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I went through a major chai phase 40 years ago.
Black pepper, but no fennel or anise, and no cloves,
otherwise the standard combination. And learned the
Jamaican style, brewed with 2% canned milk. memorable
stuff.

Anyone ever encountered matcha? Japanese green tea,
ground to a fine powder and whipped into the hot
water, to make essentially a slurry. Appparently it
used to be very highbrow, used on special occasions,
but that is falling out of favour with the younger
generation, so there's recently been a big push to
popularize it, get some export marketing going, give
it a new image, to keep the producers in business. I've
seen it offered as a flavouring for weird smoothie drinks
around here recently. Along with a lot of hype about the
benefits of protein from the leaf powder (really?), and
an assortment of other health benefits.

I checked it out shortly before finding out about my
first trip to Japan; tracked it down after some searching,
it was pretty expensive, and on the whole didn't impress
me much, but then I've never been much of a green tea fan.
In Japan I found it almost an order of magnitude cheaper,
so I bought some back in case someone wanted to try it,
but it has since sat untouched on my shelf.

Holy = Holy Ghost = Toast.
Sexton = Sexton Blake= cake.
Many people nowadays think Cockney Rhyming Slang is a myth; but my grandmother used it all the time, as in:
"go down the frog for me fags. Put yer weasel on mind, it's a bit uncle."

Let me guess: Weasel and stoat, Uncle Bill, and of course
Frog Borner Store.

A Japanese friend of mine brought some over to Scotland with him and we went through the whole tea ceremony with him, man that brings back memories.
It was 24 years ago that I had the powdered green tea, it was not as bad as I had feared, quite pleasant in fact. Not seen any here in Belgium at all.

Earl Grey is the tea we drink most but we do have a big selection of different types of black tea and herbal teas in the cupboard with different tea pots for the black tea or herbal so they don't get contaminated with each other.

Can anyone suggest proper green tea brand?

Buy tea loose for quality. Tea Bags are the plywood of tea.

I got one of these teapots for $20 last year. They work good. Loose leaf tea is the best but bags can be good too imo.


http://www.rakuten.com/prod/hario-green-.../248764949.html

Tea newbie here again, chiming in ...

Timothy and Navigator, those ingenuiTEA and Hario teapots look great. I�ll probably get one or the other or both for use when I�m at home.

I think my sister already told me how great the ingenuiTEA pot was but I ignored her since I wasn�t into tea at the time.

My favorite is still individually wrapped teabags. They stay fresh and I can just throw them in my pocket or wherever and have some tea on the go.

BTW, I tried Earl Grey for the first time over the past couple of days and I�m sold. It�s my new favorite next to green tea.

I also tried Peppermint (yuk) and Chai (interesting but I have to find a better quality).

Cheerio!

I've always had a tendency to get hooked on tea. However, I had to watch/regulate myself. There was this one time I drank so much that I had trouble sleeping.

Just discovered that Peppermint tea is caffeine free, will probably buy loads of it on my next shopping trip.

Chai is much more fun if you build it yourself, as the
ingredients are usually easy, and you can trim it to
your own taste (as per my notes in a post back there
somewhere). The only thing I've had trouble finding
is dried orange peel, which used to be fairly common
but doesn't seem to be any more. Just read the ingredients
on the labels of several brands, and you'll get the
sense of it. I like ginger, black pepper and orange
peel in mine, and I don't like cloves or any licorice-
like (anise, fennel) flavours. The rest is the usual
suspects: cinnamon (easy to overdo, alas), nutmeg,
allspice, plus cardamom (an essential, according to
the Indian tradition). Steeping in Jamaican tradition
is done in canned milk (I used 2%), which can be
diluted slightly but not near 1-1 which takes it
back to fresh milk concentration. The concoction
done this way has to be simmered a while to get the
flavours in. A faster way to do this is to put the
ginger in a small amount of water and boil (the rule
is: boil roots, steep anything else), then steep
all your other ingredients in this (which works better/
faster than steeping in milk), then add to a larger
quantity of canned milk, and microwave the result
to desired temperature.

Yes and while Linebacker might not like it, I find it is great hot or cold. Spearmint is very nice too and a bit sweeter than peppermint.

This is what I use for black teas, it is 30+ years old now


and I inherited a similar, but older, set from my mother and father which was one of their wedding presents.

http://www.picquotware.co.uk/order-form/ Ouch!

Looks nice, but they radiate the heat away like crazy if you
don't put a cozy on them, and then you can't see all that fancy
stuff...

Yesterday morning I was busy seeping a couple Lipton Green tea bags in my Thermos while talking to an Afghan friend I work with up here in Canada.

I asked him, �Hey XXX, you Afghani�s like Tea right?�. He just lit up and basically said �Absolutely! We like green tea but not that crap you have in those bags.� LOL!

He then told me how they brew loose leaf tea in a pot and went on to say, �I�ll bring you a box of excellent green tea for five bucks.�.

I should�ve said yes right then and there but we got distracted. I think he might�ve been talking about Kahwah.

I�ll definitely be buying what he has to offer the next time I see him ...

Chifir... I would rather drink pot of crappy generic bag tea laced with Polonium 210 than suffer though a cup of that again...

From Wikipedia:
Chifir' is typically prepared with 5-8 tablespoons of loose tea (or tea bags) per person poured on top of the boiled water. It is brewed for 10�15 minutes without stirring - until the leaves drop to the bottom of the cup. Chifir' is often drunk without sugar by those that seek a caffeine high. Those that prefer to simply enjoy the Chifir drink it with milk. If the bitterness is not your cup of tea then sweets can be held in the mouth before or with the tea. If preferred with sugar; add 1-5 teaspoons of sugar, but no matter how much sugar you put in it you will always have a some bitterness after you drink it. Milk is often used to make the tea less bitter or to make it less acidic. It is to be drunk slowly, otherwise it may cause vomiting.

Good god, that sounds dire! Apparently there's always a way
to wreck yourself with any drug containing substance, given
enough persistence and creativity.

Here's my favorite; a lemon slice, one raw sugar and tea bag.

Earl Grey is really good tea. It is a black tea with a slight citrus-like taste. It is rather bold as well. I prefer the dried leaf variety that you have to filter, but there are many tea bag varieties about. As for "what's good", experiment until you find what you like. Thing about tea is that tastes vary widely. With regards to tea bags, I feel Twinings brews better than brands like Lipton and Celestial Seasonings. You can try out Teavana for the higher end stuff.

I'm mainly a coffee drinker but like an occasional tea, especially when I'm getting sick or feeling a bit weak or tired. I'm not a tea connoisseur; I simply brew, and sweeten. There is a community of tea drinkers that are all into presentation, preparation, and the whole nine yards. My wife goes to tea with her girls at a few of the tea houses we have around here. They are all into the high tea scene. I drink tea mainly for the benefits.

Enjoy your tea,

--T

Here's another. 4/5 water - brew for 2-3 minutes. Remove tea bag and add milk.(no sugar) French bread with marmalade. Yummy.

Your recommendations look great Sim.

With a mug that size I�d double bag it! I really like those mugs that are actually bowls with handles.

PS. I�m still really enjoying the Green Tea and Earl Grey ... going thru the stuff like crazy. I definitely still have to stop by a tea specialty store though.