The Tea Thread

Very nice, I'll have to track some down. Sounds like a great tea to enjoy on a nice warm spring day.

 

Any lapsung souchong fans here? I like to mix a little of it loose for a hint of smoke with black tea.

 

Lapsang suchong is very good, especially if you get a genuine Wuyi variety with the distinctive aftertaste. Xiao zhong teas mix the best things between my favorite black and oolong teas.

@purrin - that sounds awesome. The Russian version is pleasantly smoky, but the actual tea taste leaves much to be desired.

 

I've been tea shopping a few times in Taipei and brought home some gems. My favorite is a red tea with a distinctive and robust flavor character. Unfortunately I don't know the name. I tried to find some lapsang souchong on my last visit with no luck. Thanks for the suggestions to seek out.

 

Bai hu sounds interesting!


I like barley tea in the winter. Chrysanthemum is nice!

At Ethiopian places, they often have a mix of cinnamon and ginger tea, it's great in the winter or anytime.

Speaking of which, Traditional Medicinals brand has a "Ginger Aid" blend which is my favorite ginger tea in a bag. Well worth having.

You could also try a strong decoction of coptis, isatis, and andrographis. 15gr each in 6 cups water boiled down to 2 cups. This "tea" has a very strong bitter taste with a difficult to remove lingering aftertaste of acrid vomit. That's how I taste it, YMMV, everyone's mouth is different.
These herbs have a lot of research behind them, but serious ugh.

 

Very occasionally I experience this on a Sunday morning but it has nothing to do with tea.

 

There is a trick to brewing it, that a friend turned me onto.
But by the time he had 'perfected' the technique we were down to the last of it.
And as much as I have tried to get more, the stuff I've tried is but a mere shadow of the 'good stuff'.

It’s a pity too because it is the most unusual and desirable tea I have EVER had.

JJ

 

I have had it in Tibet with Yak butter, in Nepal with Water Buffalo butter, and in the US with Cow butter. The traditional yak stuff was the best. It's kind of an acquired taste, more like salted butter and tea soup. It is especially good when you are freezing your ass off and very hungry and want something hot to mix with your Tsampa (roasted barley flour).

 

I don't think you can, since I know a few tibetans in the BA and all of them use cow. But things change all the time and I haven't been there for a little while. I don't know if people really bother to make it right in the BA, because you need this special plunger thingy. You put the tea inside a tube (some kinda wood) add boiling water, then put the plunger thing in (which has a lid, kinda of like one of those toilet bowl brushes that go into a tubular house, but itsa plunger not a brush). Violently move the plunger up and down for the same length of time that all your ancestors did. Add salt and butter, more plunging. Pour into a big ass metal teapot and serve to the entire monastery.

 

Yak yogurt is yum. Actually Yak is yum, slightly more gamey inna gud way than cow. If I had yak steak in Lhasa and if I didn't know it was Yak, I wudda thot it was beef with special seasoning. It may be that Tibetan yak is a different breed cuz the worst steak I ever had was a yak in lower mustang in Nepal. If it was tough, it wudda been more tender than what I had. And not to derail the thread entirely, yak is really good with salted, butter tea....

 

As a Turkish guy, I drink 10-15 glasses of black tea every day. If I brew tea at home, I mix regular black tea and Earl Grey.

 

Each to their own.

I might have mentioned being, for the past decade or so, "tea-total," but that does not mean that I exclude all things that don't only quench the thirst. I'm partial to Kava Kava, if the word partial can be applied to something that looks and tastes like mud. But yes, I don't even mind the flavour.

As to other herbs, even mint, I tend to regard them as medicines, rather than stuff to make and drink for refreshment.

 

So have any of you tried bitter tea?

There are several varieties, but as the name suggests these teas are or become (depending upon which variety) Very bitter, but then morphs (as the palate accommodates the extreme bitterness) and becomes merely interesting.

But it's what happens next that explains its 'popularity'.

EVERYTHING you eat or drink afterwards is absolutely delicious.

It seems it takes our sense of taste so far in one direction that anything ingested afterwards, tastes delectable.

Quite the contrast.

JJ

 

Some of the medicinal herbs are very bitter, and I grew to like their flavours.

 

Sounds interesting, I'll have to try this bitter stuff.

 

Stuff that is mildly sedative like skullcap and valerian. These things are strictly legal and easily available from medical herrn supplies, perhaps even some health-food shops. They are mild, but those who doubt that herbs can do anything at all (in spite of the evidence of modern medicines having largely come from herbs, might be surprised at how effective they are. Don't drive or operate dangerous machinery!