/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>17555651
A reminder for those who weren't in previous threads or just forgot: Since Vahdam got shilled into the pastebin, I'm doing a comparison with Upton to see if they're really decent enough quality to recommend. I'm doing a comparison between;
>Upton Original Earl Grey vs Vadham Earl Grey Citrus
>Upton Organic English Breakfast Blend vs Vadham Classic English Breakfast Black
>Upton's Season Pick 2021 First Flush Darjeeling vs Margaret’s Hope Muscatel Darjeeling First Flush
>Upton's Season Pick 2021 Second Flush Darjeeling vs Margaret’s Hope Muscatel Darjeeling Second Flush
>Upton Halmari Estate GFBOP 2021 Assam vs Vahdam Halmari Clonal Assam Second Flush Black Tea
>Upton Old South Meeting House Breakfast Blend vs Vadham Nilgiri Breakfast Black
And also categories of 3 of Upton's specialized blends (FInest Russian Caravan, St. Isaac's Blend, CTC Irish Breakfast) and Vahdam's 10 Tea Chai Sampler. I will also be comparing their freebees they give out. I also got the Earl Grey Extra from Upton and Spearmint/Peppermint for myself, not part of the tasting, and the Smoky Souchong from Vahdam
1,884 grams total from vendors
1,150 from Vahdam, 734 from Upton
$94.41 from Upton, $129.57 from Vahdam.
That makes it 9 cents a gram from Vahdam, vs 8 cents a gram for Upton overall

>Earl Grey
In the initial impression, I very much dislike Vahdam’s packaging. For a company that advertises itself as green, the packaging is nonsense. They send the tea in a vacuum packed bag like an Oolong, however most of their teas are not rolled teas. I would assume this only works to crush the tea. Black tea doesn’t really need this freshness boosting method as far as I’m concerned, but it may make a difference. After breaking the vacuum seal, you have to pour it into another bag and apply your own label, and it’s a bit of a pain as the new bag has a narrow opening, not a huge problem for me but I can see it being a major problem for giving it to your elderly grandma or something. While I’m not brewing by manufacturer’s instruction, Vahdam offers instruction in both imperial and metric, while Upton only offers imperial, which I dislike as it can form bad habits of imperial measurement usage that makes expanding into Chinese tea an extra step. Both brewing instructions are similar, same amount of tea to water, Upton says brew for 4 minutes at boiling, Vahdam gives a range of 3 to 5 minutes at 90 to 100C. Upton notes it was packaged on March 4th of 2022 and gives a batch number, and notes it’s a product of Germany, Vahdam has no such notes.
Before opening the packaging, the Vahdam order came smelling strong when opening the box, tells me their factory packages most tea in the same area. Upton packaging has no smell. The Upton tea, on opening the package, has an absolutely lovely smell, like that of a freshly zested orange with the smallest hint of malt that is barely noticeable but certainly present. Opening the Vahdam package, the tea smells more like a perfume imitation of lemon zest, not entirely natural, and not very strong either. The malty notes of the tea are immensely more present and smell about as much as the bergamot. It almost reminds me of the smell of lemon heads candy, or those free lollipops you get from the bank if that makes sense.

>>17555673
For the brewing, as this is for the pastebin, I am brewing to pastebin instruction for black tea. Both teapots are 1 liter so I am doing
>8 Grams @ 1000 mL
However, as this is Earl Grey, I am taking my own liberty here and brewing it for 3 minutes.
I have pre-heated both teapots with near-boiling water and let it set for a few minutes to really ensure both are hot through and through. Poured the water from the kettle at the same time for the tea, and set my phone timer for 3 minutes. Should note I used Reverse Osmosis water with a freshly changed filter as well.
An immediate first impression is the Upton turned out noticeably darker. Now I absolutely ensured both were brewed the same amount of time, it took me 15 seconds to pour the Vahdam so I added 15 seconds to the Upton so it was both exactly at 3 minutes. It was noticeably getting darker faster during brewing as well. Both liquors are transparent, with the Vahdam having a bit more cloudiness to it.

>>17555677
>Vahdam
The tea itself has incredibly malty smells once brewed, very few of the bergamot notes I wish it would hit. Drinking it is a different story, I can not notice the flavor of the black tea in the slightest, instead I immediately get hit with this strong zesty bitterness. It actually lingers for well over 30 seconds in the mouth after taking a drink. When sipping, I get a strong smell of the zesty notes, however it still smells a bit…perfumey. Oddly enough it still smells like a lemon lollipop in a subtle way, and I can taste that flavor in the tea itself. This lacks a lot of the complexity I wish it had and am rather disappointed as I like Earl Grey. The tea’s liquor is also quite thin which is a tad bit surprising.

>Upton
Let me begin by noting in an effort to taste both teas purely, I had prepared a palate cleanser. However the Vahdam had such a strong lingering I also had to gargle brine and drink a few cups of water to remove the flavor from my mouth. Anyhow, the Upton tea is immediately a nice scent, a subtle yet distinct citrus scent that is complimented by a natural malt of a black tea, I immediately notice how much better and more complex the tea smells yet again. Drinking the tea, I actually can taste the malt of the tea for a second before hit with the flavor of bergamot, which starts weak but quickly grows strong then has the bitter zestiness (though not as bitter as Vahdam’s) you expect, before lingering in the mouth for some time, and I somewhat notice a vague chocolate note after some time. It simply tastes like an Earl Grey should. The liquor of the tea is also thicker, not as thick as one would expect from pu’erh but certainly a perceivable thickness. While writing this, I have noticed I have drank the entire cup, taking longer sips and genuinely just enjoy it more than Vahdam. I also notice it has very little “dust” at the bottom of the cup, while Vahdam I can see a bit more tea dust in the liquor.

>>17555682
>Takeaway
There is a very clear winner between these two selections. However, Vahdam delivered what it promised, they do not have an original Earl Grey, but an Earl Grey Citrus, and theirs certainly is very citrusy. Would I recommend both? No. I actually would rather have bigelow bagged Earl Grey over the Vahdam. With Upton coming in at $0.07 per gram and Vahdam coming in at $0.08 per gram, or $0.56 vs $0.64 per pot ($0.28 and $0.32 if you rebrew with the leaves) the pricepoint is similar, and the cheaper option wins out. If I were to score them with an arbitrary out of 10 score, Upton would be a 8/10 Earl Grey, everything I expect and it does it well, while Vahdam would be a 4/10 Earl Grey, it simply is below expectations for a loose leaf offering, while not awful, I would never recommend this for someone looking for higher end tea than they can get at the store, simply because it is not better than what you can get at the store. I’m sorry Vahdam boys, but you really need to work on putting out an Earl Grey that can compete. As this is the first tea I have compared between the two, I am hoping this does not set a trend, nobody wants a kilogram of inferior tea on hand.

>>17555687
>English Breakfast


Since I have discussed the packaging already, I will not cover it again, as they are the same. Opening the Upton, it does not smell much. It’s not malty, woody, earthy in any way. It does very much smell like black tea, but I can’t place my finger on the notes? The closest I can place is a compost-like smell, like composting leaves or wet treebark? It is not unpleasant, just hard to place. Opening the Vahdam is a different story, it is immediately an obvious dark chocolate smell with strong malty notes. It reminds me of a very good milkshake. The tea itself also looks quite different, with upton being either rolled or cut into the size of sesame seeds, while Vahdam is full (albeit small) uncurled leaves.

Brewing again at
>8 Grams per 1000 mL of water
This time at 2 minutes as prescribed by the pastebin as it’s a more traditional black tea. Both teapots were preheated and with the same kind of water as last time.


Immediate first impression is the Upton did not unfurl or grow in the slightest, while the Vahdam did. I’m somewhat disappointed in Upton for this, but it may still be good. Upton again turned out darker, this time being hardly transparent, while I can see the bottom of my cup, its just barely. Vahdam is a nice transparent cuppa.

>>17555695
>Vadham
The website advertises it as purely Assam Teas. The tea liquor itself doesn’t smell much, no matter how much I smelled or how close I was, I couldn’t get notes off it. The tea is slightly bitter, slightly malty, slightly wood, but slightly. The malt lingers on the tongue for some time but does quickly disappear. As the tea cools down I get a lot more stronger malty notes and definitely notes of chocolate and maybe an odd bit of spicy, but not overly strong, what I’d expect from an English cuppa. I can’t comment too much more, it just tastes like a higher quality English breakfast tea than what’d you’d get from say, Yorkshire. The tea liquor is adequate, and it leaves a dryness on the tongue.

>Upton
The website says it is a mix of CTC Assam and BOP Ceylon. The liquor has some warm notes of, well, drinking a nice cuppa on a cold morning. I can’t personally place any notes in the smell besides this, it’s very nostalgic, reminds me of drinking tea with grandma. Drinking it, it almost (just almost) reminds me of drinking Ripe Pu’erh - however it is distinctly black tea. It has this deep earthiness to it complimented by the light bitterness and malty undertones. This is good, but I don’t know if I want this in a breakfast tea, and I can’t say if it would even go well with milk. The liquor is very noticeably thicc, coats the tongue and I can feel a thin film forming in my mouth as I drink it.

>>17555702
>Takeaway
This one was tougher, largely because the teas are so different in qualities its hard to directly compare. Vahdam is more clearly what I want out of an English breakfast tea, so I am handing them this round. Does that mean I recommend Vahdam over Upton? No. Do I recommend both? Yes. These are both excellent teas that deliver a great experience. I actually as a control pulled out a bagged Newmen’s Own variant to see how both compare to an organic bagged tea, and I immediately can say they blow it out of the water, no comparison. The pricepoint is the same as their Earl Grey offerings per gram, $0.07 and $0.08 respectively, however the Upton does not come in a 100 gram size, which can be a downside if you feel like it is, but I don’t particularly mind. If I were to score out of 10, I’d give the Upton a 8/10 again. I desperately want to give it a 9 but the flavor is not what I expect from the label. It is very good, in fact I may order more of it to add to my rotation, as I only got the sample size of 15 grams (enough for two brews.) The Vahdam I’d give a solid 9/10, it’s not a perfect breakfast tea and I wasn’t absolutely blown away by it, I wish it was a bit stronger - however that will come with longer brew time. It is a very solid breakfast tea, and I’m adding it into my rotation.
I am glad to see such a close race after the blow-out of the Earl Grey.

>>17555706
>Halmari Assam
The packaging is much the same, however the labeling is a bit different. Vahdam is OR 387/GTGFOP1, Single Estate Private Reserve and actually had a Date of Picking of 22nd June 2021. Upton is TA159S from India, but doesn’t really say anything extra like the Vahdam. Opening the Upton packet, I get a strong smell of malt and milk chocolate and nothing else. Opening the Vahdam, it smells exactly like Malteesers/Whoopers candy. Incredibly malty chocolate smell, stronger but not overwhelming, extremely pleasant. The Upton leaves are somewhat chopped up and broken, but largely full. The Vahdam is unbroken and less uniform in color, larger leafs as well.
Brewing at
>8 Grams per 1000 mL of water
2 minutes as prescribed by the pastebin. Both teapots were preheated and with the same kind of water as last time.
>Vahdam
We keep up with the trend of Upton being the darker of the two. Vahdam has this kind of orange-red color. The smell is subtly like malt chocolate, very pleasant, even though I just ate before doing this, it’s making me hungry. Taking a drink, it’s rather malty, slight bitterness. The liquor is buttery in texture, and a slight buttery flavor permeates the tea. I can imagine it goes well with milk, though I dont like milk in tea. There’s this kind of fruity undertone, I can’t place it, maybe blueberry? It’s very subtle and hidden underneath. This tea appears first to be shallow but has some complexity and depth.
>Upton
The liquor is a dark, brilliant crimson with fruity smells. It’s still easy to see the bottom of my cup, but it almost looks and smells like a wine. Drinking it, it comes out with a floral bitterness, not much unlike some oolong, It almost has plum notes, but the floral flavor is overpowering and hard to determine underlying notes. I do find it enjoyable, the flavor has some depth, but its hard to distinguish at all. The liquor is thick but lacks the buttery notes of the Vahdam.

>>17555717
>Takeaway
Both are okay but again present rather differently for supposedly being the same thing. I never had Halmari before so this one I have no expectation on how it should taste. Of the two, I think Vahdam is more drinkable and more recommendable. Would I recommend both? Eh? I’d have to put the caveat you like Dan Cong Oolong to recommend the Upton, if you don’t like that (and plenty don’t) then it’s a very hard sell. Vahdam on the otherhand is a pretty solid tea thats easy to recommend if someone likes black tea. If I were to rate out of 10, Upton gets a 6/10, while Vahdam gets a 8/10. Putting Vahdam in the lead at the halfway mark between the 6 direct comparisons.

>>17555726
>Old South Meeting House vs Nilgiri Breakfast
This time there is no packaging issue with Vahdam, however this is because they only ship this tea in a big 340 gram bag, which is a bit crazy to me. Opening the Upton bag, I get a weak, subtle smell of dark chocolate and this kind of mustiness that’s a bit hard to place. Opening the Nilgiri it immediately smells of spices, like a black pepper scent? Its a bit hard to place but it is a really nice smell. As this is just comparing specialty breakfast teas, I don’t expect them to be the same. This is, however, the first review of the 2nd day I’m writing these out, and these will be my morning breakfast tea, so we’ll see how satisfying they are for breakfast.
Brewing again at
>8 Grams per 1000 mL of water
This time I’m brewing for 3 minutes to get the extra punch of a breakfast tea

>Vahdam
In a shocking twist of fate, the Vahdam tea for once comes out the darker of the two, but just barely noticeable. A slight smokiness scent comes out when brewed, which I find quite pleasant. The smokey taste delivers when drinking as well. This is what I love the most, a smoky tea that tastes like a campfire. It is not too strong, in fact I wish it was quite stronger. There is a light sweetness as it rolls across the tongue, however all flavor leaves as you swallow the tea with no lingering in the slightest. This tea reminds me of sitting and smoking my corncob pipe, both in the smokiness and sweetness, and that it’s very forward in its flavors with no lingering taste.

>>17555734
>Upton
The Upton tea has a slight roasted smell on the nose, not a smokey smell but as if it was baked in an oven, a different but very breakfast friendly smell. Sipping the tea, it starts with a sweet, almost cinnamon like taste (but without the spice of cinnamon), and a subtle almondy richness as you drink it, but disappointingly also it has no notes going down the back of the throat and disappears after drinking it.

>Takeaway
Vahdam. Vahdam wins this one handedly for me, to a point it soothed my displeasure of their only offering being a large bag. Is the Upton bad? Heavens no, it’s a great tea on its own and one I will surely drink. This one may come down to personal preference, but any tea that offers that smoke flavor I love easily becomes a top tea for me, as it seems so hard to find it anymore. Would I recommend both? Certainly! In fact I would say Upton follows a more standard approach to breakfast tea, and that Vahdam is something I’d enjoy much more in the evening. This one is probably the one where my bias will clearly show the most, but I am so pleased to have come across a smokey tea like this it is hard not to be biased. If I were to give ratings I would say Vahdam received a 9/10, would be a 10/10 if it was more heavily smoked for me, while Upton received a 6/10 largely due to it being a bit weak for my tastes, but add more tea and let it brew a few more minutes and you have a lovely morning cuppa. With Upton you are paying $0.14 a gram while with Vahdam you would be paying $0.07 a gram, making Vahdam the cheaper choice as well.

>>17555746
>First Flush Darjeeling
I’m sorry to say, Upton wins this one only because Vahdam never delivered it. If it delivers, I’ll do a full review, but Vahdam’s shipping method is awful. I have had to email them on their issues during all this, and I will have to email them about this as well. Weigh this heavily when you order, Vahdam has a really awkward, clunky, and frankly inferior shipping method. I got all my Upton tea at once a week ago, while I got the last few Vahdam teas today and still haven’t had the full order and have no idea where this last tea is as it has no shipping code to track. They gave me 4 tracking codes and all the packages are delivered, so who knows what the pajeets did to my tea. Vahdam deserves this loss.

>>17555751
>Second Flush Darjeeling
Let me start by saying I wish Vahdam treated all their teas like their single estates, because the labeling is great on them. The Vahdam is DJ 178/FTGFOP1 picked on the 8th of June, 2021, while the Upton is a TDB8S packed on March 4th, 2022, with no date of picking. The Vahdam also came with a flier telling me the exact elevation and location of the estate. The other single estate I reviewed earlier had one too but I didn’t really look at it. I’ll do some rundown, this darjeeling is grown on an estate established in 1864 at about 1500 meters and roasted in a 1930 chinese factory that was disassembled and moved to India. The estate grows chinese cultivars, apparently mine was a chinary, which googling is just what they call chinese cultivars anyhow. Also it says my tea was personally plucked by a 39 year old woman who’s husband is a slave laborer in Dubai. Idk if I personally buy the “this person picked your batch” thing entirely, but I been to Dubai so I like to think her husband was one of my taxi drivers or delivered my food.
The smell of the Upton is kind of a musky smell, but not very deep, don’t really have much to say on it. The Vahdam is much more complex smelling and just more intense. It again has a bit of musky scent but also an underlying dark chocolate scent that maybe has some weird notes of vanilla.
Brewing again at
>8 Grams per 1000 mL of water
Again at 2 minutes as prescribed by the pastebin

>>17555755
>Vahdam
Again a slight smokiness hits the nose, but with an underlying scent of plums or some other kind of dark, sweet fruit. The smokiness appears more as the tea cools, when its piping hot you don’t taste much but I let it cool to lukewarm and it got quite smokey - and we know how I feel about smoke. It has a light dark fruitiness to the liquor, and rounds out with a floral touch that disappears back into the smokiness. Wonderfully complex, though I had more complex, I really like the dynamic range of this tea. I can’t think of an occasion I would particularly want to drink or serve this over another tea, but I may be in the mood for it at some point.

>Upton
Back to Upton having the deeper color yet again. A leaf somehow made its way into the liquor, which I left for the photo, and am somewhat confused how this happened as my strainer is pretty tight, suppose it fell out when I pulled the strainer. The smell of this tea is much lighter, not weaker, lighter. It has a sort of fruity floral smell, like a fruit salad and some wildflowers blooming. Quite pleasant, almost incense like quality. Taking my first sip I think very floral, second sip I think “oolong”. It has this floral, kinda swampy quality I find in oolong teas. This is lighter than oolong, honestly a good thing for me as I do not enjoy oolongs of that flavor, but this makes it more pleasant.

>>17555761
>Takeaway
Upton has this odd first flush quality in their second flush that can make it enjoyable to some, but Vahdam has a simple advantage in its complexity. I may end up drinking the Upton more in the long run because its such a simple flavor profile that it’s easy to be in the mood for, but Vahdam is a great tea in its own right. This is frankly hard to compare, and as I write this I have a really hard time picking a winner. I simply would drink the Upton more (if I bought more than a sampler), while the Vahdam I think is a more interesting tea. I’m not giving out any ties, that’s lame. The Upton comes in at $0.19 a gram, while Vahdam comes in at $0.24 a gram, as well as Upton offering the same estate (however, with far less information) while Upton’s is a unique in house pick. I enjoy Vahdam’s information, even if I don’t entirely trust it. I give a slight edge to Upton, ever so slight as it is. Would I recommend both? Sure. If I would rate them, I’d give the Upton a 7/10 and the same score to Vahdam, 7/10. I feel this is going to be my most controversial take.

>>17555768
>Free Sample
Both companies offer a freebee for over a certain price. I don’t think I can directly compare them as Vahdam sent me a big tin of a rose flavored tea while Upton offered me an Assam. This category feels hard to judge, Vahdam sent a 50 gram tin in a fancy box with a magnetic closing lid, certainly meant for presentation, while Upton sent me a 12 gram sample. By quantity alone, Vahdam seems to be the better of the two, but giving me 50 grams of tea I don’t want is worse than sending me a sample of tea I love, so let’s taste it. I’m just brewing cup sized portions of 2 grams to 200 mL of boiling water for 2 minutes for both. The Vahdam certainly has bigger chunks with the cardamom and saffron and roses. The Upton Assam is rather dark and cloudy, while the Vahdam is light and cloudy. The Upton tea is just fine, a decent black tea. The Vahdam punches like a brick, it’s not my kind of tea but it’s not terrible. May be a good present for a girlfriend or an aunt that “likes” tea but isn’t autistic about it like us. With that, I think Vahdam wins the free sample round with a free sample worth $20, while Upton’s is worth $3.

>>17555774
>Specialties
I’m going to give a brief overview here because they aren’t comparable and aren’t competitors in this market. Upton specializes in western blended teas and is pretty dang good at it. Every tea I’ve gotten from this category has been wonderful, I particularly love St. Isaac’s Blend and Russian Caravan, while their Irish tea is great as well, I don’t think they’re bad at anything in this category.
Vahdam specializes in Indian chai tea, which I don't like and I will try to be impartial about it. The Vahdam teas are very cloves forward when cloves are present, and are certainly overpowering. It’s hard to taste complexity, even when the label says they are complex, usually only the cardamom or cloves are all you can taste. They have an Earl Grey chai that you can not even taste the bergamot at all. If you love the taste of cloves and cardamom, you’ll love their selection, but I think it turns out very same-y and hard to really recommend. I say Upton wins this category

>Website
Not to judge a book by it’s cover, but I feel its worth talking about. Vahdam is very ad heavy and trying to get a certain audience, meanwhile Upton is a bit clunky and crowded in a bad way. Both have some really odd weird design choices, but it’s easier to recommend a friend into Vahdam than Upton, simply because Vahdam is more modern and well designed. It feels like 90% of the time I have to search very specifically on Upton to see anything because their categories don’t overlap and you need to know what category of their several dozen to use.

>>17555775
>Results
Actually close, with 4 wins and 4 loses each. Upton simply does better at flavored teas, and their shipping is much more coherent which won them a round. Many of these were close, and both got a blowout each. I did not intentionally make the results so close, and when tallying up the results I thought for sure Vahdam was in the lead and I’d be writing a sad story about Upton’s loss and needing to remove it from the pastebin. I still have some qualms with recommending Upton over Vahdam after this, because Upton comes with some odd caveats due to their large catalog, while Vahdam is simply more organized and consistent with the types of tea they sell. However, Vahdam’s shipping method is just plain frustrating and awful, never have experienced anything like it from a vendor, it feels like you’re buying from ebay with the way they send it. This is a big negative for Vahdam and something that I almost can’t get over personally, but I feel some would find it an acceptable caveat. This one thing is the biggest problem for Vahdam, as I’m almost entirely sure if they shipped everything together and I actually got everything that Vahdam would have won, or at least have a fighting chance to take the win in the First Flush category. It’s very hard to recommend to someone new to tea to buy from a vendor with a caveat “but you might not get it”, and while Upton has its own problems, I think due to the closeness of the race and the shipping fact, I would call Upton the better of the two. Whoever writes the pastebin may take what I wrote however he wishes, remove one or the other or keep both, up to them. I had a lot of fun drinking so much tea and now my black tea is set for the year. I probably wont ever do this again between vendors, but I’ll likely still do tea reviews as I get more teas in.

>>17555774
I got the same rose tea freebie.
>May be a good present for a girlfriend or an aunt that “likes” tea but isn’t autistic about it like us.
Sums up how I feel. Not big on flavored teas personally but I know those are like crack for girls and they're the target demographic.

>>17555664
>>17555673
>>17555677
>>17555682
>>17555687
>>17555695
>>17555702
>>17555706
>>17555717
>>17555726
>>17555734
>>17555746
>>17555751
>>17555755
>>17555761
>>17555761
>>17555768
>>17555774
>>17555775
>>17555780
Why are there street shitters in my chinese larp thread???
Nice work anon!

>>17555780
Thanks for the writeup anon

>>17555751
Thoughts on the Darjeeling? Or are you going to compare them when the Vahdam eventually arrives?
I may put an order in to both, it seems, hmmm.
Thoughts compared to Mariage Frere / Harney and Sons? I really don't drink this kind of tea, I'll probably keep a darjeeling, earl grey, and maybe a breakfast tea in the house because of >>17555817
>Haha cool anon you're into tea! Me too, I loooooove Earl Grey
>We don't do that here

>>17555817
Follow-up thought: I haven't done this yet, but I'm going to tediously pick out all the rose petals, cardamom peels, and saffron to try the tea itself. Maybe it will be less hit-you-in-the-face with only a lingering perfume from the tin. And $ave that $affron to u$e in cooking
$$$$$$$$$$$

>I’ve seen tea recommendation lists before, but usually they focus on popular teas or teas the author loved, while what I would have benefited from more was a list of high-information teas, where the author says, “you should try roasted oolongs, kukicha, hojicha & matcha green tea, and pu’erh because people tend to love or hate them, and you’ve probably never tried them before”.

What recommendations along these lines would you give, /tea/?

(from gwern.net/Tea)

>>17555780
Neat write-ups, thanks for providing this content for us. Feels like the Fullchea mini tuo gift bag experiment all over again. I have mostly avoided Indian teas over concern of flavour preference and price-performance ratio, not to mention ease of use with Chinese teaware. So, it is useful to see what I may have been missing out on or avoiding correctly. I'm personally not that big into smoky or excessively punchy teas, but a few of these seemed alright. Which ones were the most mineral or creamy in your opinion?
>Whoever writes the pastebin may take what I wrote however he wishes, remove one or the other or keep both, up to them.
I don't manage it, but this brings to mind a small conversation some of us had in the general recently. If the Pastebin is primarily intended as a resource for new people, vendors should be reliable, consistent, and ideally not exceedingly expensive or premium for most goods. That is, it should be decently approachable for people to use their services as noobs. I recommended Moychay's NL storefront to a Dutch associate of mine just getting into tea, just after checking the list. It was good enough for him that he bought from there at least twice, and had a great experience with shopping/shipping and so on. I think that should be the sort of experience any vendors recommended to noobs bring to the table, even if they have to wait a while for shipping itself. "No bullshit".
>Tfw my Chawangshop order is in shipping Hell, though.

>>17555673
>not double blind

DROPPED

>>17555677
Just starting to read this, thanks anon this is some high effort testing

>>17555891
I think everyone should try a baihao yinzhen, because they have a very simple inoffensive flavor profile, and because they so immediately different from anything someone coming from teabags would have ever seen or tried before.

>>17555847
I haven't tried the first flush because I had nothing to compare it too, and I only got a sampler so if I drank it I wouldn't have enough if the other arrived.
>Mairage Frere/Harney and Sons
Haven't had either, I was only doing this for the pastebin, I drink mostly Chinese teas. This was a bit on a whim because I wanted some Earl Grey and there was a debate in a past thread.
>Which ones were the most mineral or creamy in your opinion?
Creamiest was Upton English breakfast, don't really think any was particularly mineral
>>17555899
Couldn't get more people to double-blind it, wanted to though

>>17555892
I generally think there's an expectation that if you're posting in a thread for a hobby on 4chan, you're some kind of giga-autist and it's better to skip the user-friendly entry-level handholding. There's loads of other places to get that sort of thing. I'd argue farmerleaf absolutely belongs in the pastebin, for example, but he markets and sells basically exclusively to people who are hard core into puer, into tea processing, and are willing to pay a premium for more information on the tea and more of a guarantee of terroir.

>>17555780
A+ content. Head-to-head comparisons are interesting. Criticism of loose leaf tea quality isn't very common. I might do a few myself since I'm developing an autistic obsession with English breakfast.

I figured Upton would win at blends since I love the blends I've tried from them. In 2020 I got samplers of all their Darjeeling and was pretty disappointed. They did ship it all in a very nice cardboard box though. Vahdam seems to only recently have started doing this crazy shipping thing. Thought it was a fluke until you mentioned the same issue. All my stuff arrived so I wasn't really bothered by it. Hope yours arrives so you don't have to deal with Pajeet tech support.

>>17555921
Ah, mariage frere is in the pastebin, that's why I asked. I'll probably put an order into both and get duplicates of the ones that were close, thanks anon.

>>17555751
Very strange that vahdam ship in different batches like that. Did the packages come from different places?

>>17555935
You can always do a big dump review like this thread

>>17555947
As I understand they all came from India as the tracking info says they were received in like Texas and New Jersey ports.

>>17555780
Very nice writeup anon, i really appreciate it.
I don't think i will be removing either shop. If only because Upton continues to be the go to for sending people that want earl grey and breakfast blends. Vahdam does seem like they get some points if only because it's probably harder to buy bad tea from them since they focus pretty tightly on their niche and arent selling say green teas from china.

why do i never see anyome reccomending travel gaiwan sets to beginners? some sets on aliexpress offer a full tea set + tray for a very good price.

>>17555928
We get a surprising amount of noobies or just people that decided one day they wanted to try tea so i dlike being able to point them in the right direction but i also like to have the stores with more advanced or specialized inventorys, working on the pastebin has helped my fine a bunch of stores i never would have known of otherwise.
If farmer leaf not in there? Im pretty sure his European storefront is but maube i forgot his Chinese store, i will check.

>>17556009
Yeah, mostly my point is that it should include both, and that there be a tacit understanding that you need to expend some brain power to figure out what is what. Farmerleaf is in there, my point is just that I agree completely with that decision, but it's not a website I would recommend to someone who had been drinking teabags their whole life and showed up asking about tea.

>>17555928
>it's better to skip the user-friendly entry-level handholding.
I think I should clarify my thoughts. I mean to suggest that inconsistent products/QC and questionable order fulfillment should be barriers for inclusion in the pastebin when directed towards noobs specifically. Though, employing such metrics would disqualify a number of popular shop picks. The "pay for product now, pay for shipping later" autism for example is quite a pain in the ass, and yet many otherwise respectable vendors throughout Asia employ it.
>willing to pay a premium for more information on the tea and more of a guarantee of terroir.
Completely fine too, but when you have many vendors, and they aren't really categorized with regards to pricing or target audience, and everything is just splashed into one list, you have to ask what the target audience for the list really is. I'm not really sure at this point who it is directed to when it is so clearly far-reaching. If nothing else, the anons in this thread are typically easy to interface with, and generally open to helping with each other and noobs with picks.

On another note, does anyone know how long e-Pack EMS usually takes to update after the plane docks? It's been nearly 10 days, and all that happened is a 1:1 repeat about the plane docking. No idea what is going on. My Chawangshop order is taking quite a long time, probably more than Fullchea.

>>17556022
Oh yeah gotcha i agree. I was panicking for a second because sometimes i forget to add stuff that's really obvious but i see have both his shops.

>>17555761
Give us an update on this tea eventually after you drink it again if you don't mind. The Vahdam one puts "Muscatel" in the name but you didn't mention if it's grapey. That's the trait I'm looking for most in a Darjeeling and how I judge them, fuck all the other flavors.

>>17556037
Yeah, it could make sense to have a "start here" list. Have the yunnansourcing US link for US, etc.
I've had ultra fucked shipping recently, I've had stuff simply not be tracked. Good luck, who knows.

>>17556037
>I mean to suggest that inconsistent products/QC and questionable order fulfillment should be barriers for inclusion in the pastebin when directed towards noobs specifically
Really i would generally consider these a barrier for being included at all. If one vendor was suddenly screwing up orders frequently they would probably get dumped. Chawangshop is annoying but I'm willing to give him a pass because he worked hard to keep his shipping cheap during the batcoof shit, where some other vendors just doubled their shipping prices.
>EMS shipping
If you throw the tracking # in the usps website does it have any scans or does it just say that china post has notified them to expect a package? Once it has made it to customs it's easier to track on the USPS website.
Chinese tracking sites are incredibility annoying toe because they do shit like say
"The item has left the country" after it merely has gone through Chinese export customs and is waiting to get on a plane, it's technicality true but not a very helpful way to tell you what's happening.

>>17556049
>Yeah, it could make sense to have a "start here" list.
Yeah that's not a bad idea. I need to think about how i would structure it but i might give that a shot

>>17556043
Well I did its dark fruity, which I guess could be grapes

Hello, /tea/ long time no see
So I broke the lid on my favorite fkn gaiwan. Simply dropped it while cleaning it. I'm actually not that crushed, I have two more, but that was the daily driver for sure. My question is this: what should I do with a nice gaiwan cup with a nice matching saucer and cups? It would be a shame to see the rest of these go to waste.
The best I got is maybe trying to use the remaining saucer and bowl and use it as a cup instead of the little two.
and ffs why am I rangebanned on /ck/

>>17556147
>The best I got is maybe trying to use the remaining saucer and bowl and use it as a cup instead of the little two.
This is what I'd do. You could also pick up a mismatched lid and use it with that. Could try and glue the old lid, but that's usually a pain. Kintsugi is a huge meme.

>>17556071
>he worked hard to keep his shipping cheap during the batcoof shit
I forked just over $35 for my order last month. Vendors were charging even double that? I only bought from a few of the budget vendors before, so I never got stung with those exorbitant fees.
>does it have any scans or does it just say that china post has notified them to expect a package?
It has some scans, but only up to shipment of the package on the 24th of last month. Otherwise, it's "Origin Post is Preparing Shipment". Though, 17-Track suggests it has docked, and then lists the exact same message four or five days later. I'm used to buying from Ali, but never a big ~2kg e-pack EMS shipment like this, so I didn't know what to expect. I don't mind waiting, I just really dislike the misleading tracking notifications from Chinese shipment services when I'm paying so much.

On a last moment reflection, I think they just took a very long time to send out, and the message is the same with it being those 4-5 days going from port to port. No idea, I don't want to think about it much more. I'll just wait.
>>17556147
Use it as a filtering cup to toss leaf shreds in before infusing. Or, as a spare cup to drink from, waste cup, tea drinking problem cup, et cetera. You could use the tiny drinking cups as sauce dips/holders too, if you like finger foods, salads, etc.

>>17556071
>Chawangshop is annoying but I'm willing to give him a pass because he worked hard to keep his shipping cheap during the batcoof shit
in no way is Chawangshop's shipping cheap. praise him for his unique inventory not his shipping prices. my order from him last year was like $35 dollar shipping as well and was not cheaper than YS would have been at the time for the same weight at a similar shipping speed.

>>17556147
Congrats on the new cute little cup and two matching snifters.

Well I've ordered some tea from Vahdam, let's see if I enjoy Indian tea. Got the daily darjeeling, classic english breakfast, castleton darjeeling second flush, and the halmari assam second flush.

Any idea when yunnan sourcing US is going to drop their first flush?

>>17556407
Watch out for the shipping.
What convinced you?

>>17556461
Its already dropping
Wait til mid-april and they should have everything.

>>17556462
Tipping point? Probably classic english breakfast, if I can get a good tea that upton "should" do much better at from Vahdam, it's more convenient to buy it all in one place. I'll have to buy an Earl Grey from somewhere else but that's not a huge deal. From the flavor profiles I probably like I'm in it for the Darjeeling anyway.

>>17556407
Castleton is my nigga. Enjoy

>>17556464
>Its already dropping

they have nothing newer than last summer

>>17556527
https://yunnansourcing.com/collections/green-tea-spring-2022

Tf you talking about

How respected is Yunomi.life as a supplier among you knowledgeable lads? I was looking at places to get first flush greens this spring.

>>17556531
Yunnan Sourcing =/= Yunnan Sourcing US. The latter operates out of their North American warehouse and thus doesn't come with double the sticker price in shipping fees.

>>17556541
I missed the US
I never look at the US site so no idea. I'm going to assume in May

Have any of you tried GABA tea? Is it like drinking phenibut? Do you notice anything or does it just taste and feel normal?

>>17556554
It's just like drinking tea. GABA doesn't pass the blood-brain barrier. It has a unique leathery raisins flavor at least.

>>17556534
Yunomi is good, my only complaint is that you hwve to double check to make sure you are getting this years tea.
Anyway as long as you make sure whater your buying is fresh from this year they are good.

>>17556590
Actually looking again most stuff has the harvest date in the listing, it's just some of the weirder teas that dont, but it's in all the regular sencha listings and such

>>17556554
I would not expect anything like phenibut unless it was laced with something. That said, keeping in mind that there are different GABA oolongs, I've sampled one before, and it was pleasant. Surprisingly complex in all factors, but not too intense, and well balanced overall. If you want something to chill with, just supplement a liberal amount of L-theanine sublingually for some minutes before you take your tea, optionally after as well. I'm coasting on some L-theanine and a mix of some gentle teas earlier, and I'm coasting in my bed now. Caffeine / L-theanine stacks are the basics, but they're cozy.

>>17556608
what about if i crushed up phenibut and put it in my puerh

>>17556613
I don't think it would differ much from typical oral dosing aside from suddenly growing breasts, sprouting ovaries and a fresh vaginal canal, and getting an intense and nigh uncontrollable desire to throb tongues with another woman. I think some people dose phenibut sublingually as well, but it may be rather acidic and bad for your teeth (at least HCL).

>>17556608
Whoa, there's L-theanine pills? Maybe those can upgrade coffee to fix its major flaw.

>>17556554
Thr amount of gaba that is in gaba tea isint particularly high. And i don't know how much gaba will do on it's own, but it's tasty tea and easy to brew.

>>17556634
They pretty much don't do anything in my experience.

>>17556634
Yeah, i have used this shop before and liked them
https://liftmode.com/l-theanine-200mg-capsules/
Loose powder is cheaper but a hassle to deal with
https://liftmode.com/l-theanine-powder/#250g

>>17556634
literally the only thing stopping l-theanine infused energy drinks from being the top seller nation wide is one dumb FDA rule

>>17556634
Yeah, both pills and powder. It works well, but I personally recommend the powder. Cheaper, enables manual dose adjustment, and then you can take it sublingually for better absorption. I use L-theanine sublingually whenever I have a session or want to balance against the effects of a stimulant (caffeine). So, great for tea time, coffee, etc.

I personally just buy bulk bags of whatever is decent on Amazon, but LiftMode as the other anon suggested is a solid vendor. Actually, I'd like to know who is more readily stocking phenibut, since LiftMode only offers huge tubs of stuff as of late.

Why did nobody tell me Souchong tastes like latakia tobacco? This is marvelous!

>>17556835
Lapsang souchong is often noted to be a smoky tea, typically being dried in wood smoke. So, it is understandable that you might get notes such as tobacco. Which product specifically are you drinking?

Looking for some recommendations, fellow puerh lesbians. It seems like every ripe I've ordered in recent memory has been very woody, leathery, chocolately in terms of tasting notes. But I've got a craving for some pu that straight up tastes like dirt and mushrooms. Been a while since I've had a good one like that. Any favorites? I usually order from YS but willing to try someplace new.

>>17556862
Vahdam

Portafilternon here. Do you think its possible to make a matcha like product with a high end single dose grinder?

>>17555780
good job anon!
what are you thoughts on Smoky Souchong from Vahdam, i thought you planned on comparing it to Upton's Russian Caravan

>>17556920
>dirt
15 Years Aged Golden Melon
"10 Years Aged Rhyme" Ripe
2013 "Xue Ju Shu Pu" and Snow Chrysanthemum (think they no longer sell this)
not pu but
Three Cranes Liu Bao Hei Cha
Gao Jian Shan "Qian Liang Cha" Hunan
>mushrooms
isnt there actual mushroom teas? not just the cake shape but fungus infused, i dont mean the golden flower mold either

>>17556920
Yee on tea co
HK storage = delicious soil flavors, i got a sample of a cheapo ripe from them and its pretty damn good. Prices are in hong kong dollars so dont let that scare you away.
This is a good one, lil bit of smoke but just a hint
https://yeeonteaco.com/collections/puerh/products/2008-ripe-puerh-tea-brick-jinggu-factory
This is a decent price for some old ass tea
https://yeeonteaco.com/collections/puerh/products/2003-ripe-puerh-toucha-phoenix-factory
These broken up cakes are usually sort of a house blend of several different teas
https://yeeonteaco.com/collections/puerh/products/2007-ripe-puerh-cluster-tea?variant=19881530294342
This is the one i got a sample of, very nice ripe if you like that soil mushroom root celler vibe, really all the teas from this guy are
https://yeeonteaco.com/collections/puerh/products/best-taste-ripe-puerh-loose-tea?variant=19881522397254

Odds is the top mystery sheng
Evens is the bottom mystery sheng

>>17557556
>>17556920
He has raws too, if you email him you can order some 2010 dayi 7542 irc, some year around then
Also he has liuan and liubao
You should absolutely try som liubao if you haven't before
https://yeeonteaco.com/collections/black-tea/products/aged-ripe-liu-bao-tea

>>17557576
There wasn't enough of either for a pot so it's a blend of both, wish me luck

>>17555651
Anyone else likw bojangles tea

>americans
>in my tea thread
shiggy diggy

>>17557584
Pretty decent tea, the brown bag was fruity and the clear one was more herbal. Nice amount of bitterness.
Unfortunately 2 years old is just too young for me. I'm still firmly in the HK grampa school of thought that drinking young ripe is insane.
I have a couple 2016 raws on hand and i would say those are just about to the point where drinking them is a reasonable thing to do

I want to buy sone teas from W2T and farmer leaf but i basically have to plan on sitting on them for years before i will actually want to drink them. Looks like w2t has a few teas kicking around from their 2016 productions so maybe those will be old enough.
Does w2t keep their tea in kunming?

>>17555855
Update: I did enough for one cup. Pain in the ass just to get this much. Amazingly, it still smells overpoweringly of roses but at least there's a solid tea taste and darker color. It's so much tastier like this but the time it took was way beyond what I'm willing to do.

>>17556087
Another request next time you brew it... afaik no 2nd flush teas are smoked but they could naturally taste 'phenolic' which includes smoke aroma. Does it smell at all like band-aids or cloves?

>>17556661
>I'd like to know who is more readily stocking phenibut
Hard Rhino used to carry it, but checking it today I don't see it; I'd also like to know this

>>17557411
>>17557556
>>17557579
Thank you all for the many recommendations.

>>17555780
Vahdam offers third flush Darjeeling; Upton doesn’t. So it’s Vahdam for me.

3 Yorkshire Gold teabags for 32oz of water. Hopefully this makes my Arnold Palmer taste better today.

Sipping on a little ~year old cloud mist green from w2t. Thanks to the anon who was posting shit about freezing greens. Completely forgot I had this sitting around.
>>17556947
Bump. Somewhat serious question. I think I'd want to do it with a loosely compacted cake so I can pick out any stems or whatever. Seems dumb to fuck up a $600 set of burrs for a meme experiment. I know comandante recommends grinding tea with their hand grinders.
>Nitro Blade is an excellent grinder for both coffee and tea.Yes tea! The special burr geometry in combination with the highly inert stainless steel blades give you a tool to discover new flavor dimensions.

>>17558710
Matcha is ground essentially like flour, I don't think even turkish coffee goes comparably fine. Worth a try, maybe. I'll think about it / do some more research

>>17558761
Its the burrs from this, but in a single dosing custom build to way tighter spec. I wouldn't dream about shoving tea into it but its super clean since its hot swappable and ripe matcha on tap sounds sick. I could also just grind coarser than matcha and run it through the tea pf to see how that opens teas up.
https://www.voltagerestaurantsupply.com/products/ditting-k807-lab-sweet
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cahj6CWBm0I/

>>17558827
Super easy to clean*. Its like 4 thumb screws and an m6 torx to completely rip out both sets of burr carriers.

>>17558827
>I could also just grind coarser than matcha and run it through the tea pf to see how that opens teas up.
Matcha in many ways does not really have an extraction or brew process, though. Even something like turkish coffee, if filtered, would be noticeably coffee. You cannot really filter matcha. You're consuming the leaf itself when you drink it, that's where all the flavor is. If you've ever had protein power, or a meal replacement or something, you have a suspension of powder in water, and that's what you're drinking. It's not dissolved, it's not extracted, it's just ground find enough that the particles are distributed evenly when it's stirred properly. I'd go ahead and grind tea, but you're going to get something wholly separate from anything that could be considered matcha.

>>17558850
Ah, I should add, matcha is made with a flour mill. You can just buy these, and they aren't really that expensive. I think you'd probably want to go to a specialty shop if you cared, maybe buy some high quality matcha and sift it. I kind of expect you have have a set of calibrated filters like a kruve stack so you can plot the average ground size and find an equivalent grinder. In theory these are Japanese matcha stones hand chiseled one million times but every single agricultural society ever has built and used something comparable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-yiYQxVles

>>17558850
>>17558859
Actually, a quick search on the internet yields matcha being ground to within 1-5 microns, with a normal espresso grind being around 200 microns. Two full orders of magnitude difference in grind size, the short answer is that you simply cannot get something approximate to even the shittiest matcha with a burr grinder. Please do grind tea and brew it though, I'm curious to see what happens.

>>17558850
I'm talking about two different potential brew methods with different grinds. Not trying to make matcha in a tea pf with coarsely ground tea. Grind with burrs nearly touching and whisk with chasen, OR grind variably coarser to potentially "open up" the leaves quicker in the tea portafilter. I'm just theorycrafting until it gets delivered in may. Here's someones turkish off the same burrs. That's probably sub 200 micron while good matcha is like sub 20. I've got a 200 micron sieve so there may be some potential.

>>17558859
Lol. Those are literally stone flat burrs. Rough coarse breaking teeth feeding into finer finishing teeth.

>>17557701
why would you even attempt this

what are some good discord tea servers? ive heard communitea is kinda toxic and it seems a bit too big for me.

>>17555651
Teas I've tried tasted like hot leaf water. I like the more full bodied (can't think of a better word) taste of coffee bu I don't like the bitterness. What kind of tea would you all recommend?

>>17555651
Please how are these sort of cookies called in the US?

>>17560225
black tea, oolong tea, and puerh
the biggest thing is to buy loose leaf from a good vendor, teabags bring shame upon tea

>>17555687
Thanks for the reviews, sounds like an easy pick for my earl grey order.

>>17556572
>leathery raisins
Never heard this descriptor before but I like it a lot. I always thought of it sort of like roasted carrots or root vegetables, but the unpleasantness of the word "leathery" matches my opinion on the tea much more closely

>>17560225
Ripe puerh has a full body without being bitter, decent quality loose leaf black tea should also be pretty flavorful without getting bitter though. If you want a more roasted flavor specifically then a dark roasted oolong might be your best bet.

>Chawangshop tracking updated, picked up by local post.
>ETA: 19th, this weekend.
It is nice to get some good news on my shipment. I'll look into posting my journal notes on the new teas as I start tasting them over the coming weeks. May write up on a French green blend I've been sipping on lately, too.

On that note, are any other anons here getting some shipments in soon? I imagine some of you are buying or about to, considering fresh greens are in season. It still feels a bit weird to completely disregard the season and buy mostly older or fermented stock, but hopefully these teas turn out to be worth the investment.

>>17560225
Liu bao.

fibonacci brewing

>>17560826
I'm ordering soon but I'm frantically switch between the 12 different orders i want to make trying to decide which one to make, HK storage from yee on tea, some raw from w2t, some liu bao from purple cloud, Japanese teas, wuyi oolong.
I will probably just end up buying some random ripe from fullchea and some cheap roasted ooling out of frustration

i am drinking some oolong tea

>>17561247

>>17560250
>>17560332
>literally looks like fucking animal poo
>call it puerh
what did they mean by this?

>>17560989
If really uncertain, but you know you like greens, perhaps you should bank on buying JP greens now, and then getting some decent bang-for-buck teas from Fullchea later on. The investment won't be as big as juggling all those other vendors, and you'll get to participate in the greens season. I'd probably have done this same if I didn't want to suckle on the juicy nectar of old lesbian leaves more.

>>17561254
damn that looks good.

what does /tea/ think of T2?

>>17556554
Tasted good, I did notice that I got more sleepy after drinking it but likely placebo.

>>17561306
Tea 1 is better. The sequels are never as good.

Why does fruit tea smell better than it tastes?

New order coming in. Waddaya think?
With all those obscure oolongs and stuff I still like my classic black and green teas best.

https://twitter.com/heyitssharla/status/1504109967086784515

>>17563290
Lol, was this in Japan? At least it looks like the only casualty was some shitty black tea fannings.

>>17561251
what tea would the little animes drink

>>17563514
Japan consumes an absolute shitload of this mediocre bottled tea. Pretty much their entire production is sencha that is machine harvested and then bottled. ~80%

I’m going try tea made with bottled water

Favorite caffeine free teas for a noob

>>17563663
Well that’s just ew

>>17563663
What brand?

>>17563750
I tried with Evian

>>17563755
You made a critical error.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhuc6qOGNPc&t=120s

>>17563778
Oh no...so the best is closes to the red circle?

>>17562419
Because you smell it when deciding which one to buy, you don't get to taste it.

>>17562708
Should be fun, those dancong oolongs are very aromatic and floral the smell can fill a whole room. If you have problems with the green bi lo chun being bitter use as cool water as you can, like 70°c or 80°c

it's that time of year, /tea/

what first flush are you getting and where are you getting it from?

>>17563886
If you want the ideal water, buy a distilled water 1 gallon jug at the grocery store for about $1, pour into a measuring cup about 750ml, then top off the jug with Evian. At least that's the theory. Personally, I use tap since it's usually OK in my area.

>>17563955
Evian and those other brands are way too variable for that to work, they just filter and bottle municipal tap water and they have dozens of bottling sites in the USA alone so what your local Evian is like depends entirely on what bottling plat it comes from and what the municipal water they use is like. Unless they add minerals or adjust the water to some standard mineral content but i dont think evian does.

>>17563713
If you are in the us go to mountain rose herbs and buy whatever herbal tea they have that sounds good. They also sell fill you own teabags to use with the loose stuff. They have they best price to quality ratio for organaic herbal tea. Aslo just buy bulk loose herbs especially chamomile and brew that.

>>17563959
I think they're one of those spring water brands that ships water across the ocean
https://www.evian.com/en_us/what-is-spring-water/water-attributes/

>>17563713
Upton's Rooibos Chai is my go-to. Really just go on your favorite tea vendor and look at their top rated tisanes, maybe get a sampler.

how the fuck do people sell mail-delivered yixing pottery


I'm supposed to trust UPS or whomever to handle a box of *shaped and unfired clay*??

>>17564021
It is fired its just not glazed.
I haven't had issues but im sure there is damage occasionally, the Chinese make the cheap cardboard pillowboxes and most of the stuff ive ordered gets shiped in one of those and then wrapped in a bunch of bubblewrap.

>>17563778
>How you've been making tea WRONG your entire life - BBC
Yeah I think I'll stick with 0 TDS clean tasting water, thanks.

>>17563946
YS
>Fuding Yin Hao Jasmine Flowers 100g
>Fancy Grade Long Jing 50g
>Honey Nin'ger 50g
>Charcoal Roasted Gan De Village Tie Guan Yin Oolong 50g
>Traditional Smoked Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong 50g
>Light Roast Premium "AA" Tie Guan Yin 50g
>Da Hong Pao "Big Red Robe" Wu Yi Shan 50g
Yuukicha
>Biri Shusen Tokoname Teapot
>Happa Banko Yaki Houhin Teapot
>300 grams of Sencha
>100 grams of Kamairicha
>50 grams of Gyokuro
>200 grams Genmaicha
>100 grams Hojicha
>200 grams Bancha
Can't say which because idk which are going to come in

With my 1884 grams from earlier that should get me to 3134 grams which should last me until next year, on top of the roughly 2 kg of Pu'erh I still have

>>17564086
Zero tds makes awful tasting tea. You should at least try using the recommended mineral concentration before dismissing it as shit.
The BBC retards making clickbait using some actually good information from people that know what they are talking about doesn't invalidate it.

>>17564104
TDS tastes bad in any amount. I don't know how you guys drink that swill after knowing there is something better out there.

>>17564114
>TDS tastes bad in any amount.
Water is a solvent. What do you think tea is?

>>17564114
Sorry you are just wrong. I drank reverse osmosis water exclusively for years and water with a pleasing mineral content tastes better. The fact that lots of water has far too high a mineral content and does not taste good doesn't change that.

>>17564157
That's exactly my point. I want to taste the water (which should not taste like anything) and the tea. Why would I add other minerals into the mix for no reason?

>>17564159
Adding mineral content fundamentally makes water taste less like water. You are adding something that wasn't there before. If you have a particular taste that prefers minerals because you like flavored water that's one thing (I enjoy a squeeze of lemon in water on occasion too) but don't pretend having zero TDS makes awful tea. Why not start adding other shit to my tea? Where does it stop?

>>17564198
RO or heavily filtered water doesn't extract properly. It's not about flavoring the tea.

>>17564205
I've tried RO vs. non-RO, it tastes different but it's not better. The RO water makes a cleaner tasting tea.

>>17564231
You're potentially the only person in the world who thinks this.

I add salt to tea

>>17564236
Yeah I'm sure I'm the only person in the world. Enjoy your flavored water, I'll be over in my corner drinking actual tea.

>>17564256
>flavored water
That’s literally what tea is lol

>>17564268
You know what I mean, don't be obtuse. If I dissolved table salt and sugar in water before brewing tea it would unanimously generate a negative reaction in this thread. It would still be "tea" but the flavored water would take away from the actual taste of the brewed leaf. It's the same principle with the other dissolved solids you want to include.

>>17564283
tfw he doesnt drink tibetan yak butter tea stew.

If I'm doing tea western style, and I want to get multiple infusions out of it, for how much time are leaves going to be safe? As in healty, no bacteria, no molds?

>>17564359
Overnight is fine, generally, I rarely do it though.

How is rooibos tea?

>>17564373
It doesn't have any psychoactive substances unfortunately

>>17564359
You could unironically go for a few days in some scenarios. I don't recommend it, especially with the particulates in teabags, but it's an option. You'll probably not have as many infusions with western style anyway, so you should just enjoy your tea fully, and maybe consider coldbrewing the leftovers if you want to be economical. I do that all the time, and I almost exclusively do gong fu.

>>17555651
Since it appears you have forgotten, I will remind you: THIS IS A FUCKING FOOD AND COOKING BOARD. LOOK UP, FOR GODS SAKE. /CK/ - FOOD & COOKING. READ IT AGAIN. /CK/ - FOOD & COOKING. ONE MORE FAGGOT. /CK/ - FOOD & COOKING. DOES IT SAY DRINKS ANYWHERE IN THERE? NO? IT ONLY SAYS FOOD & COOKING? WELL THEN THAT MEANS ITS A BOARD FOR FOOD & COOKING. GO TO THE FUCKING DRINKS BOARD IF YOU WANT TO POST ABOUT DRINKS, AND FUCK THE FUCK OFF.

>>17564529
Please stay in your tobbaco containment thread, thanks

>>17564529
This general has been up for years

Looking to get some new blacks this spring from YS. Last year i got yunnan gold and nin'ger, what are your go-tos?

>>17564758
Nothing purple, the black tea cakes he makes are usually prerry good.
https://yunnansourcing.com/collections/black-tea-spring-2021/products/feng-qing-china-red-yunnan-black-tea
Some kind of black tea made with assamica, nothing too expensive
And grab a box of this
https://yunnansourcing.com/products/2021-xiaguan-hong-cha-feng-qing-black-tea?_pos=1&_sid=c3b8a7327&_ss=r

>>17564576
that doesn't not make it a den of effeminate faggots larping as chinese

>>17564888
And yes its fine that the xiagauan is a year old. It's actually good for it to be a year or two old. The age slightly enchances the flavor.

>>17564758
https://yunnansourcing.com/products/yi-mei-ren-wu-liang-mountain-yunnan-black-tea?_pos=2&_sid=99172281b&_ss=r
This is a good daily drinker, very smooth, slightly fruity. I like Yunnan black teas in general though, not saying this tea is the greatest shit ever but I would order it again.

>>17564903
chinese teas are pretty good anon, you should try them

>>17565005
no. i drink normal tea bags like a normal person. if an anglo offered me chinese tea (probably accompanied by an autistic explanation of the tea) i would laugh at them. even the chinese don't get as autistic over tea as you faggots

>>17565034
Teabags became the main one to drink tea after WW2 created shortages though
Its like wartime rationing for no reason

>>17565077
Not that anon, teabags are popular because they are easy and people are lazy.

>>17565089
I never understood this. I felt this way when I realized you made Kraft mac and cheese with milk. Normal mac and cheese has four ingredients. It saves so much time to add a packet instead of butter and flour? And stirring in cheese? I don't see how. You stick a bag in a mug instead of leaves in a pot, and this is so revolutionary that it's transformed the industry? I just don't understand at all.

>>17565238
People are lazy

>>17565077
>>17565238
>Grug no understand why people do fast and convenient thing.

>>17565261
>>17565238
>>17565089
>>17565280
Teabags were invented decades before they became the standard, Orson Wells in the late 1940s says the standard cuppa is loose leaf and even the Russians and Arabs didn't switch to teabags until recently.
If it's just a convenience thing everyone would be drinking nescafe instant coffee and not using at minimum a drip machine

>>17565285
>If it's just a convenience thing everyone would be drinking nescafe instant coffee and not using at minimum a drip machine
Hate to tell you buddy but everyone just uses kureg machines now.

>>17565324
I only see those at banks, visiting people's houses or in workplaces I always see a drip machine or a percolator or sometimes a french press. Only person I know with a personal one is my rich aunt in california

>>17565285
everyone does drink nescafe. normal people don't get autismal over coffee and tea

Should I just buy 50g each of 1 black, 1 white, 1 green tea from yunnan sourcing and call it a day? Also some tea cups and stuff. Any other websites I should check out?

I’m a tea noob and I’m looking to try a few varieties.

>>17565415
try some oolong too

>>17565415
Yeah that's a pretty good start

>>17565415
Purple cloud tea house is us based and has quick shipping. Grab some liu bao. Usually throws in samples too.

>Long-awaited shipment of tea is coming in a few days, but starting to feel the sore throat seemingly indicative of a cold I have had twice this year already.
>Been preemptively piling on the ascorbic acid, citrus, honey, zinc picolinate, and salt water gargle to mixed results.
Save me from this Hell, fellow leaf lesbians.

>>17565587
>leaf lesbians.
A hwhat now?

>fellow leaf lesbians

>>17565415
If you are getting good tea you should grab a 100ml gaiwan to be able to brew it "properly"

>>17565587
>fellow leaf lesbians.

>>17565415
>noob
Watch out your brew temperatures
Beware of water hardness

Is it normal for a Fu brick to be closer to some odd green tea than to some ripe puer?

>>17566240
What fu brick is it? They do seem to have some pretty wide variations in taste depending of what tea they are made with and how its processed. I haven't really had old green tea but ive had some fu that i imagine is what you are talking about.

>>17565587
Get yourself some echinacea. Brewed up with elderflower it's a tasty and somewhat potent immune-booster.
Godspeed sheng sister, we're behind you.

Do I need a matcha bowl if I already have a broad, handleless teacup? What in particular does it need to be fit for the job?

>>17566358
It's the 2018 mojun Yi hao fu brick from ys. It's tasty and all but always I get disappointed because I expect a thick dark brew.

>>17566240
I would say Fu Zhuan is closer to semi aged more mellow sheng than to ripe puerh but that's still not a great comparison, Fu is is really kind of its own thing.

>>17566481
It's probably just not as heavily fermented as some are before the material gets pressed

>>17566452
No, any bowl like cup will do fine
The matcha ones are usually heavy so you don't knock them over when whisking and they are a good size and shape, but really anything is fine. Specialized teaware like that is usually just something to pick up if you want to get something fancy. If you feel like looking there are hundreds of handmade matcha bowls on etsy, some pretry damn cheap but again it's just a nice decoration really.

>>17566240
Try using more tea and or longer brews, you can't really overbrew those teas so just blast them with hot water and minute long infusions. Aslo cinsider simmering, 8-10 grams in 1.25 litres of water, bring the water up to a boil, add tea, turn down temp so it's just simmering and let it go for 10 - 15 minutes

>>17563943
Yeah.
>>17563943
>you have problems with the green bi lo chun being bitter use as cool water as you can, like 70°c or 80°c
My last order was from TaiwanTeaCrafts. I had some biluochun from Taiwan previously and it indeed tasted very bitter and I thought it was just bad tea. I wonder if I ruined the whole batch by just using wrong brewing parameters.

>>17563529
Still tastes better than 99% of european bottled """ tea""" that doesn't even deserve that name because it's just cheap extract with chemicals.

>>17566778
Okay, I said it was mediocre bottled tea, and it is. It's uninspiring, it's bland. It's not terrible, but it isn't good.

>>17564758
High Mountain Red Ai Lao Mountain Black Tea

>>17566704
Stronger brews don't make it better, thicker or tastier. It's not bad per se, it has a subtle, quite unique and pleasant bubblegum/cherry aroma, surprising for such a dark dry material. I should just store it in the green/white/light oolong section instead of the ripe puer one.

Got any good views for your afternoon tea?

>>17567569
Just cleaned a pitcher for some lazy afternoon grandpa brews. Need to clear out 400g asap for the new w2t ripe snoozefest as my pumi is full to the brim.

>>17556407
2/3 of my order arrived promptly! Starting with the Classic English Breakfast, it's brewing now, I'm doing 2.5g for 300mL for 3 minutes. Just see where that takes us, I guess. Baffling shipping, as that other anon said. One third of my order is simply gone, I'll assume it just arrives later. The packaging is again, annoying. It comes vacuum sealed, and there's a separate bag with a label you can apply, I've just moved it to a glass jar. The packaging is also perfumed, which is gross, it smells like a cheap prostitute. Very unpleasant.

The tea smells fresh, though, the brewed leaves are very nice, a lot of sweetness in the aroma. Not much comes through to the tea, though. Astringent, so far, but I'm going to let it cool a bit.

>>17567678
As it cools, the astringency pretty much leaves. If you drink any young sheng, it's not something you'd ever stop to consider. After the first few sips, I was considering brewing cooler, but I doubt I ever will now, I don't think it needs it. The tea itself improves a lot as it cools, though. It's not something I'd ever call complex, but it has a good body. No real aroma, no real high notes. I couldn't complain if someone added milk to this, there's really nothing to drown out, and I guess that's the point. I'd like to call it mediocre, but it's less than half the price of the next cheapest tea I own, and actually, at .07/g shipped, it's a very good deal. Once you take price into account, it comes back strong in the "Why wouldn't you buy it?" category. Nothing really unpleasant about it, and I really have little to say about the taste. Does its job, I may end up buying more, we'll see if it grows on me or not.

>>17567569

>>17565587
>A woman that is attracted to women, but also is addicted to atleast one of these items: Worm on a string(s) , Plants (Of any type), Pokemon / Anime (of any type). This collided with being a Lipstick (Feminine) or Butch (Masculine) Lesbian, as the flag uses both (Non-offensive) Lipstick and Butch flag in the Lesbian Leaf flag.
what in tarnation

sorry lady I suck cock and gargle cum, I can’t be a lesbian

>>17567714
Second pot is much the same as the first, but a bit weak. I'd probably do 4-5 minutes instead. Impressive endurance for black tea, I don't think it will do three though.

Anyone ever buy from Darjeeling Tea Botique?
Www.darjeelingteaboutique.com
Not shilling for then, just want to know buyer experiences. Trying to find autumn flushes without going to Vahdam, and Upton has none.

>>17567714
>>17567872
Pot three isn't worth drinking for how much this tea costs. Two is potentially fine, I may or may not bother when I do it again. On to the Darjeeling

>>17567733
Gorgeous

>>17567714
If you're not opposed to milk you should give it a shot. That's how it's intended I think.

>>17567938
I regularly drink Darjeeling. I wouldn’t do more than 2 infusions. You just get weak tea if you do.

>>17567958
Do you do two regularly? What steep times do you use?

>>17567966
I follow ISO standards; 6 minutes brew time, regardless of what tea I’m brewing. I do two infusions regularly to save money. I did a Third recently because I was trying to make Arnold Palmers for the next work day from a cup I brewed for breakfast but didn’t drink. Did a third infusion; big mistake!

>>17567714
Yeah I found it improved as it cools as well. When I was writing my review I sipped after writing for a bit and noticed it was better.

>>17567984
Saving money is definitely appealing with Darjeeling. I used to do 6 minutes then switched to 5. I've been throwing the leaves away after the first steep and using less leaves so I don't feel as guilty. But it does feel wasteful now that you mention it. Would never consider that third steep though.

These leaves smell WILD. I'm not familiar with any of this, but these are strong. Very earthy, kind of tobacco-y. Very strange smell. Liquor smells somewhat nutty, quite mild, but it certainly has a noticeable aroma. Very nice smell on the liquor, overall.
First sips are underwhelming, we'll see how this turns out as it cools. Pretty bright, especially compared to the Assam, almost green-tea like.
>>17567984
Is this normal? I'm at 1g/100mL since I prefer stronger tea, I only did a 3:30 brew though.

Liquor feels kind of thin, no real mouthfeel to speak of. Absolutely zero, no astringency which I guess is desireable, a "clean" cup I think people would say. Weak body, there's somewhat of a raisiny flavor but it's faint. Light floral notes, somewhat grassy overall. I think they sent tasting notes, I'll look at what I'm supposed to be getting after this.

>>17568037
Are you drinking the Darjeeling right now?

I drink English breakfast, da Hong Pao oolong and Assam gold 2nd flush. Any recommendations?

>>17568060
Ah, yep, this is the Castleton Muscatel Darjeeling Second Flush.
One thing I will say, after finishing this pot, is that this FEELS like a good quality high altitude tea. It is my third total pot of tea, but I am JUICED. My metabolic process has been honed by drinking tons of puer as well, so it's not like I'm weak to tea.
Notes so far, this tea really smells amazing. The warm dry leaves smell great, the brewed leaves smell great, there's a lot happening. I'll probably end up brewing this either much longer, or adding much more tea, I'll see. I feel like these brewing instructions are for casuals who have a more sensitive stomach. Their tasting notes basically come down to sweet, citrus, nuts, and grapes. I didn't really taste any nuts, but I saw I wrote "nutty" on the aroma of the liquor. The big thing they want you to get is grapes, which I guess I should have understood from the name. I'll call citrusy as sufficiently "bright" although I certainly wouldn't call it peaches and apricots, which is what they also wrote. Tasting notes are mainly a meme anyway, in my opinion. The big takeaway I would give is that there is not even the faintest, tiniest twinge of bitterness. I somewhat enjoy things that are bitter, I don't generally like sweet things, so this isn't that amazing to me, but if I was the kind of person who added sugar to coffee I could see this being my favorite tea of all time for that reason alone.

Second pot is a less exciting version of the first, drinkable but I don't have much to say about it. A tiny bit more sweetness maybe. Not something I would call huigan, but it's there. Less bright, the raisiny fruit notes are more noticeable, maybe for this reason. I want to brew this stronger, basically.

>>17568108
Nice, I happen to have the same exact tea and just brewed an ISO standard cup, so cheers.

Didn't want to prime you with my tasting notes but I've been drinking this for a couple months. The muscatel aroma is essentially lavender plus a sweet band-aids kind of thing. It's a woodsy smell, contrary to tasting notes suggesting stonefruit. This might just be me but it reminds me of pink bubble gum or fake grape flavor, not table grapes since grape aroma is extremely faint unless you make it into wine. If you want to get the muscatel reference you might be able to find Chateau Ste Michelle Gewürztraminer or Barefoot Muscat for $8-9. It's a tiny bit bitter if you brew it to this strength so I usually add a tiny splash of milk. Definitely easy to drink regardless. I love the pungency.

>>17568319
Cool, I'll probably brew some more in an hour or so.
>2g/mL for six minutes
Wow they're not fucking around, huh?

>>17568352
I was scared of using that much leaf. Turned out fine though, just more astringent. Steep #2 is watery tasting but still has the same flavor. Not going to bother with a #3.

If you can handle sheng puerh this is a pretty nice way to taste the tea. This is how the blenders do it after all. The brewing instructions are what I use for milk drinks which is pretty casual.

There was a 1st flush Darjeeling I accidentally under-steeped once and it tasted exactly like peaches ("stone fruit") but tasted grassy when brewed normally. Interesting how the flavor can change so much depending on strength.

>>17567636
Went with some laochapo from last march's w2tclub. Shit takes up way to much space when its loose.

>>17568460
Yeah, waaaay more flavors come through brewed like this. I generally think western style brewing is less used to have good material to work with, and shies away from stronger brews because they simply end up too astringent. This is noticeably astringent, but it's laughable compared to some sheng I'd drink regularly. Way more body, whatever they're calling the muscat flavor really comes through. Very noticeable sweetness, now. Overall a solid tea, very cozy. I might settle at a mid point for everyday drinking, but this takes being brewed strong very well.

this thread smells like poo out of the loo all of a sudden. where is the larper accuser when we need him? perchance....

>>17568660
We drinking pajeet tea waiting for the spring harvest, this place going to be full South CHinese and Japanese larpers in a month, including me.
But for now we remember the colonies with the girls

:(

>>17568742
F

>>17568742
IT'S
FUCKING
OVER

>>17568742

>>17568742
Why is it always the lids

Is it really time to buy first flush?

>>17569355
Some of it is released, but not all
Shincha is still a month off

>>17569377
okay I am a weeb green tea drinker so wake me up for shincha and maybe 明前茶 if I can afford it

>Vahdam has Indian white teas
I wonder how bad of an idea this is.

>>17569411
From what I've heard Indian white teas are actually pretty good. Something about the climate makes it easier to make, I forget.

>>17569471
Sounds like pajeetpaganda to me.

Is Chinese first flush all green tea?

>>17568071
Anyone?

>>17570680
Have you tried Ceylon, lapsang soucong, Yunnan black, Qimen black? Are you interested in further broadening your horizon?

decided to try this after trying yorkshire red
yorkshire red is really astringent compared to gold
i can drink gold without any milk just fine which is pretty cool

>>17570680
if you like assam try Black Gold Bi Luo Chun
Ning'er "Golden Honey Aroma" also seems to be currently popular

>>17570818
So it's pretty much a direct upgrade?

so what is the difference between gong mei and shou mei white tea?

>>17570964
Different average leaf grades, one is made with bigger leafs that grow further down the tea stems that the other one.

>>17570964
I honestly don't believe there is a difference when it comes to actually buying white cakes on the market, they are used interchangeably sometimes too.

babelcarp is such a cool website for tea

i had some aged white-label shou today that tasted straight up like camphor or mothballs and the old fashioned houses where you are like to find such things. its very nostalgic tasting to me, it strongly reminds me of exploring my grandparents place when i was a kid. if only i could go back that time of wonder. the tea also was also surprisingly low on the earthiness and woodiness by shou standards. its not something i would want to drink every day but its a nice tea for the occasional meditative sip. i really appreciate it for its unique character.

.../tea/ generals are tolerate...yet al/ck/ isn't...fuckin bullshit

>>17572770
*tolerated

>>17572770
>>17572832
This is a /tea/totaler thread. See yourself out alcho.

>>17572837
no, gay boy

>>17564373
having some now. cloves and baked beans, in a good way

>>17555651
Thoughts on Nioteas TV? His channel seems pretty informative but I cant tell if its BS or not

>>17573048
Seems like reasonably informative content. I checked out a few videos and didn't hear anything that was obviously bullshit. Suspiciously high production values, that makes me somwhat weary.
I haven't heard of his shop before which doesn't mean much since i don't drink much Japanese tea. Just remember that his vidoes are ads for his tea business (like most of the tea content out there) and good videos doesn't mean he has good tea (it doesn't mean he has bad tea either) anway point is make sure you try out several different vendors over the years.
Also i don't like that he makes all that ticktok content but i guess it's just the reality of marketing to the youths so i guess i won't hold it againt him.

>>17573135
oh no I don't want to buy his tea, but he pumps out so many informative videos I was wondering if he's shilling or telling the truth

Who should I try someone Japanese greens from?

>>17573196
I heavily heavily suggest you wait a month or two for the Shincha harvest because greens dont store well long term.
The pastebin has some, I've done Ippodo and their matcha is good, I'm planning on doing Yuukicha but nobody seems to talk about them so idk. O-cha's selection is kinda poor and their shipping high.

The japanese side of the pastebin is a bit sparse, even though this general started on /jp/ We don't even have japanese brewing instructions

>>17573196
standard "good but not paying $30 for custom shipping" is Ippodo

>>17573229
Sounds good, thanks. I saw another anon talking about Yuukicha so I was browsing some stuff there also. When is the relevant Japanese harvest usually? I have never bought right at the start of season which I have heard is best for greens, but just got some 2022 stuff from Yunnan sourcing.


Ideally I can just mark my calendar for this so I am ready every year until I am dead.

>>17573266
Depends on the vendor and the farm. I'd say by May 1st everything should be available, most of it is picked in April so by May 1st it's pretty likely almost every vendor has it but some may be slow.

>>17573196
not the best brand, but maeda-en is my usual go to. comes in pretty quick

just tried black coffee for the first time and it was awful
can't believe people drink this stuff instead tea

>>17574172
Both are much improved with milk

Post your teacups. I'm in the market for something beautiful

Do /tea/ know anywhere to get a custom-shaped kettle whistle? I've a lovely kettle but, being Turkish, it lacks a whistle and its spout is ovular so typically cylindrical kettle whistles will simply not fit.

>>17574376
Stimulate the Russian economy

>>17574172
Just like people who say this about tea, you probably brewed it wrong.

>>17574872
We almost all exclusively use electric kettles and have for like 40 years now unless using one of those heavy iron Japanese kettles

I bought a gaiwan, but the edges are so round that I always spill the tea when filling my cup.
Did I buy a bad one or do I just need to train?

>>17576151
Post a pic?
Also regardless if its good or not, it's good practice to fill it with cold water a few times until you get the technique down.

>>17576151
You are probably using it incorrectly. A tip, if you hold the lid too closed to the sides, the pouring liquid may arc around, instead pouring more like a waterfall, and getting over your fingers. Open up the gap slightly more, and it should pour normally. Just notice that general gap, and you'll end up doing it right every time automatically. Try it with room temp liquid and no leaf at first if need be, testing gaps to see what pours best.

>accidentally brushed kettle against gaiwan AFTER filling it with water
>gaiwan has 0 fucking balance or weight and immediately tips over
>water and tea everywhere
>this is the second fucking time this has happened today
I'm about to murder a chink, I'm going back to using a teapot like a civilized person.

>>17576241
You're supposed to keep it on the saucer, which should lock it pretty well in place

>>17576245
A saucer doesn't change the fact that a cup with a 3" diameter at the opening and a lipped edge has a 1" diameter base. It's just bad design from the outset. Conversely, my teapot is wider at the base than the top and doesn't have any edges to catch and flip it over, the center of mass is low and it is sturdy.

>>17576269
I have never flipped my gaiwan so I have no visual reference how that happens.

>>17576279
If I apply a straight upwards lift to the lip, then it tips but corrects itself. Adding just the tiniest bit of lateral motion though will cause the whole gaiwan to wobble and spin since it's so topheavy.

So gaiwans are unstable, dribble when pouring, might burn your fingers, and you have to practice in order to use it. Why does anyone outside China use one?

>>17576330
Because you can save 3 seconds when pouring so somehow this makes the tea better or something.

>>17576241
To be blunt, how is this an issue of design and not an issue of user clumsiness? If you knock a cup or mug, it can tip over over too, maybe even break from the impact. Just hold the kettle slightly further away, fill up, and pull off. There is no need to be in absolute direct contact from kettle to gaiwan, and this wouldn't necessarily be typical for a teapot either.

>>17576330
They brew with a high ratio of leaf to water. There are teapots made for gongfu, if you'd prefer to use a teapot. "Gongfu" isn't "brewing with a gaiwan". I find the gaiwan to be a convenient tool for brewing tea, if you don't like it, you can obviously just use something else.

>>17576330
I honestly don't see how people here have struggled with them so much. It is lretty simple: leaf in, kettle pouring in, pull away, cover, pour. It is a very fluid and simple process, and I have rarely had issues with it from the beginning. Perhaps it is just a difference in basic fine motor dexterity, but if you can manipulate a writing instrument, this shouldn't be a chore. Using a gaiwan is not hard, just observe your results and consider how your form may not be stable.

I will note, as an ambidextrous person, I find it significantly easier to pour off with my left hand and pour the water with my right. Some people may find it useful to figure this out for themselves, too.

>>17575813
This. With the right roast and method, you can get coffee with the kind of flavour complexity you want. For me, it's medium roast drip SA.

>>17576330
easier to clean out than mini teapots

>>17576374
i like tiny teapots
theyre just more cute

>>17576340
I just try to tip over my teapot in any way I possible could. The thing is solid as a rock, it won't tip over. I've even dropped it and it didn't break. Best of all it's some cheap shit I found on amazon as part of a full tea set for $20, it's not even quality. Gaiwans are just that shitty. It's a reality of life that sometimes mistakes will happen, making the objects in our life resistant to that is just common sense.

The gaiwan's poor design is exacerbated by the fact that the tray I use has small slots for allowing water to pass underneath. These slots are less than a cm in width, they shouldn't affect anything, but the gaiwan's base is so tiny that it gets thrown off balance even more if it happens to get caught in one. There is no reason to design a vessel to hold liquid to have a 1" base. It's bad design no matter how you look at it.

The rest of my order from Vahdam has arrived.

Anyone here tried Steven Smith Teamaker tea?

>>17576383
Review anon here
Mine hasnt

Drinking the Halmari Assam

The warm dry leaves have a pleasant aroma, faintly fruity, they smell fresh, overall. The liquor has the strongest aroma of any of these black teas so far. Noticeably floral, a somewhat honeylike smell.
The body of the tea seems notably like the other Assam I tried, I think this is what they're listing as "malty". Very warm, pleasantly grain-like, good sweetness. Not what I would call "cereal" if you're familiar with coffee tasting profiles, though. It's noticeably astringent, but it has no real unpleasant lingering bitterness. It feels noticeably thick, but there isn't much else in terms of mouthfeel. I generally prefer tea like this. It has way more complexity than the other assam I tried, relatively faint but very pleasant floral notes, a bit of what I would call dried fruit. I could be convinced it had apricot notes, but they're very faint. Overall, this tea is very good, I might recommend this most highly.

Opening the tasting notes they sent, they call it malty, which I'll chalk down to "Assam flavor" unless I'm missing something, "soft floral flavors" which I'd agree with pretty much exactly, woodiness which really seems to me like just the mild astringency, and "lingering creamy sweetness" which I'm not really getting at all. Good tasting notes though, it does seem like they have a taster and not someone who is just making stuff up. So far I would trust these much higher than most tasting notes companies list.

Pleasant, although at 0.18/g they're into chinese tea territory, I don't know if this could win someone who is heavily drinking chinese black tea over. It does qualify as "good tea" to me, though. It tastes processed properly, it has no obvious off flavors, it hasn't been ruined by over/under oxidation, etc. It's good tea, and it has good complexity. If I drank more classic western style tea and I wanted something better, I would highly recommend this to everyone.

>>17576399
Yeah, the shipping seems to be a bad enough problem that I'd add a note in the pastebin if you decide to include them. I had to tracking for the second part of the shipment either. It arrived promptly, but it could easily not have, and there was no way to tell if/when it would get here, or a notification that it arrived.

Best tea if I like to spend all day gooning?

>>17576382
I've tipped my gaiwans slightly many times, but never so aggressively as you suggest in all my time of use. These are cheapshit gaiwans mind you, nothing fancy or fine.
>The thing is solid as a rock, it won't tip over. I've even dropped it and it didn't break.
So have I. I've dropped both of my porcelain gaiwans multiple times, and the worst that has come of it is a very tiny chip on the underside of the lid that affects nothing. Maybe if I had one of those too-expensive uberlight ones, it would be riskier, but that is hardly representative of most porcelain gaiwans.
>The gaiwan's poor design is exacerbated by the fact that the tray I use has small slots for allowing water to pass underneath.
How is this not an incompatability of your tray rather than incompatibility of your gaiwan? In fact, if it doesn't work well with the gaiwan, why are you pairing them as such at all, or not considering placement alternatives? I don't even use those revolting trays, I use it straight on my flat desk or a small flat plastic tray, and if I have the slightest liquid or leaf I want to pour off, I just have a small mug or bowl off to the side. Why not try reducing the complexity of your setup if it is not functioning well as a whole? I just think it is premature to claim design flaws without observing unison of your toolset together.

>>17576512
Even if I just used the gaiwan by itself on a flat surface, the same issue occurs. Even just brushing my hand against it will cause it to spin and topple over on occasion (thankfully this usually is after I've poured already so it's just wet leaf that sticks to the inside). It's 100% the gaiwan's fault, I've said this multiple times already but there is absolutely no reason for a vessel designed to hold liquid to have a base of 1" diameter while having an opening 3x as large. Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows to design things not to be top-heavy. This thing is extremely top-heavy even with leaf in it, there is no circumstance where that is okay.

>>17576465
That sounds great until the price comes up. How much better is it than the classic english breakfast?

>>17576538
Honestly? Quite a lot. The classic english breakfast isn't bad by any means, but it's a very very basic tea. You're really not going to get anything like the more subtle floral notes, or the soft sweetness. Actually from my earlier notes.
>>17567714
>No real aroma, no real high notes
The Halmari Assam has a quite pleasant aroma, and a lot of complexity in terms of floral, and vaguely fruity notes. It's a much much more interesting tea. Even if I was on a tighter budget, I could easily see myself buying both.

>>17576523
I can't say I've had any experiences as you have. The gaiwan is usually kept stationary, and infrequent as I've knocked into one, it usually just jostles slightly and keeps put. This is reinforced by the saucer and weight of its contents. Perhaps the one you use in particular is just not well-balanced? I won't try to convince you the gaiwan is the best tool in the world, and if a teapot works well for you, that's lovely. I just haven't seen anything like what you suggest with mine, and these two identical inexpensive gaiwans were maybe ~$8 or less each, from a domestic vendor shipped over in a few days.

>>17576581
I really can't say, I'm sure there are gaiwans out there that are better than mine, since mine was also cheap like yours, but it does make me think about generally how gaiwans are shaped. A teapot just makes more sense from a structural perspective. Even a bad teapot will be less top-heavy than a well-balanced gaiwan based on shape alone.

What's a decent gaiwan I can get off of Amazon?

>>17576569
Assam is usually weak on aroma since the goal seems to be max mouthfeel. I wonder if the two could be combined to be more than that while stretching the pricey tea further.

>>17576601
I mean, it's possible. There's nothing really wrong with the classic english breakfast though, if I had to drink tea on a much tighter budget, I'd probably do three pots of the english breakfast in the morning and through lunch, and then one pot of nicer tea in the afternoon when I have time to sit and enjoy it. I don't think you could really add enough to the english breakfast to significantly improve it in any way. I mean, I have both though, so I guess I could give it a shot. I'm pretty interested in the daily darjeeling though, so I'll probably drink that next.

>>17576599
First result, knock yourself out.
https://www.amazon.com/Sizikato-Glazed-Ceramic-Gaiwan-Saucer/dp/B087FY8P8N/

Okay I'm making a new thread, i will be up in a minute

>>17576693
Thank you for your service

>>17555651
new thread
>>17576706
>>17576706
>>17576706