I’m born in Poland during the communist regimes reign. Back then there was only one tea available: Black Tea.
We mostly drank it with a slice of lemon and some sugar. To this day this is my favourite way of drinking tea.
But I also enjoy what I started calling “Queen Elisabeth Tea” when my daughter asked what it is, same black tea but with milk and sugar. She likes it a lot too.
Last but not least, I really enjoyed Japanese tea, we went to a special tea house and they showed us how to brew it and drink it. It was some special green tea, very delicious!
If you’re interested in trying out the full breadth of flavors you can get out of teas, I’d like to suggest buying an electric kettle where you can set the water temperature (they’re like $20-$25 online now) and a website I really like that sells tea and tea blends blends called august.la (I think the company’s full name is August Uncommon Teas).
Regarding the kettle, it’s because black tea only requires boiling water (212°F, same temperature needed for making coffee), but green and white teas require 170°F and 190°F, respectively. Making green tea using boiling water causes a really bitter flavor, and not the kind it’s supposed to have. Green tea and tea in general will always have a bitterness, but it’s still a massive difference to the point that I’ve spaced out and put boiling water into a cup of green tea, realize it a few moments too late, and dump it out because it’s as good as ruined to me.
The website has a few pure teas, and there are many kinds of black tea varieties, green tea varieties, and white tea varieties in the world in general, but I go there for the blends. Low Country is my favorite black tea blend, and Know by Heart is my favorite white tea blend. They got my partner into tea too! They’ve also got recipes for some of their tea blends to make cocktails and mocktails, lattes, etc.
Green tea with boiling water tastes like cat’s piss.
Yes.
I recently ordered some loose leaf Chinese pu-erh that smelled like fresh soil after a rain - in the best way. It was the most soul warming tea I’ve ever tasted and I’m sure it wasn’t even the authentic stuff. I would kill to know the best place to order more if anyone knows.
I started a gong fu tea kick early in the pandemic. My go-to supplier has been Yunnan Sourcing. They have two sites, one is .us and ships from their warehouse in Oregon and the other is .com, which ships direct from China. The difference is mainly selection and shipping time, where the chinese site has a better selection, with much longer shipping.
I highly recommend their curated samplers and, if you enjoy the tea, getting a tea pick and learning to use it (the idea being to minimize breaking the leaves into powder which causes increased bitterness due to surface area:volume ratio).
Cardamom black tea with sugar is quite delicious. I also quite enjoy Jasmine green tea.
Jasmine green tea is lovely. If you like complexity in simplicity, try some oolong teas.
After I learned of chai, I was lost to the world of black tea and spices. Last year I learned how to toast sugar at home, so now masala chai with a little toasted sugar and cream is my favorite indulgent breakfast.
Since I’ve gotten older though, I drink a lot more rooibos and other caffeine-free herbals later in the day.
Being of conventional English extraction, I drink vast quantities of tea in the usual style: black tea and milk. These days it’s usually oat milk, and sugar is occasionally involved (but not usually). I like an Assam-heavy malty blend of black tea (and the Twinings pure Assam is particularly good too). Clipper is probably my favourite of the mainstream brands for a standard black blend (although I’m not above a cup of cheap Typhoo).
I do drink reasonable quantities of Earl Grey too. Twinings brand for that, usually. I also drink this with milk, which (contrary to the deep insistence of internet blog spam everywhere) is actually very common. I’ve had it the other way (black with lemon) many times, but it’s no improvement in my opinion.
I’m quite partial to a rooibos too, which I appreciate isn’t actually tea, but you know. I’m not fussy on rooibos brand though; so far I’ve found that every brand I’ve tried had been perfectly decent, so I’m usually just led by price (or by pretty packaging…).
Anything with bergamot makes my heart melt, when I can’t afford better tea, Russian Earl Grey by Lipton does the job
Jasmine green tea (occasionally with oat milk) or oolong is usually my favourite. In terms of English breakfast tea: definitely Yorkshire Gold!
The gulf between bad Earl Grey and really good Earl Grey is huge, but a really good Earl Grey can’t be beat. The Crema Earl Grey from Rare Tea Cellar is right up there.
I got a box of Royal Grey from Murchie’s, and it’s my absolute favorite so far! Got a box of the Earl Grey Cream from them too, but I hated it…
I might get crucified for this, but when I’m ill I find Lady Gray with a splash of milk quite comforting.
I’ve been enjoying a nice dragon well/longjing and a red tiger oolong I picked up recently. The former vegetal and lightly sweet, the latter luxuriously sweet.
My go-to is just an English or Irish breakfast tea with a bit of oat milk, no sugar, and my go-to caffeine-free tea is Clipper redbush, though I do branch out now and again, and I have a lemon & ginger tea if I’m poorly.
I love Japanese green tea and I’ve had some luck with Korean green tea as well. But my first true tea love came from roasted oolongs. That is what made me want to explore more and where I learned the value of re-steeping tea. Back in 2020, one my isolation hobbies was trying different teas and learning how to use a gaiwan.
Japanese matcha green tea is proper green tea. The secret is not to use water that’s too hot - boiling water will scald the tea and ruin the taste. With Japanese tea ceremonies, they actually have to grind the tea leaves very carefully, as if they go too fast the friction will cause the same effect.
With black tea, I only take certain blends black. Twinings earl grey works for me, but other earl greys and even basic black teas are often too bitter. However, I usually just add only a tiny splash of milk and no sugar - the sugar tends to make me drowsy an hour or so later.
Love Japanese green teas as well. I’ve made a pot of that stuff (or matcha, genmaicha, etc) nearly every day for the last 20+ years
I only started drinking tea a few months ago, but after trying a bunch I fell in love with Earl Grey teas. I cold brew a big pitcher of it, then make a simple syrup to sweeten it slightly. I recently bought a bunch of different fruit extracts to flavor the syrup with, letting me add variety to each pitcher. I’ve got a cup of blueberry-flavored Earl Grey with me now, and it’s my favorite so far.
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