HEY ITS ONLY TEA!!! We’re not talking about uilleann pipe reeds
Why do we need to go to Dublin???
We have them here at regular old grocery stores . . . PG Tips, Typhoo, Barry’s, and Lyons.
You have better grocery stores than we do, then.
The best tea company in the Western Hemisphere: www.harney.com
They have instructions for tea preparation. Do use the electric kettle and don’t microwave! The water needs to be bubbling. If you have a good quality tea, it won’t be bitter unless you let the leaves sit in the water for a long time.
This does better than a tea ball: http://www.harney.com/permanentfilters.html
Pop the leaves in it, put it in the cup, pour the water over, let it steep, then take the strainer out. Very simple.
I like iced tea with lots of sugar and fruit juices added in.
That’s the stuff! Genmai cha teabags 
I always have a jug in the fridge.
I live in Shizuoka, which is one of Japan’s top tea-producing areas.
This photo is of a place just down the road from where I live.
I never could stand English tea, though.
Mukade
I don’t think that making a cup of tea should be that complicated, especially in this modern world of microwaves. Please don’t tell me that boiling water from a microwave is somehow different from boiling water in an electric teapot. I also like Earl Grey tea. Do you know what herb gives Earl Grey its distinctive taste? I grow it right outside my front door. It is a pretty plant with nice blooms.
I am a minimalist when it comes to making tea. I like instant coffee, and I also think that instant tea is a lot easier than dipping one of those tea bags up and down in boiling water. However, with Earl Grey I do make an exception. I put the tea bag in a cup of water in the microwave and zap it for two minutes.
After reading this discussion, I decided have some Bigelow’s Vanilla Hazelnut Tea.
It’s a gift, ya know? 
If there are any, find a middle Eastern market and buy some tea from Persia or India. It’s usually a lot cheaper in bulk. Only problem is you sometimes get a lot of powder on the bottom.
I find tea in boxes, like Twinings and such to be very expensive to drink on a regular basis. If you insist on buying box stuff, there is a blend called “Lady Grey” (made by Twinings) that is very tasty, not quite as strong with the flowery stuff (is it bergamot?) as regular Earl Grey.
The Weekender uses a pint ale glass and a colander taken from a cheap Chinese tea combo cup-colander set. Set the collander in the pint glass with about a tablespoon of the bulk stuff, pour the boilin’ water. Wait a few and yer set. Put in yer cream or half-n-half and sugar (or Splenda) and you’ve got a manly tumbler that’ll keep you buzzin for hours.
I also like a blend called Russian Caravan, which varies from company to company. It’s pretty similar to the Persian stuff, I think.
I like making my own spice teas. I’d share my chai recipe but I think it’s still with my mum across town.
I tried an interesting recipe using almonds and spice with gunpowder green awhile back. It amused me, but the husband made a funny face when I gave him a cup.
One bit of advice: please don’t boil green tea. It annoys me so much when people in coffee shops do that. It ruins it, really.
Twinnings loose teas are pretty decent for the price, and for greens, I suggest looking around a local Asian market. Honestly, right now I’ve been drinking mostly bancha, though. Black tea wise I like assam, or Stash brand earl grey.
Check this out:
http://chineseteas101.com/
Funny English, yet good advice (for Chinese tea).
And, yes, I have many of the odd implements on the site.
A rightly brewed, lightly fermented, green, oolong tea will do amazing things to your head (nose, tongue, throat, brain). Honestly, it’s like being a parent - you can’t imagine what it’s like until you’ve tried it. You’ll wonder why it’s not illegal.
Don’t get me wrong. I like many of the Western tea styles, but quality Chinese tea is freakin’ amazing.
Genmai cha in Teabags???
But you don’t get to eat the little bits of rice…!
We all know who you have to thank for that.
This reminds me of a story I once read. In the story England and France are at each others throats and England decides to conduct covert operations to destroy all the grapes and wine in France. France nearly buckles under the strain but, recognizing the culprit, engineers the destruction of all England’s tea. It’s a humorous tale but I can’t recall the name or author. Robert Sheckley maybe?
I recently got this:
at that bastion of all evil, Wal Mart. It’s the Sunbeam Tea Drop teamaker. It doesn’t make the BEST tea, but it’s pretty good, and very easy. I love that it has a warming plate, because there’s nothing worse than when your tea goes cold. You can use it for bags or loose (I haven’t tried it with loose tea yet because I keep forgetting to buy some). It has different strength settings, but I honestly don’t know how well they work because I keep mine set at “strong”.
Decaffinated tea is a necessary evil for me, because while I love to drink tea in the evenings, I also find sleep is very refreshing. I drink caffiene in the AM, but have to stick with decaf after about 2 pm or so.
In Canada at one time the champion of teas was Salada Orange Pekoe, maritime blend, when brewed properly this tea would stand the Bluenose on it’s end!
I can remember in the 1950’s my mom here in Canada shipping boxes of that tea to relatives in England, and the United States, they couldn’t get enough of it. And when our American cousins came north to visit, the tea pots, yes tea pots, were going twelve hours a day!
I don’t drink a lot of tea but on slow Sundays I like to brew a small pot and sit back and read the weekend newspapers.
MarkB
Agreed. The microwave trick is for tea bags only. If you get
some good loose tea, definately boil the water in a kettle!
I like to buy tea from this company:
http://www.strandtea.com/
They’re fun to talk to on the phone too because they’ll talk to you about where the tea comes from, and the different tea growing estates around the world with whom they do business. I wouldn’t have thought of tea as a hobbie, but I guess it could be
When I was in Senegal they used to make tea by taking a small tea pot and packing it to the brim with loose leaves then adding a few shot glasses worth of sugar which they heated over a charcoal fire with great ceremony. When fully brewed, cooled a bit then rebrewed to its true perfection it would come out as an inky brown, sticky sweet hypercaffinated liquid. It was actually very tasty but I could only handle one half filled shot glass worth a day.
Now you can get a mug selector for at work/etc.
when its somebody elses turn to make it, they can just lift your mug and see if you want coffee/tea/milk/sugar etc..
or even a USB cup warmer 
..
But i absolutely am going to get one of these battery operated self stirring mugs..
