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Working from home on account of the... you know, which is letting me revisit some tea I bought a while back and stashed away. That includes opening up these TeaVivre pu-erh samples and omg they're tiny little minicakes  This is going to be the most adorable apocalypse ever.
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Mar 13, 2020 16:17
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I have a couple of those. Do you just drop the whole thing in a cup?
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Mar 13, 2020 16:19
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Yup, steeped in freshly boiled water for about 4 minutes. Most of the time I make pu-erh -- especially if it's a cake with some deep funk -- I end up breaking it into basically looseleaf and give it a quick hot water rinse before steeping. For these, I chose to just put them in whole to see what happens. Result: they come apart on their own and the flavour is just as good as with a rinse. Then again, these weren't the super-funky kind, so ymmv.
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Mar 13, 2020 16:28
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those little rascals has enough tea to brew multiple times gongfu style, one rinse and then just 5s (increments of 5s or more after fifth cup) should be enough to last you a whole day, even with bigger cups
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Mar 13, 2020 16:44
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Tiny puerh cakes are great. No muss, no fuss, brews all day long.
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Mar 13, 2020 16:47
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Trabant posted:Working from home on account of the... you know, which is letting me revisit some tea I bought a while back and stashed away. That includes opening up these TeaVivre pu-erh samples and omg they're tiny little minicakes That sampler is great, not a bad one in the bunch. I wasn’t sure I’d like the rose one, but the pu-erh overpowers everything in the nicest way possible so the florals just add an interesting touch of aroma.
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Mar 13, 2020 18:40
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Why is it a good idea to rinse pu-erh? I've seen the advice and even followed it but never thought about it until now.
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Mar 14, 2020 20:31
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for the same reason you rinse rolled teas: give the compressed leaves a quick blast of heat so the leaves will open up, the “rinse” will be pretty weak in taste anyways there’s also some who are concerned with dirt or impurities, especially with aged cakes and ripe, but take that for what you will
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Mar 14, 2020 21:12
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Can anyone recommend a strong ginger tea?
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Mar 14, 2020 21:21
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colas posted:Can anyone recommend a strong ginger tea? Seconding this. Ginger kicks rear end.
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Mar 14, 2020 22:17
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Agrinja posted:Seconding this. Ginger kicks rear end. I got this stuff from my Publix grocery. It's expensive but it's awesome, really strong. In the meantime, I've just been boiling ginger, I'm wondering if I'm better off just doing that. It's probably cheaper than tea. https://www.amazon.com/Ginger-People-Turmeric-Latte-10-Pack/dp/B07BMVQZM4/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=ginger+tea+mix&qid=1584220808&sr=8-6
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Mar 14, 2020 22:21
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I'll have to try that. Loved this stuff I got from an Asian grocery store once. The box contained very few English words outside of "ginger" and the mix came as powder in tiny little foil packets with what I think were Chinese characters on them.
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Mar 14, 2020 22:38
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Yeah, just steep ginger in boiling water. I get 3-4 cups out of about 1/2” or so? Ginger is cheaper that the bags, definitely.
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Mar 14, 2020 23:08
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Jhet posted:Yeah, just steep ginger in boiling water. I get 3-4 cups out of about 1/2” or so? Ginger is cheaper that the bags, definitely. ok, thanks
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Mar 14, 2020 23:32
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Upton has dried ginger root bits that are fantastic on their own (I like a bit of honey) and a great addition to other teas.
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Mar 15, 2020 03:53
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I'm going through my TeaVivre pu-erh samples, and there's this baggie of "Palace Ripened" tea from 2007. They suggest brewing for 5-8 minutes, which is  I like my tea strong, but that would kill a horse at 50 paces. One minute was plenty.
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Mar 17, 2020 15:43
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Greetings tea friends. I am jumping back in the thread after a 10 year hiatus lol. I now have my own online tea shop and mostly interact with the tea community via Instagram. I'm an expat living in Taiwan. I dabble in puer, white, red, Taiwanese oolong and rock tea. That is to say, all Chinese styles besides green. Not bc I dislike green tea, but that's just the nature of my connections right now. My main interest is anything gushu, meaning Yunnan's ancient trees. I have regularly lurked the forums for the last 15 years, sadly I'm not much of a poster. I'm not here to pimp my own tea, just giving some context. If anyone has any questions I'm here to share what I've learned. As a conversation starter, what's your stance on water? I used to use filtered tap water for tea, but our water is WAY too hard for that, so I started making my own mineral water. I got the idea from the /tea subreddit, but it's apparently much more common in the competition barista scene. It's just RO water from a vending machine + a concentrate I made from precisely weighed baking soda, epsom salt, and RO water. All the yummy benefits of using mineral water, without all the plastic bottles. And it's tweakable.
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Mar 18, 2020 06:49
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I say this about 3rd Wave coffee water too, but check your water report to see what’s already in your tap. I don’t think tea has the same reactions that coffee does with magnesium and potassium or whichever specific molecules it is, so you’re just making your own water profile. Which is cool, but I’ve never seen anything that suggests the difference in water affects extraction differently for tea leaves. I’m not entirely sure I buy the 3rd wave water story either, I’ve never seen the science on it and only have seen it from people trying to sell something. It would be interesting to quantify though. And if you like how your home made mineral water tastes, then that’s good enough to keep doing it.
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Mar 18, 2020 16:15
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I totally would do that if my tap water didn't obviously have crazy high mineral levels. We have extreme calcium (or whatever) scaling in our kettles and it's even showing a little in my yixing pots, which was a big motivator to find another source. Here's the guy that did some tea testing with different levels of epsom in the water: https://www.reddit.com/r/puer/comments/cifo68/my_water_recipe_for_tea_a_solid_starting_point/ If you have "normal" tap water it may not be worth pursuing. You could always do a blind RO vs Whatever Brand Spring Water vs filtered tap. And if you DO notice a difference then consider making your own. It's easy if you have a sensitive scale.
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Mar 18, 2020 18:05
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That's cool and all, but that's all subjective testing based on one person's experiences, which doesn't hold up to qualitative or quantitative methodology. It's like someone telling you that you have to smoke ribs with hickory wood because they tested all the woods and that tastes best. To them maybe it does, but it's not generalizable. Fun to play with, definitely, but even that link in that reddit post doesn't meet the standards for methodology. Some generalizations are fine to make though, but past that without actually measuring concentration of extraction, there's limitations in how far we should be going. If you don't like how your water tastes, then you shouldn't make tea (or whatever) with it. Because you're not going to like it after adding more stuff to it. Water chemistry is hard to measure outside of a lab, and I've not seen anything yet where they measure extraction rates of different compounds. From what you're saying you have a lot of hardness in your water, and that doesn't always taste so great. I'd definitely play around with using other waters or filtration methods to find something that tastes better for you. I think it's super cool when people try to replicate water from various locations by adding salts and minerals too. I'm sure you can get closer to how it was tested to be drank by the growers, and what they're expecting it to taste like. Makes even more sense if you have hard water in Taiwan and it's totally different than the water in Yunnan. I think my greatest annoyance is from the people who sell their "perfect" water salts recipe, because it's such a subjective thing. It just seems like a slimy snake oil salesman thing, and then people grab onto it to tell me I should really do this because it changed their (coffee) life.
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Mar 18, 2020 21:07
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Yeah that's gross. My annoyance is all the plastic bottles, since recommendations in the tea community always seem to be spring water. I'm glad for the Earth's sake that there are people like yourself championing filtered water.
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Mar 19, 2020 03:27
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I don't know where people think most of that "spring water" comes from, but in the US, it's not usually an actual spring. If I lived by my grandparents, I would quite literally go and get water from their spring, because it tastes wholly different than any other source of water I've had and is very clean. I have actually used water from their spring for brewing beer and it was quite a wonderful experience and turned out wonderfully. I'm sure tea would taste different as well. I'm not sure about better, but we have hard water here too and it can get heavy on the tannins if I leave it for even a little too long. You can also hook up a water filter inline to your kitchen sink if your water needs all the help it can get. Usually they go inline between the shutoff valves and the hose to the faucet connection (again, at least in US construction).
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Mar 19, 2020 03:57
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I have an RO system that puts a splitter on the cold line and a line into the drain and the result is that I have a separate cold tap that dispenses only perfect water that I love for tea and it makes my hydro setup love me too.
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Mar 19, 2020 23:38
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Agrinja posted:I have an RO system that puts a splitter on the cold line and a line into the drain and the result is that I have a separate cold tap that dispenses only perfect water that I love for tea and it makes my hydro setup love me too. Here are a couple articles that attempt a scientific/ mythbusting approach https://kuura.co/blogs/dispatch/tagged/water Another question. Anyone here boil tea? It's a popular technique in China for getting the most medicinal value out of aged puer/ shou puer/ dark tea. It's also a good way to get the max flavor out of white tea. I even do it (for a shorter time) with young sheng puer sometimes, just for a uniformly strong batch. You can simmer it in a pan if you don't have one of those electric glass "tea cookers". Or similarly, do a long steep in a thermos. Or on the opposite end of the brewing spectrum, are there any teas you like to cold brew? I think about these things a lot because I don't have time every day to do my meditative "tea art" sessions.
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Mar 20, 2020 06:06
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Death Vomit Wizard posted:Interesting. Do you know if the system re-mineralizes the water at all, or leaves it akin to distilled water? Pure RO water for tea gets a lot of hate, due to the polyphenols not having anything to latch onto for extraction. Sometimes I fill up my travel mug with ice after putting in some jasmine pearls and let it sit overnight and it's really good
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Mar 21, 2020 19:18
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Death Vomit Wizard posted:Interesting. Do you know if the system re-mineralizes the water at all, or leaves it akin to distilled water? Pure RO water for tea gets a lot of hate, due to the polyphenols not having anything to latch onto for extraction. I genuinely have no idea but I like the taste of my tea? The best I can say is that my TDS meter says I get about 22ppm out of the clean tap. When the plague isn't going around, I'll try some spring water and see if it perks up.
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Mar 22, 2020 00:50
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SymmetryrtemmyS posted:Sometimes I fill up my travel mug with ice after putting in some jasmine pearls and let it sit overnight and it's really good Right on! I like really fragrant, delicate teas best for cold brew too. Green tea and high mountain oolong
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Mar 22, 2020 05:20
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What’s the best green for cold brewed tea? I can’t imagine my Sencha would transfer well in cold. The steamed spinach doesn’t sound as pleasant when cold, lol. A Chinese green?
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Mar 23, 2020 18:16
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virinvictus posted:What’s the best green for cold brewed tea? I can’t imagine my Sencha would transfer well in cold. The steamed spinach doesn’t sound as pleasant when cold, lol. A Chinese green? I like tgy, but only after a rinse, otherwise it's weird and sour. Also it's not a green
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Mar 23, 2020 18:40
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Something fruity maybe?
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Mar 23, 2020 18:52
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Not green, but the hippy store near me has this stuff (for less than direct from Solstice, at that) and it's incredibly fruity and wonderful, either iced or hot. Steep it for like a minute or 1:15 though if you steep hot
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Mar 23, 2020 19:38
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virinvictus posted:What’s the best green for cold brewed tea? I can’t imagine my Sencha would transfer well in cold. The steamed spinach doesn’t sound as pleasant when cold, lol. A Chinese green? Oh boy, are you in for a treat. The flavors you can get from cold brewing any tea are often quite distinct from brewing hot. You just have to try and see which teas improve this way and which just taste OK. High mountain oolong is the most common tea I do it with, and it is oxidized so slightly that it might as well be classified as a green tea. Oolong leaves are also the easiest to strain out after brewing. If your sencha leaves are quality, and still fresh, you'll probably love experimenting with cold. 160/180/211 deg water all have their own character with quality green tea, too. Popular cold brew tips might be, start at 10g per liter ratio and 8-12 hrs if refrigerated, 2-3 hrs room temperature. Or put the tea in a cup of ice cubes and come back in an hour or four. Or brew hot and pour over ice into your chahai... Death Vomit Wizard fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 04:17
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Normally, I don’t pay much attention to the sample packs companies add into my tea orders, but I was bored with Sencha two days ago and tried a longjing sample pack and, WOW! I loved it so much I immediately placed a 500g order of more of it (as well as some bancha). I’ve been searching for a green tea like that. I also bought two wulongs with that order: - Bai Hao - Lingtou Yuan Wei Dancong Still haven’t delved into wulongs too deeply (and haven’t even looked at Pu’uerh yet). So this was a fun purchase. Stay safe, y’all.
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Mar 25, 2020 17:34
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Drinking the heritage roast oolong from Taiwan Tea Crafts today. I remember thinking it was pretty gnarly and way too freshly roasted when I first got it. Popped it in a jar and promptly forgot about it until some apocalypse inspired clearing out of the back of the pantry. Five years later it’s pretty good actually! 
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Mar 25, 2020 19:08
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virinvictus posted:I can’t imagine my Sencha would transfer well in cold. You'd be surprised. I love cold brewed sencha and genmaicha, but my current favorite for cold brewing is hojicha. There's a sweetness I get from cold brewing that that I don't get if made the usual way.
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Mar 26, 2020 02:01
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I went and bought four ounces of gyokuro to get me through the quarantine, so my jar is now full. About an hour later we went on shelter orders.
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Mar 26, 2020 02:12
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Heath posted:I went and bought four ounces of gyokuro to get me through the quarantine, so my jar is now full. About an hour later we went on shelter orders. Could be talking about tea, could be talking about weed.
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Mar 26, 2020 02:28
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I made a last-minute order from Upton (gotta have my rooibos) and threw in a couple of flavored black tea samples, for funsies during the quarantine. I now have two samples of Peach Sky black tea, as the free sample this month is apparently Peach Sky. Hope I enjoy it!
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Mar 26, 2020 02:38
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Trabant posted:Could be talking about tea, could be talking about weed. I wish I had thought to buy four ounces of weed  but weed I can live without, tea I can't. One is much better for my anxiety than the other
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Mar 26, 2020 02:59
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breaks posted:Drinking the heritage roast oolong from Taiwan Tea Crafts today. I remember thinking it was pretty gnarly and way too freshly roasted when I first got it. Popped it in a jar and promptly forgot about it until some apocalypse inspired clearing out of the back of the pantry. Dude 5 years of rest for high-roast oolong is ideal. Nice find! Absolutely prefer TGY/DD/Yan Cha this way
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Mar 26, 2020 06:14
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