/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>16927623
Electric kettle with temp control
Mug
$10 brew basket from finum (pic related)
+Can brew any kid of tea, in any brewing style including gongfu,
+temp dialed in for easy brewing of greens and delicate oolongs
+Minimal extra bits so you can spend more money on tea
+easy cleanup
-doesn't look fancy
-less objects if you want to get into tea brewing as a ritual
If you want to go the teapot route you have to pick 100ml for gongfu for 2cups for western brewing, something in between for Japanese greens

>>15692374
Hi anon, don't let some peoples enthusiasm for specialty tea gear scare you off, i would gently encourage you to try out looseleaf tea.
The only pice of equipment you need is a finum brew basket (or just a stainless steel infuser basket) with that you can brew any kind of tea under the sun in a mug. Don't use one of those tea balls they suck.
As far as teas to try, Upton Tea has an "intro to fine tea" sampler that covers the general areas. Or look on yunnansourcing.us at black teas, they are just starting to restock for the year so pickings are a bit slim, but everything is sorted by popularity and the descriptions are pretty accurate so it's easy to find something that sounds tasty.
I really enjoy the caffeine effect of tea vs coffee because it feels smoother and less jittery. I'm not shure what to suggest for stronger teas, but i think you should find the transition between coffee and tea pretty easy, and the easiest way to get up to coffee leaves of caffeine is to drink more tea.

>>15664389
Im not sure ehat the exact ratio is for Japanese greens, you would measure how may milliliters of water you mug holds and then look at the recommended grams per ml.
O-cha recommends .6 grams (dry weight) of sencha leaf for each 30 ml (one fluid ounce) of water
https://www.o-cha.com/make-green-tea.html
Pic related is one of the brew baskets i mentioned, they are much better than tea balls of those teabags you fill yourself because they are very big and that gives the tea room to expand and swirl around, the very fine mesh is also very good for deep steamed Japanese green teas since the leaf can be broken up very finely and they would pass through more coarse filters.