Tea Thread

More expensive doesn't mean better, it just means overpriced.
Doesn't matter anyway if you're preparing it wrong. Read the FAQ.

>Doesn't matter anyway if you're preparing it wrong.
But I don't think I'm preparing wrong.
Different temps for green and black, steeping it for the time reccomended, etc.
The only stuff I kinda like and distinguish, is earl grey with milk and sugar.

Are you adding enough leaf? How long are you brewing it for? Are you buying a store brand? If so it's probably already stale from being poor quality and sitting on the shelf for months.
Buy fresh tea from importers to start with, try upton, they have samples and good prices/quality.

I'm getting genmaicha tomorrow. Hype.

My favorite tea is the Turkish Tea.

What kind of tea do they usually serve at Chinese restaurants? I like that kind.

describe it
is probably some kind of oolong

jasmine green tea or white tea

Just checked the pastebin link in OP (not him). It's expired, nothing there.

He could Google that info anyway I guess.

You're not drinking good tea. There's black tea that is as different from a Twinings bag as good Scotch is from cheap whiskey. But "good tea" isn't as well known or readily available as good Scotch, so you haven't grabbed any.

I'm in the market for a kyusu. Anything I should keep in mind?

Such as Banko vs. Tokoname vs. Bizen.

>ERROR, PASTE ID IS INVALID, OR PASTE HAS BEEN REMOVED!

Glance down two posts.

ok, but not the point. the last thread displayed that big annoying gap in the page and i don't know why the same thing was posted again. you do you guys even read your own threads?

coffee > tea

bump and still waiting for that puerh cake

Is teeccino a meme? Does it taste close go coffee?

*to

Lyons gold blend, one sugar, drop of milk, leave the teabag in, everything else is gay and against Ireland

1) Brew for less than a minute
2) Use only slighlty hot water
3) Use bottled non-carbonated water

In the case of Gyokuro, expensive actually DOES mean better.

çay is life

Can anyone recommend a full bodied red rooibos? I'm in the UK.

Is the only issue that it's too much flavour? I would just use a smaller amount of leaves. If it's bitter, then obviously you need to reduce the temperature.

This said, my preferred way is a good amount of leaves, and an instant brew, i.e. pour the tea out as soon as I finish pouring the water over the tea. Then extend the time for a few seconds each brew after.

What is there in oolongs apart from tieguanyin?

So much. Oolongs have the widest variety - not only because so many oxidation levels fit into the 'oolong' category but there are different types of processing that go into it. There are light ones, floral ones, refreshing ones, cacao-y ones, tobacco-y ones, smokey ones, and so on.

Definitely try some Japanese oolongs and try out some milk oolongs too.

Dont forget the wuyi earthy mineral ones

W2t club or ys puer club? Pros and cons of each? Im afraid of the amount of tea in the ys one because the shipping is included in the price and I live in euroland, if it is included im afraid that I'll only be getting like 20 dollars worth of tea and the rest will be dissolved in the shipping.

I'm interested in the tobacco variety, does it have a name?

Not really, i'ts just a note that different oolongs can have. Look for the darker oolongs and the smoked oolongs. Maybe try shui xian.

>japanese oolong
wait wat

Kamairicha?

Can anyone recommend a good online shop to get some tea in Australia?

But that's a green tea.

Daily reminder.

>hide the thread if it bothers you so much
I shouldn't have to. Get your shit together, mister Singh.

yuuki-cha.com/japanese-oolong-tea

Try the ones in the pastebin: pastebin.com/EnUxQGdK Tea websites usually ship internationally in my experience.

Thanks mate, got a few different things from what-cha to try out. Hopefully customs doesnt fuck me.

Genmaicha is either really good or fucking nasty on every subsequent brew someone help.

I can't get into Gyokuro either. It's probably the same like with every green tea, start with lower amount of leafs and get used to the taste, then slowly increase the concentration. I want to get me some new japs soon, but I'm so freaking poor recently :/

Currently drinking a selfmade ice tea. Yummy as fk. Used some cheap black tea (profit goes to saving tigers or something like that. No good on its own, too strong, but perfect for ice tea), a lemon and some grape/applejuice.

This is a good idea... I have this cheap assam I'm looking to finish somehow so I'll try this out. Thanks.

Godlike stuff. Not Japanese Oolongs though.
Personally I dislike them, at least the ones I had so far, but I'm not too much into Chinese/Taiwanese oolongs either. At least the Japanese ones are very ok regarding price.
Also Thes du Japon. Personally I prefer them to Yuuki-Cha, as I feel their stuff is more consistent, with less turds than at yuuki.
Where did you buy it? It's quite possible that some of the rice is fucked, due to too long, wrong storage. Had that happen to a friend of mine.
Also you shouldn't use boiling water, but I guess you knew that.
Use more tea and let it simmer less, might help as well.

I bought a box of green tea (with lemon flavour)
It's pretty great.

What do you guys think of teavana? I'm thinking of trying their maté teas. What are their best flavors?

Nice you like it m8
I already gave you my thoughts in the other thread, I just took a look at their pricing and it's absolutely insane.
There is a reason why there are very expensive green, oolong, puerh and black tea, as supply of these high-class teas is limited.
Mate tea however isn't made using camellia sinensis, technically it's not even tea. There is no reason it should be that expensive, as the stuff you need to make it, is cheap as hell. Get a cheaper brand. More than 5$ for 100g is too much for mate, even if it's organic. 7$ for 50g is insane.

I enjoy a cup of sleepy time tea with lots of honey sugar and milk.

Their stuff is a blend of mate and other flavors/teas. If you look at the ingredients list on the different flavors some have rooibis and black tea and cocoa blends.

Also what do you guys think of using rock sugar/sugar crystals to flavor your tea?

Have you used rock sugar before?

just buy demerara unbleached sugar

I don't personally like to add sugar to my tea but my mother was brought up adding rock sugar to chrysanthemum tea so it's a nice novelty to do the same sometimes. I don't really see the benefit of using it over normal sugar though, other than it looking nice and dissolving slowly.

always put honey in the tea after it cooled down a little, as the heat changes its taste.
Just took a look at their ingedients and there are even artificial flavours in there. Not that I think those are the devil, but I'd have at least thought it was organic for that price.
Rooibos is even cheaper than mate.
Look, you can try them, but if you ask somebody who drinks a lot of tea, their prices are about 3x what you'd pay without their brandname. I bet their stuff isn't horrible, but you can get equal stuff for much less. I don't know any american shops, so I can't point you in the right direction, sorry, but I can get a good mate tea from my local teahouse for 1.50€ for 100g. Those prices of teavania seem insane to me, honestly.
Yes I have. It tastes different than regular castor sugar, when you put it in your mouth directly. I don't think that you'd be able to tell the difference from white castor sugar and white rock sugar (same for brown/brown) when it's dissolved in tea.
I just took a look at their pricing for that and 8.50$ for 450g are just -way- too much. Get the cheapest sugar (whether brown or white) you can find, maybe even something local, if you got local sugar companies (I do). There is no difference between german sugar and the one from simbabwe. It's just sugar, there isn't a difference between german E330 and american E330 either.

I feel like I sound kinda annoyed, that's not what I was aiming for though. We cool m8

overpriced trash

Where's a good place to buy larger Japanese tea cups? I'll only be drinking tea alone, and the ones on Yuuki-cha hold 120 ml, whereas it seems that many teas are recommended to be brewed with 210 ml, which would mean the tea in the pot would become oversteeped.

You're meant to transfer the tea to another vessel. That said, try looking at some Korean teacups which tend to be larger but with a similar style.

I got mine through Zenmarket, basically a fright forwarder. You buy stuff from amazon and they send it to you. Other stuff to check out is J-topia and maybe tableinstore, but tableinstore is expensive.
Hojotea got some plain looking ones, if you're into that
Hibiki-an has some too, but they are on the expensive side as well.
Another good source are the artists themselve, got the left one from tanikangama, Hozan Taniis store, whos cups I like a lot. To find those you need some japanese though.

Thanks for the advice. Sometimes teavana have deals in store and some resellers on ebay might give discounts.
I saw a seller on ebay with 4lb of rock sugar for about $16.

rock sugar should be about 3 bucks for 500g max. and that's organic, fairtrade grade.
I can't into imperial system, sorry.

Oh, that would be nice, because the small ones on Yuuki-cha are very inexpensive. Do those vessels have a name?

I really like the cup on the left. Thanks for the site recommendations, I'll see what they have.

The one on the left is this one:
shop.tanikangama.com?pid=34197891
3k yen is pretty aok price I'd say.

Just took a look, turns out it's more expensive than I thought. 16$ for 2kg is acceptable. There's no need to get that much though, 2kg will probably last you at least 3 years, if you drink a lot of sweet, sweet tea.

Well it was $11 + $5 for shipping . I usually add the shipping cost in my head,

Are there any other uses for rock sugar?

Well it's still sugar. In theory you can use it whenever you'd use regular sugar, but keep in mind it takes ages to melt, so some sweet sauce should be possible, but rather not stuff like baking. For everything but tea I'd just use castor sugar though to be honest. It's just easier and cheaper.
Also you can be like the cool kids and pretend to smoke crack.

But hands down, what do you hope to get from rocksugar?

I heard it has a better depth of flavor than regular old sugar.

Rock sugar is used a lot in Chinese cooking. The most famous dish that uses it is hong shao.

That's a very brave statement.
I don't think that this could be empirically proven, especially when dissolved.
The difference between white castor and white rock sugar isn't what they're mad of (same goes for brown/brown), but that rock sugar melts much, much slower in your mouth. That way it doesn't numb your tastebuds, unlike a spoon of castor sugar.
The main difference between regular castor sugar and many rock sugars is that many people use white castor and brown rock and there really is a difference between white and brown sugar.

pastebin.com/hw8XXZV5

Here's a picture of the tea. Got it from some company called "Tealyr" I think

Can't tell you anything from that pic. Take a deep breath, if it smells weird it could be fucked. Was it delivered in an airtight, original "container" (dunno the english expression), or one of those things to reseal? If it was airtight and factory sealed, it should be fine 100%.
If you're sure it's the teas fault and not your own (you know, brushed teeth before tasting or sth. like that) you can as well just throw it out and get something from Thes du Japon/Yuuki cha.
You could take a look at the ricegrains as well I guess, if they look funky, they might be fucked.

I'm not really into tea but I bought a bag of Thai tea leaves from an Asian supermarket because of how cheap it was. I steeped it with a couple cloves, had it over ice with evaporated milk, it was really tasty.

What type of black tea is usually used in Thai tea? All I know is it has a food dye added to it.

at least post a photo of the tea and the bag, those descriptions are too vague.

It was factory sealed. I guess it's just not for me. The thing that messes with me is that , to my knowledge, I've brewed it the same every time. I just don't understand how it can be so awful or at least alright.

hm that's weird. If I were you I'd give it another shot from one of the well known sellers.
Genmaicha is fucking great to drink during meals, no other tea can even compete and I'm not exaggerating.
One of the best teas to drink in large amounts as well.

Oh just had an idea. Put some of it (more than usual) into your can, or whatever you use for brewing, go get some room temperature water, fill it up and let it "simmer" for half an hour or even more.
Maybe you'll like it better that way.
Also you could try brewing it (no boiling water though, 80°C at most, 2 mins) and then cooling it down with some ice. It's a great tea for iced tea. I wouldn't use any juice for iced genmaicha myself, but you can try.

The brand is called Number One Brand, the leaves look like this

Proper red/black tea doesn't get the love it deserves. Anyone who's into it really needs to try this one.

I got teas from theteacentre.com.au/ and tealeaves.com.au/ if you're going for local. Free shipping in Australia if you buy over a certain amount too.

Tealeaves currently have a deal for Earl Grey, 500g for $19.95 (expires Friday 23 Sep) which is quite timely as I want to restock.

I want to get into pu erh but I still don't have a gaiwan, no place to store it, and I mainly drink alone.

You can get a gaiwan for about 10-15 dollars from aliexpress, most small gaiwans are sized mostly for drinking alone, I wouldnt care too much about proper storage if you arent buying too expensive stuff, just keep them off funky smells and airtight (no point in aging a daily drinker imo)

Those are no problems at all.
Use a regular teacup, close with saucer and when pouring out the tea, only lift the saucer lightly. At first you'll probably spill a little, but it's not that hard to do cleanly.
Also you don't need to buy an entire cake, just make sure that the store you buy from has cakes in store from which he breaks out smaller portions. That way you can be pretty sure it's not some loose Pu-Erh tea, that is probably just regular red/black tea.
The problem I have with red/black tea is the huge amount of variants and sooo many of them are just utter shit. It's so hard to find something you actually like. I think that's due to the missing amount of subcategories.

if you only want the gaiwan:
Tea set Include 1 Pot 1 Saucer, High quality elegant gaiwan,Beautiful and easy teapot kettle,Blue and white porcelain gaiwan
s.aliexpress.com/qUb2IrMZ
(from AliExpress Android)

Nah m8
Lyons
Drop of milk
Remove teabag

Should look like copper when you drink it, but I'm unionist scum so that might be why.

What's the tea in Hong Kong like? Does it differ from mainland China? I've been searching for quite a bit now and I mostly get results of British tea and "milk tea". Seems quite weak, what should I expect?

you mean as tea cultivated in hong kong or tea drink there?

ripe puer is the predominant drink to accompany a meal and at teahouses, while in china its greens n jasmine.
"milk tea" is a drink i enjoy very much, its to tea what vietnamese coffee is to coffee.
Its tough to buy good tea without getting scammed, best bet are the governement stores or chains like best-teahouse. While no bargains are to be had, you are not getting scammed on the product.

How long do you steep tea? I just boil it in an old fashion kettle.

I'll go try this. Will report back with each result.

Tea drinking
That's a shame, I will drink tea but won't really buy any then. I guess it's the same with gong fu sets or gaiwans.

>governement stores
What
please inform me on that

actually no its not, since you cant get scammed with teaware (except with yixing clay).
I bought 4 simple, but pretty, white ceramic gaiwans and about 8 cups of the same material for about 5$ a the chengdu teamarket. Its probably the same in hongkong if you can be bothered looking for it. Also i can recommend "The Best Teahouse" for shopping, prices are higher than at your hole-in-the-wall teavendor of your trust, but since you have no chance of finding such a teavendor, it is probably a very good address for you. The tea will still be better than almost anything you can get in the west and its not a huge toll on your precious holiday/traveltime, also the products are what they say they are.

wuyutai is run by the state,
tianfu is a tea conglomerate owned by taiwan.
Those 2 are good addresses for people who are not good enough at judging tea yet, so theyll get scammed with a very high probability at any private teashop.
What i forgot to mention, the prime address in hongkong for locals to buy tea is "bonham strand", if you feel up to the task, know specifically what kind of tea you are looking for and dont mind a potential negative experience (owners dont speak english, maybe they are rude/have no time...) give it a shot. Its very central on the island and famous sights as the manmo temple are close, so it doesnt cost a lot to check it out.

is there something like brands in chinese tea? and i don't meant the overpriced stuff sell by western sellers

Not really. You're better off looking at types and regions.

There are things like "brands" but you habe to dive deep into the topic to be able to distinguish. Menghai factory for example is the best known producer of puer, there are tea competitions in taiwan, getting tea from the winning/2nd/3rd places garanties at least decent quality etc. but its rly nothing you can learn on the fly