This thread is for discussing teas, tisanes, and other herbal infusions.

info: types of tea, where to get tea, how to brew tea
https://rentry.org/teageneral

previous thread: >>21471018

>>21487075
Yeah, I also enjoy those teahome teas more than the taiwanese oolongs I bought in Europe for 3x the price.
I don't drink that much oolong, but I'll definitely order from them again when I run out.

2nd for pesticides

>>21487118
added flavor, you mean?

Since I'm currently down with a cold or whatever I wanted to know what /tea/ drinks in times of sickness.

My go to recipe is usually ginger slices with some lemon since its easy.

Another one my mom always made me is:
2 parts fresh sage
1 part fresh thyme
rog sugar and a few lemon slices
Add to warm water in a pot and pring it to a boil 3 times then strain and drink hot.

>>21487075
>treat it as some kind of hyper fancy speciality tea and charge huge markups
Yeah I fell for that kind of thing back in the day too. They just rebag regular ass cheap tea and 10x its price, and add fancy marketing.

>>21487297
It's not even so much fancy marketing, it's just oolong in general. I haven't seen any place here that sells oolong for anything less than about 5-8x the price of an average black or green. The very concept of oolong is treated as some high-brow specialty tea, that's what really gets me about this.

>>21487316
Been years since I used those kind of vendors. Maybe it just sounds exotic enough that they can get away with ripping off people who don't know much about tea. Probably that's how they got me, I remember being massively overcharged for shit puer.

>>21487332
Probably. Most people here know black and green tea, but oolong sounds like a weird exotic thing. And at the same time it still tastes similar to "normal" tea so a lot of semi-fancy vendors carry it (unlike puerh which is pretty hard to find here). I guess they all just collectively decided it's good business to overcharge for it, and there's not enough of an enthusiast market for local resellers that try to sell it for real prices (especially since enthusiasts already know to just order online anyway).

>>21487348
To be fair teahome is kind of an outlier, no other western facing vendor has those kinds of prices on taiwanese oolong.

waaaaooooww! i'm health benefitiiiiinggggg

>>21487718
I'm teethrotmaxxing

>>21487733
At this point, I wouldn't care if I was actively dying of fluoride and pesticides. I'll give up my Xiaguan when I'm dead, my guy.

>>21487265
>Since I'm currently down with a cold or whatever I wanted to know what /tea/ drinks in times of sickness.
I make a giant pot of ginger tea when I'm sick and then after it cools down I shove it into the fridge. This might taste stronger the next day. Don't leave it out though, keep it in the fridge if you don't drink all of it. Sometimes I'll add cinnamon etc and basically make chai tea. If you want to be lazy, sometime when you're not sick you can peel and slice up ginger and put it in a bag in the freezer. Then next time you want ginger tea you can defrost it in the pot of water you'll cook it in. The chai tea version is really nice in a thermos while shoveling snow.

Ginger Tea

Ingredients:
Fresh Ginger ~12 grams per cup of fluid (weigh it after its peeled and sliced)
6 cups of water or more.

Directions:
Peel and slice ginger into coins ~12 grams (or more) per cup of water.
Throw Ginger into the pot of water.
Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

>>21487825
You sippin that brick?

>>21487866
I just grate a bit of ginger directly into a cup and pour boiling water over it like a normal tea. This sounds overcomplicated

>>21487889
No, actually, but I really want to. I see anons pick up the Baoyan brick and mushroom. Whenever I get around to an Awazon order, they will be in the cart. Until then, I drink a lot of Xiao Fa ripe and Te Tuo/Te Ji raw tuos. I also have a few higher quality cakes.

>>21487897
It's just a lot of waiting compared to regular tea. Ginger root unfortunately doesn't extract as easily as tea leaves.

>>21487866
I do the same thing, good for an unsettled stomach also
I stopped bothering to peel it and it didn't seem to make a difference.

>>21487939
It's great for nausea. I've had some pots seem fine without peeling and others definitely needed to be peeled. Maybe it's young vs old ginger not too sure, it's probably a coincidence.

Tried doing a gong fu session for the first time. I drank a lot of tea and I guess I got too much caffeine because I couldn't sleep and had to call out of work.

dragonteahouse.biz order landed
i think it was sent in a larger differently labeled box with instructions to open on landing in the us, it has an overlapped label which says "tea set" but has next to no shipping info on it, then a domestic label, but NO international labeling anywhere.

>>21487265
garlic in the nose
and nettle in the gut

>>21488027
Also I spilled water all over the table.

>>21488027
yep if you're not used to it, it can be quite a bit of caffeine. caffeine doesn't really make me loose sleep, but when i started i remember going from 0 daily caffeine to a suddenly a liter of tea (5-7g sessions) and i was going to the bathroom every 5 minutes lol. the one time i did loose sleep was a time i had 9g of a FL Dong Guo sample left in the baggie and leaving just 2g didn't feel right so i just used everything and drank the full liter like around midnignt. didn't fall asleep until like 5am that night
>>21488072
yeah that happens too. you'll get better at pouring and eventually barely spill anything at all. still, there's always inevitably gonna be stray drops here and there because you're constantly pouring liquid around multiple vessels, so having a towel or something under your teaware helps keep everything tidy. you could also get one of those tea trays but i find them bulky and a hassle to clean/dry so i prefer just a kitchen towel folded in half.

>>21488087
>kitchen towel folded in half
There's also these.
https://www.amazon.com/AMOAMI-Coffee-Absorbent-Counter-Coffee-Accessories-Espresso/dp/B09SYNZ1LY/ref=sr_1_5?crid=11MHGJ3N44Q21&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cY_1iha80d6VePSf6YmenoeEZHS9iGi8w4NbhCOdjnUm6owfj1IciF2a2YnSmaqJ4trX6eAh9mgChZF9NFMfug79ZaMO39CUKmkTM83-_68yLzbnaDUygl-vbnLdY_WOaxUufmU5o0yqkEsJNWRRT77lPzAR4jG16jmLCnGPXON0T0m48wTdqCQTKwoPGd6liPKUYG8mYUFpMesvNao1PAQTxzJAJY5IzTbrb8edq3QM7eMbeGRK6-EbHPvUWOy7BJGt6mWNs4GJXnmgXqwXHTbekomESSSYhGBb2mY475U.Qcg_CqmUYg2sf5mablc9cA7OppV3UeISswDg3D6wBtE&dib_tag=se&keywords=counter%2Bmat&qid=1753322957&sprefix=counter%2Bmat%2Caps%2C112&sr=8-5&th=1

aaaalright everybody freeze! nobody steep! just hand over your best fu brick recommendations and i'll be on my way

Watching tea videos
Love all the lore. Kicking my feet. Rubbing my belly. I'm enjoying this

>>21488275
Last year I bought a brick of the Mojun 1368 from Yunnan Sourcing and I liked it a lot, so much so that I bought samples of 30 something different fu bricks from Kingteamall.
Most of those KTM fu bricks were very mediocre and very similar, and honestly not really worth drinking imo. So it took me a while to get through them, and then with the tariff fuckery I held off on buying bigger samples of the good ones until recently. These are the ones I bought 100g samples of so that I can eventually decide on a whole brick or two to buy and do a proper write up:
2016 XiangYi "Jing Dian"
2012 JingWei "Jing Dian 1368"
2011 XiangYi "Tian He"
2019 JingWei "Shou Chui"
2017 JingWei "Qi Zi Fu Cha"
2010 XiangYi "Jun Xin"
2014 Jingwei "Gong Jin Fu Cha"
2015 Jingwei "Jing Dian Fu Cha"
2018 Jingwei "Qin Ling Zhi Dian"
And the Mojun 1368 from YS is definitely one of the best I've tried.
I just got all of those in last week, so I haven't had a chance to do a write up of them yet but I will soon™

>>21488027
I did the same thing and now put the extra tea into the fridge if my roommates aren't around.

>>21488338
>And the Mojun 1368 from YS is definitely one of the best I've tried.
Interesting! I'm actually drinking that one right now haha. I've liked this thing a lot; it's the reason I'm looking into trying more fu's. Looking forward to your reviews! If nothing ends up being as good as the Mojun then I'll probably just end up grabbing a few bricks of that and call it a day. I just wish they had a kilobrick or something because pulling out a huge tea brick would probably feel more badass than this little 200g one.

>>21488338
Sidenote: the 2007 CNNP - XiangYi "Te Zhi - Fu Zhuan" was absolutely awful, without a doubt the worst tea I have ever drank. I could not finish a cup of it, and I made it twice on two separate occasions and checked my water/kettle/teaware both times to make sure they weren't what was wrong. I first tried it more than a month after delivery too so it can't be an issue of "it needed to rest more".
It was thin and metallic with a lingering aftertaste like the smell of metal stuck on the tongue. There wasn't even any other perceptible flavor or aroma- it's not like the metallic note was a defect as part of an otherwise normal fu- the metallic note WAS the entire tea. It was closer to copper/pennies than iron/blood/steel.
It was pretty incredible really. It tasted like it was giving me heavy metal poisoning.

>>21488360
Yeah same here, that 1368 was the first fu I had. It seems to be more of a standout rather than representative of fu bricks. At least a couple of those ones I listed were up to par with it though. I don't remember which ones but now that I have 100g each instead of 15-25g I'll be able to get a better feel of them and take better notes.
I also want a kilobrick of tea because it seems cool lol

Alright, it has been some time... what do we think about the new FL/vietsun releases?

>>21488615
I haven't tried any of them. from vietsun the Son La mini cake could be good, the normal one was already good so this single trees version might be even better. and the price is not that big

from FL... the Miyun is cheap this year, so it could be a good value option this time around. the Banpen also dropped in price by a lot. still not sure if it's worth the premium over LME Autumn, maybe I'll get a sample

>>21488363
Copper is a pretty light metal though no?

>>21486573
My thoughts on the quiche teas 2003 brown changtai
The first few steeps it has a decent body and the storage is good, it has a bit of that mushroomy note but without being dank.
Woody, maybe a hint of smoke, no real bitterness but it has a sourish plum note that reminds me of 7542. When you push it the sort of sour plum gets more intense but it still isn't bitter or too astringent.
A pretty solid daily drinker sort of sheng imo. Not super complex but not boring.

>>21488864
Thanks, anon
Sounds like more of a classic factory blend of good quality than a total a total softie like that Yi Wu Ji Pin

>>21488615
The Mohei didn't get cheaper this year, but I've heard some good opinions

>>21488864
Did you get anything else from QuicheTeas?

Ok bros.... The deed is done... I've made the aeropress tea. I used 12g of this with 100ml of water:
https://yunnansourcing.com/products/2022-yunnan-sourcing-man-gang-gu-shu-black-tea-and-white-tea-cake

It's good. very good even. The tea shot you get is undrinkably strong, but then with the milk it becomes regular strong like if you'd done a gong fu steep, but creamy and frothy. I'd say it's about the same as making a milk tea by boiling the hell out of the tea, but this is much faster and more precise; it took about 5 min from start to finish. I apologize to the tea authorities for my crimes, but i'll be doing this again lol. Also I can definitely feel the caffeine hit, 12g of tea concentrated into a single drink is kinda crazy.

>>21489993
I don't really know anything about an aeropress, is there a meaningful difference between that and just boiling the fuck out of it?
If you want milk you do need a strong extraction so it sounds like a fine method to me however you get there.
Try it with some ripe and a tiny pinch of salt in the milk

>>21489993
Luckily for you, the tea authorities don't exist on /tea/. I like creamy drinks, I'd try it at least once but sadly the only coffee related gadget I have is a hario pour over. I'm getting back into tea, my coffee phase is over.

>>21490012
>is there a meaningful difference between that and just boiling the fuck out of it?
hmmm I think the disadvantage of boiling is just that it takes longer. The method I'd used before was 5g tea, 500ml water, 10 min boiling on the stove. then you have to strain that like 3 times to get all the leaves and dust out. This would leave me with a huge amount of liquid that wasn't nearly as strong, so to match the aeropress brew i'd use more tea and less water (maybe start it at 200 or 300ml and let it reduce on the stove while it boils?). With the aeropress it just kinda streamlines the process and even auto filters it with the paper filter. I do have a ripe cake that I practically never touch, so I can try that next. I also want to try with some cheap shou mei. just the stuff that won't hurt too much to pulverize 12g of lol
>>21490030
>I'm getting back into tea, my coffee phase is over.
nice, same here! I took a bit of a coffee detour, but this week I started doing gongfu sessions again. Coffee is nice, but I do like tea much better

>>21490062
>nice, same here! I took a bit of a coffee detour, but this week I started doing gongfu sessions again. Coffee is nice, but I do like tea much better
Tea seems more relaxing but I get burnt out on drinking the same thing all the time. My kettle died a few days ago so I'm waiting for a new one to arrive hopefully tomorrow. That's what I've been doing too, I love gongfu. I've been drinking some Chinese black teas and whatever this instant powdered sencha is. I'll try making gyokuro again when the kettle arrives.

>>21489245
Yes, these
>>21474474
and the 2003 purple 7542, which is good, but sold out and really expensive for what the tea actually is. I like it quite a bit but like half of the price is for the name "dayi 7542".

>>21488338
Hell yeah. Can't wait for those. Let em rip.
>>21488615
I really need to put in an order this year... Thinking mixing it up away from FL and going Vietsun. It might be worthwhile to get acquainted with non-Chinese tea.