Welcome, tea lovers! This community is for discussing tea, from camellia sinensis to tisanes, and tea culture with fellow enthusiasts.
Inherited a set of these amber glass cups from my dude's great-grandma. I like them, they make me feel a little fancy, but I absolutely cannot gauge a steep color in these. I've got water as hardass as a Humphrey Bogart character, and it helps to glance at the color to see if I've got a decent steep, especially for herbal tisanes.
Welp.
Had BTTC's Misty mountain oolong for the first time today.
Nose - dry leaves: floral
Nose - wet leaves: buttered vegetables, hot milk, floral
Liquor: smooth, floral, milky, slight vegetal and honey notes
The flavour was decently strong and there was absolutely no adstringency or bitterness. There were some stems in the tea, but that's to be expected considering it's machine picked. Otherwise the leaves were pristine and almost completely intact. Would make a fantastic daily drinker if you like gaoshancha.
Not had this stuff in many years.
A friend brought it back from Japan and told me it was either sencha or hojicha but I think I got lucky.
My beloved clay kyusu died some time ago, this is my charity shop backup kyusu. Not a looker but makes a fine cup of Japanese tea.
5.5g, 200F, gong fu method
I'd describe it as honey sweet, warm baked, chocolate, and a tanginess for intrigue. This is the heaviest roast I've tried from Taiwan, but with their hot air roasting method, I think it works well. I do enjoy lighter roasts too, but this brings more depth and makes the tea last for more steeps. I think of this as the ultimate dessert tea. For me, it fully replaces the need for actual dessert.
This is my most favored tea from Taiwan. I like to have this tea once every week or two. It is in a class of its own for me. I'd be interested to try other teas that I would consider comparable, to compare quality. So if you know one, please share!
My experience
Having a temperate controlled kettle has greatly improved my tea enjoyment. Not just for more sensitive tea types, such as greens, but for all tea types.
When I started my journey with tea, I primarily drank black tea. I believed that I just didn't enjoy green tea and even many of the black teas that I was trying. It turns out that I was not only over-steeping them, but also negatively affecting the balance of the profile by only using boiling water. I have since learned that some teas need a lower temperature to be in balance. Temperature control has enabled me to experience all tea types at varying temps, tweaking the balance and profile to get that perfect cup. I have found more complex and enjoyable profiles in teas that I thought were simple and harsh.
I know that temperate control is not for everyone, either due to differing preparation methods making it not necessary or maybe you are better than me at getting the temperature right on your own. For me, my kettle is my most important teaware. I'd gladly give up all other teaware to keep it.
My kettle
I have the kettle shown as the image of this post. You can find it by searching "temperate controlled goose-neck kettle" on Amazon. It must be a generic, as it has gone by multiple manufacturer names. I have 2 of these, one at home and one at work. After a few years with them, I am still happy. It is a cheaper kettle, but it still has all of the features that I want. My only complaint is that I wish it held more water, so I didn't have to refill as often.
Share your water preparation method and teaware!
I don’t love flavoured teas so I buy plain tea bags and spruce them up with flavoured simple syrup instead. There are a lot of syrup recipes out there, but a lot of them aren’t great with black tea. I combined recipes, made modifications and these two are my faves. Hope you try and enjoy!
Here's my favorite tea...
I've been exploring the world of tea for about 5 years and have tried just over 200 teas of nearly all tea types. There is one tea that I've consistently gone back to since I have discovered it. It is a sheng puer from Yunnan Sourcing. I have an interesting relationship with this tea. I have never thought of this tea as wildly complex or as an experience. Instead, it has balance with just the right amount of intrigue to work as a daily drinker. I'm always happy to drink this tea.
2020 Wu Liang Mountain (the pic of this post)
Tasting notes: Thick texture; mineral, wood, and sweet body; citrus and herb high notes; a bitter-to-sweet aftertaste transformation.
Today, I don't want to focus on the exact tea I'm drinking. Instead, I'd like to think about the water temperature I'm using.
For black tea, I typically use 200-205F (93-96C). I find that this brings out the strength and body, but still leaves some subtle notes for intrigue.
But today, I wanted to brew this tea at 195F (90.5C). There are so many sweet, floral, and fruity notes that come out at this lower temp that aren't as present at the higher temp. There is still sufficient strength and body, so I'm not missing the higher temp.
This is just a reminder to myself, and to anyone out there, to try out your teas on different water temperatures. You may find a new profile from an old tea that you enjoy even more!
I'd consider myself proficient with using a gaiwan now, but I wasn't for the first few years of my tea journey. I was scared of them.
That's not going to filter the tea properly. That looks uncomfortable to use. I'm gonna burn myself!
At first, I used tea infusers that sit in your cup. These bothered me for a few reasons: some tea types don't expand and steep well in a confined space; they clogged constantly; and they can be annoying to clean.
I then took my first baby step towards gaiwans - with an "easy" gaiwan. It was a nicer experience, but still had some of the same issues: it tended to clog and was annoying to clean. It has a lip that is difficult to clean under. And it actually lets quite a bit of tea bits through.
Similar to this one:
After a few years, I got my first gaiwan for cheap, and I'm so glad I did! It was just easier. You can keep the lid mostly closed and it somehow filters tea bits better than my "easy" gaiwan. It's soooo easy to clean. Now, I do actually use a filter sometimes to catch fine tea dust, but I don't actually need to.
I'm sure gaiwans are synonymous with loose leaf tea for many people, but they aren't common where I am in the US. So for anyone who hasn't tried one, I say give it a try!
-- PS - One cool looking kind of teaware I have yet to try is a shiboridashi. This looks like a better version of my "easy" gaiwan:
This post assumes you are as obsessed about tea as I am. If you are not, you have my permission to just wonder, "What's up with this guy?" :D
I find it handy to have a list of the teas that I've tried and my detailed thoughts on them, as I can't remember everything since I've tried so many teas at this point. Keeping a list has helped me avoid re-sampling the same tea accidentally and to learn what styles and regions of tea I enjoy.
I use airtable.com (shown in the screenshot). I started out using Google Sheets, but I was feeling limited. I wanted to dynamically sort, filter, and search my spreadsheet - as if it were a UI form. I also wanted to add tags to describe my teas, again for quick filtering and such. airtable.com seems to be everything I need.
Sweet, a good mid body strength, and a strong cherry taste and aftertaste.
Black teas from Tong Mu have become my favorite of all black teas. I love to have them hot and flash chilled.
They're my go-to if I want to introduce people to artisan tea. My family and friends drink iced black tea, so this flash chilled is safe enough to get them to try it.
Aroma and taste profile is lightly sour underripe melon, mellowed by a light roast.
I don't drink Chinese oolong very often, and if I do, they are typically more roasted than this one. I think the profile is balanced and ok, but it feels like it is lacking some intrigue. I've been favoring bitey sheng puer lately.
This is my tea setup at work. I pick a tea and resteep it all day long. If I don't use it up fully, I'll take it home and put it in some water in the refrigerator to drink it cold the next day.
I super duper miss working on the tea farms in Japan. It was a golden period in my life, and to this day, if I take a moment, I am transported back to the sounds, smells, and feeling of being surrounded by the tea trees in the hot and humid summer.
