Holy shit, tea.

[MisterNoisy]

There's another way to do it?


I'm so fucking confused by this thread. Boil Water, Add Bag, Profit?  

There is this way....

http://www.enema-web.com/green_tea_enema.htm

1/2" tubing hooked up to the tea robot?

'It took the plastic surgeons a week just to remove the smile from his face'

[Chimpy]

Furiously just brought a new interpretation to the thread title. 

[Viin]

As long as the water is not superheated, all water is at 100 C if it is boiling. 

Only a sea level. [the more you know]

[Tale]

Have ye no heard of teapots?

[Evildrider]

I just put water in my electric kettle, wait for it to be hot, pour in cup with teabag, and wait a couple minutes.

You all make me feel like I'm doing it wrong.   

[Kitsune]

My mother dumped a grocery bag full of various loose teas on me today, saying that I could keep what I liked as long as I gave back any I didn't like.  Mom likes tea, but she's more for the convenience of tea bags and never fiddled much with loose teas, so she'd buy a tin of a loose tea, use some of it, then stick it on a shelf forever and never go back to it.  My research thus far is proving that the tea people were correct in saying that tea from 1995 is in fact not still good, even if it was sealed up the whole time.  None of it's been horrible, but it's very unremarkable and muted in flavor, leaving only the faintly bitter flavor of dried plant instead of the cinnamon cherry whatever that the tins claim it's supposed to taste like.  Which is a shame, 'cause there's pounds of the stuff.  I'm going to keep testing them in the off chance that at least one of the tins still has a good flavor, but I'm not feeling hugely hopeful.  I'm more hopeful that I can convince my mother to let me dump out the expired tea and keep the tins to put my own tea into.

[Jimbo]

I imagine tea is like coffee or other goods (beer, flour, vinegar, etc...) that once opened you have the exchange of oxygen on the goods to remove some of the flavor, it may be edible, but not taste very good. 

[Lantyssa]

Only a sea level. [the more you know]

Doesn't everyone live at sea level?

It will, however, be consistent in the same location.  (Unless you want to get pedantic about high and low pressure systems and the tiny difference that would make, too. )

[WayAbvPar]

Furiously just brought a new interpretation to the thread title. 

This little tidbit aside, this thread is making me consider loose teas again. They are kind of a pain in the ass, but sound like they may be worth it.

[Engels]

Last night I had decaf, vanilla flavored tea, in the microwave. I thought that I should buy chemically flavored half-and-half, just to troll you bastards, but even I have some standards.

[Furiously]

Furiously just brought a new interpretation to the thread title. 

This little tidbit aside, this thread is making me consider loose teas again. They are kind of a pain in the ass, but sound like they may be worth it.

I'd imagine an emina would be a pain in the ass too.

[Draegan]

Furiously just brought a new interpretation to the thread title. 

This little tidbit aside, this thread is making me consider loose teas again. They are kind of a pain in the ass, but sound like they may be worth it.

Well played sir.

[Simond]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTDcWi1dzoM

[brellium]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTDcWi1dzoM

Wow.

Ever since I cracked my stone tea kettle, I've just been lazy and make it in the Coffee maker.

On the previous responses, I've stopped drinking Twinnings, I could taste the difference with their Earl Grey, it seems they added more bergamot to cover the taste of the tea.  Usually my tea of choice is Alghazaleen both their Earl Grey and their Cardamom Gold.  As I have a Tea Kettle at work I usually drink Sencha and sometime Gyokuro there.

I bought Alghazaleens Earl Grey for a co-workers grand-daughter, she apparently loves the stuff and my co-workers (even those who can't or don't drink tea) love the Cardamom Gold.

[Kitsune]

I'm still cutting a swath through various tea samples.  The unfortunate thing is that it's difficult to have multiple teas back to back; if I toss out tea leaves after a single steep then they're more or less being wasted, so I only make one tea flavor in an evening.  What I might need to do is get some thermos bottles or something and store the batches of tea for later reheating so I can sample multiple teas in one sitting and get a better idea of which I like the most.

[Count Nerfedalot]

F13 just continues to amaze me with the wonderfully odd little discussion gems like this one that keep popping up!

I'm really a strong coffee lover at heart, like, Swedish or even Turkish strong, black and sweet.  I used to love to toss down Redeye's (coffee with a shot of espresso) at the local Borders back in the day. But now I'm down from 8-12 cups a day to 1 or 2 a year due to a whole host of reasons elliptically summarized by admitting that I'm now taking three blood pressure medications a day.  So, now I drink tea. No milk or whitener, thankyouverymuch, hot milk makes me barf.

To date, I'm primarily a bagger, being lazy and all.  (And that is as close as you will ever get to being able to label me a tea-bagger, lol).  I did have some nice teas in Australia many years ago, since the choice there was fine tea brewed on the spot or crap instant coffee usually served in a styrofoam cup.  But here and now since I've been forced to switch to tea I've gone the easy way out and used the bagged variety.  And I've tried just about everything the local grocery carries (and as it's the ONLY local grocery, that didn't take very long). I've discovered a total lack of interest in the various fruit and herb flavored varieties. With the surprising exception of Bigelow Green Tea with Mint which makes an awesome iced-tea.  I remember loving Earl Grey as a child but now it makes me gag. 

So anyway I worked my way through the basic options.  Lipton was meh.  Luzianne was eh.  "Normal" Bigelow was OK.  Kroger brand was dishwater.  Twinnings was a bit harsh.  And then I discovered Tetley's English Breakfast Tea. Whoa.  Smooth but rich, even when steeped a tad too long. This almost tastes like what I remember having in Australia.  And I guess they think you'll feel fancy by making you fish the bag out with a spoon instead of giving you a string to haul it in with.  Whatever.  But it is a pretty nice cup of tea.

So, I'm a tea-heathen lazy American.  What am I missing out?  Is loose tea really worth the extra hassles (and presumably expense)? 

[Pezzle]

Noticed this thread at last.  By my last count I have at least 25 loose leaf teas and some untold varieties of bagged.  Is it worth it?  Yes.  I love tea.  I drink it at home and at work. 

Is loose leaf worth it?  I think so.  I get more mileage out of loose leaf tea and it is easier to brew batches for company and mass consumption.  Luckily, there is a small bulk food outfit in town that has a selection.  If you have anything like that in your area, start there!  You can pick up small amounts for little money and find things you like.  Early investment can be pretty cheap.  You can use a stovetop kettle and a single cup infuser basket.  Later, if you get into it, you can buy yourself a machine and get fancy cups etc.

I have a machine (thinking of getting a different one).  I have a few fancy cups that do not see any use.

[Kitsune]

Still loving the tea robot (have a cup of genmaicha from it at hand right now, in fact), so yeah, I consider loose tea to be absolutely worth it.  But like Pezzle pointed out, fancy stuff is hardly necessary just to try it out and see if you like it.  Just for the love of God don't walk into a Teavana store; they'll try to sell you four hundred bucks of crap and tell you that it's all absolutely vital for making tea.  For the tea itself use a decent online tea place if you don't have any locally-owned tea stores; adagio sells sampler packs with small portions of several different teas to try out.

[lamaros]

I've been drinking roasted dandelion root tea the past couple of days. It's not bad. Generally I drink Kukicha. white tea, or herbal teas, but the dandelion root tea I can have with (soy) milk, so it's a bit of a different tea experience for me. About to try a spiced variety, which should be interesting.

[Gets]

I and the cafes I work for use this.

[palmer_eldritch]

This thread convinced me to buy my own specialist tea machine.



The tea goes in the container at the top. The water goes in the machine and is heated using the hot plate at the bottom - you have a choice of 85, 95 or 100 centigrade. Then it goes up through the handle, and back down through the container with the tea in it, which is also a strainer. This takes place over a period of a few minutes - you can set the machine to make weaker or stronger tea (five settings to choose from), which determines how long the straining takes.

In theory, the fact that the tea is strained rather than stewed improves the flavour. I don't know if that's really true but it does make very nice tea.

[Furiously]

Doesn't restraining it lower the caffeine levels?

[palmer_eldritch]

Doesn't restraining it lower the caffeine levels?

Fair question, I've got no idea. It wouldn't bother me though. I don't really want the caffeine as I want to drink lots of it, although I hadn't realised straining the tea might reduce the caffeine level.

[Furiously]

I know percolator coffee makers have lower caffeine.

[Tale]

This thread convinced me to buy my own specialist tea machine.

As a British-born person, I need to inform you again that nobody makes tea in anything like that ever.

You're not making tea, you're doing some American thing I don't know about.

[MuffinMan]

I got myself a nifty steeping cup.



It doesn't fit together that well, as you can see, but it works well enough.

[Tale]

Here is a 1988 US news story in which my grandmother drinks tea - she's at the table in a blue dress and says "today is, I should think, one of the nicest days we've had". They are drinking tea as it is properly made in the UK. Hot water poured onto leaf tea in a teapot, allowed to steep for a while, then poured into teacups.

[palmer_eldritch]

As a British-born person, I need to inform you again that nobody makes tea in anything like that ever.

You're not making tea, you're doing some American thing I don't know about.

You may be right but to avoid any confusion let me point that that my tea robot lives in my kitchen in sarf London beneath a cupboard full of Jaffa Cakes and Marmite and seems to fit right in. It does make a lovely cup of tea.

[palmer_eldritch]

In fact I'm going to skive off work and head to Harrods to buy some posh tea to put in it, now, literally.

[Kitsune]

That's a pretty interesting tea robot, I'd be very interested to find a taste test somewhere between that system and the steeping style of the other ones.  My gut inclination is that water+leaves gets the same result whether the water is sitting still or being poured over them, but I'm definitely no expert.

[Simond]

What a teapot should look like:


If it doesn't, you're Doing It Wrong.

[Kitsune]

No, I'm doing it awesome.   

[Gets]

Working for a coffee shop chain I often get to see how even the simplest drink machines break down, not to mention costly espresso makers. Washing limestone out is also a regular maintenance task if you're in the Serving Hot Beverages With High Mark-ups business. So if it comes with a list of error codes I don't think I want it making me tea.

Does anyone else drink their tea non-sweetened? I used to drink tea with 2-3 teaspoons of table sugar ever since I was a kid. About a year ago I got more seriously into the diet&exercise lifestyle and started avoiding sodas, fruit juice and everything with table sugar in it. For a while I used honey or glucose, which as a sweetener is as effective as sniffing Post-Its to get high. A tablespoon of honey is as sweet to me as two spoons of white sugar. Since it's summer and a few months ago I had a kidney stone I try and keep myself hydrated. A friend of mine started drinking unsweetened tea because she was worried about her dental health.

[Lantyssa]

I don't drink a lot of tea, but I only do unsweetened.  Preferably a strong green or similar.

[jth]

I used to drink a lot of green tea, but these days only once or twice a week. Usually my daily routine is one or two mugs of English Breakfast (varying brands) in the morning for the bit of caffeine in it, then throughout the day 3-6 mugs of white tea. I really love white tea, but it isn't very strong so the water must be hot enough and it needs to be infused properly, otherwise you'll be drinking slightly tea flavored water.

I'm not really a "tea elitist" and also I'm lazy so I mostly get my tea in bags, however I do drink it all unsweetened and most importantly with no added "flavors".