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Tea doesn't even compare to coffee with regard to caffeine. 8 ounces of ceremonial grade matcha is probably the highest you're going to get from tea at 70ish mg, compared to 90 in a cup of coffee. That's going to get expensive. Yerba mate is going to have more caffeine than tea will, closer to a cup of coffee. I've been drinking matcha for years and I find it wakes me up pretty well, but it doesn't jolt you like coffee does. It's more of a slow release, and I feel like it lasts longer. Coffee makes me crash hard, while matcha keeps me pretty even throughout the day.
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Feb 19, 2020 04:35
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bitprophet posted:Heath, that chocolate aire stuff is https://happyluckys.com/products/chocolate-aire yea? I've enjoyed Upton's coconut pu'erh (and I think some other chocolate pu'erh from a more mainstream brand) so putting this on my list to try sometime. Is Happyluckys your main supplier? I'd never heard of them before. Yes, they're local to me so I get all of my tea through them.
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Feb 19, 2020 04:39
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A serving of black tea can be something like 35-50 so two bags would probably do the job.
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Feb 19, 2020 04:51
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As for tea setup: I have generally been pretty minimal with my setup and have only recently gotten more serious about my brewing since I'm doing a lot more of it at home. You really don't need much, a plain tea ball strainer and a cheap electric kettle will suffice for most things (I use this one) A good cast iron tea pot will be your best bet if you want to go that route. They can vary a lot in price but any one should do and will last basically forever so long as you clean it. Cast iron pots will stay hot for a long time, and most come with a strainer. If you prefer black teas, most of them aren't super heat sensitive and will brew fine from just clicking on the kettle (contrasted with a green tea or a more delicate oolong that will suffer from being steeped too hot or too long.) You could probably get a serviceable setup from just a kettle, tea ball and a mug. Edit: you may enjoy that chocolate tea I posted about (linked above.) It's dark and savory and you basically can't oversteep it, but it might not hit your caffeine threshold. Heath fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Feb 19, 2020 |
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Feb 19, 2020 05:03
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LifeLynx posted:Amazon delivered this and it's amazing the taste difference just from actually boiled water vs. microwaved water. It's less bitter for sure. My (unscientific, unverified) assessment is that I don't think a microwave can heat water evenly and you get some wonkiness with the variant temperatures. Water near the edge of the mug will be hotter than the water in the middle, etc.
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Feb 21, 2020 20:42
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I got a bit of a single cultivar green called Oku Midori that I will probably have tomorrow morning. I also got a shitload of Konacha that's real good
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Feb 24, 2020 02:28
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This morning's tea was the Oku Midori Sencha I posted about above. Sencha is another Japanese green, and is the most popular tea in the country. This one is a single cultivar tea, meaning that all of the leaves were harvested from clones of the same plant, giving it a distinct flavor. Here it is in the sample bag I got: Similar to gyokuro, nice rolled leaves that unfurl when steeped, and the kind of dark green characteristic of good Japanese teas. It's not quite as dark as the gyokuro, since that tea is grown under extended shade, causing it to produce more chlorophyll to compensate. The initial steeping came out the kind of gorgeous, cloudy neon green that I look for in Japanese teas. Unfortunately I didn't have time to resteep this batch, and I'm told it doesn't resteep all that well, which I tend to believe since the initial steep cast off some of its original color:  That said, the drink came out excellent.  Nice dark green, strong seaweed smell, grassy and springy, all things I love in a tea. And while I love gyokuro, it does tend to overstimulate my stomach and make me super hungry, which this tea did to a lesser degree, making it quite drinkable on its own, without food. This tea costs about as much as the shop sells gyokuro for (it's like $1/oz. cheaper, I think, so not much) so I will probably pick up a little bit for special occasions. Single cultivar teas that are actually good and not merely novel are a bit hard to come by.
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Feb 25, 2020 02:49
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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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Something fruity maybe?
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Mar 23, 2020 18:52
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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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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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How do you guys do a rinse? I usually don't rinse my leaves.
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Apr 5, 2020 17:43
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There are some nice washi tea canisters on Etsy. I just ordered one made of wood that's very classy looking that my gyokuro will go in. I just use Mason jars for most things. What you can do with labeling is get a plastic sticker sleeve and just put that on, then slide a new label in the sleeve when you change teas instead of having to constantly peel them off. Heath fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Apr 21, 2020 |
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Apr 21, 2020 01:02
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Truck Stop Daddy posted:Received a shipment form yixing today. Can’t wait to try it! Is that a bathing monkey on top of the lid?
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Apr 28, 2020 12:30
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The name for that is "grandpa style."
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Apr 29, 2020 03:34
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Death Vomit Wizard posted:Sure, but I more associate grandpa style with drinking tea on the move or doing something else while drinking. Do you ever just make bowl tea and watch it? Everyone should have a porcelain spoon to smell, imo. Once in a great while I'll get one of those blooming teas as gifts for people for that purpose
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Apr 29, 2020 05:20
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Hell yeah. Tie Guan Yin? Or something else?
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May 1, 2020 06:19
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A metal whisk might scratch the poo poo out of your bowl, if that matters to you. Otherwise in my experience the bamboo whisk with its open tines does a better job of breaking up the bubbles than a metal whisk with closed tines does.
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May 2, 2020 01:53
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgbqUv59l9A I've been watching this guy's videos a lot while in quarantine and he does a comparison video between a traditional whisk in a bowl and one of the open tine electric latte whisks you can get in a mug.
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May 2, 2020 02:16
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I have discovered that you can add some salt to spent gyokuro leaves and just straight eat them and they are amazingly good
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May 8, 2020 07:26
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I am intending to put some over sushi rice at some point. I wish I could get some sushi grade salmon to go with it, but alas, I am landlocked and I don't think I could conceivably eat enough raw salmon before it goes bad
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May 8, 2020 22:13
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I was gifted some very expensive ($25/oz) Taiwanese Songboling Baozhong oolong that I've had sitting for a couple weeks waiting for the chance to brew it, and I finally got to have it the other day. I'm mostly pretty married to my green teas, but this stuff was shockingly good. I ended up getting four pots of it brewed up during the day and it never tasted quite the same twice. The first brew had kind of a woody forest floor note to it that faded into the aftertaste of honey and coated the mouth and throat. Every subsequent brew just got sweeter and sweeter as the woodiness gave way to a lavender-like floral bouquet and accentuated the honey flavors, and the tea got more and more golden as I steeped. I have enough left for another session, but I've just ordered a proper gaiwan for some gongfu style brewing, which I haven't been able to do at home before. I will get some photos then, but it needs to be on a day when I've got time to sit and drink it all day long.
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May 14, 2020 01:13
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I have officially entered the world of home gongfu brewing and am loving it
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May 20, 2020 20:14
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Karenina posted:hell yeah. what'd you brew? Some nice dark shou puerh that I forgot the actual name of. Had some very rich dark chocolate notes and a bit of roastiness. It was given to me as a sample and I was just waiting for my gaiwan to arrive to try it. Gonna have to get some more.
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May 21, 2020 00:37
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Sounds like you should drink more tea.
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May 21, 2020 05:26
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Death Vomit Wizard posted:OK I have finished the wall of text version of my Beginner's Guide to Chinese Tea. You can read it here. Give me a week or two and I'll have it in wiki form with illustrations and videos. Your feedback is most welcome. I read through a bit of it and it looks good aside from a couple typos and editing things. Good info. Where's your store located? I found the website but I didn't see a location listed. I've been watching a lot of this channel lately and I want to boost him a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo8uqFIfTDQ He gives some extremely informative and technical explanations about the tea making process, the market in China, and info about the kinds of tea his farm makes. I really enjoyed seeing how a puerh is made and the kill-green process in motion as done by an "artisinal" small batch tea production outfit.
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May 23, 2020 06:01
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There's a preponderance of "tea shops" around that sell a ton of super spiced up herbal blends without a lot of actual tea in them. One of my co-workers brought in a ton that she had bought and was quite proud of them and every one of them was super overpriced "spiced" things - one was like 7 bucks for an ounce of hazelnut black that had some of the saddest little black tea leaves. I've been trying to educate my coworkers because I have been spoiled and am that guy now
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May 23, 2020 09:24
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I've never been a big coffee fan but I'm always surprised when people who really geek out over their coffee are completely unenthused by tea.
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May 28, 2020 05:31
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Get a tea ball that's big enough to let the leaves expand and brew it in a larger vessel of some kind that you can pour out of. You can brew tea in a drat measuring cup if you want, just be aware that anything that open will cool quickly. I'm not a fan of brewing in the same mug I'm drinking from.
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Jun 2, 2020 09:49
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Anonymous Robot posted:May I ask why? I usually brew in a 16oz mug with a solid, finely perforated strainer that sits inside it, and I’ve never really understood the utility if a teapot outside of a group serving. It allows you to control the ratio of tea leaf to water better - I tend to use a lot of leaf and I want to get proportional brews and the amount of water from a mug makes the tea too strong for my liking. A larger vessel allows for more water proportionally to more leaf, making for better flavor but not brewing too densely in the water. Again though, it does make more tea but if you're using something open in the absence of a pot it will cool faster, with the caveat that my go-to tea is greens brewed at lower temps so ynmv Heath fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jun 2, 2020 |
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Jun 2, 2020 19:03
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Does anybody have any comments about the differences between a shiboridashi and a gaiwan? I brew a lot of Japanese greens and the leaf is much too fine for it and a lot of it ends up coming out and clogging the filter no matter how small an aperture I use. The shiboridashi, from what I can tell, often has a grooved spout and pours without pulling back the lid as you would with a gaiwan. I've never used a shiboridashi, but does it do a better job of keeping fine leaves in the pot?
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Jun 4, 2020 21:56
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I do quite like the look of the big flat shiboris
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Jun 5, 2020 23:08
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I don't know about "literally any," but most should be sufficient. Not a bad idea to have one around.
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Jun 7, 2020 05:07
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Cage Kicker posted:First time poster in these here parts, hello tea goons! If you like Puerhs, this is some amazing stuff. Dark chocolatey flavor and brews up almost coffee black. Good rich tea.
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Jun 8, 2020 05:57
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I'm a big fan of gyokuro personally. If you like genmaicha, mugicha (barley tea) is also quite good
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Aug 10, 2020 18:15
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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.
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Aug 13, 2020 01:36
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Gongfu brewing can be done very cheaply or very (very) expensively. It depends on how fancy you want to be and how many people you plan to serve. I brew Gongfu style for myself every couple of days and occasionally for one other person. The only things I would call critical are the gaiwan, a gongdaobei (a pitcher) and a strainer. Secondary would be a serving tray/reservoir to dump out the rinse, but that's not strictly necessary - you could just dump it in the sink if you want, or into a bowl. Here's my setup: A bamboo serving tray. This one comes with a pair of tongs, a scoop, and a microfiber tea cloth. A double-walled glass pitcher. In Gongfu serving, a clear glass pitcher is preferred so you can show the color of the liquor off to your guests. This one works great, pours nicely, and the double-wall keeps your hands cool. A gaiwan - I won't link a specific one because there are a billion of them available in different styles and it really comes down to personal taste. You can get really geeky about weight balances and designs and such, but truthfully any of them will work. The most important thing is that the lid sits securely and cleanly in the gaiwan. It should be able to settle into it without rattling around. You can get a clear glass one or a plain white porcelain one for around $10-12 or you can go higher end and get fancy ones with beautiful glaze like this one that I've got. It's my most prized piece of teaware and I love it. But it's not at all necessary. These strainers fit perfectly into the pitcher linked above. The smaller one sits better in that, the bigger one will fit in most mugs and cups. If you go cheap on the gaiwan you could get a full setup for roughly 60-70 dollars that will serve you well.
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Aug 24, 2020 06:04
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The Postman posted:Awesome! Thank you for the replies so far. The main difference with gongfu brewing is the ratio of leaf to water, namely that if you're brewing in a gaiwan, you're going to be using a lot more leaf to a lot less water (as compared to a pot), and subsequently, brew times are much shorter. I usually eyeball my tea (though I just bought a gram scale to actually weigh it and have been experimenting with that) and do one heaping scoop to as much water as it takes to fill up to about where the lid sits on the gaiwan. I was planning to have a session this morning anyway, so I recorded my process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbCW4EXBRFA I probably could have used more leaf for this brew, but it turned out pretty good regardless. Next time I have it I will probably use significantly more leaf, but I've only got a small sample of Big Red Robe and it's quite expensive so I went conservative with it. As I said in the video, if I'm having an oolong or especially a Pu'erh, I will use a gaiwan. I really love Pu'erhs served gongfu style because they tend to extract fast and hard and dark, so you get a super rich tea brew. Larger leaf teas tend to do better in gaiwans too, since you're not pouring off as much - smaller and broken leaves will extract faster and more aggressively than larger leaves, which is why you try to get rid of the smallest bits in the first rinse so they don't muck up the tea. Your rolled oolongs like Tie Guan Yin are especially good for it. I've never had much luck with greens in gongfu, at least not the Japanese greens that I like. They're too temperamental about the water ratio and temp and brew times and such, and really need a big wide kyusu to get the most out of them. As for temperatures, go with what's recommended on the tin and adjust brew times accordingly. In general, the temperature range determines what is extracted from the tea and how fast it is extracted - my non-chemist understanding is that higher temperatures speed up chemical processes and the breakdown of the compounds in the tea, and thus, higher temperatures equal faster extraction. When gongfu brewing, the closer to boiling I am, the shorter the brew time. Higher temperatures tend to extract the more bitter notes in tea, too, so if you're into the bitterness you may go a little higher and shorter and if you're trying for something more mild you can go lower and longer. Gongfu brewing times are a difference of seconds rather than minutes, though, so experiment until you find out what you like. Initial brews should be shorter, of course, because there's more in the tea to extract and you don't want to overextract it in order to save some flavor for later brews. A rinse should be 5-10 seconds (I gave my BRR 10 seconds, which was honestly too long - some people rinse for about 2 seconds and immediately dump it.) First brew should be 5-15 depending on what you're drinking and how much it has opened up, and as a general rule each subsequent brew should add 5 seconds. I find by the time I'm hitting 25-30 second brews that the tea is running out of steam, and by then I will usually do a final brew that's as long as 2 minutes just to see what I can get out of it.
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Aug 24, 2020 20:21
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Right, when I first started brewing gyokuro I went by the bag instructions and brewed it at roughly 170, and while it was good, it didn't even compare to it brewed at 120, much cooler. It was a completely different taste experience. Do some research, there's a lot of tea talk out there.
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Aug 24, 2020 21:10
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Pu'erh is also a bit volatile due to how it's made, so you can get good Pu'erhs and you can get very bad Pu'erhs. If you have the opportunity to get a sample of something I'd try that before buying a cake. Personally I'd say for your first few sessions get something you know you like and brew it gongfu style to see how different it is.
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Aug 24, 2020 21:25
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