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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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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:30 |
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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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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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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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Jasmine and lapsang doesn't sound like a good mix, but I'm intrigued, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter
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Sep 10, 2019 04:32
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Most herbal blends are low or no caffeine.
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Oct 25, 2019 03:49
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It's called that because even on its own it tastes like it had milk added to it. It's quite good when prepared right.
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Oct 28, 2019 15:22
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Golden Monkey is good poo poo
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Oct 30, 2019 03:18
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Reading this thread made me go and drop $10/oz. on a fine milk oolong you sonsabitches
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Nov 1, 2019 06:07
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Are you using a specific blend? Do you make it in the same container every time?
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Nov 26, 2019 19:39
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If your workplace is anything like mine, drinking tea that doesn't come in a bag already makes you look like a psycho Everybody makes fun of my gaiwan  
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Nov 30, 2019 01:11
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I work in a sterile area and my gaiwan has to stay in the break room, so my tea tastings are limited to breaks.
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Nov 30, 2019 04:32
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My local shop has a Puerh blend called Chocolate Aire and it's probably my favorite drink. I've loved every Puerh I've had, actually (not a ton. But several)
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Dec 12, 2019 22:18
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My local tea shop carried a blend called American Roots that was composed of sarsparilla and such that I quite liked (had a vaguely root beer flavor to it, as the name implies.) They got a whiskey barrel from one of the local breweries and aged a bunch of that in it and that poo poo was good. I hope they make it again some day, it was small batch and went quick.
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Dec 18, 2019 05:24
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I will ask if they're planning to do another round of it. Getting the barrel is the hard part, evidently.
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Dec 18, 2019 06:42
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I wrote this a couple of days ago, but I am really loving this tea lately: Today's tea is a matcha-infused genmaicha, or brown rice tea. Matcha, or fine-ground green tea powder, is added to the tea, enhancing the green coloration, flavor, and caffeine content. It is also available without. Here is the tea before brewing.  Note the brown bits: toasted rice. This adds a nutty flavor to the tea and a hearty body to the texture. The white bits off to the right are also rice - some grains will "pop" during the cooking process as popcorn does. Whether this affects the flavor of the tea or not I cannot say, but it is aesthetically pleasing.  This is the tea mid-brew. A gentle snap-crackle-pop greets you as the hot water pours over the cooked rice, much like a familiar breakfast cereal. The leaves in this tea are not as tightly rolled, and do not swell very much in comparison to the gyokuro I had yesterday. Originally the rice was added to increase the bulk of the tea and make it more affordable for low-income people to drink, but its hearty flavor and body make it a popular choice for all walks of life; being relatively inexpensive helps, too.  Don't be fooled by my green cup - this tea really is a quite beautiful emerald, owing to the matcha content. Plain genmaicha trends toward the yellow end. Much of the matcha tends to settle to the bottom of the pot, so that last little bit may be a tad strong. I personally look forward to that last drop, as it contains the highest concentration and makes for a nice cap to the drinking, a shot of caffeine and antioxidants, and a grainy sensation upon the tongue.
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Jan 19, 2020 08:05
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I bought it from a local shop, but I'll send you their webpage if you want to order some.
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Jan 19, 2020 16:43
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gamingCaffeinator posted:I'd love to have the page link too. Genmaicha is my comfort tea, and the color from the matcha looks lovely. Link is sent! If anybody else wants it let me know.
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Jan 20, 2020 02:03
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Dr. Gargunza posted:Could I get that link as well? It's been a while since I've had a good genmaicha & I'm looking to expand my options. Thanks! Check your PMs!
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Jan 20, 2020 17:43
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Today's tea is gyokuro, a high grade Japanese green tea. The shop I got it from calls it "Jade Dew," although I think that's just a name - I don't speak enough Japanese to know if there's a direct translation or if this is a specific cultivar. Regardless, gyokuro refers to a green tea grown under shade for an extended period of time, about three weeks, which is three times longer than that of a kabusecha. It's one of the highest grades of green tea available, and good gyokuro is a treat. I'll edit in some photos here in a bit. The flavor embodies umami in the absolute - I can feel the smooth savoriness in the center of my tongue that radiates outward to the very knife-edge of the palate, that indescribable sort of sweetness-without-sweetness sensation that a good tea can deliver. It's one of my favorites in both flavor and appearance. Gyokuro is tightly rolled into very fine needles that unfurl beautifully during the steeping process. The tea is a deep viridescent jade color when dry, absolutely packed with chlorophyll - these are presumptions on my part, but certainly this relates to the lengthy shade-growing process. Resteeping it releases some amino acids that produce gorgeous little rainbow bubbles in the tea's surface, which I don't think I can capture in a photo but I enjoy nonetheless. The brewed tea is a lovely fresh olive color with a full body; not as full as the matcha genmaicha I posted about above, but moreso than most greens. I generally try to save my gyokuro for days when I can afford to make it last, because it is quite expensive, owing to its quality and import cost - this tea that I have runs about $10 USD/oz. An ounce of gyokuro, however, does translate to a pretty good amount of tea - it's tightly packed and pretty light by weight. It's generally brewed at a lower temperature, although I've found it doesn't suffer too much at a higher temp, and I'm not an expert brewer. If you end up getting some of this, I do recommend taking the time to do it right, and make it worth it. Get some good leaf and set aside some time to really savor it. Photos: Dry leaf:  Initial steeping:  After 1-1.5 mins, first steeping:  The tea itself:  I never brew a green tea for more than 1:30 minutes, personally - I know some people who brew it for 5 minutes or more and enjoy the bitter flavor, but that's too much for me. I wish I had the time for a re-steeping today to show off the bubbles, but I don't. My cup is kind of a green-turquoise color so it lends a little bluishness to the tea, but it is very green in person. Heath fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Jan 20, 2020 |
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Jan 20, 2020 18:10
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Another thing I wish I had the money to blow on is making a batch of Shinobicha. I've had it twice and it's the weirdest sensation. Basically you take some high grade green tea and brew it over ice, literally - you place the leaf bare on ice and allow it to melt, and somehow the process distills the proteins out of the leaf and you end up with a small amount of very thick, highly concentrated green tea. It is pure umami, almost overpowering, coating your entire tongue and throat. It's not something I would drink often, for sure, but it's been a hell of a thing when I have had it. It is very costly to make since it takes a lot of good leaf and produces only a little tea and it takes hours. The taste of it evokes "corn" to me, although it isn't nearly as sweet as corn is. It's very hard to describe. My local tea shop brews some up for its yearly ceremony and I always look forward to it.
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Jan 22, 2020 02:51
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Today's tea is a Pu-erh called Sticky Rice, so-named for its distinctly ricey aroma. Pu-erhs are typically available pressed into a large cake from which a piece is broken off and steeped, or as single-serving individual cakes, or as loose leaf. This variety is of the individual serving size, which is about a tablespoon worth of leaf packed into a fragrant little nugget. The flavor isn't too hard to picture: You've had rice? You've had Sticky Rice. As such, it makes a perfect accompaniment for sushi, and I personally love it as a counterbalance to the flavor of the pickled ginger. Like most Pu-erhs, it is rich, robust and very dark. I do a very light brew on this one, only about 30 seconds to a minute in boiling water, because it is quite strong. I love pouring the water over the cake and watching it disintegrate and seeing how the water quickly browns. Aside from the water being physically hotter, the rich flavor and aroma combine to form a sort of "warm blanket" feeling, making for a good Autumn and Winter drink. The individually wrapped cake:  A steeping of about 50 seconds. You can see just a touch of green still in it.  The brewed cup. 50 seconds gets you some impenetrable darkness. You can see a little steam around the rim. 
Heath fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jan 23, 2020 |
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Jan 23, 2020 00:21
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Today's drink is Russian Caravan, a smokey black tea blend. While I'm not generally the biggest black tea fan, I do enjoy some lapsang souchong, which is the principal component of this blend. If you're not familiar, lapsang is a black tea originating in the Wuyi region of China, which is smoked over pine wood fire. The smoking adds a potent and delicious aroma to the tea and gives it a hefty body; Russian Caravan takes lapsang and adds some oolong and keemun teas, broadening the flavor profile and giving the brew a malty taste and a very slight lingering sweetness. Its name is derived from the caravans that brought tea leaves from Asia into Europe through Russia. Supposedly, the nature of the journey and the storage methods used contributed to the aging of the tea in such a way that produces its unique flavor: Wikipedia quoting 'The Dublin Review' in 1888 posted:The southern route by Odessa is far cheaper, but the tea is supposed to suffer in flavour in its transit through the tropical seas, while it improves in its passage through the cold dry climate of Mongolia and Siberia, by losing that unpleasant taste of firing [whereby tea was dried using direct heat]. As Russian epicures believe that a peculiar delicacy of flavor is imparted to it by the slight moisture it absorbs when nightly unloaded and placed on the snow-covered steppes, the enhanced price it commands compensates for the greater expense and difficulty of its carriage by this route. Part of the tea lore is that the tea picked up its smokey flavor from the campfires of the caravans, but that probably wasn't true then and definitely isn't true now. Even still, just smelling the tea instantly transports you to a seat around the campfire. I've never had it seated around an actual campfire, but it sounds just delightful; the tea itself has a comforting warmth and a full body, with a flavor that hangs around with you for a while after you've finished. I can taste the smoke on my breath for some time on days that I drink it. Straight lapsang has much the same, but lacks the woody sweetness that the oolong provides. Lapsang in particular is getting a bit expensive, since the region that produces it is not large and it's a frequent inclusion in a lot of blends, so good Russian Caravan can be kind of hard to find in the States. My usual shops only carry it infrequently, and often have to blend it themselves, so your options may be limited for trying it. If you're a black tea fan and want to try something with a pretty different flavor profile, I recommend it for that, and if you can't find RC, straight lapsang is, of course, a good alternative to enjoy a smoked tea. Here's some photos: Dry leaf:  Post-brew leaf:  Brewed:  On a personal note, it says something about the power of scent to elicit memories that every time I smell this tea I am suddenly four years old again and remembering a very particular scent that I loved when I was very young. I had a scratch 'n' sniff Disney book featuring the DuckTales characters, and on one of the pages there had been a recently extinguished fire. Scratching the page gave off an aroma very similar to that of the smokey lapsang scent, and smelling this tea sends me into a Proustian reverie of my very early childhood centered around a book I haven't thought about in three decades. What a strange sensation that is. Heath fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jan 28, 2020 |
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Jan 28, 2020 18:12
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virinvictus posted:I just ordered my first real Japanese load: Gyokuro is something of a prestige tea, so it can command some ridiculous prices. Really, most of the time anything rated as a gyokuro is going to be pretty good. Let us know how the expensive stuff is, though.
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Jan 29, 2020 19:58
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Today's tea is a jasmine-infused green tea called Moli Hua Cha. (also written Mo Li Hua Cha.) Or, more properly, you could call it a green-infused jasmine tea. It's heavily floral and fragrant, with a delightful smoothness, going down quite easily - a very drinkable tea, the kind you want to slurp a little bit to oxygenate it as you sip, to kick up the floral smell. This tea is contributing to my ongoing refusal to acknowledge winter by pretending it's already spring, and it's quite good for that. It smells like the inside of a green nursery. This one's a new one for me, since I don't tend to gravitate toward the floral teas, but I'm looking to expand my palate a bit, and it gives me something to write about. A lot of the floral teas I've had have suffered from having an overpowering fragrance. This one is just jasmine and green tea, so while it's powerful, it's not overwhelming; many of them include a few too many floral flavors rather than too much of them. The single-stream jasmine taste smooths any astringency produced by the included green, reduces the caffeine content a bit, and makes for something you can drink all day long. I'm having it with a bit of chocolate and the flavors compliment wonderfully. Photos: Dry leaf:  Wet leaf:  Brewed: 
Heath fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Jan 29, 2020 |
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Jan 29, 2020 20:29
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Just because, here's my cheater gaiwan. 
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Jan 31, 2020 23:22
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I use this one at work because it's quick and easy. And I get a lot of compliments on it, although nobody knows what it is until I show them. One guy thought it was for sake.
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Feb 1, 2020 00:40
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That's super cute
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Feb 3, 2020 23:06
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I don't know how much liquid it holds, but that one looks much taller than mine is. I'll try and get a reference picture for mine.
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Feb 3, 2020 23:19
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It's a bit of an acquired taste. If she wants a green tea but wants something that isn't so overpoweringly umami, perhaps try a sencha? I don't have anything to give a proper size reference for my gaiwan so here it is sitting on a copy of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. 
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Feb 4, 2020 01:17
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I'm at work so all I've got to dispense hot water is a Keurig and a plastic cup from a pizza place  I'd guess it's 4 oz?
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Feb 4, 2020 01:26
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It just has 3 buttons marked with a teacup, a coffee cup and a bigger mug.
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Feb 4, 2020 01:42
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I can get about 2.5 fills out of the biggest setting so I'm gonna say it's roughly 4 oz. It's quite a bit shorter than other regular style ones I've seen.
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Feb 4, 2020 03:42
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People show me tea they've bought and all the blends are like potpourri. I think people in the US at least are so used to their tea being very strong and cloyingly sweet like you'd get from Starbucks or whatever that the presweetened and heavily herbal stuff sells better.
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Feb 4, 2020 08:39
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Today's tea is green Earl Grey, another green tea. This one uses a base of Mao Feng and adds bergamot oil, giving it a sweet citrusy scent and taste. It's a very interesting tea, and in spite of the name is quite different from a regular Earl Grey, which I'm admittedly not super familiar with. I don't sweeten my teas, but this one would probably be excellent with a bit of honey or agave added to it. The bergamot oil composes the dominant notes, and a quick sniff brings to mind (for me anyway) Fruit Loops, of all things. There's a very slight citrus burn to it that makes the tongue tingle. The green tea also seems to be on the sweeter and lighter side, with the tea itself coming out quite clear, hardly green or yellow at all. This would be a fantastic breakfast tea, with pancakes and syrup. I feel like this bergamot will be on my breath for the rest of the day. While it's not something I would personally drink every day, if you're a fan of lighter flavored citrus, check it out. Dey leaf:  Brewing:  Brewed. Again, as you can see, it's quite clear in comparison to my other greens:  Heath fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Feb 4, 2020 |
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Feb 4, 2020 18:09
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Rooibos has a very different texture from tea. It's smooth in a way I can't explain.
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Feb 5, 2020 03:32
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My shop carries a strawberry and pomegranate rooibos that's just lovely. Next time I have it I'll get some photos.
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Feb 5, 2020 04:40
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Vanilla rooibos is just... Vanilla. Why drink it over anything else? I can see how it would turn people off.
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Feb 5, 2020 05:42
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 I bought this adorable little kyusu today. It's perfectly sized and I am in love with the little thumb dot.
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Feb 16, 2020 03:10
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:30 |
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Today's tea is a Puerh blend called Chocolate Aire. It's a mix of Chinese Velour Puerh as a base with chocolate tea, vanilla honeybush, vanilla black and roasted chicory root added to give it a warming maltiness which, to my nose, evokes Cocoa Pebbles of all things. It's very rich and dark, owing to the cacao in the chocolate tea and the natural darkness of the Velour. This may be my favorite casual drinking tea. It's great for a resteeping, with the caveat that the cacao doesn't tend to survive more than one or two rebrews, and the tea lightens significantly after the second and only lightly resembles the original brew. This is the one I keep at work for use in my little gaiwan, since the complexity of the flavors offsets the rather poor water quality I have to live with there. Another good winter morning tea, and would be absolutely phenomenal with some honey or agave mixed in (I've not tried it, since I don't sweeten my teas, but I imagine it would taste like hot chocolate.) Dry leaf:  Since this one is a blended tea, it comes loose rather than in a cake like the Puerh by itself would. Brewing:  Brewed: 
Heath fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Feb 18, 2020 |
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Feb 18, 2020 17:52
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