/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>6026798
How serious of a hobby are you looking for, this post
>>6026822
is a good example of how serious the hobby can get, even though that anon suggested it jokingly.

If you want to absolute most entry level loose tea, I would recommend David's, Adagio, Upton, and Harney and Sons, if you want to get more into it, then I recommend the following.

Verdant Tea for super fresh Chinese tea - small selection
Teavivre for more Chinese tea - not as good, but bigger selection, some good teaware

Mandala tea for some good pu-erh, pretty good selection
Misty peaks for really good but expensive pu-erh straight from a small family farm in china -super small selection

Taiwan Tea crafts and Beautiful Taiwan for Taiwanese tea.

Den's Tea for a good beginner level Japanese tea vendor
Hibiki-an for more expensive Japanese tea (overpriced tea, great teaware)
O-cha or Yuuki-Cha if you are fine dealing with yen


camelia-sinensis has a huge selection of pretty much everything.

Butiki is also a decent website, cheap, with a big selection, not the highest quality but they have a lot of less common stuff.

Just buy a finum brew basket, a cup, and a thermometer and a bunch of tea from different websites. Find out what kind of tea you like an go from there.

>>5936327
It just means steeping your tea in small amounts multiple times instead of one big steep. Lots of people of people do it, pretty much anybody who is into Chinese tea does it. Most people in China do it. There is nothing fancy about it, there is nothing pretentious about it, it is literally just a way to drink tea, and I personally prefer it, and I don't mind if you don't.

So please don't try and make up some weird scenario where I am trying to elevate myself above other people or that I have tricked myself into something ridiculous or that I "don't actually enjoy tea" or something.

>>5814868
>what you want is a real damned tea store where the owner can tell you where the leaf's from, when it was harvested, how long it's been sitting in storage and what the plantation operator's going to do for christmas this year.
I like you. Totally agree.

Personally, I love Chinese tea, not too into Indian, and when it comes to Chinese tea, Gong fu style is the only way, hands down. I haven't really ventured in to Yixing teaware or Pu'erh all that much, which are really popular nowadays, because I love my porcelain gaiwans and oolong tea too much.