does not at all align with my tastes in tea and the rest are enough out of the way that it's hard to find a time to make a trip (or are "by appointment only" kind of situations). I'll see what I can figure out though.
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Aug 27, 2019 16:23
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breaks posted:My preferred shop is Tea Masters, he sells mainly Taiwanese teas and stocks quality stuff at every price point he offers, but is on the pricey side overall. Can recommend Stephane as well. Very high quality teas. Bought a couple different oolongs from him and some teaware. Tried the qingxin alishan 2019 last night and it was superb! Bright yellow soup with nice umami and sweetness. No off-tastes.
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Aug 28, 2019 14:58
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Making pu-erh at work, breaking off pieces of the cake with a pocket knife, looking like a goddamn psycho.
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Sep 3, 2019 15:52
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Trabant posted:Making pu-erh at work, breaking off pieces of the cake with a pocket knife, looking like a goddamn HERO. ftfy. At least you're not heating up fish in the microwave.
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Sep 3, 2019 16:26
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Trabant posted:Making pu-erh at work, breaking off pieces of the cake with a pocket knife, looking like a goddamn psycho. I'm just imagining your coworkers side-eyeing you and asking each other in whispered tones "did Trabant...stab his tea before he put the water in it???"
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Sep 3, 2019 23:47
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I appreciate the "hero" fix but thisShallNoiseUpon posted:"did Trabant...stab his tea before he put the water in it???" is almost certainly what's happening. One day I'll change jobs and will be remembered in the department as the Tea Stabber.
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Sep 4, 2019 00:09
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If anyone asks you why, reply with "gotta make sure it's dead, right?"
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Sep 4, 2019 01:20
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if you ever upgrade from using a regular flat-head electronics screwdriver to an actual puerh pick, please change your tea-prying habits and don’t be an idiot like me. I jammed the pick right into my hand a couple of week ago and I still have a scar from the wound
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Sep 4, 2019 07:24
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I just opened a new bag of loose leaf hojicha from the stuff I brought home from my Tokyo trip and noticed that the best before date is this coming 16th. It'll probably take me a month or so to finish the bag. There shouldn't be much issue with using up this tea past the best before date, right?
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Sep 5, 2019 18:46
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No, it should be fine, it just might have lost some of its flavor. As long as it's not moldy or whatever you're good.
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Sep 5, 2019 18:53
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MockingQuantum posted:Hey thread, I've got a couple of questions: I've just been getting back into tea. I drank a lot--in terms of volume, not variety--in college and right after, but just picked the habit up again after a while of not touching tea. Now I can actually buy decent stuff instead of the cheapest bagged green tea I can find! Is your electric kettle temperature-controlled, or does it only go to boiling? If the latter, that either somewhat limits the types of teas you can make, or you have to get a thermometer/get really good at the asian grandma thing where your pour water between two cups and measure the temperature by how hot the cups are getting. Tea Masters is excellent, but at a very high price point. This is going to be true of a lot of name-brand Taiwanese teas, because it's an overheated market and my understanding is that this year in particular crummy weather did kind of a number on the harvest. Yunnan Sourcing for mainland Chinese teas and Vahdam for Indian teas are my usual suggestions for having a good variety, excellent value-for-money, and reasonable shipping. YS in particular is good for having small sampler-sized packets available at a low markup, IIRC.
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Sep 5, 2019 21:07
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anakha posted:There shouldn't be much issue with using up this tea past the best before date, right? I have a tin of sencha that I bought in 2015, and it still tastes fine, so you should be ok
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Sep 5, 2019 21:39
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Reiterpallasch posted:Is your electric kettle temperature-controlled, or does it only go to boiling? If the latter, that either somewhat limits the types of teas you can make WRT water temperature, I really think you don’t need to be too precise with most teas. As long as the leaves are solidly intact you don’t need to worry too much, if you need a lower temp just let the water cool down for a minute or two or whatever unless you’re really trying to hyperoptimize. I say most and solidly intact because it does make a real difference with sencha style teas, especially the heavily steamed ones, but regardless of steaming level I’d always recommend some reliable temp control for those. Also as someone who always warns about pricing with Teamasters, I also want to mention that nowadays he does actually stock a decent selection of quite reasonably priced teas, which are as usual quite good. The admitted catch is factoring in shipping from Taiwan for orders under $100 which does bump it up a fair bit.
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Sep 5, 2019 22:30
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Huh, that's a neat tip, I'll have to put in another order at some point i'm in the mood for taiwanese tea. While I'm hear, since I'm not very familiar with the Indian tea market--a friend is looking for a good Darjeeling-style tea minus the slave labor and I have absolutely no idea where to begin looking. Surely there's some estate somewhere which is willing to treat the labor better and charge more for it, but maybe I'm being too optimistic about human nature?
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Sep 5, 2019 23:04
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Reiterpallasch posted:Huh, that's a neat tip, I'll have to put in another order at some point i'm in the mood for taiwanese tea. While I'm hear, since I'm not very familiar with the Indian tea market--a friend is looking for a good Darjeeling-style tea minus the slave labor and I have absolutely no idea where to begin looking. Surely there's some estate somewhere which is willing to treat the labor better and charge more for it, but maybe I'm being too optimistic about human nature? Try looking for small/family growers. My local tea shop gets teas from here: https://www.tealeaftheory.com/know-our-farmers/ Also, not a darjeeling, but the Latumoni Assam is divine. I like the Mandal Gaon as well. They do a nice darjeeling oolong. Edit, also I’ve been awaiting a shipment from Teavivre, an extra week because they accidentally shipped my package to Australia lol. Though they’re higher priced than Yunnan Sourcing, when you factor in shipping costs they seem to come out to about the same. Does YS ever do free shipping deals to Canada at all? Because I’ve stuck with Teavivre due to that but YS has way more selection. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Sep 5, 2019 |
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Sep 5, 2019 23:15
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I’ve developed a taste for matcha. So far I’ve only had the Ito En from Safeway. I don’t care for ceremony. I’ve read that it should be whisked after adding water, and I’ve read that the powder should be turned to a paste by a small amount of water, and then enough water added to drink. I’ll probably try the latter variation tomorrow. Should there be a collection of stuff at the bottom of the cup after/during drinking? Anyone have any strong opinions on matcha? I figure I’ll order from the first link in the OP and give them a go once I’m nearing done with my current can.
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Sep 6, 2019 03:48
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I'll check out that link, thanks!HelloSailorSign posted:I’ve developed a taste for matcha. So far I’ve only had the Ito En from Safeway. There should absolutely not be sludge or clumped powder at the bottom. If there is, you've got a bum whisk or you need to sift the powder before putting it into the bowl. A normal kitchen sifter you'd use for flour or sugar or whatever will work fine. If you don't care about the ceremony at all you don't need a $30 handcarved bamboo whisk; you can get excellent results from one of those $5 tiny-electric whisk-on-a-sticks you use to froth milk for a latte. Matcha is an extremely specialist product and Adagio is absolutely not the place you want to be buying it. Because it's the new hot thing, there are a lot of unscrupulous vendors, including Adagio, hawking crappy Nishio or Chinese tea powder as "ceremonial grade" (this has no legal force in Japan or the United States, which is why they all use it) matcha. None of them are a particularly good value either--they command superpremium prices despite really not being any better than Ito En's Nishio-grown offering. If you don't have a lot of money to blow on matcha powder, you could do a lot worse than continuing to buy Ito En. Unfortunately, the good stuff is an incredible pain to store and ship because it's a powder instead of whole leaf; you'll be mail-ordering from Japan which means that you'll eat substantial shipping costs. Ippodo is one of the more western-friendly matcha vendors out there and has pretty reasonable shipping. Sazen offers a number of famous domestic producers, including Koyama-en's product line which I really like, but their shipping fees are Super Bullshit 64 unless you're ordering a lot. Both producers offer an excellent matcha at around the $0.50/gram mark--Koyama-en's Wako and Ippodo's Sayaka-no-mukashi are both very orthodox teas with balanced sweetness and umami. The more you order, the less of your cost will be shipping, but it's hard to go through a lot of powder at once before some of it starts to go off. Sorry for the long-rear end post, but scummy matcha vendors are one of the things that really annoy me. Reiterpallasch fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 05:18
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I decided I was on a matcha kick for a bit, bought a bunch from Nijiya, then never even opened it.  On the upside, I guess it won't go stale as quickly?
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Sep 6, 2019 10:41
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Bees on Wheat posted:I decided I was on a matcha kick for a bit, bought a bunch from Nijiya, then never even opened it. Worst comes to worst, you could always use it for cooking.
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Sep 6, 2019 17:38
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Reiterpallasch posted:Sorry for the long-rear end post, but scummy matcha vendors are one of the things that really annoy me. A long rear end post is exactly what I wanted. Telling the difference between good info and dumb stuff with everything online is hard for me since I know near nothing. Thank you!
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Sep 6, 2019 17:57
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Heath posted:If anyone asks you why, reply with "gotta make sure it's dead, right?"  ulvir posted:if you ever upgrade from using a regular flat-head electronics screwdriver to an actual puerh pick, please change your tea-prying habits and don’t be an idiot like me. I jammed the pick right into my hand a couple of week ago and I still have a scar from the wound Oh poo poo, you just gave me an idea for my next idiot project. Also, ow.
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Sep 6, 2019 19:44
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Reiterpallasch posted:hawking crappy Nishio or Chinese tea powder as "ceremonial grade" (this has no legal force in Japan or the United States, which is why they all use it) matcha. I always wondered why Starbucks claims its matcha powder is "ceremonial grade" when it tastes like poo poo (and is something like 80% sugar, to boot). Thanks for that information.
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Sep 6, 2019 23:16
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So if I see matcha that says “ceremonial grade” I’ll avoid it, since it means nothing it’s likely only used by those trying to market their way out of an inferior product.
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Sep 6, 2019 23:43
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gamingCaffeinator posted:I always wondered why Starbucks claims its matcha powder is "ceremonial grade" when it tastes like poo poo (and is something like 80% sugar, to boot). Thanks for that information. It's awful, right? It's almost entirely sugar.
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Sep 6, 2019 23:51
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Heath posted:It's awful, right? It's almost entirely sugar. Yep. I loathe the stuff. Not only does it taste like candied grass, it poofs out in giant clouds when you load it into containers and stains everything Wicked Witch of the West green. I'm not a big fan of matcha anyway, but that's just personal preference. I like genmaicha because I'm a peasant.
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Sep 6, 2019 23:59
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I love ceremonial matcha because I have a sheep's taste buds but I often get it served as a latte with a shot of agave sweetener in it. It's just a little sweet and doesn't overpower the green tea taste.
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Sep 7, 2019 01:46
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I’ve had it for awhile as a latte at the local coffee shop and felt it was sickeningly sweet. I saw they also just had a regular tea and asked - they have both sweetened and unsweetened, so I asked for unsweetened (they were worried it’d be too bitter) and I kinda liked it. Then I got my own and I too am a ruminant, though a little honey in a thermos was awesome. That’s also when I had the least sludge because I sat there absent mindedly shaking the thing.
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Sep 7, 2019 04:18
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HelloSailorSign posted:So if I see matcha that says “ceremonial grade” I’ll avoid it, since it means nothing it’s likely only used by those trying to market their way out of an inferior product. Unfortunately the marketing term has more or less won and almost all matchas sold in English at a high price point will be described as "ceremonial grade," good or bad. The safest, if most expensive, bet is just to import from the well-known blending houses like Ippudo, Koyama-en and Tsuen. They've spent a very long time providing a very consistent product to very picky people. Otherwise look for teas from Kyoto prefecture/Uji city (if a matcha doesn't proudly declare this, it isn't), which have received the full 20-day shading (if a matcha doesn't proudly declare this, it probably hasn't) and then been stone-ground (etc). e: organic is also kind of a bad sign, weirdly enough--it turns out that putting a tarp on a plant for 3 weeks puts a lot of stress on it and unnatural fertilizers really do seem to make for better-tasting teas in this unnatural environment. i'm not saying you can't grow a good matcha organically, but i am saying that i've never had one that was competitive with conventionally grown matchas at the same price point Reiterpallasch fucked around with this message at 11:59 on Sep 7, 2019 |
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Sep 7, 2019 11:24
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Finally got around to making a trip to a localish asian market. There's a whole tea aisle!  I got a sampler of 6 loose leaf chinese teas in pretty little tins and a teapot. Plus a bunch of other not-tea stuff. One of the samples was pu erh and it was pretty nice, albeit very mellow. Am I like supposed to grind the loose tea up a bit or just leave it alone? E: the tinkuyin that I just steeped is quite nice. Resting Lich Face fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Sep 9, 2019 |
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Sep 9, 2019 01:44
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Resting Lich Face posted:Finally got around to making a trip to a localish asian market. Leave the tea leaves alone and just put it in your water to steep.
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Sep 9, 2019 02:22
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Aye boss. Will continue to do as I have been.
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Sep 9, 2019 02:39
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Jasmine tea. Mind-blowing how much like a flower it tastes. Not sure I'm a fan.
Resting Lich Face fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Sep 10, 2019 |
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Sep 10, 2019 01:14
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