Tea General

It was a gift, I couldn't give a shit less about it lol. I typically use loose leaf. But I agree, it is meant for hipsters.

Chai guy here, what do you think about Teavana by the way? I like them for all the varieties they have, but they seem really expensive.

I dislike them for being a Starbucks subsidiary, and carrying mostly weird blends with sugary additions.

I feel like I've explored most greens, reds/black and Oolongs at this point, now I want to try some Pu erhs. Anyone ordering from Chinalife? I really enjoyed their Royal Peach Orchid, damn that was fresh.

Where do you usually get your tea? can it ship across the US?

Teavana manager here. The teas are truly of good consistent quality. You paying for convenience though: most of their teas are marked up at least twenty percent from the same product elsewhere. Ama btw, ive been in the tea peddling world for years

The pastebin in the OP is dead.

Nice man, I have bought from them since before the starbucks buyout. My friend worked at one, he would buy so much tea that he would literally give some to me.

Many of their teas are literally picked from the same gardens as typical tea shops, like their gyokuro and silver needle. If youre getting sugary additions youre ordering the wrong thing

I get my tea from a tiny Asian lady downtown, runs her own business.
I guess she could ship to the US but international shipping is obscene here.

>The pastebin in the OP is dead
>Teavana manager here

Ck, pls

ah yeah, that is some short of marketing mistake i think called it "masala chai tea" is very common
dont buy if you have any other choices

pastebin.com/ff6mNwUw
Fixed

>implying they have gyokuro and silver needle

I've been in that shithole, it's wall-to-wall caramel sea-salt rooibos with espresso coffeebean garnish and random herbal bullshit.

Whats your point buddy? Ive managed local tea joints and have a passion for thw craft. I dont understand why youre trying to discredit what ive said since i currently work for the teavanna big brother

Your tea is shit and you should kill yourself

>Okakura Kazukou's book removed

I knew this pastebin was a mistake.

They literally have both if you payed any attention and thier gyokuro is of comparable price to what youd find elsewhere, twenty dollars an ounce for consistent imperial grade tea. Its not as advertised as the bullshit but they have it. I used to sell four lbs of it to this one lady every other week.

any of you have experimented with cold brew? does it works on oolong?

>literal first flush darjeelings, gyokuro, tieguanyin, silver needle
>shit

Yeah okay, sure thing pal. Guess ill go off myself since some angry neckbeard on an indonesian stop animation forum tells me to who doesnt even drink tea.

you should fucking kill yourself

You can cold brew any tea and im fact is preferable with some milder whites amd greens. Any oolong will be fine irrespective of their oxidation levels.

...

Where should I buy matcha? There's a whole foods nearby, but I'm sure it's overpriced trash.

Any specifically good online retailers for the stuff?

wut
thanks, i got some tieguanyin liying around and i wanted to try it

I bought a replacement tea pot from amazon.

It arrived today broken.

I am currently drinking no tea.

Wow, it's so hard to find those teas first flush elsewhere, end your life m8

Thanks!

:[

Buying fragile stuff from amazon is not a good idea in general. They handle packages like crap.

Yeah I know it's risky but it's so much cheaper. All the teapots that are for sale at the local tea shop are gay anyway. So I didn't want one of those.

Oddly enough I bought some other big glass thing that wasn't even bubble wrapped or anything and it arrived fine.

They're shipping me another one so I have to wait until next week for tea I guess.

Achmeds Khalami loose tea is pretty good and sells in bulk. Brew it to drink to dry my mouth out, to mix with milk, or cream liquer.

Don't you have an asian market instead of a tea shop nearby?

Well no, actually.

If it were up to me I wouldn't even go to the tea shop at all but I have no idea where to buy normal tea online in Canada.

I might try the antiques store though.

You should be able to find a plain white teapot in just about any Walmart
Heck, I found one in a dollar store.

Salvation Army's also got a shittonne of old ceramics for cheap, if you're comfortable drinking from the pot of a dead old woman.

>General

Those are gay though.

You don't seem to be understanding the core issue.

Please describe your vision of a heterosexual teapot.
I'll try not to laugh.

...

Favorite aside from the oolong, shang tea is amazing. If you are ever in Kansas city it is a must go!

This man does gods work, and is very kind without being overbearing

>Implying my deceived trust is fixed

I got their Young Gushu puerh this week. Beautifully rolled leaves that produce a delicious liquor, lighter than an aged puerh but fruity and without the earthy mushroom flavour you get from older teas.
Could be a good introductory choice, but I'd try that and something from the 90s or early 00s to get an idea of the range of flavours.

>Me and my girlfriend drink
It's actually "my girlfriend and I". An easy way to remember this is to remove the other person and see if it make sense. In this case "me drink tea" sounds retarded, while "I drink tea", is correct.

We only sperg about tea in these parts, muchacho.

Teavana uses synthetic artificial flavors, also their tea has been found to have illegal amounts of pesticides... and yet people are still drinking it.

But rooibos is a herbal infusion, is it not? I mean, it's not tea.

Not him
Nevertheless: words.

It's not even really an herb, more of a bush

how much of a bad idea is drinking tea from aliexpress?

Its a tisane

Seriously this.

I wish people would ger in the habit of using the wors tisane so we can stop calling everything fucking tea

I'm really too lazy to clean my tea strainer so I only drink one large cup of cheap assam ctc daily, made with paper filters.
I do have some other teas, but I rarely feel like drinking them because I can't find a strainer that looks easy to clean.

Why not use a french press? If its loose leaf.

Here in BR land chai= black tea with curry nigger spices prepared with +-1/2 of milk.

Look at Chatsford teapots, yw.

Love this.

It's a decaffeinated black tea with lemon balm, lemongrass, nutmeg, and vanilla.

Gonna brew up two gaiwans of tea.
One will be menghai 7582, the other Bang Dong village raw pu er.

I like Bang Dong

Does anyone know a good place to get Ya Shi Xiang Dan Cong Oolong (aka Duck Shit Oolong)?
Only place I've found it is Yunnan Sourcing's chinese location, and that shit takes 2 1/2 weeks to arrive.
I do have some Huang Zhi Xiang oolong from YS, and Imperial Golden Needle and both are delicious but I want my hands on that Ya Shi.

Didn't mean to quote.

thank you lala prancing homo man

I love eating sweet things with my tea.
What are some good tea snacks?

Health tea house have great quality tea for the price. I can't vouch for the others.

Does anyone actually like rooibos?

I tried some and it had 0 flavour so I tried some more expensive shit thinking you might need to go quality with it and it had 0 flavour so then I tried some flavoured shit and it still had 0 flavour.

How long was the steep time?

For herbal tea it's important to steep the tea as long as you can until the water has finally cooled down to drink.

I think that rooibos has a nice earthy tone to it. I like drinking it with a splash of milk and a little cinnamon. The type of thing you would drink in winter for me.

C'mon, it has at least 1 flavour!

I agree though. Its just.. not as complex and interesting as even cheaper true tea.

Any of you guys brew kombucha? I recently started, and I'm in need of some flavoring ideas.

I like bananas and tangerines with my mate cozido

Cinnamon and strawberry have been my favorites so far. I've been wanting to try lavender, though.

Just be warned if you do powdered cinnamon it makes a sort of sea monster looking thing as the yeast attaches to it in the storage bottle.

I bought a bottle with a colony and the guy is sending some kefir grains for free too. It'll arrive this week.

>Coffee, matcha and chocolate powder

>Any green tea with rapsberry

>You can try to add fir, evergreen, cedar or maple to get the flavor in it.

isn't that shit poisonous?

>herpa derp chai and tea are the same thing
No they aren't. "Chá" is a mandarin word that used to refer to tea in some cultures. "Chai" refers to Masala chai, a flavoured tea beverage originating in India. No one ever in the 21st century would refer to a cup of green tea or early grey as "chai" unless they were a literal retard who knew nothing about tea, such as yourself.

What're some good caffeine-free teas to try out? I have some bags of herbal tea but I want to branch out

I love rooibos. I like to add a bit of milk.

I think it also makes a very good base for other flavours. My local tea shop carries a bunch of rooibos blends and they don't use artificial flavours, which is pretty great. I've had

>vanilla rooibos
tasted like liquid cake when I added milk, except not so sweet
>apple pie rooibos
needed more spices desu
>rooibos provence
This is probably my absolute favourite. It's just to fragrant and flowery and delicate. It contains lavender, rosehip, and a bunch of other things and it's so lovely.

Cha, chai, cai, tea, te, so on and so forth are all regional pronunciations of the same word: 茶. Even in China that can be pronounced as cha or te or zo.
Ask for a chai in India and they will give you a cup of plain tea, not masala chai.
Using any variation of "tea" to mean "masala chai" specifically is ridiculous.

Like damn dude you might as well use "catsup" to mean German curry ketchup.

>tfw waiting for a puer cake from ebay
i hope that i don't get poisoned lads

If it's shit try out Mandala Tea. They're located in the US, and they offer samples of cakes so you don't have to go all the way in, if you're just starting out.

Bought a bunch of Sencha from the asian immigrunt store. Its stronger than I thought it would be so I put too much into my pot.

Will do better next time.

Just had some Barry's tea gold for the first time, tastes similar to Yorkshire or Lipton.

>they are located in the US
I will get raped by the shipping, but oh well.
never put too much sencha, and don't oversteep that shit gets bad really fast.

Just tried Russian caravan today with some half and half, honey, and a pinch of some cinnamon. I tried it with the honey and half and half first and then decided that I liked the slight smokey taste to it but also that cinnamon would compliment the taste. It was amazing, new favorite black tea.

These things are shortbread with matcha in them. Pretty good with a latte, coffee or otherwise. Just hard to get unless there's a local Asian market nearby. Online ordering could work if you care.

Time to have some expensive white tea.

That's all nice but we're speaking English and in English Chai refers to spiced tea. Anyone who says otherwise is a pedant. You can't hand me some any old roasted tea and call it Hojicha, even though Hojicha just means roasted tea in Japan. In India, Chai means one thing, and in an English speaking country it means something else.

This also relates to people who sperg out over tea/tisane. In the common English speaking world, all tisanes are tea, but not all teas are tisanes.

>im a mong please rape my face

Yeah, I agree.
Sure, chai is just tea. But in in the western world, it usually refers to the Indian spiced tea, that's pretty much common knowledge at this point.

Anyone have any good tea-personas on youtube that you follow?