EPTFor example:100g dragon well
Tea enthusiasts - Page 23
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politik
409 Posts
For example:100g dragon well | ||
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peacenl
550 Posts
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number01
203 Posts
 I might even become a tea enthusiast after reading this post. | ||
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duckii
Germany1017 Posts
I would like to buy a japanese teapot (tokoname kyusu style). Does anyone have experience with these and knows what I have to look out for in terms of quality? | ||
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EliteSK
Korea (South)251 Posts
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Xalorian
Canada433 Posts
You guys HAVE to look at this tea house. Free shipping all over the Ca/Us if you order for more than 50$ I think. Fantastic teas, best that you will ever taste probably. They have a team of expert tasters and they go directly to the gardens each years to taste and chose for their shop. The website is really beautiful too. (A bit slow, but beautiful) On December 26 2012 04:21 duckii wrote: great thread! I would like to buy a japanese teapot (tokoname kyusu style). Does anyone have experience with these and knows what I have to look out for in terms of quality? Yes, actually, I know quite a bit about them. You really want to look for a kyusu that is not too big, because you want to do multiples brews of the same leaves with little water and a lot of leaves. And I mean between 3 to 6 brews of 70-100ml of water with 1-2 teaspoons of leaves. http://www.thes-du-japon.com/index.php?main_page=index&language=en you can look at this. It's a fantastic shop/blog. It's pretty much where I get all my kyusu these days. I personnally started with a Tokoname-yaki kyûsu teapot by Takasuke, 130 ml / 4.3 oz. Really like it. Great to introduce yourself to the senchado. If you want something cheaper (those are pricey) just look for a kyusu that is not too big and really, anything can do the job if you are only starting. A good teapot is important but a teapot is only as good as the tea that you are brewing, really. | ||
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DDie
Brazil2369 Posts
Any tips for a complete noob to get started on tea? Something that doesn't tastes mega bitter/vile. | ||
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WindWolf
Sweden11767 Posts
On December 26 2012 05:27 DDie wrote: I tried to drink tea (heard green tea was healthy and whatnot) but i really don't like the taste of it. Any tips for a complete noob to get started on tea? Something that doesn't tastes mega bitter/vile. Flavored tea can be a good introduction to get started with tea. I started by drinking a fruit-flavored Rooibos tea, but for other types of teas, I can recommend Persian Earl Gray. Not to much bitter tea taste if you ask me. | ||
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Xalorian
Canada433 Posts
On December 26 2012 05:33 WindWolf wrote: Flavored tea can be a good introduction to get started with tea. I started by drinking a fruit-flavored Rooibos tea, but for other types of teas, I can recommend Persian Earl Gray. Not to much bitter tea taste if you ask me. I never liked flavored tea, even when I was a super noob. It smells really good but never delivered tastewise for me (it's only personnal really.) Rooibos is not a tea, either. It's an african herb/spice that can be brewed. It's really good tho and not bitter at all. I really like to dring a good plain rooibos during a hot summer day. It's quite refreshing for an hot beverage and is actually fantastic iced, too. If you don't like tea because you it tastes too bitter (should never taste vile... like, never) it's probably because you are brewing it too long. But, really, it's pretty much impossible to get a tea bag that doesn't taste bitter/vile, simply tea doesn't stay good forever. A green tea become bitter or simply tasteless after a year and that's for a tea that was kept in a quality environnement. Black tea/Wulong can last longer tho. If you really want to try a GOOD tea, that doesn't taste bitter. Try to get your hand on a quality green tea in leaves, on the net, at a tea house or at an asian grocery store and buy yourself a really simple brewer or even empty tea bag that you can fill with leaves (BUT take the biggest one that you can get, leaves need spaces to expand to taste good.) Fill the brewer/bag with a teaspoon full of leaves for each cup of water. Don't use boiling water for green tea, that will burn and spoil the leaves, turning the tea bitter. Try to aim for a simmering water, around 80 celcius. But really... just don't use boiling water for green. For black tea, you can go for boiling water. Brew the leaves that way for 3 minutes and taste it. If it's tasteless or just not tasty enough, brew it for 30sec or another min and do that until you get a result that you like for those leaves. You should get really good results that way with pretty much any tea. The only teas that should taste bitter are the black/black wulong/pu erh and japanese sencha, really. And that's not an overpowering bitterness either. Way less bitter than a cofee, for example. If it's bitter to a point where it just taste bitter and nothing else, something went wrong during the preparation or the tea is just shitty. | ||
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tili
United States1332 Posts
I especially like it brewed at a very low temp ~135-145 F I tear up the ladder as I drink it! | ||
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Golbat
United States499 Posts
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drew-chan
Malaysia1517 Posts
In malaysia many chinese drink tea with every meal, and a cuppa in between meals is common. Common teas with meals are jasmine or xiang pian, pu-erh often mixed with chrysanthemum flowers for extra flavor, long jing, and tie guan yin. And i tell ya nothing beats a nice cup of tea on a cold rainy evening. | ||
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tili
United States1332 Posts
On December 26 2012 12:05 drew-chan wrote: Tie guan yin has to be the best tea for everyday drinking IMHO. The iron goddess of mercy. Affordable, easy to brew, and hard to make a mistake with (even questionable tea leafs produce a decent drink. Has a nice iron-ish metallic flavor to it which tastes great when hot. Most affordable O_O; How much are you buying this for/where? I saw it at my tea shop, and I don't remember the exact price, but it was out of my budget. | ||
Carnivorous Sheep
Baa?21242 Posts
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politik
409 Posts
On December 26 2012 13:04 tili wrote: Most affordable O_O; How much are you buying this for/where? I saw it at my tea shop, and I don't remember the exact price, but it was out of my budget. http://www.aliexpress.com/item/250g-Tie-Guan-Yin-tea-Fragrance-Oolong-Wu-Long-8-8oz-CTT01/479747982.html | ||
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scaban84
United States1080 Posts
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RuiBarbO
United States1340 Posts
On December 27 2012 05:59 scaban84 wrote: Can I get an expert opinion on Teavana tea? I have been drinking their Gyokuro Green and Jasmine for about a year now. It is expensive but has a great flavor and visually it impressive. I can rebrew it many times without losing the essence. However I'm wondering if there are better brands out there. I've almost exhausted my supply. A little earlier in the thread people were talking about Teavana. Seems the consensus was that you can certainly do better. | ||
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Thereisnosaurus
Australia1822 Posts
All Puerh's I've tasted have a warm, earthy tone compared to the sharp, grassy flavour of japanese greens or rich, toasted flavour of normal black tea, though depending on the origin and age they can have notes of both. Puerh is a fantastic social tea since the tea-bricks cause the tea to express itself slowly over several pots. The first pot of water is traditionally discarded, simply being used to wet and separate the leaves, after that you can get anything up to six or so pots out of a single set of leaves, with the tea being richest around the second or third pot. This means you can share a pot around a table for quite a long time. It's probably the reason tea drinking ended up as a social thing in the first place, it's pretty hard to drink through the full worth of a bit of Puerh brick by yourself XD. It's important if you're going to try Puerh to go balls deep and invest in the good stuff, since as mentioned by the OP commercial Puerh is often kind of meh. Like wine, good Puerh is generally produced by small factories and hand-aged. Such Puerh is generally sold in a circular puck of around 300-400 grams that will make a truly ridiculous amount of tea since for single consumption you need about a third the weight of tea than is in a commercial teabag. You can also get samplers (small pucks) from some places that weigh about 20 grams and make about four pots (about 80 chinese style cups). You may need a letter opener or oyster shucker to dig tea out of the cake. A full sized premium puerh cake will set you back anywhere between $40-300. (I've had puerh that costs $40 a pot before, from a cake that was worth upwards of a thousand dollars) You can also get lower grade teas in brick or loose leaf form, but custom dictates that these are mostly composed of stem and second-grade leaf, while the best leaves go into the teacakes. Finally you can get Chagao, which is tea that has been brewed, then reduced into a concentrated tablet of solid essence. It is rebrewed by placing in a tea strainer over a pot and slowly pouring boiling water over it. Again this kind of puerh is comprised of offcuts and lower grade leaf, but it has its own charms. Make sure when you prepare a pot to be careful how you do it. Don't let the puerh brew for long- fill the pot with water, swill it around for a few seconds (very quick at first and then lengthening by the 4th-6th pot) and then pour the tea into a decanter, leaving the leaves in the pot- make sure you drain all the water, don't leave a little lake at the bottom. Repeat until the tea becomes watery. The best flavour comes from the second or third brew as mentioned, since the leaves have by then fully rehydrated and any impurities have been washed off in the first brew. For quick reference: -Maocha is loose leaf green puerh, the cheapest and most astringent -Aged, pressed green puerh is the highest quality puerh since it responds best to aging and can be aged for well over a decade. -'Ripened' puerh refers to puerh that has been artificially aged quicker through flash oxidation. It still ages well, but is heavier than green puerh and cannot be aged as long without beginning to deteriorate. -Tuocha is a form of highly compressed Puerh in a small bowl shape. You kind of need a jackhammer to get any tea off the cake, so probably not great for noobs. I'm not sure whether the compression style has any unique flavours that go with it. -Don't make the mistake of getting a good quality young raw cake to try, since the qualities that make the best premium aged teas make those same teas often very bitter and astringent when young. - Make sure you store the tea you buy well, away from things that might alter the flavour over time like spices or chemicals. A single cake of good quality puerh can last you several years if you drink it only now and then for social or special occasions. For americans this is a good place to start if you're interested: http://www.puerhshop.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu-erh_tea | ||
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tili
United States1332 Posts
On December 27 2012 13:09 Thereisnosaurus wrote: Just want to put in a holler for Puerh for those semi-pro tea drinkers who are looking to go from specialist mainstream suppliers like teavana or T2 to something more refined. Puerh is the red wine of teas in that it is often aged creating a cultural tradition similar to wine or scotch aging. There are several types of the tea, some Puerh is flash-oxidised in the same way as black tea before being aged, but the more sought after Puerh is compressed into bricks of green tea and slowly aged until after 6-10 years it has oxidised to a black tea slowly (though it's still technically a green tea). There are thus a whole variety of kinds from young greenish Puerh to ancient rich dark puerh like is showcased in the OP, meaning you can really go wild finding your niche. All Puerh's I've tasted have a warm, earthy tone compared to the sharp, grassy flavour of japanese greens or rich, toasted flavour of normal black tea, though depending on the origin and age they can have notes of both. Puerh is a fantastic social tea since the tea-bricks cause the tea to express itself slowly over several pots. The first pot of water is traditionally discarded, simply being used to wet and separate the leaves, after that you can get anything up to six or so pots out of a single set of leaves, with the tea being richest around the second or third pot. This means you can share a pot around a table for quite a long time. It's probably the reason tea drinking ended up as a social thing in the first place, it's pretty hard to drink through the full worth of a bit of Puerh brick by yourself XD. It's important if you're going to try Puerh to go balls deep and invest in the good stuff, since as mentioned by the OP commercial Puerh is often kind of meh. Like wine, good Puerh is generally produced by small factories and hand-aged. Such Puerh is generally sold in a circular puck of around 300-400 grams that will make a truly ridiculous amount of tea since for single consumption you need about a third the weight of tea than is in a commercial teabag. You can also get samplers (small pucks) from some places that weigh about 20 grams and make about four pots (about 80 chinese style cups). You may need a letter opener or oyster shucker to dig tea out of the cake. A full sized premium puerh cake will set you back anywhere between $40-300. (I've had puerh that costs $40 a pot before, from a cake that was worth upwards of a thousand dollars) You can also get lower grade teas in brick or loose leaf form, but custom dictates that these are mostly composed of stem and second-grade leaf, while the best leaves go into the teacakes. Finally you can get Chagao, which is tea that has been brewed, then reduced into a concentrated tablet of solid essence. It is rebrewed by placing in a tea strainer over a pot and slowly pouring boiling water over it. Again this kind of puerh is comprised of offcuts and lower grade leaf, but it has its own charms. Make sure when you prepare a pot to be careful how you do it. Don't let the puerh brew for long- fill the pot with water, swill it around for a few seconds (very quick at first and then lengthening by the 4th-6th pot) and then pour the tea into a decanter, leaving the leaves in the pot- make sure you drain all the water, don't leave a little lake at the bottom. Repeat until the tea becomes watery. The best flavour comes from the second or third brew as mentioned, since the leaves have by then fully rehydrated and any impurities have been washed off in the first brew. For quick reference: -Maocha is loose leaf green puerh, the cheapest and most astringent -Aged, pressed green puerh is the highest quality puerh since it responds best to aging and can be aged for well over a decade. -'Ripened' puerh refers to puerh that has been artificially aged quicker through flash oxidation. It still ages well, but is heavier than green puerh and cannot be aged as long without beginning to deteriorate. -Tuocha is a form of highly compressed Puerh in a small bowl shape. You kind of need a jackhammer to get any tea off the cake, so probably not great for noobs. I'm not sure whether the compression style has any unique flavours that go with it. -Don't make the mistake of getting a good quality young raw cake to try, since the qualities that make the best premium aged teas make those same teas often very bitter and astringent when young. - Make sure you store the tea you buy well, away from things that might alter the flavour over time like spices or chemicals. A single cake of good quality puerh can last you several years if you drink it only now and then for social or special occasions. For americans this is a good place to start if you're interested: http://www.puerhshop.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu-erh_tea This is both intriguing and intimidating. I look forward to trying some out | ||
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RuiBarbO
United States1340 Posts
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