Tea

sub humans

snobbish c**t that's never done a hard day's work in his life

>c**t
Please keep your aggressive lack of standards on facebook where you belong you gormless bint.

please keep your flaming homosexuality on grinder where it belongs.

never listen to brits about tea, even with their snobbery the cunts always burn it.

Avoid teabags.

If it sounds like Starbucks bullshit, don't buy it. Contrary to some comments, David's tea has decent tea but you need to sift through a lot of bullshit.

Go to an asian grocery store and find some loose leaf tea you like.

Good luck

>How do i get into tea, bros?
Drink some tea
>What to know
Tea bags are great
>what to avoid?
Loose leaf tea and advice on tea from Veeky Forums in general

dumb britbong

Pretentious weebo

op: amazon: any decently rated electric tea kettle, pot or a metal cup steeper like mine. harney and sons has nice teas.

and hey Veeky Forums, first time trying genmaicha -- holy shit, how cozy and interesting. anyone recommend any brands for it or any similar teas?

Go to chinese markets. I picked up 120g of black lychee, 120g of jasmine, and 400g of thai tea for like $4 each. The 120g even came in a tin. They taste great, excellent value.

I prefer a cast iron kettle, and time/temperature of your steeping is the most important thing to consider.

Don't listen to these teabag memers.

Get a nice load of loose Earl Grey, then add hot water. Maybe a bit of lemon.

This is the only real tea. It actually taste like tea. Everything else is thinly disguised homosexuality in a box.

Yellow Lipton comes in bags and loose leafs but you should obviously get the bags.

This.

Also add at least half a mug of skimmed milk and five sugars. Anything else and you're a bloody poofter who doesn't know a good days work.

Why is Veeky Forums full of shit memes these days, this thread is full of terrible advice. Talk about food you nig nogs

>muh food advice

If you can't cook then fucking kys lmao jfc js mwah

If you want to get into tea get into gong fu, anything else isnt getting into tea, just drinking tea

>dust swept off of the floor
>real tea

Nah, fuck you.

>if you want to get into tea, get into karate

>britbong at their finest

Most people will tell you the most important method of making tea is the quality and water.

... but I think that's only half the experience. The other half is your own personal setting, where you're at, and how cozy you feel. Tea is meant to be drank in a tranquil atmosphere, to feel home within yourself and your environment.

Mmmmmm.
Delicious cup of rice krispies, popcorn and lawn clippings

Lipton a shit
Get some yorkshire down ya gizzard

>And the he said "Tea is meant to be drank in a tranquil atmosphere to feel home within yourself and your environment"

Well, obviouslly.

In other words you have a child's palette

if you don't want to be an overspending faggot, just pick up some Twining's and start from there. you'll get more into it as you discover your tastes.

also, sugar is a shit-tier sweetener imo. honey and agave are GOAT.

You've obviously never worked an honest day I'm your life.

I get home, and have a nice cuppa of sweeped tea dust with a litre of milk and a good 10 tablespoons of sugar.

>Herbals are not tea

Tea is plant material steeped in water.

So is coffee.
Therefore coffee is actually tea.
Checkmate, atheists.

I buy a lot of my tea from crepes teahouse

If I might vouch for something, I picked up some of their second flush dajeerling and it's pretty based.

Some of their flavored bullshit white teas are nice when you have a sweet tooth.

idk don't go to david's tea expecting real tea I guess, but some of their pseudo teas are alright

>cuppa
what an homo lmao

>loose leaf
jesus fuck
it reminds me of smoking a blunt when someone cant roll it right and shit gets in your mouth and you spend 5mins trying to spit it out but you cant because cotton mouth

fuck that shit senpai gimme a bag

This man knows the score
A nice cuppa tea, and a fresh box a family circle.

No better way to create a tranquil atmosphere to feel at home within yourself and your environment.

I was going to give some real advice on brands/preparation, but given how much this thread has gone to shit, I'm not going to waste my time and neither should you

This helped me
youtube.com/watch?v=puldqGnW9P0
youtube.com/watch?v=EUuw5rqWkZU

Just go to your local shop and buy loose leaf from there, don't go to big in the beginning

>being so high you'll literally drink dirt off of the floor

You know teapots have strainers built into them, right? Of course you don't, you dumb addict.

>box a family
Is this like a new carnival game or something where you have to catch a whole family in a box

A couple months ago there were a series of pleasant tea generals on Veeky Forums. Coming back know I wonder what has happened that has caused the spread of so much literal shitposting. At least those generals revealed how little Veeky Forums knew about food and cooking.

>milk

In general, loose leaf tea is more flavorful and, if you know the right places, is significantly cheaper than bagged tea.

For bagged tea they're aren't a lot of options PG tips is decent but twinning and Tealey are better. Don't bother with green tea unless you've got shit teeth.

this too

>avoid loose leaf
>bags are great

Yes, good goy. It does depend on how much you drink though.

>adding milk and sugar

W E W

>honey and agave
>agave
kys

>What to avoid: herbal tisanes
unless you specifically want that, like peppermint tea 4-5 days for digestion

Tisane-shits are the worst pedants. They don't understand that herbs + water is what everyone understands to be a tea, not just canandensis sinensia. It's literally tea-focused autism. The are like medium-function train enthusiasts.

LOL are you a fag for real mate?

Finally. I had to go through half this thread for a real post.

Bunch of queers itt lol

Anyone else like mountain tea (ironwort)?

>Earl Grey
Assam is so much better for black teas, though. At least you didn't say Irish Breakfast.

Harney Paris

like Jesus Christ, I considered myself a tea person and I had never had it until a month or two ago

I'm going to keep the shit stocked, goddamn

if you get good honey

my local honey is $10 a bottle but I don't think there's any better in the world

It just makes it complete. I get my favorite tea, some Oberweis whole milk and Eisele's raw honey.

>They don't understand that herbs + water is what everyone understands to be a tea

No one gives a shit about what idiots on facebook "understand", and the minute you start to try you get bullshit like Trump being nominated for President.

Sounds neat. What does it taste like?

I like my tea with a bit of honey.

Tapal Danedar has good black tea which you wanna brew half milk, half water. Then strain out the clumps. Add in some sage if you like it.
Ahmad makes a fine cardamom tea (which is delicious plain).
Celestial Seasonings is VERY hit and miss.
Recently I've been trying out a vanilla chai and sweetening it with maybe a teaspoon of honey.

I know it's not tea, but I like my coffee with just a tablespoon or two of creamer per cup.

I repeat myself with this question every time, but Harney & Sons is a good vendor to start out with. All their stuff is solid and it's reasonably prices. Start out with the most popular types: English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Sencha, and maybe Paris. Good shit.

>not just using a strainer

Teamakers of London are good

get some pu-erh for your first tea if you're a coffee drinker

I've been shopping pretty much exclusively from Mandala Tea for the past few months. Trying out tons of different pu er (raw only, I don't much care for ripe) , plus oolongs and blacks.

Excellent customer service and pretty good prices.

Also decided to try out white2tea's tea club, first shipment should arrive sometime within the next two weeks, plus another shipment from Mandala, and a shipment from teaware.house as my gravity steeper broke so I decided to replace it with a gaiwan and some teacups.

do you notice a difference in cake pu-erh compared with regular loose leafs?

Yeah, pretty much all the cakes I've had have had a lot of complexity compared to other teas I've had. The shit you hear about "a hint of this" and "so and so on the nose" is pretty true for pu er as well.
The aging is also an important factor of that (and the light fermentation which is the purpose of the cakes). Young raw pu er, I find, is a bit too bitter for me, but 2014 and especially 2012s are fucking fantastic.

If you've ever heard of the term "tea drunk" (combo of caffeine and l-theanine) it is not at all rare for me when drinking pu er.

Over all I'd definitely recommend it, so long as you can find somewhere that sells reputable pu er, and which has samples you can try out.

Cheers.

I've had "tea highs" before from drinking sencha, but I do get that cozy feeling from Pu-Erh. I might pick up some 10yo Pu-Erh tonight.

With tea, how long do you steep for?

I always keep the leaves steeping in the water till it's cool enough to drink, but most guides say only 3-5 minutes for most teas.

For pretty much anything I can (usually pu er and oolong) I do short steeps. 15-45 seconds depending on the tea. This complements multiple steeps, where you do short steeps and then add on a bit of time each additional steep.
For example: 30 second first steep, 45 seconds second steep, 1 minute third steep, etc. continuing on like this until the pu er (or what have you) has yielded all of its flavor.

I've gotten around 10 steeps from one set of leaves before, and it could have been more but I only drink pu er at home so I can't do tremendously long sessions.

Most everything else I just give it a few minutes, depending on what it is. The only thing I really worry about oversteeping is green teas.

Look for suppliers that inform you about the plantation the tea came from,
learn to appreciate the taste of unsweetened un flavored tea before you start adding stuff
if you're buying it in a grocery store it's pretty low tier. like cheese or some liquors

>implying trump isn't our salvation from muslims
>implying the earth isn't flat
>imlpying the bible isnt literal truth
ifchygddt

oolong master race

fuck you

What are good places online to get tea?

What's your country?

Burgerstan.

Sevencups

Who are the best tea sellers in UK?

I usually go with Tea Makers of L, but are there any fancier brands (where any price increase matches the quality).

No
Its a big box of cheap biscuits

>not buying your tea from aliexpress

Mandala tea
White2tea
Crepes Tea House
Upton Tea Imports

Here's my recent order from Mandala Tea.
The cakes are, left to right, silver bud raw pu er, autumn song raw pu er, and heart of the old tree raw pu er.

I need to get a better camera, though.

Yorkshire Gold has the best black tea I know of. The best green tea I know of comes from Taiwanese bubble tea manufacturers; asian food store green tea is hit or miss. If you don't want to bother with all that, get some Stash green tea and put it on ice.

brew that shit in a chemex

Sugar is life.
Just not too much.

Why is everything so cheap?

cuz you are buying directly from china

I'm a huge oolong fan. I like a light-medium roast on mine.

My favorites have been green tie guan yin and medium roast dong ding.

Have an unopened bag of gui fei I need to get into. Eager to try it.

How do I train myself to get better at noticing all the complexities of different teas? I do pretty well with most raw pu er I've tried, and some green teas, and oolongs.
But, for black teas, and ripe pu er it all just tastes the same to me.
Do I just drink more of it? I take my time and pay attention to the flavors, but even good quality ripe tastes like... ripe pu er.

Invest in a nice electric kettle, preferably one with adjustable temperature settings, as different teas require different temperatures. A tea basket for putting directly into your cup is good, but you can also get a proper teapot for large batches/multiple people.
Avoid most of the tea you see at the grocery store unless it's an emergency. Twinings is good, but most else is either overpriced or very low quality (Lipton) or both. Teavana is overpriced and the tea you buy there will never taste like it does in-store unless you brew it extra strong and sweeten it. Buy loose tea: no bags, no syrups, and especially no powders. David's Tea can be good, but know that they do a lot of flavored teas (and some teas with bullshit in it. Like sprinkles and gummi bears and shit). Flavored teas can be nice but they usually only are good for 1-2 steepings and are flavored to mask the taste of low-quality leaves. I like Adagio teas if there isn't a good, local place to buy tea. I find that shops in areas with a lot of Asians tend to be reasonably priced while being decent quality.
I can't tell you what tea is best, that's gonna depend on your own taste preferences. I'd recommend trying some basic teas (earl grey, sencha, pu-erh, etc.) and going from there. Tisanes & rooibos are good too but not really "tea." Also don't buy corn tea. I bought it at a Korean shop and it was not pleasant.

Try drinking some lapsang souchong and some assam or ceylon side by side, if you don't notice the difference then you've got tongue problems.

Haven't tried ceylon, but I've had both assam and lapsang and there's obviously a difference. With some, I assume there's subtle differences/different flavor profiles as with any other tea I've tried but I have more difficulty noticing them.

With Silver Bud pu er for example, I taste some tart apple, hay, and some subtler flavors I can't place.
With Autumn Song it's lemon, and fresh grass.
Mu Ye Chun has a buttery flavor mixed with dried apricot.

I got some Black Beauty and Downy Tips (both black teas) so I'll do a tasting session of those and see if I can spot some differences.

If you want to be a fat fuck who can't drink anything remotely bitter than be my guest and follow this queer's advice
If you want to drink tea and actually taste it and not just drink something sweet then get into the loose-leaf "hipster shit". I didn't even know there was a hipster tea scene.
I buy my shit from amazon by the brick or in bags
I recommend Pu'Ehr, it comes in Shu (fermented) variety and Shang (unripened) variety.
You could also get into Matcha but it can get expensive if you get higher grades of it and if you decide to buy an expensive set but you could probably find something cheap online.
I would recommend loose-leaf, there are some bagged teas that can be just as good but I don't really no any brands besides Mighty Leaf regarding that.