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The popcorn is poprice.  You might try hojicha also, which is the Japanese roasted tea. No rice, the actual tea leaves are roasted instead. I have not had their hojicha recently but as a general matter Hibiki-an is one of my preferred vendors for Japanese teas. There are a wide variety of oolongs roasted to different degrees which can also have some of those flavors. I can recommend the 2008 top grade roasted Tie Guan Yin at Teamasters as an excellent example but his prices are on the boutique side of the line.
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Oct 2, 2011 18:29
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A quick steep actually doesn't do much to decaffeinate the tea. There's a good article about it here: http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caffeine-and-tea-myth-and-reality.html Also in there is some discussion about how black teas do not necessarily have more caffeine than green teas. Caffeine content is mostly down to the varietal used and the growing conditions. There's some small charts in there showing that oxidation actually lowers the caffeine content. Lots of interesting albeit lengthy articles on Cha Dao, though they haven't updated in quite a while now.
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Nov 20, 2011 20:46
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Thoht's advice is pretty good. Personally I find that the more leaves I use the less I need to increase the steeping items. If brewing in some pseudo-gong-fu style with a gaiwan stuffed full of oolong or puerh I'll start at 15 seconds and add 5 seconds each time for the first several steepings. On the other hand with sencha, which I use a relatively small amount of and which extracts very quickly, I do the second steep for less time than the first, especially with the really pulverized heavily steamed ones.
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Dec 24, 2011 00:17
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"Sakura sencha" is what you are looking for. I don't drink it myself so I can't make a specific recommendation. I used to get a lot of emails from Den's Tea about theirs but it looks like they are out of it until the spring harvest. O-cha.com has one and they are one of my favorite vendors for sencha. Or, you can google it and you'll be able to find a bunch of shops I'm sure.
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Jan 15, 2012 05:01
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Water temperature issues: if you are staying in one place, get a good quality electric kettle that lets you set a specific temperature. If you have to take the water somewhere, use a high-quality thermos and preheat it. You should be able to keep it at a decent brewing temperature for several hours. Cheap oolong: My opinion is that when shopping online, don't bother with Samovar, Imperial Tea Court, Red Circle, Mandarin's Tearoom, Tea Gallery, etc (in common: SF or NYC, high-end or at least trying to be); these are all really loving expensive places to buy tea for the most part. I think that high quality baozhongs tend to outperform their prices, but it's kind of a tough time to buy tea since the spring harvests aren't far off at this point. Floating Leaves has a couple winter baozhongs right now which I haven't tried, but I've been pleased with most of her teas in the past. I can recommend from personal experience the 2011 subtropical forest baozhong from Stephane over at Teamasters, but he doesn't have a formal web shop, which I guess might bother you given the recent posts in this thread. He is reliable and has impeccable taste, I really recommend him if you don't mind that his ordering process is stuck in the 90s. Not always cheap but the subtropical forest baozhong is one of his better deals. Last I checked you can get out under $10/oz even after shipping from Taiwan. Might have changed lately, I don't know. If you like heavily roasted oolong the 2008 heavy roast TGY he has is an excellent example of well-roasted oolong and also relatively cheap unless he's raised the price.
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Mar 20, 2012 03:04
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If you stick to leafy stuff that makes a decent infusion on its own, you can just try different ratios of tea:whatever until you find something you like. Mint works well, for example. Don't use really nice tea for this, of course, but it's a good way to add some interest to unspectacular tea that's perfectly drinkable but doesn't have much in the way of unique or special flavor. On the other hand, your average strawberry-cinnamon-vanilla fruity "blended" tea is hit with a flavor extract spray and has some bits and pieces in there more for appearance than for flavor. If you are trying for something like this, depending on what particular flavor you want you may or may not need to use an extract, but in any case keep in mind that you might get a weaker/different flavor than what you are expecting if you don't go that route. breaks fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jul 22, 2012 |
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Jul 22, 2012 21:03
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My preferred vendor for oolong (mostly Taiwanese in origin) is Teamasters. Not the place to go for bargain pricing, but he's got impeccable taste in tea and very rarely misses with his selections. His 2008 roasted TGY is a very good example of heavily roasted oolong, and thanks for posting and reminding me of it because I think I'll brew some up right now. It's been a little while since I put in an order as I wasn't drinking many oolongs this year, so I can't offer too much comment on most of what he's currently got available. But, if you buy from him you've got to email him for his current price list anyway, and if you ask him what a good intro to oolong type of purchase would be I'm sure he can help you out.
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Nov 28, 2012 03:12
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That's around $7/oz for the 2 month and $4.50/oz for the annual. Houjicha, (kyo)bancha, and genmaicha are all cheap ($2-3/oz) teas. The black is unusual because not much black tea is made in Japan, but probably also not expensive. So the annual is a little pricey, which is to be expected with the videos and the way they are marketing it, but you're really getting jammed on the 2 month, which costs nearly what you'd pay for very high quality sencha straight from Japan. Their per-ounce non-subscription prices are outright offensive, I guess they are trying to make the subscription look like a great deal rather than actually sell them. Definitely don't order any that way.
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Nov 28, 2012 04:51
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I'd try something like 30 seconds for the second and 45 seconds for the third. Some people will even tell you just to pour water over and then pour it right back out for the second steep. Once it gets going it doesn't take much to get the flavor out of sencha. You might also experiment with going a bit shorter on the first steep, maybe 90 seconds. I think it's generally ok for the leaves to sit for a few hours, but hanging out in the presence of water and oxygen is only going to do bad things to them given enough time.
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Dec 22, 2012 23:44
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The Yutaka Midori and Sae Midori are my preferences from O-cha. I stick to the deep steamed stuff from there and usually go to Hibiki-an for asamushi sencha.
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Jan 23, 2013 19:21
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In regards to the request for oolongs, try either the Formosa sampler from Adagio or the Taiwanese oolong sampler from Floating Leaves: http://www.floatingleavestea.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9&products_id=56 They are both fairly similar in terms of price per ounce. Floating Leaves is sometimes a step up the quality ladder from Adagio, though also sometimes not, I think. My favorites these days generally have a medium or so level of both oxidation and roasting, sometimes labelled Hong Shui/Hung Shui/Red Water oolong, but unfortunately neither sampler contains an example. It's harder to find them and tougher still to find good ones. Floating Leaves has them sometimes, but I guess not right now. In any case both cover the three most common types, baozhong, oriental beauty, and very green balled oolong, then throw in one or two extras. Plenty of good oolongs from China too, but Adagio's out of their sampler for that, and I'm not all that familiar with them so I can't recommend an alternative.
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Apr 10, 2013 03:54
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If you're buying bagged tea, do yourself a favor and seek out the ones that come in nylon bags rather than paper. At least to me, all the paper ones impart a cardboardy taste on the tea to one extent or another, whereas the nylon ones don't. I think adagio uses nylon for most or all of the bagged teas they sell nowadays, for example.
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Apr 15, 2013 03:56
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For sencha, try about a gram of tea per 2oz of water and adjust up or down from there depending on whether you find it too strong or too weak. This is really a matter of preference, so just experiment and figure out what you like most. Unless your brewing vessel really absorbs a lot of heat, I don't find preheating to be all that important. You can pour in water a bit hotter and aim for the sides of the brewing vessel if you want. When I'm at work and using a heavy 10oz mug I preheat the hell out of it, when I'm at home and brewing in thin, light gaiwans and houhins I usually don't bother.
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May 17, 2013 04:03
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You're always going to get some little particles with sencha, it's just the nature of the tea. It's as pulverized as whole leaf tea gets, well, to the point of only sort of being whole leaf any more, as you've noticed. If the particles bother you a finer mesh can help of course. Another thing you can do is to basically decant the tea using an intermediate cup, just let the particles settle a bit then pour into your drinking cup. Since sencha is brewed at a relatively modest temperature, you will probably want to pre-heat the cups if you are doing that. Not sure about the genmaicha, I very rarely drink it.
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May 21, 2013 05:05
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No experience with david's specifically but most flavored teas are sprayed with extracts of whatever (ie "natural flavors") and the bits and pieces are really more for show. There are some exceptions for things that infuse in a similar way to tea, like mint. In general though you will probably need to blend some extracts and then spray a base tea with that to truly replicate these sorts of teas. I don't mean to discourage you from trying whatever, it may well turn out great, just something to be aware of. If you aren't using extracts you'll probably have the most luck with other leafy material. breaks fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Jun 13, 2013 |
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Jun 13, 2013 08:21
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Sorry if I missed this somewhere in the last 33 pages, but is there a good place to get Japanese-style green teas (sentya, genmaitya, gyokuru, etc.)? I've ordered from Adagio since Dragonwater stopped selling most regular teas but man, I was in Kyoto and got some really good genmaitya and well... the stuff on Adagio is nothing like that. I usually order from Hibiki-an these days. O-cha is good for fukamushi. I've ordered from Yuuki-cha before and it was alright, but not as good as what I've gotten from Hibiki-an or O-cha. There's also Maiko but I've never ordered from there. I'm sure there's others also... breaks fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Jul 2, 2013 |
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Jul 2, 2013 02:43
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Stephane has definitely got a rather spiritual or romantic view of tea (and the world in general, as far as I can tell). A lot of his reasoning for things will drive you up the wall if you read with a skeptical eye or have more of scientific or rational approach. He really knows his tea, though, and I do think it's worthwhile to try out his various instructions as far as preparation, regardless of the many valid criticisms one can level at his rationale. As far as water goes, the most important thing is to use something that tastes good by itself! If there is a tea you drink a lot and you are in an experimental mood, trying different waters can be interesting, especially if you can get a few that range from very soft to rather hard.
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Aug 7, 2013 04:59
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Yeah tea is almost always pretty clear, though there are a very few that will get cloudy. Heavily steamed sencha is all I can really think of off the top of my head... and I guess matcha if you want to count that. Of course black teas especially can get rather dark, but generally not cloudy. I'm not too sure I want to know what is in the water where you live. Here in Austin, we do have fairly frequent issues with algae and other taste problems, so I just have a Pur filter attached to my faucet. If you find yourself buying bottled water often you might look into some kind of filter like that, it can pay for itself pretty quickly depending on how much you go through.
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Aug 27, 2013 04:05
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I prefer an all metal, stainless steel, fine mesh basket infuser like this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CO5KQ4O That one is on the expensive side but has everything I look for. You can easily find cheaper ones with bigger holes or with some plastic involved. Really any of the all-metal ones will do if you aren't picky about getting tea crumbs in your cup.
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Oct 27, 2013 01:34
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If you're looking for a heavy roast, the 2008 TGY from Teamasters is real good. Been a while since I ordered from him so I don't know what his current pricing for it is like. He's in Taiwan so the shipping is always a bit rough, but it's an option.
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Oct 31, 2013 03:14
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Renzuko posted:says to use 1.25 tps to a cup and I did that, and let it steep for the 4 minutes it says on the package but it still tastes weak or off? If it tastes weak first thing to do is try using more tea, pretty much always. If it tastes off as in rotten then something else is wrong.
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Nov 19, 2013 22:48
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It's mostly personal preference. The biggest difference any of them make is that depending on the material, they will impart their own flavor/the flavor of previous brewings somewhat. Porous clay ones (eg. yixing) in particular will do that. A secondary issue is that they can affect the brewing temperature a fair bit, really, depending on the material, thickness, whether you pre-heat, etc. Aside from those two things I think it's just a matter of your preferred manner of use and style of brewing. Personally, I'm about 50/50 between strainer and cup (mostly at work) and a gaiwan (mostly at home). I also have a houhin for Japanese green teas, but that's really just a Japanese gaiwan anyway. Teavana pushes the cast iron pot because they want to sell you something expensive. That's not to say that they are bad or unsuitable either, though I think it's worth keeping in mind that the original purpose of the tetsubin was to heat water, not to be a brewing vessel. breaks fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 05:33
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ReptilePicasso posted:Hey guys, I am trying to jump into the world of tea and was wondering where to start. Some quick information about me: I enjoy coffee right now and wanted to get into tea for the late afternoons when I don't want that extra caffeine. I am currently planning to use my trusty french press to brew tea until further notice, with the water coming from my Bonavita variable temp kettle. I've tried oolong before and I quite enjoyed it. I'd love to stay with light and floral might be a good scent/taste that I might want to get into. Short answer: hit Adagio's oolong section, and order either the samplers or some of the green looking ones. Some of the brown ones may be ok - the more heavily oxidized ones will tend towards fruity flavors rather than floral - but avoid anything that mentions being roasted. If it's roasted enough to turn it brown it's unlikely to be floral at all. Also roasted oolongs in general are tough to get right and there are a lot of lovely ones out there. I think unflavored teas are great and the much better way to go, but if you like the flavorings then try those too!
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Jan 15, 2014 10:05
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AreYouStillThere posted:I've recently discovered Pu'erh, and I'm intrigued. I thought it was delicious, but I'm a little wary of buying things grown in China. Should I be worried? Is there a brand that I can be less worried about? I bought one of these and though it does say USDA organic on it, I'm almost positive it was still grown in China. Any puerh not specifically labelled as being from somewhere other than China is from China 100% of the time. If grown in China is a dealbreaker for you, you'll have a very difficult time finding puerh to drink. You can easily and reliably get loose leaf teas grown in countries like Japan, Taiwan, India, less traditional places like Kenya and Nepal, and so on. That's just a matter of doing your shopping at the right places, which is easy to do online. The problem is that the amount of puerh style processing done in those countries is very close to zero. All that said, close to is not actually zero. I have seen a few places selling puerhs from other countries, mostly shops that appeared to buy their tea from wholesalers instead of doing their own importing. I think (but am by no means certain) that this company was ultimately the source: http://www.tealux.ca/buy_puerh_tea_online_store No idea about the quality or their reputation in general; I've never bought anything from them. Also just a word of warning, if you do buy Chinese puerhs, there is an enormous amount of total crap out there. The good stuff is rarely cheap and the expensive stuff is often fake. In short, finding and buying good puerh is an unbelievable pain in the rear end. If you decide to go down that route I really recommend finding a vendor that you can trust to figure all that poo poo out for you.
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Feb 23, 2014 01:07
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I like the Yunnan Noir, but I think they are out of it right now.
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Mar 3, 2014 04:42
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Boris Galerkin posted:I'm really liking black tea and I'd like to try more. The only one I know for sure I've had is this English breakfast, but I've had others too that I don't remember the names of. What are other black teas (don't have to be similar) for me to try and where do I order them online? Adagio has several black tea sample packs that you can order, I'd recommend trying whichever of those strikes your fancy. Or, you can usually order samples of their teas individually, also.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:32
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Holy poo poo dude.
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Aug 29, 2014 03:59
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Aside from gongfu style brewing, the other time you'll commonly encounter very short steeps with high quality tea is when preparing sencha. It extracts quickly, especially on the second steep, since the process of steaming and rolling it into the needle shape also pretty well pulverizes it.
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Nov 12, 2014 06:49
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The oxidation process that primarily defines black tea actually reduces the caffeine content slightly. The reputation for higher caffeine content probably comes from the assamica varietals used in India and many other countries that primarily produce black tea, which has more significantly more caffeine than the Chinese varietals used in various Asian countries where greens and oolongs are much more popular. If anyone really feels like nerding out, a pretty good paper on the subject can be found here (which talks about the varietal difference and compares green and black tea made from the same batch of leaves, among a few other things). I've read a couple others with similar findings but don't have links handy. There are plenty of other factors: yrelevant to recent discussion the shading process used for matcha and gyokuro increases the caffeine content a bit, along with the amino acid content and some other things. Younger leaves have more caffeine than older leaves. Leaves picked in the spring generally have more caffeine than leaves picked in the summer or fall, which itself might vary depending on location and frequency of harvest. And so on and so forth. Aside from what's in the leaf, how you go about brewing makes a huge difference in what you get out into the water, too. The takeaway from all this is just drink whatever tastes and feels good to you and don't worry about it.
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Dec 16, 2014 05:04
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Sure you can, but how much depends on what kind of tea, brewing style, etc. Maybe try 0.3g per oz of water for black tea brewed the standard 4-5 min duration, feel free to use more or less if that is too weak or strong.
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Dec 31, 2014 00:34
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With tea there is more variation in brewing methods than with coffee. Grinding the beans up into a fairly uniform powder helps a lot with standardizing a brewing process. Since with tea there is a lot more variation in what you are trying to soak flavor out of, there's a correspondingly wider variation in times, weights, etc. My personal guideline for sencha is .6g/oz, 1.5min, 175f water, 2nd brew 15-30sec, 3rd brew maybe a minute. Gongfuing oolongs is surely more than that (I never weigh), starts at 15sec, water just off a boil, except some really green ones can get cooler water. I'd brew them who knows how many times, adding 5-10 sec for the first few and more than that later on, I just feel it out if a cup comes out a bit too strong or too weak. I always give balled oolongs a rinse to open them up, sometimes I'll skip it with unrolled ones. Black tea I'd do .3-.4g/oz for 4-5min, boiling water, no additional brews. Chinese greens I don't drink much but I'd do a weight similar to black tea and a time and temp similar to sencha the first time, and add a minute for each later brew. I'm sure others have different opinions about the exact weights, times, and temps, and to some extent it depends on the specific tea. Heavy-steamed sencha needs less time than light-steamed, big leaves need more time than small ones, etc. Weigh away though, it definitely helped me get things right a lot quicker when I first started drinking tea. I rarely bother anymore unless I've splurged on something really pricey. And if you really want you can brew almost everything the way you would brew black tea, and if it's good tea you'll still get a good cup. It is a good idea to stick to a lower time and temp for greens. breaks fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Jan 1, 2015 |
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Jan 1, 2015 03:48
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For reference the most expensive gyokuro sold by O-cha, a very good vendor specializing in Japanese tea, is about $14/oz. Their "Yame Gyokuro" is one of their cheapest at about $6.25/oz, but that doesn't really say anything about the pricing of the one you linked. At Hibiki-an, my other preferred Japanese specialist, their super premium is $16/oz, and their ultra-top-end, totally excessive competition grade is $38/oz. Their cheapest is a bit over $4/oz. Of course with both of those you also have to figure in shipping from Japan unless you are ordering enough to get it free. So basically, the pricing on the tea you linked is reasonable for a fairly high end tea from a specialist vendor. If it is in that neighborhood in terms of quality then the price is fine. For what it's worth, the brewing instructions are fairly consistent with how good gyokuro should be prepared, which is usually a good sign that it's at least decent. A lot of places selling crap gyokuro say to brew it like any other green tea. breaks fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 01:33
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For the kind of tea you like, basically traditional western style stuff, Harney and Sons is a pretty solid vendor. I think you'd have a tough time finding something that's better and Prime eligible. Adagio and Upton are a couple other options if you want to look at other sites. If you at some point want to get into puerh, or high quality oolong, or Japanese tea, I would recommend looking for (or asking here for) a source specializing in those styles. I can't much help with a large teapot since I don't use one, but make sure to have some kind of plan for keeping the tea warm or reheating it if you go that route.
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Jan 20, 2015 06:42
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No idea where to buy them, but here is a little article on making this kind of tea oneself if that's of interest. http://gingkobay.blogspot.com/2010/04/making-tea-grapefruit-step-by-step.html
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Jun 22, 2015 06:21
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Ineffiable posted:Does anyone have a good source for Japanese green teas? Looking for a good blend of quality and affordability. I like Hibiki-an and O-cha. They both stock teas at a variety of pricepoints, but nothing so cheap that it's of poor quality. Since there was mention of deals, taiwanoolongs.com is doing 12% off green tea at the moment. But I mostly wanted to give them a mention because I was really pleased with some oolongs I ordered from them a while back. It's a newish Taiwan-focused shop from the Yunnan Sourcing guy. Teamasters is still my favorite but I'll be ordering from taiwanoolongs again for sure. I thought the wu she jade oolong was particularly good price/performance value.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:22
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Looks like oriental beauty / bai hao to me.
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Nov 25, 2015 22:38
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The white letters at the top are "gao shan cha" / "high mountain tea." I can't actually read Chinese, I've just picked up a few tea-related things over the years, so I don't know the rest of it. I guess it was probably rolled into balls like this? If so, in the event you can't track down the source of this particular one, any decent quality Taiwanese high mountain oolong would probably be similar. They are most all very green though there are occasional ones with some roasting or more oxidation done. I can recommend some good vendors if you want.
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Jan 2, 2016 12:22
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Well, usually Taiwanese and green and twist-shape means it's baozhong. A lot of those leaves look like they are smashed flat which would be unusual, but maybe it's just the lighting? Baozhong is usually pretty 3D rather than flat. I think there is a small amount of high mountain stuff made into a twist instead of a ball, but it's rare enough that I think it's more likely that whatever shop sold this tea just uses that bag for all their teas.
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Jan 2, 2016 21:45
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Let us know what you think! I've thought about giving them a try but haven't gotten around to it yet.
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Mar 7, 2016 03:02
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For the sencha you have there you should keep the temp around 170F and steep it for 1 minute. You can do a second steep for 30 seconds or less and a third one for 45 seconds or so. I don't usually like to do more than 3 with sencha, and sometimes only 2 if it brews out really quickly, which fukamushi style sencha is more likely to. The temp and numbers can vary a bit depending on the tea but anyway that should be a decent starting point. I'd also recommend pre-heating whatever you are brewing in, just pour some hot water in and let it sit to warm up the whatever, then pour it out, put in your tea, and pour in the water you are going to brew with. It's usually convenient to do while you are waiting for the water to cool down anyway. Don't worry about it for the later steeps if you do more than one. A lot of sencha is on the brisk side, but fukamushi especially should generally be more umami/rich/"grass candy" flavored than bitter. It depends on a lot of things though! breaks fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 01:34
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