Beer, it ain't the only thing we got brewin': Tea thread.

[Chet]

I'm sat here drinking a steaming hot cup of Darjeeling, and it's good. What's yr cuppa of choice? Growing up I always drank standard milky tea with two sugars, my dad used to make fun of me and call it "baby tea" now I'm all about teas of all kinds. Never milk, and only occasionally sugar.

[alex]

I drink green tea with jasmine almost to the exclusion of everything else these days. A nice cup of Darjeeling can be a very nice thing too. After three and a half years of living in the Netherlands, though, I have lowered my standards and am now happy with just about anything that isn't a bag of Pickwick tea and/or melon-flavoured.

[Good Intentions]

Rooibos tea. I drink inordinate amounts of rooibos tea at home.

[clare]

I am a tea wimp. It needs milk. I'm also a caffeine wimp which means I like decaf tea (*hides*) but I kind of wish I wasn't so extreme in that regard, it's annoying. Chai is good too.

[ellaguru]

I like Darjeeling. Yesterday I had some iced chai, and I bought some Japanese green tea to make iced tea with, although I haven't made it yet. I like iced green tea in the summers.

[mountmccabe]

I drink mostly white tea, green when I am out and haven't brought my own and/or are at the mercy of someone else timing (or, rather, not timing) its brewing.

I have a few packages of loose leaf whites at home - a basic and a Silver Needles that is exceptional - and I think I might bring one of them in to work as I actually have a job now what has a desk what is not in a lab.

I take my white and green teas plain, maybe a bit of sugar or honey if it went a bit long.

I also like Rooibos quite a bit though I am out. I am OK with flavoring in this and will almost certainly add honey/sugar/Bourbon.

[Good Intentions]

Honey is traditional in rooibos (in SA most people unceremoniously drink it with milk and sugar), but I drink it black and without sugar. But I drink all my teas and herbal infusions black and without sugar.

[Greg Nog]

I've been having a whole lot of iced apricot sun tea lately!  We always had it when I was young, and the taste awakens all kinds of nostalgia in me.  I've had a hell of a time finding apricot-flavored tea in stores, but just recently discovered that this otherwise-crappy little dollar store near my apartment carries it!  It's been lovely.

[coldforge]

I like drinking tea a lot, but I absolutely cannot get beyond buying something generic and cheap at the store. I can't bring myself to go artisanal or some shit. I been drinking a lot of Typhoo. That stuff is surprisingly tasty, being the cheapest tea on the shelf.

[milesofsparks]

I haven't been drinking nearly as much tea lately as I used to, but I have some Earl Grey here at work I drink occasionally (sometimes with a little milk & sugar, sometimes plain).  I enjoy Moroccan mint tea (with Chinese gunpowder tea) with, of coarse, sugar.  for iced tea I will either shake some Moroccan mint tea in a cocktail shaker with ice or make oolong sun tea.  I also have a bit of black tea I bought in an open-air market in Istanbul that I dole out in small, nostalgic bits to drink in the tulip tea glasses I also brought back with a sugar cube.

[peacocks]

Rooibus is my jam when eating at places where they have tea. At home I mostly drink celestial seasonings blueberry tea though because, like cf, I can't get past buying the generic stuff at the grocery store. I have this tea a friend got at a middle eastern market that's called Alessi that i haven't tried. It's in a pretty green box.

[milesofsparks]

oh and I have some matcha that's purdy and I keep meaning to try, but I don't have a whisk...

I've tried to like rooibus, but I just don't.  sorry, rooibus.

[coldforge]

I used to drink a lot of genmaicha back in the day. I only drink tea at work these days and doing too much with loose tea seems like more trouble than it's worth.

[Greg Nog]

oh and I have some matcha that's purdy and I keep meaning to try, but I don't have a whisk...

I have matcha, too, but I find that whenever I remember it I suddenly get more interested in making green tea ice cream than just having green tea.

[milesofsparks]

I used to use one of these at work:



it's relatively easy to deal with, but now I mostly drink coffee, or just use tea bags.  I still have the filter at home, though, and use it now and then.  thanks for reminding me, Chet, I should drink more tea.


and I should make green tea ice cream.  maybe this weekend.

[alex]

I always use paper tea filters at home. Not quite as environmentally friendly as reusing other filters, but so much less hassle: you can just throw the entire bag away rather than having to clean out the filter, and you never have to face situations where you forgot to clean it out and it's become gross and moldy. That was always the problem with cotton filters for me, which is what I used to use. The kind of thing milesofsparks posted indeed doesn't get gross as easily, but somehow I am hallucinating that the taste doesn't develop as nicely as with paper filters.

At work, I just use teabags. I discovered a few months ago that I could just buy packs of 100 teabags (green tea with jasmine, of course) at the Asian supermarket. Probably lasts me about 2 months, even though I use each teabag 2-4 times before throwing it out.

Since I'm currently staying at a friend's place and didn't want to bother with loose teas there, I bought some teabags of white tea at the organic store last week. It turned out to be quite strongly flavoured with some floral flavouring agent, which was not advertised on the package. I'm feeling a bit ripped off, but I'm still drinking it.

Moroccan mint tea is a very good call, by the way. I've never made it myself, but it's always a very strong incentive to go to the Moroccan restaurant in Leuven (along with the really excellent lamb dishes). If I knew a place that served it that wasn't quite so restaurant-y and where I could just go for a cup of tea, I'd probably be there every week.

[alex]

For iced tea, by the way, I go for green tea with mint leaves.

[elpollodiablo]

You guys ever drink yerba matte? There was a span of a few months back in 2008 when I drank it at work pretty frequently.

[Thermofusion]

Hot tea I take with a teaspoon of sourwood honey. Uhh I use teabags, sorry if that makes me a slackjawed redneck mutant or whatever. Favorites are Twining's Ceylon Orange Pekoe, Bigelow's Plantation Mint (this stuff is kind of awesome iced, too), Chinese Oolong, and Trader Joe's Jasmine Green Tea (which strangely has a tea-oriented Clive Barker quote on the back of every teabag package)

For sweet tea, duh I always brew black (ain't fucking with tradition)

[ausdemfenster]

You guys ever drink yerba matte? There was a span of a few months back in 2008 when I drank it at work pretty frequently.

I used to drink it constantly in high school, because you could buy a giant two-pound brick of it at the Argentinian grocery store for $1 and it woke me up better than coffee with fewer jittery side effects. I love how it tastes like you're sucking on a forest!

[Bernard]

Do we not have a tea thread already? Somebody mentioned yak butter? Dudes, let me turn you on to drinking iced lapsang souchong.

[coldforge]

If somebody mentioned tibetan butter tea, it was probably me. I love the stuff. Never had it with yak butter, though.

[alex]

Do we not have a tea thread already?

There is indeed a very old previous tea thread, complete with Leonard Cohen reference in the title, from back when I mostly drank Japanese green tea:
http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com/forums/index.php/topic,4415.0.html

Also, iced Lapsang Souchong does sound lovely. Do you add anything to it, or just pure iced tea?

[jm]

You guys ever drink yerba matte? There was a span of a few months back in 2008 when I drank it at work pretty frequently.

Yeah, when I was working in Harvard Square, there was a tea store nearby that always did hot yerba mate and occasionally did iced yerba mate, and both were wicked tasty dood.  I even would get ... Materva, I think it's called? from the nearby imported-foods shop.

Ok so hey, maybe someone can answerate this question:
Once upon a time, I had a tea that was very smoky. So smoky, in fact, that it basically tasted like I was drinking bacon/sausage-infused tea. Does anybody know what this might have been? I will probably recognize the name if you name some.

[alex]

Could it be the aforementioned Lapsang Souchong? Seems like the by far most widespread very smoky tea to me.