|
So, I just got given a load of Tea from someone who I'm doing some volunteer work with whilst furloughed (they own a small, local Tea company). They offered to bring me some samples, I said yes expecting 1 of each type/flavour. This is what they actually brought me: 5 x 1 liter Glass Storage Jars with Bamboo Lids 15 x Apple Strudel (Green Tea) 5 x White Chocolate & Chilli (White) 15 x Masala Chai 5 x Spiced Oolong 5 x Danish Pastry (Rooibos) 5 x Apricot Blossom (White) 5 x Raspberry, Licorice & Lavender (Black) 5 x Turmeric Twist (Blend) 3 x Mint (Blend) 2 x Earl Grey 4 x English Breakfast 2 x Chamomile 2 x Green 2 x Rhubard & Vanilla (Green) 2 x Lemon & Ginger (Blend) I'm not really sure where to start, although I will be gifting some to my brother. 
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 14:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 19:41 |
|
|
That looks awesome Raikiri! I would try them in this order: 1. Green 2. Earl Grey 3. English Breakfast This will give you a good baseline of how good their base tea leaves are. If the leaves are bad, then it is really about the flavors and how well they mask the bad tea. The order for trying teas is from lighter to stronger. After that, try the blends like this (my personal opinion anyway) 1. Apricot Blossom 2. Apple Strudel 3. Rhubarb & Vanilla 4. Raspberry, Licorice & Lavender 5. Chai I think after these 8 teas you should have an idea if this is a good brand or not. Just remember to use 85 degree Celsius water for green and white tea, and boiling water for black.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 14:36
|
|
|
Awesome, will do. I did try the Lemon and Ginger which was very nice, although it is usually my go-to for flavoured teas anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 14:43
|
|
|
Death Vomit Wizard posted:
Hey the sidebar menu on mobile is really low contrast, and using that script font makes it even harder to parse quickly, just fyi. Im looking at some of your pu, the Gaoligongshan looks mighty tempting.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 16:24
|
|
|
Raikiri posted:Awesome, will do. If you can, try cold brewing some green tea yourself. Then squeeze lemon juice, sugar, and fresh ginger shavings. This is my go-to drink for the summer and nothing beats fresh lemons. Also you can spike it with 1 part rum and 5 parts tea.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 16:42
|
|
|
5 parts rum, 1 part tea. Heard.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 17:06
|
|
|
Werewolf of London posted:If you can, try cold brewing some green tea yourself. Then squeeze lemon juice, sugar, and fresh ginger shavings. This is my go-to drink for the summer and nothing beats fresh lemons. Also you can spike it with 1 part rum and 5 parts tea.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 17:57
|
|
|
Do you use cold-brewed oolong for the mint tea? I muddled the leaves, added some black sugar, add the iced oolong, then garnish with whatever seasonal fruits. Can also add rum lol.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 19:21
|
|
|
Nah, no actual tea involved. Just mint. Also, I add mint leaves to water+pineapple slices in the blender to make minty pineapple juice sometimes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 00:19
|
|
|
Trabant posted:TeaVivre is... taking a minute: Update: turns out the shipping time during the apocalypse is 77 days.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 00:56
|
|
|
hope and vaseline posted:Hey the sidebar menu on mobile is really low contrast, and using that script font makes it even harder to parse quickly, just fyi. Im looking at some of your pu, the Gaoligongshan looks mighty tempting.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 03:45
|
|
|
Here's a video of me rambling a bit about how to break up pressed tea and why it's so important to do correctly. Anyone else OCD about never breaking their leaves? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sL23ulnTVY
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2020 12:05
|
|
|
I have really been coming around to matcha lately, and I have found that the practice of eating a small, mildly sweet confection before having matcha helps to mute the bitterness of matcha and allow the subtler flavors to be expressed. So I got to wondering, what would be a good, readily available western equivalent for wagashi? Something available at an Asian grocer counts. The ideal treat would be: -shelf stable -small serving -mildly sweet -preferably, though not necessarily, individually wrapped
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2020 12:11
|
|
|
Anonymous Robot posted:I have really been coming around to matcha lately, and I have found that the practice of eating a small, mildly sweet confection before having matcha helps to mute the bitterness of matcha and allow the subtler flavors to be expressed. In my experience European desserts tend to be sweeter than Japanese, and American even sweeter than European. There are plenty of cookies to pick from for any sweetness levels though, just like some warashi are basically cookies. On a more specific level I thought of a couple things not to sweet and without overwhelming flavor(like dark chocolate has for example): Turkish delights, depending on maker can be barely sweet at all, especially if it's pistaccio/almond and not fruity flavors. Not to be confused with other turkish deserts, like baklava, that one is never not soaked in sugar. Georgian churchkhela (known as soutzouki in Greece) should be only slightly sweet normally, containing no added sugar, just the grape juice Pyromancer fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Jul 10, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2020 12:29
|
|
|
Pyromancer posted:In my experience European desserts tend to be sweeter than Japanese, and American even sweeter than European. There are plenty of cookies to pick from for any sweetness levels though, just like some warashi are basically cookies. Every now and then I pick up some pistachio or rose flavored Turkish delights to have with my tea. Everyone seems to think it's weird grandma candy, but gently caress 'em, more for me.  Sometimes I also get frozen rice cakes from the Vietnamese market because they're super convenient and I can just pop a couple in the microwave for ~30 seconds. They keep for ages in the freezer, and I generally find them more enjoyable than mochi because the kind I buy don't have any filling, and sometimes the bean paste in mochi is too sweet for me.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2020 13:24
|
|
|
Pyromancer posted:In my experience European desserts tend to be sweeter than Japanese, and American even sweeter than European. There are plenty of cookies to pick from for any sweetness levels though, just like some warashi are basically cookies. Can confirm that cookies and chocolate work well. I took Japanese tea ceremony for a little bit and in addition to the traditional sweets, we'd occasionally have stuff like shortbread cookies, milano cookies, chocolate truffles, and fruit (persimmon, asian pear). Sweeter stuff should be fine too, just maybe in smaller amounts if you're concerned about the sweetness? We had konpeito once and I'm pretty sure those things are pure sugar.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 02:26
|
|
|
New chapan from artist Tsai Yi-Ju:  And the other day I was treated to three aged Oriental Beauties: 11, 27, and 45 years. If you've had aged OB before, you may have noticed the post fermentation transforms the traditional honey OB taste into tart fruitiness. It's one of my all time favorite teas. And that's what I got from the 11 year. The 45 year was all rich woodiness/ "aged oolong taste" and almost none of the signature OB tastes. And the 27 year was predictably in between, flavorwise, but with a really full mouth feel. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 06:22
|
|
|
Can anyone identify this brand for me? Many brands use this type of tag, but I've yet to find one that's blank on at least one side (the text is added.) The drinker lives in Glasgow, so it may not be available in the States.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2020 12:19
|
|
|
So I bought some tea from Spiritwood Tea Collective. It's very delicious. I even remembered to pull out my phone and take a couple pictures last week. I just forgot they were there until this week. Shipping was quick and you should go take a look.    The tea itself was almost sweet and reminded me of being in a early fall forest in aroma. I'm not the most poetic when it comes to description, but it's very good tea and is a delight to drink. I also got the Alishan Honey Red 2019. It's delicious too and is definitely tastes a little sweet. I've ordered tea from lots of places, and these varieties have nothing I could describe as an off flavor (definitely no chemical flavors unlike most Indian darjeeling I've had in the last decade), and the leaves are giant and almost entirely intact.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
drat, those are some pretty leaves too
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2020 22:26
|
|
|
Just drank a competition winning Shui Xian. 8g/140 ml zhuni pot. Skipped the rinse and steeped for 10s and adjusted by taste and color afterwards. Best yancha I’ve had, really rich taste! sweet and spicy. With a lingering sticky sweetness at the back of the throat. Probably won’t get more of it considering the price point though... 2$/g
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2020 21:11
|
|
|
Jhet posted:So I bought some tea from Spiritwood Tea Collective. It's very delicious. I even remembered to pull out my phone and take a couple pictures last week. I just forgot they were there until this week. Shipping was quick and you should go take a look. Reiterpallasch posted:drat, those are some pretty leaves too Yeah, in the thumbnail I thought they were dried lily buds for a moment. Now I kind of want to see if brewing lilies would taste alright.. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2020 07:55
|
|
|
Jhet posted:So I bought some tea from Spiritwood Tea Collective. It's very delicious. I even remembered to pull out my phone and take a couple pictures last week. I just forgot they were there until this week. Shipping was quick and you should go take a look. Truck Stop Daddy posted:Just drank a competition winning Shui Xian. 8g/140 ml zhuni pot. Skipped the rinse and steeped for 10s and adjusted by taste and color afterwards. Best yancha I’ve had, really rich taste! sweet and spicy. With a lingering sticky sweetness at the back of the throat. Probably won’t get more of it considering the price point though... 2$/g
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2020 13:30
|
|
|
Death Vomit Wizard posted:Thanks for trying us out! I'm so glad you like the tea. The 2016 Ruby Red has lost most of the "mint and cinnamon" notes that that cultivar is famous for, but it's good in its own way. It's quite different from the bug bitten oolong red, right? Yeah, the two taste so very different, but they are great drinks. I’d compare them to something, but I don’t have a good frame of reference for it. Sort of like drinking those little individual puerh mostly and then having a cup from a really good block. They’re in the same general field, but the most they have in common is the name. Really good tea and I’m excited to pull out the samples too.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2020 18:55
|
|
|
Death Vomit Wizard posted:Daaamn that's rad. What year was it? Traditional yancha is charcoal roasted many times over the course of months because it's meant to be aged. But like all Chinese teas, there is a new school demand for a fresher, greener style. I'm curious how roasty it was. Also, was it laocong? (Old tree) Shuixian is famous for those 100 year moss covered trees growing in the mist. No idea if it was laocong, but it was 2019 tea. Got 8g for free as a sample with my other stuff from txs-tea. Have tasted a bunch of their yancha now and most of it has been pretty good. Just got another kg of tea off wuyiorigin, so I’ll hopefully taste more stuff in the coming days. If the summer weather returns I’ll even get to fire up my chaozhou stove a bit more and brew tea outdoors...
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2020 23:59
|
|
|
My interests coming together: https://www.pitchblacknorth.com/  And something I'd actually buy: 
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2020 23:13
|
|
|
There’s a tea seller on fb who I really like. She does more ~spooky~/ Halloween/ fall themed teas but she’s a lovely woman and the tea is really good! https://www.facebook.com/ravenandreverie/ It’s def worth checking out! CeramicPig fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Aug 3, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2020 02:07
|
|
|
Ready for the overpriced Dark Blood English breakfast tea experience. As Alanis Morsette would say, "ironic" Anyway I am a major Yerba Mate nut. I just noticed I've been pouring hot water and drinking from the same leaves now for about 6 hours. Canarias is smoked so it probably gives you cancer, but it's still my fallback.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2020 10:59
|
|
|
anyone got any links to a good Thai iced tea? We've got a couple Thai places around here that serve an amazing cup of the stuff, but it's like $5-$7 for a 12oz, and hoo boy does my wallet hate that. I know this stuff usually comes as a powdered mix like matcha, is that what I should be looking for? Or is there some loose leaf blend I should be using and then adding condensed sweetened milk to?
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2020 16:19
|
|
|
The price of thai tea is a vice tax to keep you from getting type 2 diabetes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2020 16:48
|
|
|
I have a friend temporarily living in Japan who has agreed to send me a package (if I can come up with things worth his time to buy and ship that I can't just order myself) I haven't found a great source for powdered genmaicha matcha and I'm almost out of my current stash, so that's on my list. I've never had Hojicha so I want to get some variety of that - any suggestions? What other teas should I look for to take advantage of the package?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2020 17:39
|
|
|
I'm a big fan of gyokuro personally. If you like genmaicha, mugicha (barley tea) is also quite good
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2020 18:15
|
|
|
Anonymous Robot posted:The price of thai tea is a vice tax to keep you from getting type 2 diabetes. Well, I can't honestly argue with that, I suppose. Heath posted:I'm a big fan of gyokuro personally. If you like genmaicha, mugicha (barley tea) is also quite good Unrelated to living in Japan, but Trader Joes recently started carrying barley tea. I tried some a couple days ago, and it was definitely unique. Kinda smokey, definitely a different sort of sweetness to it. The wife, who hates tea, only smelled it, but commented that it smells like beer. The stuff was unsweetened, so I tried adding some lavender syrup I had taking up space in the fridge. It completely turned the drink around in an amazing way.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 17:06
|
|
|
For Thai tea I usually buy the big bags of Pantai and steep like a quarter cup in 4 cups boiling water using a tea sock for twenty minutes, then add like a third a cup of sugar. I let it chill in the fridge instead of pouring it over ice because I like boba, and I feel like ice messes with the boba texture. Most restaurants use half & half but I use straight cream because I have it in the fridge anyway and I'm lazy. I try not to make it too often for health reasons and also it will dye the whole kitchen orange if you let it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 17:20
|
|
|
whodatwhere posted:I have a friend temporarily living in Japan who has agreed to send me a package (if I can come up with things worth his time to buy and ship that I can't just order myself) Karigane is made from the stems and twigs left over after gyokuro aracha has been processed. I quite like it, and it's supposedly low enough in caffeine you could get away with drinking it at night. If you enjoy lapsang souchong, you might also enjoy kyo-bancha, which is similarly smoked but light and vegetal instead of sweet and floral underneath the smoke aroma. Both can be pretty hard to get here, since they're lower-margin items that usually aren't worth offering over EMS shipping. You could also consider a can or two of straight up matcha--good quality matcha is a totally different, totally weird experience from most of the garbage we get in the States, and the vast majority of the price we pay here is just in the shipping. That said, there are reputable vendors that (if there wasn't this virus gumming everything up) will ship you the good stuff, so it's not quite as unobtanium as kyo-bancha.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 01:10
|
|
|
A can of good matcha here runs 30-40 bucks retail in my experience. You can get a decent number of drinks out of it, but matcha prepared in the ceremonial style is a much bigger punch for a much stronger drink and hence you have a lot less liquid. Traditionally you're supposed to drink it in 3 sips and that's it, that's your tea. I love the stuff but it is definitely a delicacy in the states. 95% of what's called "matcha" here is not at all or else it contains so little tea that the hyper sweet "cooking grade" matcha that is used in the vast majority of drinks and confections may be as much as 15 g of sugar to 1 g of tea (incidentally making it vastly more expensive than the spendy, unsweetened ceremonial grade if you're going by volume of tea.) I've had bagged green tea that claimed to be some kind of green tea/matcha combo where you steep the bag and then pour the powder in, but there was so little powder in it I thought it was defective. Maybe a single pass of a salt shaker's worth.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 01:36
|
|
|
Reiterpallasch posted:If you enjoy lapsang souchong, you might also enjoy kyo-bancha, which is similarly smoked but light and vegetal instead of sweet and floral underneath the smoke aroma. OK I know this is a dumb question given the context but do you know of any reasonable way to get this in the US? Or know how widely exported it is elsewhere? It sounds like my dream tea and I'm not above begging people in Singapore, but I'm pretty low on contacts in Japan these days.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 07:14
|
|
|
Irony.or.Death posted:OK I know this is a dumb question given the context but do you know of any reasonable way to get this in the US? Or know how widely exported it is elsewhere? It sounds like my dream tea and I'm not above begging people in Singapore, but I'm pretty low on contacts in Japan these days. The Meidi-ya Japanese supermarket in Singapore might well have it, they carry a good selection of Japanese teas (and are pretty awesome in general) . They used to be in Liang Court back when I lived there, but i think they might have moved to the Great World City mall around the corner
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 07:57
|
|
|
Irony.or.Death posted:OK I know this is a dumb question given the context but do you know of any reasonable way to get this in the US? Or know how widely exported it is elsewhere? It sounds like my dream tea and I'm not above begging people in Singapore, but I'm pretty low on contacts in Japan these days. I asked around and it turns out I was kind of wrong about it being unobtanium. Ippodo, a very reputable vendor, does carry it, though $16 for like 100 grams before shipping is highway robbery--it's a second-harvest tea, so it's ordinarily quite affordable. Thes du Japon, which specializes in all sorts of weird hipster Japnaese tea (regardless of whether it's actually palatable sometimes) also carries it, but they can't ship to the US right now because of COVID. I suppose you could have them ship it to Singapore, but that really does seem a little roundabout for $6 worth of tea.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 08:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 19:41 |
|
|
Cool, thanks for the leads!
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 20:16
|
|