Wow I don’t even drink tea really but that frog pot makes me want to
Today I have drinked some charcoal roasted bug-bitten Jin Xuan that I bought from 陳華胤 in 2016. I bought a few roasted teas from this fellow at the time. Tbh, I don’t really like roasted tea. But, he suggested I buy them, and I wanted some other greener stuff from him too, and so I bought them. They’ve mostly just been sitting around, mellowing out over the past five years.
I brewed 10 nuggets or so, five or six times, 190-212f water, and mixed all the steeps together.
This bug-bitten one in particular is now, drinking it again for the first time in a few years, sweet and floral. Pretty good, I like it. Nice change of pace.
is bug bitten a bug or a feature?
they encourage/allow the little bugs, the bites cause plant reactions that change the flavor
Oriental Beauty tea is I guess maybe the most popular example?
Wow, I’ve never heard of this! I just ordered some, I’ve got to know what that tastes like.
oh for the die hard tea fans, i also wanted to recommend the taiwanese tv drama La Grande Chaumiere Violette which is on netflix. It is loosely based on the life of the artist Koeh Soat-ô͘ but the fictionalized plot follows a family tea business throughout the late years of the japanese colonial regime into the early kmt martial law era. it is only tangentially about tea but you might still find it interesting. it is a soap opera so it’s extremely corny, but it’s on netflix with decent english subtitles.
wait david’s tea exists in the USA too? ugh another thing to add to the list of “things i thought were canadian that i just didn’t know about until i moved here”
David’s Tea used to have stores all over the US, but they closed them all permanently during the pandemic. I used to go to their store in Harvard Square for tea because I worked right near it. 90% of their teas are straight garbage though. They actually add sugar and/or stevia to most of those cheugy* fruity blends of theirs. I can’t think of a worse tea sin than that.
However, I still continue to buy a ton of tea from these maniacs for some reason. All of their oolong teas that don’t have ridiculous ingredients added are actually pretty good. In particular, I really like their Guangzhou Milk Oolong, which sadly seems to be out of stock right now. Their empty sachets for loose tea are actually the best I’ve ever used, too.
You’re almost definitely better off with like any other tea retailer, but hey. Now, of course, there is NOTHING good in that sale, aside from those sachets and maybe the pu-erh (though I haven’t tried that one).
*I finally learned what this word means the other day and I’m very excited to use it. **
**The previous footnote was cheugy.
weirdly colored birthday yixing
averaging 5 dramatically different Initial “Seasoning” Instructions into what will probably be some kinda wash
anyway it’s fun to simmer the pot and the lid for a while
tight, congrats. i used to have one of a very similar color & size. i shattered it in the sink at work one day.
tea pigs tea pigs
I now understand what my brewing technique is missing.
having a nice asamushi sencha… I like light teas like this, grassy and vegetal, just a light sticking on the tongue
maybe I should get some loose leaf?
“Hello.”
Today I will continue what has become morning ritual for the past week: drinking 4-6 ounces of deep-steamed Japanese green tea.
About a week ago I donned my N95 and drove the ten miles or so, out to the city-proper’s out-skirts, to visit our local longstanding Japanese convenience store Nippan Daido. My sencha supply had become stale and was due for a replenishing. Look their tea selection, to be fair, is not great. But, well, they were going out of business a couple years ago before apparently being purchased by a group of the employees, hang in there pals.
Anywho, I got a $10 bag of mixed sencha + kabusecha from UJInoTSUYU. Let’s cook it up.
After shaking the tea around for a little while in the still-moist pre-heated teapot (this is when you want to sniff some whiffs prime leaf whiff time), I’ve been brewing a single infusion at 160F-ish for around 1 minute.
I would rate this packaged factory tea as: pretty good, tastes good to me. Nice and round, the seaweed tastes and grass bitternesses clear, you can hear them, but unfussy. I never drink enough of the stuff to finish the bag off while it is still fresh. If only the industry as a whole could develop some kind of individually portioned and fresh-sealed easy-steep sachets.
I hope that you have a good day. Good bye.
would love to drip and sip with the boys around the corner slab
My doctor has recommended I dramatically reduce my caffeine intake… This is a cruelty, as I usually like to sip oolong teas all day. Does anyone have any recommendations for great non-caffeinated teas? I’ve got the obvious ones like rooibos and chamomile, but I’m interested in branching out.