Murchie’s is usually overpriced but their black tea range is fantastic
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Twinnings had a good blend of loose leaf Earl Grey but either my tastes changed or their blend did; after a certain point a year or so back it went weird like you found. Tetley is not to your taste either? The Metropolitan Tea Company (headed by Tea Master Level 4, Gerry Vandergrift!) has a decent variety of English teas though the only place I could find selling their products in Edmonton is Nook In The Woods.
Yeah I think we have gone through Tetley and Typhoo. I mean, they are fine, it is just black tea bags after all, the Twinings was the only one I found actively unpleasant to drink (and even still finished the whole box…). At a certain point it kind of seems just like… coke vs pepsi you know. I just have the indelible PG Tipsiness of it all stuck in my head.
I will keep an eye out for metropolitan tea company and murchie’s, but i don’t think i’ve seen those for sale anywhere. I might actually just be that jerk and go to the shop that sells imports and stuff. I think it is shaped like a telephone booth or london cab or something like that.
I have not heard of nook in the woods, it looks like it’s a bit out of town but if I’m ever in the area I will check it out!
There are actually a lot of really nice seeming tea shops around town but I mainly just get herbal teas from them. I should try fancier black tea one day.
Do it, I’ve been buying Assam tea from a little importer and as a consequence I started drinking five times more tea.
2018 “Waffles” (ripe puer)
- smells like wet dog
- brews dark red to plum and thick, drinks good. very clean flavor and soft mouthfeel
- honestly wasn’t sure what to expect but it’s a great daily drinker. light caffeine load
unidentified white2tea sample (they threw it in as a freebie)
- i thought it was a puer but it tastes like oversteeeped black tea
- bitter
- i dont especially like it but whatever, tea is tea
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Some puerhs are extremely tannic and bitter in an almost moldy way
surprise it’s not water it’s old sour tea
So after a couple months of brewing kombucha I’ve got four (4) bottles left this is one (1) of them. This is from the sixth or seventh batch.
The first couple didn’t taste very good and I tossed most of them, but the rest got progressively better as, I guess, maybe the liquid culture stabilized or various other procedural changes.
I used a bottle of that Element brand stuff, linked earlier in the thread, as a starter and just dumped it into a half gallon glass milk jug topped off with some cooled + sweetened brewed tea. Let that sit on the counter for a couple weeks covered with cheesecloth, lots of membrane stuff formed in there. Drink/toss 2/3rds or so and then refill with newly brewed tea, ~1/2 cup of sugar per 1/2 gallon. Some people say to toss the scoby/pelicle/mucus layer, some people say they would rather die; but the good stuff is in the juice itself.
After the initial ferment of a week or two or three or whatever, you can bottle and put in the pantry for perhaps another week for a secondary ferment which theoretically should self carbonate if you add some additional sugar to the bottles; but this never worked out for me. I ended up force carbonating, with my carbonator co2 cartridge bottle thing, which I think is how all the bottled stuff on store shelves is produced.
The first couple batches I used some taiwanese oolongs, and the last few (pictured) were various ‘deep’ steamed japanese greens I had small amounts of left over the years.
The best results tasted good but I mostly prefer the taste of the best stuff I’ve bought once I ignore the novelty of artisanal self hand made single origin tangy tea pop; so I think I’m over this for now but will maybe restart the scoby factory at a later date.
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Stephane’s new pics from the motherland
I brought home $5 worth of tea from Japan. I also brought back some onsen water from Tenzan in Hakone, but I ended up giving it to my daddy instead.
The best tea we did have was from this take out place Hachiya in the Daikanyama/Ebisu area. They had like, freshly made tea soda on the menu; I didn’t get it I just got some sencha.
The lady like used multiple pots to brew after getting her hot water from the robot tap and had a little dixie cup on the side to pre taste while she went before serving it. It was real brothy food tea great job guys thanks. My wife got a Hojicha smoothie thing it tasted like a sweetend campfire but she was into it.
I had planned to maybe buy some stuff during a layover at the airport in Taipei but it was all whack and overpriced seeming, makes sense. They do have semi-hidden very nice private lockable shower rooms there though.
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i bought some Republic of Tea “Milk Oolong” leaf and I am drinking it now for the first time and it is this shit, whack
i dumped it and switched over to some japanese green crisis averted
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when my wife and i were in shimokitazawa walking around we passed by a tiny tea shop and so i went inside and there were two guys one middle aged and another elderly and they were chatting and i was looking at all the packages lined up along the wall just like looking and not understanding anything it was all in japanese but i liked the packaging and then they had a little glass fridge on the side with matcha cans in it and i was looking at it too and then the old guy got up from his chair and waved me over and then he slowly walks over to one side of the store and theatrically raises both of his arms and then slowly lowers them indicating the entire selection of pacakged tea and says “SENCHAAAA!” and then he goes over to the little fridge and does the same thing and says “MATCHAAA!” and i will always love you pal
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Today in low-stakes brick-and-mortar tea-purchasing I got some of Rishi’s “Earl Green”. I bought 30 cents worth. It is like a twisted green oolong with bergamot. Seems like a baozhong? Inside baseball: I looked on their website before typing this and it is baozhong but wanted to record these rock-solid stream-of-consciousness tasting-notes.
It’s good, v.fragrant, better than with black tea, anything’s better than black tea, I would drink again, don’t be afraid if someone gives you a cup.
I got into Clipper black tea in the US and now it’s all I drink, one milky mug after dinner. Boring Assam but im boring
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For the past few months, I’ve been drinking cheese top iced tea, exclusively. I am a philistine.
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i don’t think i like cheese / salty-milk foam tea; i’ve slurped a few as they have come to popularity locally
call me crazy i just don’t think i like cheese and salt in my tea
oh i don’t like cheese and salt in my tea and now i’m the bad guy?
i got this flowery oolong jelly dome dessert at one of the cheese foam places too it was also kind of lame but the interior had a nice matte finished wood panelling and a fake cactus instagram area and was pleasant to sit in so i mean not a total bust i don’t mind sitting in an instagram restaurant as long as no one is yelling
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See, I would have thought the same way until I went to the place where it all began, Hey Tea, and ordered a King Fone Cheezo, a smoky oolong with a thick, salty cream. My first two sips were nothing but “cheese.” After that, the fluid dynamics were such that I was gulping at a half cheese, half tea ratio. Then there came a point where the cheese teased me, floating away just before reaching my lips. At this point, I began to drink the tea a bit more greedily until I got to the very bottom, winning my prize. Cheese foam tea isn’t just a drink, it’s an experience.
For anyone else out there who would like to sample it, I recommend Happy Lemon’s grapefruit cheese tea and Coco’s Black tea on Cloud.
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the phrase “cheese tea” makes me want to never swallow a tea ever again in my life
I fully support the drinking of “cheese tea” by those persons who are not so afflicted by the invocation of “cheese tea” and enjoy imbibing “cheese tea”
everyone is different, and valid, and fine
but sometimes
“cheese tea” 
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What about Cheezo tea?
geez-o-pete
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It sounds kind of like salt lassi floating over tea, which is… maybe good?, but the phrase “cheese tea”
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