Thread: Tea anyone ??!!

Eastern day for us here and I ate like a wolf, according to the tradition.
There is nothing better to drink after a heavy meal than a good Ripe Pu Erh tea.

Ripe Pu Erh from Menghai, Yunnan, China.



A calming feeling of earth and water.

I will get some my next order

Be prepared if you've never had it Dave. It's rather an acquired taste. More accurately put "dirt and water." It takes a little getting used to.

Yea, kind of like liver and onions!

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

I should add to that that it depends on what your aim is; to enjoy tea or to indulge in snobbery. I have had people chide me for still drinking grocer line teas. " I'm sorry but I just can't drink that crap." My answer to that is that I don't drink crap either. Walmart store brand and the like are in fact crap and if that is all a diner or other restaurant has I will pass and have coffee instead. But, I also can just drink a cup of tea without keeping myself from enjoying it because my ego prevents me from it. To those people I would encourage self examination.

I just didn't know that people got so passionate about a cup of tea! But hey, if that's what floats your boat, Good for You!

Originally Posted by Johntoad57

I just didn't know that people got so passionate about a cup of tea! But hey, if that's what floats your boat, Good for You!

I'm sure plenty of people don't get our interest in razors.

I like the Apple Cinnamon flavored tea. I'm sure some would say that is not real tea, but but I don't need to add milk/sugar/honey/lemon to enjoy the taste so that is what I get!

Originally Posted by Johntoad57

I just didn't know that people got so passionate about a cup of tea! But hey, if that's what floats your boat, Good for You!

If you get to know real tea, it is very likely that you will also be passionate about it I believe.

One of my favorite Oolongs is Mi Lan Xiang Dan Song and I used to buy it from a small tea shop in London which has really high-quality teas. Here is the webpage of that tea. The price is 75€ for 150gr and once I decided that it is overpriced and I had enough with these prices and that I was smart enough to buy directly from China the same quality in much more affordable prices. So, I found a seller in China who sold Premium Mi Lan Xiang in less than half the price and I ordered 500gr.
After a month the tea arrived and I tasted it. It was the worse Mi Lan Xiang Dan Song of my life. Quite undrinkable. Good for the Chinese seller, he had fooled another tea-ignorant westerner. Four years passed, and I still haven’t finish these 500gr of tea.

On the left you can see the tea I bought from China directly, and on the right the same variety, Mi Lan Xiang bought from my trusted tea shop in London in double the price. Look how many stalks there are in the left one. There is none in the right one. There shouldn’t be any stalks without leaves in that tea. But since it is a low-quality tea and it will be sold at a low price in some ignorant buyer from the west lets put stalks inside to increase weigh, they thought.



The second point that should have warned me is that it was certified to be Organic. If a tea is certified organic tea, then it is guaranteed to be a low-quality tea. High quality tea is never certified to be organic because the farmer knows that he can achieve a high price in the market and he will sell for sure his tea, so there is no need for him to pay thousands of dollars to certify his already organic tea that it is actually organic. Only low altitude, low quality teas that cannot be sold in China due to their inferior quality are certified to be organic in order to sell it to an ignorant and neurotic westerner who thinks everything certified is good an has actual no capability of judging the tea by tasting.

Originally Posted by STF

I reckon that Supermarket own brand teas are made from what's swept up from under the machines while their making Typhoo or PG Tips, or Tetleys.

Mind you, there's a premium tea in Canada called Red Rose, it's premium but having tried it I think I'll leave it for the Canadians. Tea bags are strange, made of some kind of plant fiber.

Yes. Those are called "fannings," and that is exactly what they do.

Originally Posted by Slur

If you get to know real tea, it is very likely that you will also be passionate about it I believe.

One of my favorite Oolongs is Mi Lan Xiang Dan Song and I used to buy it from a small tea shop in London which has really high-quality teas. Here is the webpage of that tea. The price is 75€ for 150gr and once I decided that it is overpriced and I had enough with these prices and that I was smart enough to buy directly from China the same quality in much more affordable prices. So, I found a seller in China who sold Premium Mi Lan Xiang in less than half the price and I ordered 500gr.
After a month the tea arrived and I tasted it. It was the worse Mi Lan Xiang Dan Song of my life. Quite undrinkable. Good for the Chinese seller, he had fooled another tea-ignorant westerner. Four years passed, and I still haven’t finish these 500gr of tea.

On the left you can see the tea I bought from China directly, and on the right the same variety, Mi Lan Xiang bought from my trusted tea shop in London in double the price. Look how many stalks there are in the left one. There is none in the right one. There shouldn’t be any stalks without leaves in that tea. But since it is a low-quality tea and it will be sold at a low price in some ignorant buyer from the west lets put stalks inside to increase weigh, they thought.


The second point that should have warned me is that it was certified to be Organic. If a tea is certified organic tea, then it is guaranteed to be a low-quality tea. High quality tea is never certified to be organic because the farmer knows that he can achieve a high price in the market and he will sell for sure his tea, so there is no need for him to pay thousands of dollars to certify his already organic tea that it is actually organic. Only low altitude, low quality teas that cannot be sold in China due to their inferior quality are certified to be organic in order to sell it to an ignorant and neurotic westerner who thinks everything certified is good an has actual no capability of judging the tea by tasting.

Yes. You might be surprised if you had someone make you real, fine tea you might be surprised just how much you like it.

I used.to ask my kids when we saw something in the store that said organic, "What does organic mean kids?" And they would answer, "very expensive!"

Originally Posted by STF

Mind you, there's a premium tea in Canada called Red Rose, it's premium but having tried it I think I'll leave it for the Canadians. Tea bags are strange, made of some kind of plant fiber.

Yes, please do leave it for us. The only Red Rose tea I will drink is their Black Orange Pekoe. Actually any black Orange Pekoe will do. That is about as fussy as I get concerning teas. Generally, so long as it is dark enough that I can't see the bottom of the cup and has a couple of sugar in it I am good to go. Drinking tea for me is a rarity though. A good decaf coffee, there aren't many, black is my go to now.

Bob

Originally Posted by BobH

Yes, please do leave it for us. The only Red Rose tea I will drink is their Black Orange Pekoe. Actually any black Orange Pekoe will do. That is about as fussy as I get concerning teas. Generally, so long as it is dark enough that I can't see the bottom of the cup and has a couple of sugar in it I am good to go. Drinking tea for me is a rarity though. A good decaf coffee, there aren't many, black is my go to now.

Bob

Wasn't trying to knock Red Rose Bob, I have one cup of coffee a day, although to be fair my cup is the size of a bucket.

Maybe it's because I'm English but except for that one coffee, I'm a tea drinker, especially for breakfast.

I can't imagine coffee with my cornflakes. Nice cuppa with milk and two sugars, well sweet and low.