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The land of milk oolong and honey |
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Mar 3, 2021 14:02
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 20:41 |
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confession: i've never had oolong i just drink pg tips and a bunch of weirdo herbal teas |
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Mar 4, 2021 00:00
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Dip Viscous posted:confession: i've never had oolong You have a big open world ahead of you, buddeh |
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Mar 4, 2021 00:48
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Oolong has always been my favourite but I am realizing how little I actually know about tea.
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything   Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Mar 4, 2021 03:12
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We should do a tea study. Hmm. I haven't done a large scale thing in a long time, maybe lemme think on this because my brain just spun up monthly tea samplers and I'm like "no, too much, put some back." Maybe a recommendation list? Or I can just mail everyone samples of tea all at once? Idk! |
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Mar 4, 2021 03:15
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Teddy Thunders posted:We should do a tea study. Hmm. I have a notebook I used to use when I was going through tea tasting at Imperial Tea Court, mostly in Berkeley in the Gourmet Ghetto I dunno what a tea study is but it sounds cool |
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Mar 4, 2021 04:06
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aldantefax posted:I have a notebook I used to use when I was going through tea tasting at Imperial Tea Court, mostly in Berkeley in the Gourmet Ghetto Shattuck ITC is the best. A tea study is just basically a full tasting but you take your own notes and everyone makes a full review of each selection. We also learn a bit about the history and provenance and traditions and people involved with the tea. |
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Mar 4, 2021 04:09
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Teddy Thunders posted:Shattuck ITC is the best. I have done (didn't get paid for but did in a professional environment) multiple ramblings on tea so I am down for this,particularly regarding the history and such surround tea! It is a very deep cultural thing and also a cool hobby to see how it all developed |
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Mar 4, 2021 04:11
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aldantefax posted:I have done (didn't get paid for but did in a professional environment) multiple ramblings on tea so I am down for this,particularly regarding the history and such surround tea! It is a very deep cultural thing and also a cool hobby to see how it all developed Yes please!!! I love tea chat particularly about the cultural and social connections. |
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Mar 4, 2021 04:12
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A short story: I grew up drinking really strong often smoked black teas, brewed full strength, with zero milk. My ggma would make them for me. I just thought everyone's tea tasted like it was on fire next to a diesel engine. Turns out a really heavily smoked lapsang souchong type tea is really really popular in Chornomorsk and I will never escape my family's influence on my hosed up taste buds. |
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Mar 4, 2021 04:20
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Lapsang souchong is smoked with pine needles and there is a secret to brewing it and drinking it: the first few brews go fantastic with jam or honey to complement the deep smokiness that it comes with, but on successive brews it gives way to an interesting malty flavor and texture that starts to become like dark chocolate. Rooibos also is good for this if you are looking for a caffeine free alternative. I had to look up where Chornomorsk was but I do not know much about tea culture in that region of the world - I know Russia made use of large kettles (samovars) and favored multiple brews of very strong tea, and lapsang souchong would likely have kept very well and met the flavor profile. Samovars are great for staying warm since it's a big-rear end hot kettle of water and kind of served as a communal gathering activity as well similar to how people would meet for coffee. Tea culture in that region of the world is actually pretty interesting! |
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Mar 4, 2021 06:56
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I grew up with a big charcoal samovar! My ggma was very... Well, she was extremely of her time and of that place. And she loved a very very smoky tea brewed incredibly strong and hot like fire, and she was very insistent that we take a dark bread with either red cherry jam and butter on it, out a bread with smetana and either a fish or this sort of pickle, a big mug of tea and some soup. We could've shown up at five am or midnight or three in the afternoon, didn't matter. This was our routine. I loving loved it. |
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Mar 4, 2021 07:16
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I'm pretty sure my ggma would post in this thread if she were alive, if only to talk poo poo about my current snack and tea game. Get it together, hamjobs, Jesus, go make a loving bread and jam and at least boil some loving leaves. |
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Mar 4, 2021 07:18
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My favourite tea experience was at a shop in the Hangzhou airport where they had new harvest green tea on sale. I went in, could not read anything but prices, the shop keeper could not help me other than shaking her head as I pointed to various options. When she nodded I bought it. Was excellent tea.
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Mar 4, 2021 19:18
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At one point I really wanted to try out the Kusmi range since it's so bourgeois they had to flee Russia during the revolution. But it's a little too expensive for tea I will steep too long and then gulp down cold when I finish reading the chapter of a book. |
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Mar 4, 2021 20:22
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it is time for tea
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything Thank you deep dish peat moss! |
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Mar 5, 2021 20:24
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Milk oolong update: they're correct it's delicious |
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Mar 5, 2021 20:34
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Bilirubin posted:My favourite tea experience was at a shop in the Hangzhou airport where they had new harvest green tea on sale. I went in, could not read anything but prices, the shop keeper could not help me other than shaking her head as I pointed to various options. When she nodded I bought it. good China has what they like to call "ten famous teas" and I forgot most of them except for Dragonwell (Longjing) and Iron Goddess (Tie Guan Yin). Jin xuan (milk oolong) might also be up there as well. This is actually the time of year if you are looking to try dragonwell tea in its freshest form to get the 2021 longjing varietals. It is a very sweet and creamy kind of tea that is supposed to coincide with just before the first rains of qingming, which this year is April 4. If you have a chance to try dragonwell and get a preorder of it in, hopefully consider it as a nice treat. If someone invites you over for tea and breaks out the good poo poo, this is one of those kinds of teas that they'd serve when they really wanted to impress you. Teddy Thunders posted:I grew up with a big charcoal samovar! My ggma was very... Well, she was extremely of her time and of that place. And she loved a very very smoky tea brewed incredibly strong and hot like fire, and she was very insistent that we take a dark bread with either red cherry jam and butter on it, out a bread with smetana and either a fish or this sort of pickle, a big mug of tea and some soup. We could've shown up at five am or midnight or three in the afternoon, didn't matter. This was our routine. I loving loved it. This is a good story. Samovars predate reliable electricity getting to people and have been around for a long-rear end time and given their size and importance almost certainly a thing that was well cared for and loved as part of the welcoming routine. In the steppes closer to Siberia it is also common to begin preparing tea as the first thing when camps get made though tea is more of a savory milk broth which ended up being the precursor to stuff like bulletproof coffee (and kinda sadly appropriated for that). Fun fact: Cha is the word for tea in most of eastern europe and asia, where as tea came from cha being bastardized as it came back west as tcha, tay, and then tea, which ended up sticking. Chinese and Japanese written words use the same symbol for it too, so if you are looking at something and you have no idea what it is, then if it is suffixed by 茶 then you know you are gettin' some stuff. Also, tea as a gift is interesting because there have been times where people will gift tea to people thinking they don't know anything about tea, but when they do comment "oh nice this tea is so and so", I have stories from a friend who the gift giver got super ashamed, took the tea back, and came back the next day to give some of the actual good poo poo they had Also: duck poo poo oolong is good, try it if you can find it |
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Mar 6, 2021 02:34
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Duck poo poo is the poo poo and I wish I could have it more often |
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Mar 6, 2021 02:51
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I bought some milk oolong today and am looking forward to it. not had it before so holler with any tips |
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Mar 7, 2021 02:01
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Planet X posted:I bought some milk oolong today and am looking forward to it. not had it before so holler with any tips try with lower temperature hot water and give it a few rounds before it opens up w/ the milkyness. |
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Mar 7, 2021 02:23
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guy at the shop said 185 for like 3 mins bit I've read shorter? Eh I'm trying not to overthink it but it's not cheap so don't wanna waste it. will try a few mins at first then go longer on successive steeps |
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Mar 7, 2021 04:06
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Planet X posted:guy at the shop said 185 for like 3 mins bit I've read shorter? Eh I'm trying not to overthink it but it's not cheap so don't wanna waste it. will try a few mins at first then go longer on successive steeps Are you using a pot or doing gongfu style? |
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Mar 7, 2021 04:56
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Had some jasmine tea this morning. The last of it I think. Having some honeybush in my Pop Team Epic mug because it's cold and I'm feeling lazy.  
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Mar 7, 2021 07:34
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Heath posted:Are you using a pot or doing gongfu style? No I use a french press style vessel |
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Mar 7, 2021 12:12
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That's a very good mug. |
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Mar 7, 2021 12:45
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To Gongfu, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar |
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Mar 7, 2021 17:16
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I am exactly the kind of meganerd that could easily go down the rabbit hole with Tea like I have with beer, whisky, coffee, and cigars. Where do I start, tea goons? I love me some good old fashioned earl gray, but obviously there's a wide world of leaves out there.
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Mar 7, 2021 17:20
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Gramps posted:I am exactly the kind of meganerd that could easily go down the rabbit hole with Tea like I have with beer, whisky, coffee, and cigars. Where do I start, tea goons? I love me some good old fashioned earl gray, but obviously there's a wide world of leaves out there. I'm a big fan of Chinese teas myself. There's a lot out there. Have you tried any oolongs? They're really varied with very distinct flavors. |
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Mar 7, 2021 17:23
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SweetWillyRollbar posted:I'm a big fan of Chinese teas myself. There's a lot out there. Have you tried any oolongs? They're really varied with very distinct flavors. I've tried very few teas. My wife was all about this one tea shop in the mall a few years back and the loose leaf Earl Gray from there was dope as hell, but I don't recall getting super adventurous. Time to order some samplers I think
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Mar 7, 2021 17:29
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actually if someone can recommend some good places to order samplers, I would also be interested |
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Mar 7, 2021 18:29
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Leraika posted:actually if someone can recommend some good places to order samplers, I would also be interested https://www.theteasmith.com/gifts/tea-sampler-set/ https://fingerlakestea.com/product/mix-n-match-canister/ |
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Mar 7, 2021 18:50
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If you are looking for teas in general and want some places to start, the general regions for teas are: China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka (typically branded as Ceylon), and Kenya is up and coming, probably more beyond that. Chinese teas have the largest variety and cover the entire range of stuff. They take their tea real seriously there and speculating tea futures on things like fermented puerh tea cakes is definitely a thing. I recommend the joint I used to buy stuff from if you're looking for samplers: http://www.aromateashop.com/ - if you want to figure out a palate for tea, then you might want to hit up your closest tea vendor that doesn't sell exclusively Lipton or whatnot and start drinking through their catalog and see what you like. Japanese teas are usually machine-processed and have micro-varietals but generally are focused on green tea. More adventurous cultivars are starting to crop up and I was tasting some JP oolongs and they were not bad! Try Lupicia, Cha-to, or online Yunomi Life: https://yunomi.life/?currency=USD A large amount of teas for big production and what the Western palate is most familiar with comes from India and Sri Lanka. Earl Grey is a scented black tea mostly finding its black tea base from those regions. English/Irish breakfast teas and more stronger, malty black tea blends you find at grocery stores (Lipton, Twinnings, PG Tips, etc) come from this. I think if you want to get started w/ teas you are generally familiar with look for stuff from Twinnings and the like and see what your normal grocery store has to offer - lots of places here even in Texas stock things you wouldn't expect like Hime brand (Japanese brown rice tea) and if you're lucky you can score a box of Twinnings, which I prefer over Lipton. These days I remain very lazy and just use teabags from Prince of Peace, which is a US-based company. Their green Jasmine tea is highly passable. The main thing about getting more nerdy with tea will have to do with preparation - most Chinese teas, for example, are meant to be brewed through multiple rounds and their flavors will change in subtle ways as the leaves open up. Teas which predominantly depend on their extra flavors like Baja Berry Blast Butt Booster Teas you would have found at Teavana generally are done after one round. Experiment: get yourself some tea bags from Twinnings, Harney & Sons, and Prince of Peace. They can be the same "type" (Earl Grey, etc) or they can be different. Try reusing the same teabag over multiple rounds and brew smaller tea batches, or larger batches with a tea pot. Which one do you like more? What falvors etc. do you like? Do you like having snacks with your tea, or drinking it by itself? When do you drink the tea? How is the temperature around you when drinking tea? Lots of thought goes into tea preparation and people tend to associate all manner of things with tea, so it's got a lot of room for pomp, circumstance, and experimentation |
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Mar 7, 2021 18:51
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I never got samplers from them but Tao of Tea in Portland had great stuff https://taooftea.com/woocommerce-search/?rs=Sampler&search_in=product&cat_in=all&search_other=product%2Cpost%2Cpage |
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Mar 7, 2021 18:52
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Also re: Yunomi, they partner most often with tea growers directly and sometimes those growers get a bit silly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaMgWNKGwrQ |
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Mar 7, 2021 18:53
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Seconding both Aroma and Tao of Tea. Tao was my local shop for a long time; I still order primarily from them for a lot of my blends I drink every day. Coffee chat: I just got another burr grinder. It's the Baratza branded Bosch conical burr, it's really nice and I got it for less than a hundo on sale. It's my second; I literally destroyed the first by accident by knocking it into a sink full of water and sanitizer. Otherwise it would still be chugging at a decade old. |
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Mar 7, 2021 19:11
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Everything is better when it's from Africa. |
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Mar 8, 2021 00:21
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Gonna have some Chinese green tea (at least I'm pretty sure that's what it is) someone gifted me ages ago. |
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Mar 8, 2021 03:32
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SweetWillyRollbar posted:Gonna have some Chinese green tea (at least I'm pretty sure that's what it is) someone gifted me ages ago. Lemme see the tin, I can read |
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Mar 8, 2021 03:41
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 20:41 |
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What kind of teas make good unsweetened iced tea? I think jasmine is pretty good. |
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Mar 8, 2021 03:42
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