/tea/ thread

How dead am i if i drink this?

Gongfu is fucking autistic. Looked up a video on YouTube and the first result made my anus wince the entire time.

"H-hello friend. W-would you like a cup of tee-e?"
>Brings out two pots, boiler, pad, three cups, a fucking brush, chop sticks, tongs, a minature statue to keep you company because you're so alone
Moshi Moshi motherfuckers

What the hell is wrong with tea bags? They are quick and easy, you know like most people's mothers.

The tea they contain is "dust and fannings", which is code for "literally the shit we swept up off the floor"

Fair enough, then what do you suggest to stuff in a water bottle for flavor? Generally just stuff 3 bags in and let it seep till it's time for lunch; I'm a lazy ass motherfucker that likes fire and forget.

If you're not even going to brew it properly then stick to teabags.

The fuck is a gongfu?

Pre-bagged tea can't even compare to loose leaf. That said, I buy my own empty tea bags from Daiso or one of the other japanese stores where I live, and fill them with my favorite loose leaf teas and put them in an air tight tin to take to work. So if you like the convenience of tea bags, you can order empty bags and add quality loose leaf to them if you desire. They have a decent selection of empty tea bags on Amazon as well. At home I brew the loose leaf traditionally, and use a fine strainer over my cup to keep debris out.

As far as tea goes, I'm an Assam devotee. It's the tea I drink all morning long. Kalami Assam is my all around favorite, it's long leaf with golden tips, and it's nice and strong. Although, this morning I'm drinking "Imperial Blend" which is Assam blended with Darjeeling and Earl Grey, which is very fragrant, still strong, but with some delicate flavor and aroma when brewed. It's pretty boss.
In the afternoons, I alternate betwee pu'erh, matcha, or golden monkey.
After 5 pm, I have to stop drinking tea or I won't be able to sleep at night, since I'm already a chronic insomniac. That's when I break out tisanes, mainly chamomile blends, my favorite being a blend of chamomile, lavender, and lemon balm, but I also like rosehip and hibiscus.

I have that exact same little tin. I keep my son's baby teeth in it.

I actually have that whole set of those particular tea tins, they were my mom's, after she used the tea in them, she kept other tea in them for years until she gave them to me. Those are from the 1970s.

This actually still has the tea in it.

Started with a nice puerh, as usual. Been drinking milky oolong buttertea most of the day at work. Going to make some rooibos with prickly pear before dinner. After dinner I'll probably have some cognac though.

I figured it did by your first post. Tea goes stale, but I doubt it would kill you to brew it, since you'll pour boiling water over it. Unless it smells like mildew or mold, in which case, toss it. But since it's so old, it probably won't taste good. It's 40 year old tea.

People have an autistic need to make it into a ceremony like the japs, when it is actually a fairly recent method and not ceremonial at all. You can do it without all the bells and whistles, only thing you need is a brewing vessel, preferably small, hot water and a cup, all the rest isnt needed, some of it is useful like a small pitcher so you can have a brew cooling whilhe you drink the first one. The logic of it is just to have a high tea-water ratio. This video is pretty good, theres also one on peripheral teaware that's pretty useful
youtu.be/vF_-CMzj0tE

why can't i post about tea god damn it

I thought about this and I just couldn't accept that bagged tea comprises most of the tea market in terms of either dollar volume or poundage. I reasoned that bagged teas couldn't possibly have that much market share due to most bagged tea using dust and fanning quality tea (literally the lowest grade leaves, which would not weigh more than all of the higher grades of leaves combined). Public perception (or at least my perception) was that most tea drinkers use bags, which conflicts with the earlier reasoning. So I tried to find some statistics about it and came up with this info (only applies to the USA though):

>In 2016 the canned/bottled RTD tea segment comprised just under 50 % of the market share and is expected to continue to grow an estimated 30 - 35 % (4 - 6% CAGR) over the next five years. The bagged/loose leaf tea segment (DMM/Grocery) continues to lag, showing little to no growth, comprising an approximate 23 % market share. >Foodservice, refrigerated teas and high end specialty teas continue to grow at 7 - 10 % per annum.
The bagged/loose leaf tea segment ... comprising an approximate 23 % market share.

So both bagged AND loose leaf tea lumped together comprise only 23 % of the market. Apparently most people get their tea from cans and bottles.

I call bullshit on the earlier claim that 87 % of millenials drink tea though. There is literally no way that is true. I know not a single person in my age group that drinks tea, and only a couple of asians that drink thai "tea". If they mean "has ever drank tea even once in their whole lifetime" then sure. Plenty of coffee drinkers in my age group though.

link:
teausa.com/14655/tea-fact-sheet

This shit website won't let me put all of this in a single post god damn it

But the thread isn't about inclusiveness it's about discussing finer tea

gong fu

>Stop using teabags.
No.
>STOP USING TEABAGS.
NO.

Going through my cupboard and drinking up packs where I've just got a pot or two left at the moment. Found a few grams of last years Mt Fuji sencha for today.
Basically waiting, making space and saving up for the new season spring teas to hit the stores.

>Could you be more inclusive?
fuck off subhuman pleb

most of the world shits on the street too

>steeped for 2:30
>green tea
nigga what the hell are you doing, 60 seconds is too much

>when it is actually a fairly recent method and not ceremonial at all
>18th century
faggot

So if I'm not supposed to be drinking tea bags
1. What is the process of making loose tea, because I assume I'm not supposed to be consuming the tea leaves with the tea
2. Where can I get this tea, not online

1. Loose leaf is typically brewed using the Gong Fu method. It basically involves more tea, multiple infusions, and less steep time compared to the Western method. You don't need autistic sets to do it. Basically all you need is a kettle, at minimum two cups, and a way to strain the leaves.

Here's a ghetto version of it without a gaiwan:
youtube.com/watch?v=F8FMHudkfU0

2. Local Asian supermarket. The better stuff are usually available online unless you live in a city with dedicated tea stores.

Can anyone recommend some good plain looking cups for pretty cheap? I'm looking to buy a couple and prefer they be at least around 200ml. I'm gonna gongfu into them.

Gongfu brewing is your answer

>What is the process of making loose tea
1. pre-heat a teapot
2. put tea in the teapot
3. pour water in the teapot
4. wait
5. pour tea out of teapot

>Where can I get this tea, not online
Grocery store
Dry goods store
Asian grocery store
Dedicated tea import store
Hipster garbage store (Teavana, David's Tea(don't do this))

I'm a puer and oolong drinker here, looking to broaden my horizons. Is matcha really that good or is it just a meme? What makes it so special?

They say that whenever you make something yourself it usually tastes better, matcha takes a bit of effort to make, so that might be the case.

On the other hand, the foam is a pleasant texture to drink and if you get decent matcha the whole ordeal is pretty good.

Someone please advise:

What is mate? I've seen little gourd cups of tea, is it a special brewing method?

Where do you recommend to buy teapots? Like in OP's pic or some simple iron/clay/etc utilitarian ones?

>What is mate?
Not tea.

>is it a special brewing method?
Yes. They pile the leaves up in the cup and sip through a filtered straw. Some of the leaves are left dry to soak through over time or something.

>Where do you recommend to buy teapots?
Literally any teapot is fine. You can import a fancy yixing clay pot or you can get some dead grandma's china at the thrift store, they're all functionally equivalent.

If you want an iron pot specifically, make sure it's enameled on the inside. Rust in your tea is no fun.

I see, thank you

Your using gong fu quantity of leaf but western timings. By 3 cup pot, do you mean chinese cups? I.e. about 150 ml total? Cut the time to 30secs, maybe reduce leaf as well.
I brew long jing western style though, with probably about a heaped teaspoon for 250 ml cup and start out brewing for about a minute. Swirl the water to get the leaves moist to start with or they just float on top.

What's the most basic gong fu method for making tea without all the ceremonial aspects? Hot water into gaiwan with tea leaves, let steep 30~45 seconds first cup, successively longer. Speaking of, where's the best place to get a basic gaiwan? Do you need specific leaves for this method? There's a local tea shop that sells a pretty big variety of loose leaf tea, and I'm not sure how to discern the quality.

Kill yourself

Best

>temperature control
ear drum it with a cheap one

if you're gonna get autistic over water temp then i hope you're calculating the actual boiling temp based on the day's humidity and elevation, how much heat is lost as you pour the water from kettle to cup and how long you take before/during pouring, how much heat is lost to the cup for the total duration of your steeping time and determining the temp range based on this heat loss over time along with deciding whether you want to use the recommended steep temp as an average temp for the duration of the steep or as a maximum temp, and the heat loss to the cup also depends on how fast the cup itself loses heat and the cups' current temp which depends on what steep number you're on, how fast the cup is losing heat, and how much time elapses between steeps, oh and don't forget to shock the tea leaves with cold water right after each steep so they don't oversteep from the leftover moisture

you can buy plain white gaiwans of various sizes for under $10 at JK tea, I have one on the way

You can brew anything gongfu style

I probably should, but western style is sometimes helpful. Especially when I'm making tea for family members, as they don't really appreciate gong fu.

The instructions on the package (what-cha's long jing) say to steep the tea for around 2-3 minutes, which I'm starting to think is too long. Assuming that this is for a single imperial cup, I figured I needed to increase the leaves for the whole 3 cup pot.

Imperial cups, which should be around 680-ish ml. I'll cut the leaf down to 2-4g and see what happens.

Thanks for the advice.

Shit guys. I'm spending all my money on weeb stuff.

it's a chinese green tea you fucking pleb, brew it gongfu style

I decided to smell it to see if it retained its smell.
It smelled like ass and my stomach has been hurting since.

you sound like a woman

>$200~
How do they look?

Don't follow the instructions on the package and always brew your tear gongfu. Hard to find a tea that doesn't taste better gongfu.

I find indian teas work best western, well not western, somewhere in between, like 30s-1min 300ml 5g, usually use my glass pot so I go by colour rather than time but it ends up in that range

not him but its really too much of a hassle, user. always heat your water to boiling temp and just transfer it to other pitchers. transferring it into a glass pitcher and waiting around 7-10 seconds drops it to about 90 C. doing the same thing with a clay pitcher drops it to about 80 C. just play with the time and you'll eventually be able to have the intuition for it.

however, if you want a temperature controlled one then get a kamjove t-22a. it does precisely this, boiling into 100 C then cools it down to either 90 or 80 C. like other user said though, there's too much other factors and imho its really just an added expense when you could be using that money on more tea.

I wish
But trying to precisely control the temperature of the water in the kettle is rendered pointless if you're not also going to figure out what your actual steeping temperature is based on all of those other factors. At that point you might as well just bring the water to a blind boil and wait a few seconds or add a bit of cool water.

Sounds like you are following the recommendations right, and checking against the one i use (mei leaf) they say 1g per 100ml as well, brew 120 secs. However i know if i did that, it would be bitter.
I think you've got the right plan, try 2-3 g for 120 secs and see how it works out. Remember the second brew is always best, and you can steep that longer if the first wss too weak.
Ignore these gongfu only fags - most chinese dont gongfu long jing, they are either western or grandad style.
Personally i usually gong fu oolong and puerh, never sencha or long jing. Other greens it'll depend. It's about making it so you are going to enjoy it.

that's pu-erh my lad
people would pay big money to have some tea that's so heavily aged
enjoy

Can I get an intro to pu-erh?
What's the difference between ripe and raw?
What does aging do?
Shopping on white2tea and have no clue what to look for.

Harney & Sons makes decent bagged tea (way better than Twinings and other supermarket stuff). I suppose it's just because they use actual leaf in the bags, rather than "fannings."

Can anyone recommend a good loose leaf English breakfast on Amazon? (Or an Assam/assam blend?) I'm about to do a bulk order on Amazon, so it'd be convenient to re-up black tea there. Although if there's nothing good enough there, I'll just get Canton's Eng breakfast tea, my usual.

I always just drank twinings loose leaf english breakfast. Its cheap, and when I drink it its right after I wake up and right before I go to work so I hardly care about the quality.

Imagine a really old puerh, dark, woody, intense, damp cave-like minerality.
Matcha is the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Young, intense grassy, vegetal flavour shot. High caffeine and theanine because you consume the ground leaves. Good for alertness and concentration.

I actually do most of this. It's why I don't use a temperature controlled kettle and just rely on a separate vessel with a thermometer in it. Really I just tend to aim for a consistent temperature of the water for brewing. If you're always using the same equipment and preheating your pot the loss over time isn't going to matter much. It's only going to go below your maximum and probably not by much in the

Its a weeaboo shit.
>MUH SUPERIOR NIPONESE TEA

nigger

Bump

Matcha can definitely have some minerality to it too. It just tends more towards oceanic or even slightly chalky.

my aunt got me some winter tea for christmas and its nice
heres a quart of it

ITS MAY

yes and the weather is cold

literally wikipedia

raw is traditional pu-erh that utilizes high ambient humidity wherever its stored to undergo a slow microbial fermentation and partial oxidation since most but not all the enzymes in the leaves were destroyed/denatured right after harvest
loose leaf matures/ferments faster than compressed cakes but compressed cakes are more resistant to changes in the environment

ripe is basically raw that undergoes a fast-fermentation method that's basically the same as composting and smells/tastes fishy unless you give it time to air out; if you want to air it out break up the cake into loose leaf form
ripe is supposed to mimic aged raw but not really

aging makes the tea taste less green and more dank

just buy samples of whatever "looks" good or has a cool label (like how you'd buy craft beer based on the label alone)
ignore tea blog recommendations because they over-exaggerate all the different flavors or just make up random bullshit, because they have an incentive to do so in the form of free tea and other kickbacks
aging your own pu-erh is a fucking meme unless you live in a tropical rainforest

Everyone here advising to gong fu every single tea and to be super finicky with temperature clearly hasnt been going at it for very long, dont get me wrong, I gong fu most my teas but if the leaf is good quality it is super hard to fuck up, I've had vendors straight up advise me to just boil their tea in a pot on the stove for 30min and just add water throughout the day, once you drink more tea you will be able to see how far you can push each tea instead of being autistically dogmatic about it

weebs

>literally wikipedia
>just buy samples of whatever "looks" good or has a cool label (like how you'd buy craft beer based on the label alone)
>ignore tea blog recommendations because they over-exaggerate all the different flavors or just make up random bullshit, because they have an incentive to do so in the form of free tea and other kickbacks
>aging your own pu-erh is a fucking meme unless you live in a tropical rainforest

See user? There's merit in asking a forum over just wikipediaing everything.
Also thanks.

fuck you little autistic homo

>MUH SUPERIOR NIPONESE TEA
user, where do you think tea comes from?

Do any herbal teas actually have any health benefits or is it just a case of "this herb is really good for your health, but only if you condense 20 pounds of it into a cup"?

honestly that gallon container of tea is probably better than dust/fanning grade bagged tea, since they probably use higher grade leaves to bulk brew that tea at a consistent temperature

Dear tea hobbyists,

I recently got my hands on a rather precise cooking scale (0.00 g) for free. I already have a fine kettle which let me set its temperature. I have black and green teas, a few pu ers and wu longs of various oxidations (I prefer low oxidation ones).

I am not very knowledgeable in the different brewing methods yet and the pastebin is rather light on the subject.

I am looking for guidelines regarding g of tea per L of water, temperatures and stepping times according to types of tea and brewing methods. Where should I look?

Something like that?

Also reddit.com/r/tea/wiki/faq

>Reddit
Just get over yourself if your not going to go by what's in the paste bin

Yes, but with added concentrations: mass of tea to volume of water ratio. I guess ratio differs according to the brewing method and steep time.

Tea is traditionally measured by volume: whatever amount of tea fits onto a scoop from a teaspoon.

Experiment for yourself the exact mass of tea that you prefer, there's no hard rules.

However,
>pastebin.com/SWNA0rLX
>FAQ
>How to make tea
>1. Get a scale
>Scales are better as the density of teas vary widely. A rolled oolong, for example, is quite a bit more dense than a silver needle tea (not to mention silver needle would be quite hard to measure with a spoon).

Whisked up some matcha, pretty tasty.

I really want to give matcha another try. I had some years ago but I didn't have any tools to properly whisk it so I was never really sure if I got what I was supposed to get

You might just have gotten shit grade matcha, pretty hard to find decent matcha outside of specialised stores and Japan.

Typically avoid all matcha that mentions health benefits.

nah it was from a store that sold generally good quality tea so I trusted them that the matcha wasn't poor quality.

I had to whisk it with one of these though and yeah...

Ah, no wonder.
I use one of these, works really well.
shop.ippodo-tea.co.jp/kyoto/shopf/goods/index.html?ggcd=901009&cid=utensils

I almost exclusively drink black tea.

If I am feeling fancy
>buy some on-line
usually lapsang and Darjeeling/Nepal
>brew it loose in a french press, pour it into a different pot and drink that for a couple of hours, reheating

If I don't give a fuck about cleaning the french press
>buy bagged Akbar tea or Impra from my local fruit market (not some hipster shit, literal market with normal prices)
>drink 5 cups a day.

I got some puer that smells like wet dog and tastes like feet. Fair enough, I'm an idiot. I can't afford the kind of bullshit import prices imposed on my country so I thought I'd be able to get something not utterly terrible locally. Mistake.

But I also got some oolong (god knows which kind) which when brewed, stinks a bit like fish oil or something. Doesn't smell like anything dry. What the fuck is wrong with this thing. Help.

Is yunnan sourcing's matcha any good? What's the best place to buy on a budget?

Just cave in and buy some puer cakes from Yunnan Sourcing

Name what it costs and then double or even triple it. That's how much imports are taxed around here.