Tea Thread

nah, when it's boiled beforehand it dissolves the fibers that sting you. Stinging nettle is meant to be an estrogen blocker too, so if you wanna get rid of those man titties it's pretty good.

Are the weird tools for brewing macha important or are they for weeaboos and ceremonies?

I've only had matcha in the form of iced latte like beverages from Asian restaurants. Is the real stuff much different?

Is it actually good?

>Are the weird tools for brewing macha important
No.
>or are they for weeaboos and ceremonies?
Yes.

Use a milk frother.

do you guys do multiple pours with the same leaves, china style? does the flavor change a lot from pour to pour?

it has a pretty odd smell and a lot of people don't like it. It's an acquired taste I guess but I genuinely like it. It's better if you have it in a blend or something, I have one here with peppermint, spearmint, calendula, echinacea, burdock and then nettle.
Would recommend trying it out though friendo

Cool, how long can you store tisanes like that before they go bad? You can only drink so much a day and I want to drink as much tea as possible, so I wont be able to drink tisanes that often.

Has anyone tried Yerba Mate? Its great for digestion.

pfffffff I honestly have no idea how long they last, maybe years? Also, is that a thing? I drink as much herbal tea as I want, I didn't know that was bad.

i have some old pu'er in my pantry from when a mate went to china

should i brew it up?
how should i do it with regards to water temp/brew length?

Bought it once. Wont buy it again.
I meant, I can't drink more stuff I will die from water intoxication.

Is Harney & Sons a good brand?

Why don't tea farmers sell directly instead of using these new-age themed middle-men?
>Get children to learn english and computing at school
>set up a web shop
Both ends would save money surely?

What's a good online store to purchase tea from?

Yes but it's a lot more work for the tea farmer than that. For one, what's to say that their children aren't already too busy working on the tea farms? Or that they go to a good enough school? Or that they even want to be shackled to their parents' business? And even if they were able to set up a web shop, how are they going to market and compete?

>what's to say that their children aren't already too busy working on the tea farms?
have more children.
>Or that they go to a good enough school?
learn online
>Or that they even want to be shackled to their parents' business?
disown them. have more children.
>how are they going to market and compete?
cutting out middle-men would save a lot on the product cost I'm guessing. that alone would be a marketable image, some people wouldn't want their money going towards anything other than the production and transport.

>chinese tea farmers
>having the know how of running a western audience sales business
Thanks for the giggle. Made my day. Why don't Africans just be millionaires and stop being so damn poor?

>what is ebay, amazon, paypal

>buying shitty loose leaf teas that don't break the bank
>not realizing that even the fannings of expensive tea are better
poorfags, when will they learn?

Personally I usually do not.

The flavour generally gets stronger and more bitter. I'm not big on bitter.

>so I had this groundbreaking revelation the other day, why don't we just sell the shit ourselves on ebay or amazon?
>fuck the middle men, gramps you take care of marketing and granny you're in charge of trademarks and intellectual property rights

>marketing, trademarks, intellectual property rights
>necessary for selling an ancient agricultural product
I better tell my local market about your groundbreaking revelation, the vegetable baskets should have speakers playing each farmers own theme tune, and a logo should be engraved on each carrot!

>IMG_0778.jpg
>watermark
user, please.

You are so incredible stupid you should actually kill yourself. You don't know anything about sales, trade or business. Or even agriculture. I want you to kill yourself tonight.
>I better tell my local market about your groundbreaking revelation, the vegetable baskets should have speakers playing each farmers own theme tune, and a logo should be engraved on each carrot!
Your local market is the exact same counterpart for the vegetable farmer as the online tea shop is for the tea farmer. Please try to make one rational thought before you type next time.

>;_________________; :@@@@@@@@@@
My local farm sells the exact same produce online as they do at the weekly market. Please try to keep up.

>my local farm sells the exact same produce online as they do at the weekly market
Why don't you give me the link to his online shop and I can go and order some of his produce.

...

manorfarmcatthorpe.co.uk/farm-shop/

As you can see they use tripadvisor to gain consumer trust.

I like nettle on it's own, tastes green and a little bit earthy.

>Where are my fellow tea bros at?

Twinings of London, Earl Grey Tea.

pic related.

>tfw you forget your infuser at home and have to drink shitty coffee at work

I really need to buy a second infuser to keep at the office.

But you didn't actually prove anything with this. Manor Farm is a brand just like Dole or Del Monte, they're just incredibly small and local oriented. When you're buying carrots from Manor Farm you're buying brand carrots. Asking Chinese farmers to do the same, in a foreign/international market furthermore, is absolutely ridiculous. A handful of Japanese or Taiwanese farmers could possibly be able to start their own brands and pull this off. But what you're asking for by the majority of any farmer and particularly by Chinese farmers is so naive I hope you realize that. You know many Chinese famers are illiterate, right? They have never seen a computer in their life.

Standard grade cooked pu-erhs are pretty low maintenance. The taste and texture can typically hold up to excessive heat or steeping time.

For the first cup, brew it like you would a black tea, see what you like about it and then experiment from there.

You can put the loose tea in a coffee filter and steep it that way.

gooks

>A handful of Japanese or Taiwanese farmers could possibly be able to start their own brands and pull this off.
Finally, you concede to my modest argument. I never actually specified anything about the majority doing so, in fact I naturally assume only select groups can achieve the most sensible things. In this case it's no surprise that you choose the yayoi and han (well, the han who didn't get their culture obliterated by materialism).

I heard Turkey is the biggest tea nation of all. Africa, Britain and South Asia probably outdrink East Asia when combined, too.

Iced sweet jasmine tea is best tea.
No tea gets better than this.

What is "jasmine tea"?

Google it.

I'm just plebing it out with orange pekoe ice tea i brewed that i'm using to make sweet tea and honey milk tea. After I finish off all my OP i'll be back to [iced] irish breakfast tea until I get more.

(someone help I'm going through at least 1.5L a day of it)

Good aroma, mild taste.

Holy fuck why didn't I think of this. I've done it with a paper towel and it turn out kinda shitty, I will definitely use the filter. Man I am dumb. Thanks user.

taiwanese gov destroyed them

For good reason.

Why?

The tea production is damaging the environment.

Here's a short article about it
munchies.vice.com/en/articles/taiwan-is-destroying-its-high-mountain-oolong-tea-farms

You didn't specify because you thought it would work universally. Now kill yourself.

>Are the weird tools for brewing macha important

no

>or are they for weeaboos

no

>and ceremonies?

party yes

it's just fun mate.

are you being serious? maybe i am misunderstand "pour"?

you can brew your leaves (high quality) from anywhere between four to eight times depending on how strong the tea is..

it shouldn't get more bitter (as theother guy said) but rather more nuanced, lighter, less intensive, to the point where it's essentially just water (8th brew).

you should always brew more than once. it takes some time for the leaves to open up.

a lot of people even refuse to drink the first brew. the chinese generally regard the third one as the best one.

if you're not brewing at least 3 times you're wasting good tea.

>You didn't specify because you thought it would work universally
So you're saying I thought a mentally challenged, xenophobic 'slave' farmer would be able to sell directly to a western market? If that's your stance, to each their own. I'll let everyone else make their judgements.

lmao

for real tho that other guy is a complete retard

It's a bit harder to froth properly with a wooden implement but you don't get that artificial roasting that a mechanical tool imparts to the powder.

I'll refrain from guessing samefag, but read the whole response thread.

>sencha after the 2nd steep
no thanks m8

it's all preference. you should experiment when you first get the tea with what tastes good, and you may find that you only really enjoy the first steep. drinking 5 steeps in a few hours, especially in the late afternoon, makes it difficult for me to fall asleep.

you're right about washing the leaves. not enough people wash their leaves and for oolong and puerh it's pretty much essential.

i did read the whole thread. it's just that i have friends (and s.o) working in marketing and (food) economics and that your posts are so incredibly gullibe they cheer me up. it's not even that your proposed solution is impossible, it isn't. i know people that have done it, you know. it's just the fact that you think it's "that easy" that's incredibly cringey. it needs months of work, it needs personnel et cetera pp.

setting up an online shop is easy peasy, hell my fucking fifteen year old sister got can sell her amulets via dawanda, but actually making a living off of it, finding customers, making enough money to feed a whole family, finance your plantation, your workers and so much more is hard. very hard.

not even to begin that the company you previously had a trade agreement with probably won't like the idea of you selling your tea for a higher price, so there is a risk of completely losing one's business involved.

>>sencha after the 2nd steep

what's the problem here? i honestly don't fucking get it.

is it too bitter for you or something? use 80c* water and steep it for less than a minute.

japanese tea is literally the only tea in the world where you would prefer the first brew to the others. it's their mentality actually that the first one is the best one.

sencha often has dust which adds to the flavour, but is gone with the second steep. that's why the first one is the supposed best one.

like, my gf is jap, she orders premium tea from japan, she's been served proper green tea for her entire life and she still steeps her sencha three times until she throws it out. you're just wasting tea my good friend.

If you read it properly then you'd know that I made no claims for it being universally possible or "that easy" (hilariously, despite your use of speech marks, your post is the only one featuring "easy" ITT)

>i have friends (and s.o) working in marketing and (food) economics
My condolences.

>wasting good tea
stop with this shit
you're acting like there's an objective use for tea when there's not. It's not a problem of bitterness for me, but even if it was, so what? you've admitted yourself that tea develops in flavor over steeps, so why is it wrong that some people prefer some flavors over others. just because I don't steep 8 times and rub the leaves on my nipples doesn't mean I'm "wasting" it. On the contrary, drinking 8 cups of tea, half of which are worse than the last, and getting the jitters is probably more "wasteful" because I've just ruined my tea drinking experience.

these must be super small cups/portions though, right? or do people do subsequent brews hours later?

>western style is just as good as gong-fu
Absolutely not, with a small variety of exceptions.

>implying implications
I'll give you that never experimenting with your tea is bad, as you should probably brew new tea gong-fu style to get an understanding of the flavor. But from there it's just taste. Tea has a large variety of tastes. You can't expect one person to enjoy every single one of them.

seriouseats.com/2014/06/best-water-for-tea-tap-spring-bottled-filtered.html

>not brewing with bottled water
>2016
This test should be done with more participants and bottled variants though.

I always brew with bottled water because the tap water of my country is shit.
Good to know i suppose.

tx friend

> so why is it wrong that some people prefer some flavors over others

it ain't wrong my friend, not at all. i'm just really fucking curious. your behaviour baffles me. i honest to god want to know why.

so please, tell me what makes you dislike the second/third brew. i'm not some kind of authority on tea, my tastebuds probably aren't even all that developed. i just don't see it and i want your input.

i do my brews hours apart, yes. in order for my tea to not continue brewing after i take it out i rinse it with ice cold water. if you don't do that it'll lose it's taste after two or three sessions.

i don't really do small session to be honest with you, i just drink loads of tea. my guess would be 2l to 3l a day, three or four brews in total.

this guy is NOT me by the way. you can brew tea "western style" and still do it three to four times, you just have to adjust brewing time, temperature and be okay with tea that tastes a little less intense.

i like filtered better, actually. but you are right, it improves quality by a huge leap.

Read your posts again you flaming faggot.
You clearly lost the argument and you realized how incredibly stupid and naive you were but you can't admit defeat so now you claim that "I never said it was easy LOL" "I didn't mean Chinese farmers LOL" "I never meant that the majority should do it LOL"

You're cringeworthy as hell.

Yeah, love their Paris and Tokyo blends

The original user conceded that I was right. I never claimed any of the other things you say. The fact that quotation marks were used for things no one ITT said at all shows the levels of delusion here. People got mad that I said something is possible, just because it's not possible for the majority. That's sheeple assumptions at its finest.

for flavored teas they seem okay. for unflavored you can do better given their prices
i have their choco nut ambessa blend and I like it a lot, on my second tin. i have vanilla comoro too and its "okay." want to try florence and soho

You're misunderstanding me. I don't absolutely dislike multiple steeps. For puerh it's nearly essential. For more floral teas like tieguanyin? Sometimes I'll get lazy or am in the mood for just a single longer steep. This of course does not account for washing your tea, which you should almost always do.

If I don't enjoy the flavor of the tea very much it makes no sense to spend an hour drinking it. I have a lot of dahongpao, so I tend to reach for that first. However some days I'll take a sniff after brewing it and think "ugh, too sour" or something similar. In situations like that I know the tea is going to change that much with subsequent steeps, so why bother? Just drink what I've made and move on.

This is of course not accounting for the practical reasons for drinking a single cup. In the morning I'm limited by how little time I have. In the evening I don't like drinking a lot of tea or I have trouble falling asleep. Sometimes one cup is better than none.

>High mountain agriculture can be quite destructive; it erodes the landscape and causes harmful pesticides and fertilizers to contaminate water sources and the land. The additives also strip the soil of moisture, rendering it completely useless in a matter of decades. It’s a toxic industry; for every one pound of tea, roughly $9 USD is spent on pesticides and fertilizers.
Why not just grow organic? Or is that not possible in those altitudes?

>This of course does not account for washing your tea, which you should almost always do.
ayy lmao

ah i see you now

>This is of course not accounting for the practical reasons for drinking a single cup. In the morning I'm limited by how little time I have. In the evening I don't like drinking a lot of tea or I have trouble falling asleep. Sometimes one cup is better than none.

yeah sadly this happens to me all the time.

>If I don't enjoy the flavor of the tea very much it makes no sense to spend an hour drinking it.

when i do multiple steeps i always shock it with cold water so i can use it hours later. sometimes ill do one in the morning, then one in the evening.

some of them did grow organic, no one gave a fuck. it' in that vice article, which is, as always, very badly written.

for some it is true, for some it isn't. if you want to make a point then make a fucking point.

example: no one would ever do a rinse with sencha. with pu erh it's totally legitimate.

>shocking with cold water
I hope you at least drink that. leaves generally flavour fast on the 2nd steep.

what? all i do is pour a little bit of cold water over the leaves to drop their temp to room temperature instantly, then i get rid of the water. it's just a very minor step to stop them from steeping once they're outside my teapot. don't really get what you're trying to tell me. of course they're going to flavour the fastest on the 2nd steep, because the leaves will have opened up by then.

You don't rinse green tea at all.

Typical chinks with these black-and-white government mafia methods.

You should rinse with bleach everything you get from china

Because?

Where do you guy tea from?

i don't, some people do. i'm largely indifferent.

welp.

he's just memeing, ignore him.

*buy

TITTING FUCK

i like what-cha.com and yunnansourcing.com (yunnansourcing.us if you are in the us)

Aliexpress.
I live on the edge.

I do multiple pour depending of the tea. I tasted an very old pu'er and each pour the savor changed drastically.

I drink it because it taste good and it's very cheap. Beware, if you drink alot of it, it act as an aphrodisiac.

>teabox.com for good Darjeeling, chaï and designated tea
>aliexpress : ''Green Sailing Trading Co.'' and ''Health Tea House''

>aphrodisiacs
my favorite meme

>I have unexplainable long lasting boners after each time I drink it.

the same thing happens when I take a really big shit for some reason

your shit stimulated your prostate.

The Chinese gov't makes it very, very difficult to get export permissions.