I want to start drinking tea. I’ve had some very good hot tea recently by way of a friend of mine, and I’d like to start into myself. I’ve done a great deal of research, and here’s what I’ve come up with.
1. Get an electric kettle. This is important for me, as I live in a dorm. Luckily, my best friend’s mother has one she’s been trying to get rid of for a while, and has offered it to me.
2. You can use tea bags or loose leaf tea. Tea bags are going to be more convenient for me, but I’ve heard that doing the loose leaf tea thing (and pouring through some sort of strainer into your cup) makes superior tea. I will probably use tea bags to brew in a small teapot.
3. Brew for 3-5 minutes, depending on how strong you want it. I suppose this will come down to experimentation.
I’ve had some knowledgeable individuals suggest I start with Earl Grey and perhaps English Breakfast. Any other suggestions? What brands do you suggest?
Any other advice? Any nifty gadgets I might like to have? Any tips or tricks? I’m ignorant of the whole process, but I’ve enjoyed what teas I’ve tried.
I do happen to like Irish Breakfast tea; slightly different from English Breakfast but I can’t explain how.
I think my favorite tea experience was when I would stop in a little place in Ireland to get out of the rain and order a pot of tea. Maybe it was just the ambience that made it taste so good, kind of like eating dinner when you’re camping outdoors.
Another tea you might try is Samovar tea, if you like a little spice. You don’t need the Samovar pot. In fact it wasn’t until just now when I was browsing for a link that I found out about the Samovar pot. I just like the tea. http://www.russiansamovars.com/tea_recipes.htm
Go for real tea, not the blended stuff. Darjeeling, Assam, lapsang souchong, Formosa oolong. . . Most of these will be blended to some extent (real unblended tea can be found, but it’s difficult), but it will give you a sense of the regional variations.
I’m mostly a coffee drinker, but there are a couple of teas I really like.
Pu Erh is a Chinese tea with a very earthy taste.
Lapsang Souchong is smoky and very different
There’s a Japanese tea whose name escapes me at the moment which is made from some sort of twig-- very light and refreshing.
From an episode of Good Eats (on the Food Network), I learned that
there are different grades of leaves. You want as little of the tea leaf
“dust” or “fannings” mixed in as possible, because this makes the tea
bitter. Comercial teabags tend to have a lot of this undesireable
material mixed in with the better leafy material. So, the show suggests
not letting the water come to a boil, by microwaving it until it is over
180degrees (F), but NO MORE than 190! This keeps the fannings
from expelling their nastines, aparantly. The info is for making a large
batch for iced tea, but I think it would scale OK, once you figure out
how much to microwave one serving of water.
I buy most of my tea from them. Their also very informative and have very fast service. I use the disposable pot-sized tea bags (Agatha’s) to brew tea in my big mug at work. They work great.
Favorite teas:
Lapsang Souchang Imperial (I drink this one almost daily - it’s low in caffein.)
Blimey, what are you lot on about! Take one PG Tips Pyramid tea bag and put in mug. Add boiling water to within one inch from top of mug. Mash for two minutes then squidge around with spoon to extract as much flavour as possible. Fish out tea bag. Add milk. Take three digestive biscuits, preferably chocolate. Dunk in tea and eat. Drink tea. Paradise. And give over about all that fancy, perfumed tackle. Earl Grey my arse!
That’s Japanese Green Tea with rice! The green tea is bitter, but the rice makes it mellow. You HAVE to use a teapot to make this.
And the TeaDirect Fairtrade Tea is nicer than PG Tips. I know - I drink a lot of different kinds of tea at my customers’ sites, and TeaDirect is what I have at home.
Other wonderful speciality teas are:
Formosa Oolong Jasmine
Broken Orange Pekoe
Rose Pouchong
Lapsang Souchong
Poetry!
And “The Tea House” in Neal’s Yard used to do a delightful Chocolate Tea. Very strange, but nice.
English Breakfast Tea and Irish Breakfast Tea are two distinct teas. One is Assam, the other is Darjeeling. I can never remember which is which. I mean, which is Irish and which is English. I know I like the Irish breakfast tea better, because it is stronger. I thnk the Irish is Assam, but I could be wrong.
And our American Friends may not have heard of it, but the Tea company “TyPhoo” used to claim “Typhoo put the ‘T’ in Britain”.
There arose a complimentary question:
“If TyPhoo put the ‘T’ in Britain, who put the ‘c*nt’ in Scunthorpe?”
Apart from the abomination which is decaffeinated tea (I mean, what IS the bloody point!!), the biggest joke of all is those fruit-flavoured “tea”-bags, or chamomile-dust, or whatever vile powder it is that’s in 'em. For a start you need at least three bags to get any flavour (if that’s the right word - I doubt it) out of 'em, and, even more fatally, they deliver no caffeine. I would suggest cold tap-water as a more pleasant alternative to any of these daft things.
