LinuxBBQ

I like to think of myself as a bit of a tea fan.

But being a lazy bastard i rarely drink loose tea using the tea all and my nice tea set.
Every so often i will try a new flavour of Twinnings tea when at the supermarket.

Im a regular drinker of Earl Grey, Lapsang Suchong, Chai, Darjeeling, Assam, Green Tea and other teas i have are Ceylon and Lady Grey.

There was a tea test on German TV where an institute for food safety tested tea bags (Darjeeling, Assam, Earl Grey) versus loose tea, and guess what: the tea bags were "better" in all points: caffeine concentration is higher, there is a higher concentration of flavanols and polyphenols, and more of the minerals are released. This all requires high quality tea bags, of course (not those that only contain dust and other fillers). So, no need to apologize if you think you are a "lazy bastard".

@john: the water everywhere *is* the Chinese method (called gong fu cha) - all tea ware should be brought up to temperature, everything, even the funnel ；）

Oh nice.

You know me, I am coffee.

But I like to drink teas, especially while smoking on my pipe. Most often it is black (red) Turkish çay, made the traditional way just like my coffee, what a coincidence. :)
Though you have to cook it about 10 to 15 minutes after the water already was boiling, it is even more complicated when you use the Çaydanlık. The whole flat smells of tea.

I put a Wiki link for the interested:

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

Exotic teas:
Something made from the droppings of a caterpillar that eats tea leaves.
(There's also that "kopi klewek(?) from the droppings of a civet cat(?) that eats coffee berries.)
冬虫夏草 Totally weird thing that's an insect in winter and a plant in summer... ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps ) but of course this is getting into medicine, not tea.
Likewise, ginseng tea, mostly from Korea. I've actually drunk this and it's quite nice, though I can't say anything about its effects.

Ivan, you just took me back 25 years, as a kid I went on a Family holiday in Side on the med.
every shop we went into we had "elma çayı" I thought it was great that, at age 11, I got a cup of tea too...

John, that is way too weird to make tea out of.
more Parasitic fungus tea, vicar? sounds like 'The Invasion of the Body Snatchers'

EDIT: I just watched an episode of 'Sherlock' (The Blind Banker) with a chinese tea ceremony - that explains a bit why the water gets splashed all over the pots.

btw amazing thing about that parasitic fungus - it can change the behaviour of its host insect. eg an infected ant is made to climb up a plant and attach itself at the top to give the fungus a good spot to release spores after the ant dies! Is that ultra-creepy or what?

I'm no tea explorer, but I drink loads of it (and never coffee). Yorkshire tea (teabags), milk and sugar (lots of both). Lovely with a chocolate biscuit (or five). Occasionally Earl Grey, same as above with regards to milk and sugar.

Ah, another European, huh? :D

machinebacon wrote:Ah, another European, huh? :D

How ever did you guess that? (It's because I used the term 'biscuit', not 'cookie', right?)

^ You didn't use "like" or "could of" :D

"I drink Yorkshire tea now-a-days"
Best advert evar

I'd go so far to say - I could narrow it down to the UK Midlands,
not many hardbitten Northerners would admit to having that southern jessie bergamot flowered hippie tea.
But you don't drink it all the the time. Nor expand your tea horizons.
So that pushes you down south. Yet you love Yorkshire tea.
lots of milk and choccy biccies are indicative of a cold climate.
that brings you back up north a bit - let's say Birmingham, or maybe manchester, bit more hardbitten?

Sorry i've been watching 'sherlock' almost non-stop.

wuxmedia: Maybe it works for Mr Holmes, but in real life it takes a little more than one's tea and biscuit consumption statistics to deduce their hometown :P Nice set of deductions, though...

hehe, oddly enough the first line of supposition was an actual hunch, the rest I made up. 8)
I had a cuppa today (just PG tips) and it was lovely.
found an old packet of yerba tea in the tea cupboard at work, gonna try it out tomorrow.

Speaking of tea: http://what-if.xkcd.com/79/

^ That's a nice one :)

Actually we have some tea bushes at our place out in the country. If left alone they grow big (imagine a camelia forest) so I clip them now and then, but they get little use otherwise. My wife picks some leaves and makes her own tea, which is quite nice and aromatic, but it takes so long to pick enough leaves for two or three pots...

Once left some leaves in a box for a week or so (half-forgotten) and they fermented a bit and turned into something like oolong. Not bad.

^ Do you or your wifey know the story about the "fragrant" Biluochun tea, or the reason why it is so "aromatic"? ;) Happy googling :)

Ceylon for everyday use (i drank lots of fancy teas until i figured out that i really like that dirt-chep Sri Lankan black tea) and japanese genmaicha when i really have a quiet moment. I can't stand it when i'm in a hurry but i love it when i have that 30 minutes on my own. Which is rarely the case. I once bought chinese genmaicha. Don't try it, even when you have lots of time. In that case, nothing beats Gyokuro, again, only from Japan although it's cheaper from China.

machinebacon wrote:^ Do you or your wifey know the story about the "fragrant" Biluochun tea, or the reason why it is so "aromatic"? ;) Happy googling :)

Ah finally found my way back to this thread and looked it up!

@Verändert Ceylon's my favourite too. Brews fast, and plenty of colour and taste.

Now, Japan and China - water not to hot, say ~80deg.
England - water boiling hot
but
India - cook the tea in the water, or milk.
I'm not an expert on Indian teamaking, but this is how I make something which tastes somewhat like what I enjoyed there:
Put milk, or mixture of milk and water, (optionally, add a cardamon seed too) in a pan, add the tea and bring it to a simmer. Turn off the gas just before the milk is about to boil over. I use Ceylon tea again, but you can use "dust" tea (very fine, broken) or "ruby" tea which has a good red colour.
Indians would add sugar.
Stronger than the standard British cuppa, but the extra milk takes the edge off it. Pretty good in fact.

A Pakistani customer the other week insisted on a variant of this:
Cook the tea in a little water in the pan till the colour comes out, then add the milk and just warm it up. No cardamon. Still more milk than water.

Turkey: Cook the tea also in water, slowly, low heat.