Tea!
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My current fave company is Positively Tea, LLC. From them I have a wonderful loose mint tea and an equally wonderful loose leaf jasmine tea. OH! And I've had a butterscotch black tea from them prior. All 100% organic and SUPER tasty. ^_^
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Right now the liquorice and peppermint one by teapigs is a fav of mine. Yummo aftertaste too.
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Fresh gunpowder black.
My favorite is 100 Mile Tea. It can keep me awake for days on one cup. The world starts to blur after a few minutes on this stuff.
Lipton makes the single best bagged brewed iced tea on the planet. No shame in that.
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@Apu said in Tea!:
Oh. I forgot to mention. Lipton's green tea is nice and their green tea with jasmine is a particular fave of mine. This does nicely for when I want jasmine green tea but can't afford the dragon pearls which is expensive af due to the leaves being hand rolled.
Admittedly, I've never gotten to try dragon pearls.
Someday
If you want to try it I suggest getting a sample of it from Adagio. The last time I did that I got enough for more than a few cups of it and it was not very expensive.
"Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here." - ― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
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@Apu said in Tea!:
@Apu said in Tea!:
Oh. I forgot to mention. Lipton's green tea is nice and their green tea with jasmine is a particular fave of mine. This does nicely for when I want jasmine green tea but can't afford the dragon pearls which is expensive af due to the leaves being hand rolled.
Admittedly, I've never gotten to try dragon pearls.
Someday
If you want to try it I suggest getting a sample of it from Adagio. The last time I did that I got enough for more than a few cups of it and it was not very expensive.
I may just do that. I usually get a sample of this or that when I do my Irish Breakfast order.
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My favorite tea is coffee.
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Bean tea!
"Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here." - ― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
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My favourite is a personal concoction! I use vanilla bean, and then loose leaf chamomile, lavender, and ginger all together. SO GOOD!
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Too lazy for super hipster tea, so only from shops near me.
Twinings Assam is my usual brew. Assam is just generally lush, Twinings is easy to get hold of.
If we're talking flavoured teas, Whittards vanilla tea is very good, ditto their Russian caravan though thats a smoky tea like lapsang souchong so not for everybody. I could drink vanilla tea all day I think.
Never liked green tea. Tastes like grass.
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Bigelow Cherry Vanilla, back when you could find it.
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Twining's English Breakfast Tea, loose, in the big red tin. Dilmah will do in a pinch.
Unless we're talking iced (cold) tea, in which case Luzianne. Accept no substitutes
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I like my tea best tightly compressed and aged (often after a fungal infection) for anywhere from three years to two decades or so. Both of the teas I'm drinking now are in this photo:
The disc on the left is 1kg of "snow bud tea", which is old-growth trees with the spring buds hand-picked off of them. This is three year old "raw" tea and it looks like this unpacked:
The other is a four year old "raw" tea too, but one that was fungally infected so that it ferments slowly. At four years of age it's begun to pick up the earthy taste that is the appeal of this tea. Were I a patient sort I'd keep this stored until it's at least ten years of age, but I'm not such a sort so I won't.
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While waiting for Apu to share his tips, here are mine:
- DO NOT USE BOILING/JUST-BOILED WATER. This, while absolutely necessary for blacks and oolongs, murders greens dead. You will get a massive dump of tannic acid from the brew that will ruin any attempt to tease out the actual nice flavours. For most commercial grade greens you want 85°C tops, and maybe even as low as 75°C if it's a decent commercial grade. For some of the more delicate greens you would go as low as even 65°C.
- WASH YOUR TEA. Remember that "tannic acid" bit? Yeah, that stuff is nasty and tea is full of it. The oxidized teas (blacks and oolongs) have less of it, but it's there. Greens are abundant in it. Most people who don't like tea are actually reacting to the astringent bitterness of the tannic acid. Even tea drinkers who don't like green tea are reacting, most likely, to the tannic acid. So wash that shit away. The thing is that most of the agents that make tea taste good are oils and are not water-soluble. The stuff that is unpleasantly astringent is, however, water-soluble. A quick rinse of the tea (half-fill your cup, slosh it around for a few seconds, and pour it away) does wonders. You'll need to use more tea if you adopt this technique (like double), but don't worry. You can re-brew even a crappy tea like Red Rose or Lipton's at least once. (Finer oolongs and pu'ers can be re-brewed a half-dozen times or more with an ever-evolving, but not lost, flavour!) Use twice as much tea and just brew it twice. "Washing" your tea like this improves any tea, but it is essential to enjoying any green that has any flavour worth mentioning.
- LET IT COOL. The ideal brewing temperature ranges from about 75-85°C for greens and hovering just below 100°C for blacks, oolongs, and most pu'ers. (The younger "raw" pu'ers should be treated like freaky greens and brewed on the high end of the green range.) The ideal drinking temperature is about 60°C. At that temperature you get the best blend of flavours from the tea (without scalding your tongue) and aromas from the oils in the tea. Drink it too hot and you're going to scald your tongue, swallow too quickly, and generally lose the opportunity to savour the aromas. Drink it too cold and the aromas fade away. The bingo point seems to be in the spread around 60°C.
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Hehe. That's what I was going to say.... minus the tea washing. I don't do that one.
And sorry for not giving mine right off the bat. I tend to hold back on advice and stuff because people (not here but on other forums) have gotten mad at me for giving such without their okay so I tend to hold back on giving it until the person/people in question give the okay.
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I can be a bit obsessive over my tea and the preparation of it. I just honestly don't often like oolongs. There are a few I do, but most just aren't to my taste. Greens (esp. cirtrusy ones, mmm) and whites are my favorite.
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I'm a big coffee man. I roast my own coffee and all that jazz.
However, other than a good single malt scotch (cough) I'm also a big tea man. Wife loves tea as well.
I've recently started ordering from the whistling kettle (http://www.thewhistlingkettle.com/). They have mostly loose leaf tea, and it's fairly top notch.
My favorite teas to date are lessee....
Irish Breakfast
darjeeling 1st blush,
Aged Pu-erh (15+ years preferred). I like both raw and cooked, though cooked helps more with healing.
Lapsang Souchong
Aged Oolong (Prefer Blue Spring)
Earl Gray (I like the derivatives that have like various flower blossoms added)And some flavored White teas go great for ice teas. Have a nice leechee tea and some white chocolate tea (with actual cocoa nibs) that make excellent tea for the summer.
And that's about it for my favorites.
Green teas I'm hit or miss as they tend to be a bit too bitter for me.
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I'm fond of chai tea, black instead of with cream, and even though it's not a popular choice, lemon tea is also yummy to me, esp. if I add a dollop of sweetener.
