/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>20148066
No way is that a virgin picking it.

Love my virgin young raw.

>>20148066
got a tooth abscess and the dentist wont see me til monday
teas for this pain?

>>20148203
Opium tea

>>20148203
Shou mei and lots of vodka.

>>20148075
She's the one puerh lesbian who couldn't get laid

fuck sleep drink tea

>>20148433
I like shiny sheng. Que es?

>>20148066
hey please give me backstory behind this pic and whatever it is referencing
I promise I will pretend to care about tea lore for three posts afterwards

I just had the most fucking insane sleep paralysis episode of all time. Swear to god this shit was on the whole other level. I've talked to like 5 other people and nobody else even came close. Never had one before either. First time. Woke up and I was shaking and crying for 10 minutes. I'm good now though. Not looking forward to sleep.
How's everyone going?

>>20148562
this is the tea thread so i would like to know what tea you drank to cause this so hopefully i can replicate this. im pretty sure i didnt have sleep paralysis until i started drinking tea, and ive now probably had it like 20 times over the last 3 years. also describe your sleep paralysis more in depth please.

>>20148562
Had something like that happen to me.
Was on the verge of sleeping one time and I suddenly gained awareness with a bright light flashing in my closed eyes, only to find out I couldn't move and that my body was vibrating. In that moment I immediately thought I was getting abducted and felt an immense fear come out of nowhere. I woke up afraid. I have no idea why my brain thought that it was aliens, I would've guessed demons, but apparently aliens was the most logical thing for my brain to think.

>>20148066
>virgin picking tea leaves with her mouth
How do you call this tea?

>>20148497
>Kou Chun Cha (Mouth Lip Tea)

>Legend has it that the leaves used to be picked by fairies with their mouths. When boiling water is poured on the leaves, fairies ascend amid the steam into the sky.
>Last century some Chinese tea sellers experimented with the idea of ‘tea in front of breasts’, involving a group of 16-year-old virgins started picking tea and sleeping with it on their breasts during the night.
>The next day it was thought the tea leaves would have picked up enough of the virgins scent to have health and wellbeing benefits.
>Now new pickers are being sought, with adverts in Gushi, Henan province, specifying that ‘applicants must be virgins’ and offering payment of £50 a day, a fortune in China.
>'A prospective employee has to be a woman with no sexual experience, a bra size of at least a C cup, and no scar or wound visible on her body with a uniform.'
>'They have to cleanse themselves completely before they start working and perform a special exercise programme to build up their necks and lips.
>The girls are not allowed to touch the tea leaves with their hands at any point and all the picking has to be done through the lips. The leaves are put into the baskets which are called Chaliuqing and have to made from the freshest willow twigs and also not touched by hand.

>>20148497
>>20148674
>Kou Chun Cha (Mouth Lip Tea)

>Legend has it that the leaves used to be picked by fairies with their mouths. When boiling water is poured on the leaves, fairies ascend amid the steam into the sky.
>Last century some Chinese tea sellers experimented with the idea of ‘tea in front of breasts’, involving a group of 16-year-old virgins started picking tea and sleeping with it on their breasts during the night.
>The next day it was thought the tea leaves would have picked up enough of the virgins scent to have health and wellbeing benefits.
>Now new pickers are being sought, with adverts in Gushi, Henan province, specifying that ‘applicants must be virgins’ and offering payment of £50 a day, a fortune in China.
>'A prospective employee has to be a woman with no sexual experience, a bra size of at least a C cup, and no scar or wound visible on her body with a uniform.'
>'They have to cleanse themselves completely before they start working and perform a special exercise programme to build up their necks and lips.
>The girls are not allowed to touch the tea leaves with their hands at any point and all the picking has to be done through the lips. The leaves are put into the baskets which are called Chaliuqing and have to made from the freshest willow twigs and also not touched by hand.
>Li Yong, a spokesman for the Jiuhua plantation, said: 'It is much harder work than it looks. 'We are hiring 10 girls to perform the traditional ritual to pass on interest in the tradition and keep it alive. We will auction off the tea leaves that they pick,' Mr Li added.

>>20148687
those asians will really eat anything

is the tea supposed to make your pee green

>>20148665
Mine are somewhat like that too. It was scary the first couple times but I got used to it, sometimes I see trippy symbols everywhere for a while after.

>>20148562
Hope you can relax and get some rest. At times like that I get a pot of comfy tisane and take some time out.

>>20148697
Why are so many people who are into tea insane? Coffee drinkers never sound like they belong on /x/ but tea drinkers often do. Very curious.

>>20148691
No

>>20148645
>>20148665
>>20148697
I've been tapering off of mirtazapine. Withdrawals are hell. Don't trust doctors. I haven't even been able to drink puerh because its been fucking with my heart.
Here was my experience
>wake up
>voices inside my head telling me to kill myself. dark, demonic voice
>words flashing in front of my eyes. the light is blinding
>tingling all over my body. similar to a seizure
>shadowy pointy figure appears before me
>im stuck. cant yell for help.
>start fucking levitating
>wake up
>cry
I don't know how long it was but all of these symptoms were happening at the exact same time.

>>20148698
I have too nervous a disposition for coffee, I always assumed my jank sleep experiences were related to that. Might also be the lead poisoning

>>20148757
Maybe you’re just crazy.

>>20148715
oh

>>20148005
I was curious about that one. the w2t raws I've had so far have been kind of wimpy, so I wonder what their take on "super bitter" is like

>>20148005
According to my notes it was very hard to drink if not flash steeped. The extreme bitterness didn't last too long and there were some nutty and/or smokey notes.

>>20148689
you eat ass

>>20148741
Since we are schizoposting here is another story.
>be me
>dreaming
>inside a casino, go to the bathroom to wash my hands
>giant mirror facing me as I'm washing them
>notice my reflection and it's doing the same thing as I am
>see my face in the mirror and it looks normal
>it starts becoming demonic but I am unfazed
>despite that my heart begins beating faster despite me not being afraid
>the more demonic my visage becomes the faster and stronger my heart starts to beat
>wake up with my heart pounding like crazy.
>mfw I almost let a demon give me a heart attack for being an autist and not being afraid of it.

What does /tea/ think about mao cha? I've been """"scammed"""" by that cutie employee into buying some when I was in for just some lose leaf ripe pu er. I don't like sheng: so far mao cha is easier to brew, very fruity/apricot. I'll try the cocoa smelling charcoal roasted one later.

>>20148066
>Doctors traced an Arkansas man’s kidney failure to an unusual cause – his habit of drinking a gallon of iced tea each day.
>They ruled out several potential causes before stumbling on a reason for the 56-year-old man’s kidney problems. He said he drank about 16 8-ounce cups of iced tea every day. Black tea has a chemical known to cause kidney stones or even kidney failure in excessive amounts.
>The unidentified man went to the hospital last May with nausea, weakness, fatigue and body aches. Doctors determined his kidneys were badly clogged and inflamed by the food chemical called oxalate. The man is on dialysis, perhaps for the rest of his life, Ghaffar said.

>>20148896
>"If you're having two to three cups a day, you're probably OK as long as your family doesn't have a history of kidney disease," Syed said. "Just don't drink in excess or replace water with tea, like this man did."

>>20148864
mao cha is just a generic term for raw pu-erh that wasn't pressed into any shape and is just sold in loose tea form
so it appears that you do like sheng, of the fruity variety

>>20148896
pretty much all recorded cases of health problems from tea come from overbrewing shitty tea made from older leaves. if you drink 20 overbrewed grocery store teabags a day, in the form of gallons of sweet tea, it could fuck you up. same with the Tibetans who boil cheap tea bricks for hours every single day to make butter tea

>>20148687
What they do with the girls who broke their hymen? Do they check their hymen on interview for job?

How would the tea house you open in your home town look like.

>>20148930
Ok. Other shengs' background taste usually give me poisonous/toxic vibes.

>>20148687
thanks
I lied before though I am not going to pretend to be interested in tea
sorry it's a cruel world

>>20149010
maybe you just like the soft and fruity stuff and dislike high bitterness or astringency

>>20149024
I think I don't mind bitterness or astringency as I enjoy unsweetened black coffee, 100% cacao chocolate, tannic red wine etc. There's just this aftertaste, upfront in young shengs, that is just undrinkable to me.

>>20149074
What young shengs have you tried? I wonder what the flavor you're describing is... Like a certain pungency?

>>20149001
I live in a podunk farming town. It would have to be in some quaint old bar full of antique teaware to get any tourist attention.

>>20149001
I'd go for either stark wabi-sabi minimalism or full-on orientalist mystical tea emporium managed with random looking items that are probably cursed
unforunately most tea houses here cater to middle-aged women who really want to overpay for scented teas and mixes, so I guess I'd have to factor in that demographic too

>>20148972
Its probably the honor system, as 16 year olds are generally virgins wherever you go, especially in Asia. Anyone known to be a slut just sleeps with the boss and is declared to totally be a virgin.

The bigger question is where are they finding Orientals with C cup tiddies?

>>20148972
Double post, I checked article. They're full of shit the whole way through. The virgins shown picking are clearly less than C cup and at least one is clearly a dude.

The requirement is just marketing and possibly an excuse for the manager to hire underage women with boobies he likes.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378870/PG-Lips-Chinese-tea-plantation-seeks-virgins-pick-leaves-MOUTHS.html

>>20149216
>at least one is clearly a dude
Maybe they're a butch puer lesbian

>>20149216
>one is a dude
>buy exquisite mouth tea picked by a virgin
>get AIDS instead
Thanks China

>>20149243
Also on the far left in the light blue blouse she's clearly picking the leaves by hand. I don't see any boob baskets to leave in the tea in either.

No one expected "Made in China" to be authentic or good quality but it is kinda disappointing when even their own official promos show the lie.

>>20148896
I have a coworker who ended up in the hospital with severe kidney problems because he became obsessed with green tea extract and was consuming massive amounts of it daily

>>20148896
This is why you have to balance out the oxalate with citrate.

>>20149216
just when i was about to buy some

Is white tea supposed to be super fucking fussy about how its brewed? Goddamn this shit gets bitter as fuck so easily.

>>20148783
I don't want to comment with too much undue confidence that it's wimpy. It has an interesting profile, albeit fairly one dimensional.
>>20148806
I did not find it at all hard to drink if it wasn't flash steeped. I think this aligns with my suspicions that I might be missing the ability to perceive a piece of the flavor wheel.
>>20149001
I can't imagine a tea house here being popular enough to keep open unless it were another boba tea joint. I'd rather source and import teas for other tea shops.

>>20149391
What kind of white tea do you have? In my experience a lot of white teas are tolerant to high temps and long steeps, but I recently tried a Bi Luo Chun white that was very fussy.

>>20149418
jasmin dragon pearls
though it was neat how the unfurl as they steep

Yunnan Black by Twinings
8g /liter; 85°C; 2:30 steep time

Thick bodied, well balanced and mellow black tea. Lacks the harshness of Assam and is the right thing for a winter afternoon. Has some nuttyness to it. I tried hotter steeps but settled at 85. Seems to pronounce the comforting nature of this tea the best. Astringency is in the middle region. Good black tea overall. I'll compare it to the 2023 Yingpan Shan Black from Farmerleaf once it gets here.
Would I buy this again? Maybe

>>20148203
Red vein Kratom but you’ll have to get the pill form from the local drugstore since you don’t want any loose material getting into your abscess.

>>20149567
They sell it at headshops not drugstores. Also, take about 10 of them your first time, not on an empty stomach, and have fun. You’ll be nodding off and shit.

What do I do with bad tea?
I've got some "organic" jin jun mei black tea that is just bad. 0 flavour only roast.
I've tried the old "put sugar and lemon in it" but it's still meh at best, I would rather drink some tea bags at this point.
Next combucha base?

>>20149891
Kombucha
Make the cold brew concentrate recipie from the pastebin and then sweeten as desired
Squeeze the air out of the bag seal it up good and forget about it for two years, then try it again. The roast notes might mellow out some (it also might just get more bland)

>Mom found the virgin girl tea and virgin boy eggs

>>20149950
if the girls pick the tea leaves with their mouths, does that mean the boys suck the eggs out of the chicken's asshole

>>20149439
You sure it's white tea? These are usually made from green tea
White tea doesn't usually get bitter

>>20149567
>>20149580
Why not just get a tramal prescription instead of ingesting some opiate tea?

>>20149991
doctors hate giving out painkillers now

Drinking through my Farmer Leaf order, Da Du Gang is pretty mediocre, Da Long Shan is the dark horse so far. Da Long Shan retains a mild but decent huigan and it elevates it above most other shou at that price point. Have drunk the rest yet. Drinking the Cang Yuan right now, it's pretty crazy. Sad the cake is sold out or I'd buy one. I haven't bought samples in a while, and I think I really am become a "The cake is a sample" tea boomer. Most tea is at least drinkable, samples feel like a great way to regret not having purchased tea. 20 grams also isn't anywhere near enough to really understand a tea. Think about something like the Fa Zhan He, which I only have 30 or so grams of left. It's been different pretty much every time I've drunk it, even if you order a cake immediately after you taste the sample, it's not going to taste anything like the sample because the tea you sampled no longer "exists". Time has passed, it's a different tea now. Especially for young sheng, just embrace that buying samples is impossible.
I think it was a decent idea for the shou though, I don't want 2kg of shou.

>>20150052
"A cake is a simple" is the way to go, only regrets when you drink something once you love and can never taste it again.

>>20150052
>The cake is a sample" tea boomer.
Yeah i see it for sure. I usually just buy cakes. Its kinda fun to get somples sometimes but i really think 50 or even 100g is the minimum sample size to really get a tea and at that point you might as well just buy a cake. Its hard to say. I guess it really depends on how much tea you buy and how fast you drink it.
For example i got a sample of the farmer leaf zhu tang, fist time i tried it i thought it was unexciting, second time i thought it was pretty nice, eho knows what the third session will be like.

>>20150052
agreed that a cake is a sample if you already know your preferences well enough
I loved the sample of Fa Zhan He, but the cake tastes significantly different desu. I remember the sample was much more sweet. the cake is still great, but the sweetness is more elusive
I also agree that 20 grams is nowhere near enough to really get to know a tea. I think 100 grams is a good sample size for stuff you're not sure about, I kind of wish farmerleaf offered that for their cakes
interesting about the Da Long Shan. some other anon complained it wasn't mineral enough for him but otherwise was impressed with the flavor. maybe I'll get a free sample with my order of Autumn Lao Man E and Tang Fang Liang Zi sample

>>20150113
I think the Da Du Gang has more minerality, the Da Long Shan is pretty thin. The Da Du Gang is better material and will probably age better, but it tastes pretty thin and has a worse huigan. It's gently sweet, and I got a little bit of spice, but it wasn't that impressive honestly. I'll do a big writeup once I finish tasting the rest of them. I write my tasting notes blind so I feel pretty confident when they agree with what William puts up, but sometimes I feel like I'm totally missing something, or a tea has a strong character the website doesn't mention. I brew them all quite strong so I don't think that's the problem either.

>>20150132
>the Da Long Shan is pretty thin.
This was supposed to say mild, I got ahead of myself.

>>20148066
I recently got into tea. So far I've only had normal loose leaf like gunpowder and English breakfast. The most outlandish I've had was lapsang souchong. I want to get into the weird shit. Can I get some autist approved tea kettle suggestions and/or sources for good tea? I have a trabloom kettle which worked well for my introduction. But it it sucks because I can't see the leaves using it. Thank you /tea/ sisters

>>20150222
Get a temperature controlled electric kettle. A kettle is also not where you brew your tea, thats done in a seperate teapot or mug together with a strainer.

>>20150113
>I loved the sample of Fa Zhan He, but the cake tastes significantly different desu. I remember the sample was much more sweet. the cake is still great, but the sweetness is more elusive
I'm starting to think all of these raws are just lottery. Even blends tend to be quite different from anon to anon.

>>20150274
I thought the fa zhan he cake was pretty variable from session to session as i drank though it, i always just assume that variability is down to something im doing but i do use a scale for dosing tea and reasonably consistent pours in my gaiwan

>>20150274
Perception changes from day to day for me. Would be surprised if it wasn't also different between people even for the same tea.

>>20150274
I think with fresh raw it's down to the tea changing with even a few months of time and also the fact that it's not super rigorouosly sorted material, so there is some variation
but there are some traits most people seem to agree on for a given tea, like the green teaish and citrusy character of hte Fa Zhan He

>>20150222
yunnansourcing has the biggest selection and some of the most newbie-friendly descriptions for teas. kingteamall is another big site like that. for smaller sites, farmerleaf is popular here, mostly for sheng pu-erh. but check out the vendor list in the pastebin

if you want the really alien wet stored stuff that tastes like beetroot, ginseng and old furniture, there are stores like yeeontea too, and liquidproust stocks a few truly bizarre items scrounged up from god knows where

you can probably get a small glass teapot or gaiwan on one of these sites or on aliexpress, if you want to observe the leaves

I've seen this discussion thread many times, but I post nowhere almost all the time. I have spent many hours researching tea's, and I will give you a glimpse of some of my original findings with the help of chatGPT4 and the scholarAI plugin.

https://www.cato.org/blog/after-50-years-fda-finds-out-oral-phenylephrine-doesnt-work

The FDA said in October of last year that the main chemical in dayquil doesn't work; It's a substitute chemical for ephedrine, which was banned in the 90's in the USA since people were using it to make meth.

You can get the chemical naturally from a tea called ma huang, but the tea is illegal unless you get a prescription from a chinese medical doctor / acupunturist (the versions you see for sale on amazon are from a lesser plant that does not give the same amounts of the chemical). The plant, ephedra sinica, is also illegal to buy, however the seed is a legal grey area and you may purchase it yourself to grow ephedra sinica.

Using the scholarAI plugin, I was able to see that the maximum dosage of ephedrine in the 90's for a full sized adult male was 150 mg. The most contents you could have in a fully concentrated tea of ephedrine is 120 mg. You cannot take too much of this tea however, for it will kill you if you do.

I've given you like 10 hours of personal AI research in like 3 minutes, I hope you guys buy your own 'mormons tea' plants from places and find ways to cure yourself naturally.

>>20150437
i take zicam and then it totally skips every cold i get, no need to become a farmer

>>20150446
I think when WW3 begins the amount of chemicals that will be available to the public will be lessened, and people will have to start relying on ancient methods that have been used for over a thousand years. People have been using ma huang in Asia for just that length or longer to cure colds and illnesses, and people who knew the subtleties in the chemicals within the tea were considered almost like doctors, even if that seems stupid now.

Here's an easy one. Green tea contains the chemical theanine, which in turn contains the chemical gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA. Most tea's contain this chemical because they come from a variant of a plant that existed a long time ago, although there are some that don't like peppermint.

The chemical gaba latches onto your gaba receptors in your brain, which prevents the firing of neurons. When less neurons fire, theres less brain activity, and so people are calmer. It's the chemical they use in anti-anxiety medicine.

If you've felt calm before in your life while making decisions in your everyday, it's because you were emitting something called 'alpha waves'. There are brain frequencies that it emits, and at all times people are set by default to think in terms of 'beta waves'. Beta waves mean you are concentrated, but can be stressed out. GABA is the neural bridge between changing between resonating beta waves to alpha waves, and alpha waves to beta waves.

You might have known that tea made you calm for some reason, but now you know the chemical processes on why it happens.

>>20150420
yunnansourcing is awesome im about to drop like 100$ on this site, thanks for the recommendation. my tea game is about to dramatically increase

>>20150473
i commonly eat 3/4 cup (uncooked measurement) of gaba brown rice, it makes me feel comfy
>I think when WW3 begins the amount of chemicals that will be available to the public will be lessened
likely the opposite in my personal opinion, but we'd be getting into /pol/ territory

>>20150478
Get some liubao if you wanna try something weird, its good, earthy, mellow, chocolaty, rich black compost, wood etc
https://yunnansourcing.com/collections/guangxi-liu-bao-tea/products/2014-three-cranes-45007-recipe-traditional-liu-bao-hei-cha-of-guangxi
Also there is yunnansourcing.us smaller selection but ships domestically

Still thinking about those expensive teacups...

>>20151781
I only drink tea in the most standard porcelain from Chongqing.

>>20151781
I spent too much on it but it speaks to me

>>20148896
hey that's gonna be me soon

>>20152218
Powerful

This is going to be a bit of a rambling post, but i feel a bit sad after buying almost 6 kilos of ripe puer from taobao. None of these teas have been able to impress me, to offer me what i seek. All of them just feel very boring. They either feel unimpressive all the way though a session, or hit me with an upfront taste that quickly tapers of into a boring nothing.
Out of the more premium teas: the Bulang ones (Dragon Pillar and a brick from Fuhai) just hit me with some bitterness that isn't followed by the huigan that i would expect. Just the bitterness that slowly fades into nothing. There's also a Yiwu cake from Fuhai that is smooth and sweet, but nothing out of the ordinary.
I don't know if it's the teas or my state of mind. I kept thinking these last few days what is it that i'm looking for in ripe and i came up with: medicinal herb, camphor, huigan. Thinking back in time, the only teas that offered me this were the Huirun (a Bulang blend from YS), and two Mengku cakes (also from YS).
I'm not giving up on ripe yet. but i think next time i'm going to try more premium offerings and also explore other regions, mainly Lincang. I don't think Xishuangbanna can offer me what i seek.
Fortunately i still have the sample packs of Fu and Taiwanese tea + a brick of liu bao to break the monotony.

/end of rant

>>20152295
Store that shit in a warm humid environment. Winter is hellish on puerh.

>>20152295
>buys 6kg of ripe cakes and bricks on chink discount website
>its shit
What were you thinking?
At this moment I would trade/swap with other anons here, some are propably interested.

Tea wise I would just try everything possible. Different temps, volumes, simmering, brewing styles. Maybe you find some combination you enjoy.
Hell, make ripe pu erh iced tea from it. Worth a shot.

>>20152295
Maybe you're just bored with ripe? I got bored with it myself. I do enjoy the one aged tasting ripe I have though, it's a bit more interesting.

>>20149128
>Like a certain pungency
Not at all, I guess it's a part of the typical sheng flavor profile I dislike. I noticed the younger the harsher that taste. The apricot mao cha I was talking about did show a bit of it but after 1.5L when the rest was gone. I have a 2014 smokey/tobaccoey xiaguan tuo I gave up on trying to like.

Shipping hasn't updated since "received by airlines" a week ago
Come on... I just want it to leave China before the new year's fuckery

>>20152610
Oh fuck I forgot about that. My pack just got sent today...

I’m now confirmed hiv+
Any teas for this?

>>20152301
>>20152338
>>20152441
Thanks! Iguess, as anon said, that i got bored of ripe. Honestly these last 2 years i focused so much on puerh i grew completely blind to other teas.
I quite enjoy these Fu and Taiwanese sample packs and i also remember enjoying some sencha 2-3 years ago. I think i'll buy some of the 2024 harvest.
Hopefully things will get better until then.

>>20152738
I gotta try more fu and liu bao myself

>>20149074
Mao cha usually oxidizes faster than a pressed cake, maybe that is why you aren't tasting it.

Has anyone tried brewing with a teapot like this? I'm thinking of getting a larger teapot for guests but I feel like the small slits at the bottom of the glass strainers won't be enough compared to the stainless steel ones?

>>20153498
I'm not a fan. It's not like there's anything really wrong with them, but I just hate the amount of parts and the amount of space the strainer takes up.
I used a teapot with a wire strainer that hooks inside the spout like this for a long time and I liked it a lot.

>>20153498
I actually have the one in your pic and didn't have any problems. Was able to brew all kinds of heicha, ripes and herbal teas.

My teahome order came in, took about a week and a half to the us. Shipping on 450g of tea was ~$12. Im sipping on the legend of tong ting special logan charcoal roasted oolong.
So far so good, well fermented, super sweet, roast is good, well done without a ton of charcoal flavor.
If this is representative of their other teas i tink this is the palce to go for affordable oolong.
Im getting some almost rock candy sweetness.
I will post more complete tasting notes tomorrow, this is a right out of the shipping box first impression

>>20152610
> I just want it to leave China before the new year's fuckery
Too late...
Hapry Chinese ney yrr!

>>20153519
That pot looks great, I'm a big fan of space for the leaves to move about so I might try and look for something like this one. Failing that I might just go for what >>20153520 recommends.

>>20153617
Sounds promising. I wonder if I can badger them for UK shipping with an email or two, I'm in serious need of some oolong.
Or I'll just try out taiwan tea crafts already.

>>20153300
Very sensible post

>>20153817
>I wonder if I can badger them for UK shipping with an email or two, I'm in serious need of some oolong.
It's worth a shot. They dont seem to speak any English so write a really simple message and then copy it into google translate and translate it to traditional Chinese and include that as well.

I remember a few months ago people were talking about collecting puerh wrappers in a notebook/scrapbook along with notes about that tea. Did anyone actually follow through with it?

>>20154023
I have a cardboard box full of them
No idea if i will ever do anything with them

>>20154023
>>20154028
I collect wrappers and nei fei as well. I want to make collage posters with them

>>20154023
My plan was to get a glass top table and put all the wrappers under the glass for decoration.

>>20154073
>>20154171
>>20154028
Think it ate my reply, but I'm starting to finish some of my older cakes and was wondering what to do with the wrappers other then throw them away or stash them somewhere. I'll figure something out when I actually finish a few.

>>20153848
Good idea thanks. They got back quick. I'll be sippin some oolong in no time.

>>20154319
Cheers, let me know what you pick up, a bunch of stuff looks good and im not sure what to get next. Sometimes they have 2-3 different teas under a single listing as well which is a bit confusing. But hey, for their prices i can't complain.

I'm sipping my 2014 Xiaguan Jia Ji. I picked up a handful of the cheap XG raws and finally am getting to them. My only other experience with a sheng is the 503, which I now think is pretty rough and not very good. On the other hand, this Jia Ji is much better. It has the classic house funk, but no smokiness, which I think Xiaguan does poorly. At least it doesn't suit me. Nice easy drink.

>>20154705
Xiaguan tuos used to be pretty smokey but i guess they have toned them down a bit in the last decade or so to be more in line with modern puer trends. I like the smokeyness but i can see the appeal of getting that house xiaguan sweet mushroom broth without a fat dose of smoke to go along with it.
Tasting an old rough factory cake that's been stored dry in Kunming for the last 20 years, i can see why the old timers were of the opinion that raw puer wasn't worth drinking until it spent a decade in a wet warehouse in hong kong.

I'm over here steeping my sheng, I got water on my sheng right now I'm just steeping my shit. I'm thirsty as fuck man, I'm a puerhhead. For real.

I'm drinking some Black Gold Bi Luo Chun, western style since my teapot is still not here. It definitely tastes better than teabags or stale amazon loose leaf tea, although it's not very special. I do like it but I'm not going to rave about it. I think it's time to swap to tea that isn't black for a while. Hopefully I like the oolongs coming.
Yesterday the etsy shop started shipping one teapot and the other from taiwan tea crafts is still on it's way here along with some oolong samplers. One for myself and I'll gift the other to my brother and his wife when they visit.

>>20148066
I want to pick up some white tea, I know silver needle is supposed to be the good stuff (never tried it) but honestly I'm more interested in buying some cheaper stuff (that is still decent quality) maybe a cake, any reccomendations or what I should look for? Even if not a specific link to a tea if you want to reccomend like a type of tea from a certain region or year, I'm all ears. I'm new to this so I don't know a ton.

>>20155734
I like moonlight white. FL has a cake for a decent price. YS has a cake in for similar price as well. Their loose "purple" moonlight white is good but it's a bit pricey.
On the cheaper side this one has been recommended as good value but I haven't tried it:
https://kingteamall.com/en-gb/collections/white-tea/products/2010-kingteamall-lao-bai-cha-old-white-tea-cake-357g-fuding-white-tea-baicha

Silver needle is good but I dunno, I tend to prefer the ones with mixed material not just buds.
Don't take the 80c thing too seriously, plenty of people prefer it at boiling.

>>20155823
Thanks for the recs fren, just picked up the ys cake

>>20155734
I agree with anon, moonlight whites are cool and can be quite cheap. I think they tend to be more interesting than silver needles, you can get them made from different material and all taht

>>20155734
I don't know if it's still in stock but yunnan sourcing had this little 100g 2019 shou mei mini cake. It's got a nice bold flavor, I'll recc it as a good white tea introduction

2023 Snoozefest giving me some similarities to Fa Zhan He now. similar sweetened green tea / green bean thing going on. not as good, but enjoyable enough for the price

I have no idea what white tea is.

>>20156380
white tea is tea that is dried without much aditional processing, such as pan-frying or rolling
tends to be mild and sweet in flavor

Does cspuerh have some nice value cake that isn't bitter?

The pastebin is down. Maybe we should mirror it to rentry

>>20156415
the 2022 Naka brick I have isn't too bitter and I think it's a great deal. it's certainly not completely bitter-free though, but you could just brew it light. it's got some of that short-lasting sharp bitterness that's supposed to be typical of the region, not really the lasting bulang ku cha bitterness

I'm sure their Yiwu should be non-bitter, but I haven't had it. supposedly the #1 blend is also not too bitter

>>20156417
Was gonna check it on archive.org but I can't even load that atm. Dunno what's going on.

>>20156443
lmao pastebin has always been shit and has been getting worse as time goes on. It's why a lot of general threads on 4chan now use rentry

I made a new paste in rentry for the time being. Feel free to edit or take over, pass is the general.
https://rentry.org/teag

>>20156643
Thank you, anon! I was going to do it myself but I didn't have the pastebin saved.

I bought oolong and it smells nice but boy oh boy do I hate the way this tastes
Reminds me of barley tea and whisky which also have they same quality I dislike

>>20156771
Presumably a roasted oolong? The roast flavor is probably what bothers you
There is a lot of oolong out there that's more green teaish too. Oolong is diverse

>>20156771
That's neat, my oolong actually just arrived a short bit ago. I bought really small sizes, nothing over 50 grams so most of it fits in a one sealed container. I finished washing the porcelain but I probably won't drink any until tomorrow. I'm excited!

Fuck me so now i have to figure out rentry?
Fine i will take a look this afternoon
This is the first time ive noticed pastebin being down for this long

What are the most popular cheapish cakes from the factories dayi, xiaguan and mengku? I want to buy their signature cakes. Preferably ripe but doesn't matter.

>>20156968
It's incredibly easy, you can do it! Remember the password is on the bottom of the site.

>>20156643
>>20156968
Looks much better. The versioning was helpful, imo. It needs to resume in a saner way than appending 9s to it, though.

>>20157050
3.100000?

>>20157060
An integer is probably fine. Semantic versioning is overrated. I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth, though. Thanks to maintainers and bakers.

>>20156643
>>20156968
>>20157050
I agree, it looks way better! Especially the tables with steeping times. This is so much easier to read than pastebin.

>>20157080
>Itshappeningitshappenningitshappening.gif

>>20157012
ripe: 7572 for Dayi, Xiao Fa Tuo for Xiaguan
raw: 7542 and 8582 for Dayi, 8653 and Jia Ji / Te Ji Tuo for Xiaguan

Chad o tea just unleashed something bizarre
https://www.chadoteahouse.com/products/kuromamecha-black-soybean-tea
It's tea.... beans
You just drop a dozen beans into your cup and its tea
I kinda want to try it but I legitimately can't justify buying even more tea than I already have, so if anyone tries it, please review so that i get an excuse to get some myself

>>20157080
that was tedious to format.
I also wasnt 100% sure about formatting the japanese tea brewing chart since I have never looked into that kind of brew and it was weird on the text file I exported from the old sticky.

>>20157237
Japanese stats look fine

Bit of a problem
rentry links are spam filtered

>>20157304
I grabbed /teageneral and put my layest offline backup of the pastebin in there but i don't really want to use it if it cant even be linked directly in the op

>>20157165
What kind of maniac would brew a bean?

>>20157304
I believe you need to use .org instead of .co for filter reasons.

>>20148687
sounds hot but then you remember 90% of chinks are ugly af and these are the ones who couldn't even get laid

Test
Rentry.org/teageneral

>>20156643
thanks a bunch, looks better in every way

>>20156643
Thanks

Okay pastebin anon here
I grabbed the formatting that anon graciously did and copied it into
https://rentry.org/teageneral/
when pastebin decides to come back up i will make sure everything from the latest edits made it over and then take a look at improving some things a bit.
>>20148066
For the next op use
https://rentry.org/teageneral/
Thanks!
If anyone has any feedback or complaints or things they want changed let me know.
You can also email me at teageneral@protonmail.com
but please mention that you sent me an email in the thread as i don't check that account regularly

>>20157798
the tables on your website are fucked up

>>20157816
Fuck me, okay fixed it
Thanks

>>20157816
>>20157867
Fuck one second

>>20157877
Okay got it

thanks again to the anon that did the general formatting for the tables, that was super helpful

>>20153498
I have this thing, it works fine

>>20157889
Do you have the extra vendor list or is that gone until pastebin is back up?

>>20157965
I have an offline backup, i was thinking of mostly dropping it and adding a section about buying from taobao with the taobao links ive collected to the main pastebin.
Im not sure how many shops are still on there that didn't make it to the main pastebin

Should i just completely remove Fahrenheit from the tables and only use Celsius?
It would be neater to not have both but i think keeping Fahrenheit makes it more accessible

>>20157991
have you thought of having a rough conversion guide at the top of the chart?

I dont suppose anyone could recommend a decent cheap electric kettle?

>>20158095
Cheap, works well, 100% stainless steel interior.
https://www.amazon.com/Secura-Electric-Stainless-Protection-K15-F1E/dp/B087BRBX4Q/
Cheap, stainless interior, temp control and keep warm settings, the button controls are a bit unintuitive but work fine, look at reviews for the details.
https://www.amazon.com/JOYHILL-Temperature-Stainless-Thermostat-Protection/dp/B09ZKHXMG1/
I use the secura 5x times a day and it has lasted for years,

Heard from various people that white tea only started being pressed into biings recently, to cash in the pu'er boom. Is that true, and if so, is it actually cheaper to buy loose whites, all else being equal?

Someone a month or two ago wanted to know how pic related was, and I can only say that I like it, but I've had similar taste for less money.

>>20157991
that would look the best but you should probably keep fahrenheit on because most americans cant interepret celsius at all and its not really an inconvience to keep it

>>20158137
>Heard from various people that white tea only started being pressed into biings recently, to cash in the pu'er boom. Is that true, and if so, is it actually cheaper to buy loose whites, all else being equal?
It seems to be true, i haven't seen many pressed white teas from before 2010 or so.
Being pressed does have some advantages, before that teas like shoumei were stored loose in big boxes and sold mostly in generic packaging. With white tea being sold in bings you get something labeled by the factory and know what you are buying.
King tea mall has some reasonably cheap loose white tea but their shipping isint cheap.

>>20158140
Yeah that's which way im leaning

>>20158137
i prefer cakes because i feel like it lets me get more steeps out of it but theres probably little difference in reality and loose may really be better for the price, but i dont encounter loose whites very often in the first place

>>20155823
I love that lao bai cha. I have a baker's tong.

>>20158148
This is a fair point. I actually have a decent stockpile of no-name loose shoumei (which tastes almost as good as the pictured YS one), but it is by far the bulkiest tea I own, so the shipping cost alone might be enough reason to buy cakes.

how is shipping from farmer leaf during the 春節 (True New Year), im anxious with anticipation. i wish i had stockpiled more tea before this in hindsight but i think ill be fine.

>>20158095
kettles are an appliance, and you probably boil water every single day. don't think you have to start with a real cheap and shitty one.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003KYSLNQ?th=1
i've been using this for the better part of a decade. it's not the lowest of the low end, but it's not like zojirushi prices, it's usually under a hundred dollars and it's pretty good quality. the temperature settings are both good and accurate. it doesn't leave me wanting much. at least get something with temperature control, if you get something that only boils you're just setting yourself up to want to buy another kettle prematurely.

>>20158192
>>20158120
thoughts on this one?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BFMV68M/

>>20158192
My spring is worn out and I have to assist the lid up after unlocking it with the button. How's yours?

>>20158206
haven't had any problems with the lid, the only real problem after however many years for me is that the water gauge doesn't always fill up properly so sometimes i have to shake it a little while filling it.

>>20158186
Shipping during Chinese new year is basically
Nothing happens this week
Then it moves relatively normally afterwards
Sometimes it will still move during Chinese new year but its not guaranteed.
If its already at the airport it will still get loaded on a plane this week if possible. Also there are a ton of flights this week and next so its more likely to get on a plane faster once it is at the airport.

>>20158201
Its probably fini don't personally like glass kettles because there is a big silicone gasket between the stainless steel bottom and the glass sides. I don't think its a problem structurally, i just don't like it being there.

Okay anons, this is my first time trying gongfu and it's with a 125 mL porcelain teapot. I'll try it later or another day on a bunch of black tea but I had to stop with the oolong because the kettle beeping at 2 AM woke someone up. I'm thankful for whichever anon suggested Onyx stainless steel airtight containers because 50 grams of this tea fits perfectly in the smallest container. I actually opened the wrong one, I think I meant to first try the four seasons or whatever that anon suggested. This is Beishan Organic High Mountain Jin Xuan Oolong Tea (lightly baked) Lot 1235 from Taiwan Tea Crafts. Do lots matter? The first steep was too long by mistake. The tea doesn't seem to taste very strong on the first steep but maybe I should have done a rinse to warm it up. The second steep was a bit better and I swear I tasted something sweet at the end. The third was much better and I'll try some more later. I forgot to write down what they tasted like at the time but enjoy the pictures I guess. I believe the right is the one I steeped too long. Next time I'll take better pictures with more lighting. All of these teas I've been trying the past month or two are really spoiling me. I'll never drink supermarket/amazon loose leaf or bagged tea again.
>type captcha right 3 times
>doesn't work
>>20157798
Thank you anons for fixing the tables!
>>20158280
Gaskets can wear out eventually. I had a glass kettle and it spewed boiling water out the bottom one day. To be fair, I had it for years and it was used multiple times a day by several people. I replaced it with another glass kettle because the stainless steel electric kettle I had seemed to let water get between the metal pieces and rusted. I couldn't seem to fit a cloth between it to dry it. Electric kettles seem to either be good or incredibly cursed but I refuse to stop using them.

I'm sipping the goofy frankenstein mini ball from the shulloween bag, this one is pretty good low fermentation, still got some bite to it. One of the better ones in the bag imo.

>>20159384
>the kettle beeping
Open it up and cut the trace to the beeper, why the fuck do they do this, I hate it
>maybe I should have done a rinse to warm it up
I like a quick rinse and then leave the lid on a few minutes to let them open up a little.
It'll take a little practice to get the hang of things but after a while you'll be brewing no problem.
>I'll never drink ... bagged tea again.
Based

Back with the 2022 Fuhai Menghai ripe cake. Tried simmering it like an anon recommended last thread (7g/700mL, 15 minutes). Still doesn't taste like anything. Very weird tea, first time i encounter something like this. Into long-term storage it goes then, to forget about it.

>>20159451
>Open it up and cut the trace to the beeper, why the fuck do they do this, I hate it
I would but I let others use my kettle and they walk away while it boils. I'd be okay with it if it had an off switch. I hate it too but if I get annoyed enough and it's late or too early in the morning, I'll boil water in a pot. It's only a problem because of my schedule.
>I like a quick rinse and then leave the lid on a few minutes to let them open up a little.
Oh, that's interesting! Yeah it was really cool opening the lid and seeing that the small balls turned into leaves. Most loose leaf I've tried looks really long instead of balls. I think the black gold I tried recently was also balled or similar if not.
>It'll take a little practice to get the hang of things but after a while you'll be brewing no problem.
Thanks, I'm pretty excited and it's cool that it's slightly more active than western style.
I haven't had bagged tea in a while. I have some metal baskets I'd use with loose leaf instead but it seemed like it was too small for the leaves when they'd expand. I'll probably stick with this teapot considering it has a filter built into the spout. I like it a lot and it seems really smart but I wonder why all teapots don't have this.

lads, does Farmerleaf send a dispatch notification or anything? I ordered 3 weeks ago and all I got until now is an auto order confirmation mail. All I want is to start sipping.

>>20159698
They used to send it, but they also forgot to do it for my last order lol
If you log into their site you can check the tracking number. It's probably been sent weeks ago

>>20159384
The first steep is almost guaranteed to be weak, either you do a rinse or you just accept it.
For black tea remember that you want to pour water in and then immediately pour it out for quite a few steeps, otherwise it can get really astringent; if this happens it is best to water it down a little, if you drink very astringent liquid the aftereffect can linger quite a long time.

Am I the only one who really likes astringent taste? (= dry and cotton-ish mouth feel unique to real tea) I guess its the main reason I like tea.
If one does not like that, herbal teas have zero astringency.
I agree that astringency is something that builds across a session and is not present at the first sips.

>>20159384
I forgot to mention that I smelt the leaves in the pot after a few steeps and it smelt like flowers, pretty nice.
>>20159884
I accepted it.
>black tea
>pour water in and then immediately pour it out for quite a few steeps
I watched the black tea gongfu video farmer leaf has and he did that too. A few hours ago I made someone "Wu Liang Hong Mao Feng Yunnan Black Tea" from YS as an excuse to practice. Either some of these teas don't taste very special or I'm getting sick.
>>20159927
You're not the only one, my mom will not drink black tea unless it has that oversteeped tier of astringency.

>>20159927
I didn't know anyone liked it. I hate it, but I get dry mouth anyway so it's just not pleasant.

>>20159931
>Either some of these teas don't taste very special or I'm getting sick.
Off days are a thing, though I find a lot of those very tippy black teas to be kinda meh.

>>20159943
>Off days are a thing, though I find a lot of those very tippy black teas to be kinda meh.
Okay, so it's not just me. I guess they're meh then. Thanks anon!

>>20156441
I really do not want to be that guy again, after I exposed KTM/YS and I don't know what you paid for it, but there is a chance you got chinked.

>>20160063
Never mind I'm retarded. The $31.5 is for 100g.

>>20160063
What happened with YS?

>>20160063
I paid like 35$ with free shipping for it. coupon + black friday sale. I think it's great tea at that price, pretty complex, very nice aroma, good mouthfeel, lots of sweetness and some nice throat cooling

good to know that it's available at a good price at tea-expert though. I really have to take a good look at that site, they seem to have good prices on many teas

>>20160067
Just the usual. You should always shop around.
>>20160070
Damn, that's good. Going to take a look next BF for sure.

>>20160078
Okay, thanks! I'm pretty new with ordering from the Chinese. The only reason I didn't try dragonteahouse was because I was worried the insurance and box packaging was required and a bribe. But some other anon got his order from them so I guess not. I wonder how their shipping is free. I guess I'll look at them next time I want tea.

>>20160086
just be careful buying from DTH because their prices can be very random. sometimes they're better than anywhere else like for the xiaguan hong cha, other times they're like 3x as expensive for some reason, like with their Haiwan cakes

>>20160098
As I said. ALWAYS shop around. This is why all these places try to make their own shit so they have monopol on it and can dictate price.

Anybody have a recommendations for a cheap, loose black tea to have every morning? I usually drink Lipton yellow label in the morning since I switched from coffee a few years ago but as I’ve been delving into finer teas I find that it just tastes bad.

>>20160138
>>20160078
try this black tea. it's bretty gud

>>20160138
If you just want plain cheap black tea get a classic ctc assam blend like Büntig Grünpack. It has good value at 2€/100g, when you get the 500g pack. High yield also.
Nothing wrong with fancy teas but not all cheap blends are bad.
Avoid: turkish black teas meant for turkish style brewing

>>20160143
I dunno... it's meh to me. I will take this over it any day of the week
https://www.fullchea-tea.com/products/2019-chinese-tea-dianhong-honey-rhyme-gold-screw-black-tea-red-teas-200g-box
Costs the same, and it's better. In fact I haven't had many black teas that I would take over it and I've had those fancy all gold stuff.

>package still at "received by airlines"
fucking come on, it's been more than a week
will it even get on an airplane now or are we in Chinese holiday territory already?

It's a hongcha kinda day isn't it. Sipping the "sweet potato" black tea from YS, this one really grew on me.

>>20157445
The best Chinese women are all virgins because they know they can refuse inferior Chinese men and wait for a chance at superior white cock.

>>20160224
Why is that tea so cheap?
>>20160226
Some shops are closed already until the end of February. Hopefully you'll get your package before then!
>>20160234
I love hammered glass. What size is that teapot?
>>20160292
I had to make sure I wasn't on /v/ or /vg/.

>>20160323
>Why is that tea so cheap?
Don't know. Maybe it's not considered "premium".
But I've had 20+ black teas at this point and this is one of the few that I would buy again.

What are your favorite teas from Trader Joes? I've been drinking the earl grey and spiced chai for a while, would like to pick up something different next

overpriced or good choices?

>>20160323
>What size is that teapot?
It was sold as 220ml. But I get about 170/180ml out when actually brewing.

>>20160067
In what shouldn't be a big surprise, Yunnan Sourcing isn't actually Fujian Sourcing.

>>20160388
I'm too new to know what that means.

>>20160390
Xiaguan black tea is shipped to Guangzhou and distributed from there, If you buy from a shop in Yunnan you are paying Scott to ship it back to Yunnan from Fujian. This is also why you should be wary buying small-leaf black teas from YS.

>>20159480
> I wonder why all teapots don't have this.
They used to, but then people switched to using brew basketd in teapots, or even worse a lot of small western pots are designed for foodservice and assume you will be brewing teabags in them.

>>20160436
What the fuck.

This is the other tea i got from teahome. He collects all the broken bits and dust from when he roasts the standard house roasted oolong and then gives it an extra roast to get that roast level up nice and high. He describes it as a 75% roast. It was $5 for 300g. I just threw it in my cart for the hell of it. Anyways i was hoping the broken tea bits would be a bit larger but it's definitely what it says on the tin. When i opened it i wasn't expecting much but its totally acceptable, smooth roasted, easy on the stomach, decently sweet. Don't expect deep complexity but for less than 2¢ per gram it just works. Much better then a random asian market balled oolong that i paid much more for last year.
Here is the listing
https://www.teahome.com/product/teaf-2/
And here is that standard house roasted oolong its made from, this isn't roasted as heavily but its still nice and cheap at about 3 1/3 ¢ per gram.
https://www.teahome.com/product/10404/
Im specifically into well fermented generously roasted oolongs andnim psyched that tea home is scratching that ich at such an attractive price point. I got a really nice roasted tgy from purple cloud last year but it was 30¢/g

>>20161251
Its actually got some decently live huigan

>>20161251
Hey I didn't notice that one, nice one. I'm putting together an order atm.

>>20160859
Every retail business is like this. We tend to notice it because we're buying so close to the origin.

>>20154340
There we go. I wanted to get one of the competition teas but I couldn't really work out what was what.

>>20161251
thanks for the advertisment, im sold

>>20161640
Hell yeah, interested to hear what you think of them, that wuyi tea sounds interesting. Really all of those teas im interested it trying. That cheap aged oolong sounds nice too. Did you get enough for free shipping?

I encountered a smallish cast iron teapot at a thrift store. I'm guessing, eight pounds empty. Imagine the gains. Imagine having one arm slighlty larger than the other and not from wanking off. The sick gains on your 'tea' arm and the grip strength of a baboon

>>20161887
>Did you get enough for free shipping?
I think free shipping is for mainland Taiwan only, if I'm reading the site correctly.
It asked me to pay and I stopped there since the guy told me by email to place an order and wait for advice on combined tea/freight cost.
Definitely one of the more confusing purchases I've made.

>>20161957
When you checked out did you select the family convenience option or the other one? I think you had to select the other option to have it just generate an invoice and not request payment. Then he emailed me with the shipping cost and a payment link.
Pic related

>>20159703
thanks, found it. Apparently it's stuck in customs

>>20162621
Not that anon but that's great! My teapot was apparently received at
ShaTian,DongGuan on the 29th and then appeared in JFK airport on the 31st and cleared customs later that day. It's possible that any anons that had orders a week or two ago are already being shipped. I don't ever order anything during Chinese New Year so it's really amusing to see packages get shipped faster than normal.

>>20148066
Why does this puerh have an expiry date???????

>>20162822
there"s a time bomb inside
it's so you consume it quicker and come back for more

>>20162822
maybe it's required by law where the store is based?

>>20162785
mine has been at the airport since the 23rd...

>>20162847
Nyooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

>>20162822
Oh, what's that? Your tea has an expiry date?! That sucks. You wouldn't happen to have tea that expired like 20 or 30 years ago, would you?
It's quite dangerous, so you'd better justy give it to me, i'll get rid of it safely, haha.

>>20162858
The best I can do is 2005 :|

finishing off my 2006 Dayi Spring of Menhai 100 gram sample from Awazon
honestly quite good stuff for the price if you don't mind a bit of smoke. nice bitterweet thing, minerals, above average aroma and a bit more complex than the Xiaguan tuos I have lying around. could use a nicer aftertaste though.
tastes less aged than the year suggests, no doubt because of the bone dry Kunming storage and the tight compression

>>20162919
it's got a distinct grassiness to it + some florals and plums. totally an easily acceptable tea

>>20162882
Damn, too young for me. I like 'em older.

hehe
Not the worst I've had but the only thing standout is the name.

>>20162952
The oolong is WHAT now?

>>20162992
what are those square bricks?

>>20162999
Dayi lct from 2014. I am having some now that's why they're there.

>>20163007
nice, will you write your thoughts? I finished that brick a while ago

First time here, what's the general consensus on which green tea to consume?

>>20163529
The one you like.

>>20163529
Just make sure it's this year's harvest. It matters much more for green tea than others.
I prefer Japanese greens myself. They tend to be intense, grassy, seaweedy, I think more complex than Chinese greens too but harder to brew right.
Chinese greens, in turn, are milder and easier to brew. Can have some roasted notes like peanuts, sweetness, green veggies.

If you want to compare, sencha and longjing are the most common examples for Jap and Chinese greens l.

After 80 days my FL samples finally arrived.
I've got all the popular ones so once I drink them all I try to write something about them from puer noob POV and compare it to xiaguan cakes that I've recently got.

Something for new people that never tried puer before so they have a vague idea before they become another victim of local lesbians.

>>20163547
Nice! What samples did you get?
A comparison of Xiaguan dong guo to FL dong guo could be cool, since it's from the same village.

>>20163547
80 days is brutal. Sometimes that's the way the dice rolls. I had 75 days last year from KTM on a large order. Looking forward to your writeups! You only get to be a novice once, so make sure you enjoy the journey.

>>20163558
Sorry don't have the xiaguan one, but I do have the FL one.
From FL I have fa zhan he, yellow flakes, dong guo, jingmai shengtai, tang fang Liang zi, maybe some others that I ordered for a friend.

When I ordered some spring-harvest TGY from YS, I got a little autumn-harvest sample of the same grade, and I wouldn't have guessed how much I prefer this now.

>>20162174
Yeah figured it out in the end over email, serves me right for getting rat arsed and ordering tea again

>>20163017
Just got done with it and I think it's among the better lcts you can get via ktm. I don't drink much shou but I like this more than the 7572 from 2019 and haiwan lct from 2018 that I own. One nitpick I have is that I wouldn't drink this while eating food because it might be hard to pair, it's not very tannic. I noticed in the dim sum restaurant when you ask them for the polay cha it's always a shou that tastes like your mouth is dry, this is more like a sweet and light shou.

Generous anon did you ever figure out what happened to the missing package of samples? Did the postal service say where it went?

>>20162919
Man i wish every dayi tea didn't have the associated dayi price hike to go with it. Outside of deals like buying tea from these ancient cryovault tea websites its good tea but often the price is just totally disconnected from the value because its made by dayi.

>>20148562
>>20148645
>>20148665
>>20148741

This seems to be demonic oppression.

Sounds like you guys need Jesus, seriously.

>>20164236
Yeah, the very same spring of menghai cake is available at 3x the price at KTM.

>>20163950
I thought it had a nice thick body but wasn't otherwise outstanding.

>>20163541
>Chinese greens, in turn, are milder and easier to brew. Can have some roasted notes like peanuts, sweetness, green veggies.
>sweetness, green veggies
>>20162952 here; going through a sampler pack from Yunnan Sourcing and those two flavors are exactly how I would describe the 2023 Spring Tieguanyin they included.
The veggie note is strong relative to the sweetness but isn't bitter, so while not a mild flavor, it also isn't a harsh one. In contrast, the similar note in Japanese green tea I usually taste is more likely to be bitter, and grassy is a good way to describe that.
>>20163659
What sampler pack and what did you like the most?
Still going through mine, the spring TGY is what I like most.

>>20164358
Are you replying to a different thread, what happened?

>>20164413
>In contrast, the similar note in Japanese green tea I usually taste is more likely to be bitter,
Japanese greens definitely get bitter more quickly. Good chinese greens I just brew grandpa style, they can handle it easily. Jap greens can be more finicky but I like the astringency, I think it often adds a fruity edge not present in Chinese greens

Spring harvest isn't that far away. What are you thinking about putting on that first harvest purchase list? Me, the usual puerh. But this year I intend to study more yancha and dan congs. Additionally, being that it is the year of the Taobao, I'm going to learn how to use that as well.

>>20164941
The year of taobao must become stronger. Make an account there if you haven't already and start doing some browsing. Its really easy as long as you use some chromium based browser for the in page translation feature. Very rarely i need to use google lens for some popup that doesn't get captured by the transater or for images with text on them. bebelcarp is really helpful to get tea related characters to use for searches. You will get better results if you search in chinese.
I added a link to this taobao shopping guide in the new rentry.
https://www.howtotao.com/
This spring i will probably just buy more $50 cakes from farmer leaf.
I also need to reup on liubao, i will probably try to get that on taobao. I would aslo like the get some semi aged cakes since i haven't picked any up in a few years.

>>20164941
>>20164958
Oh and iirc taobao requires third party cookies to be enabled to work properly. It's obnoxious. I usually just grab a different browser from my regular use one to dig around on there.

>>20164470
>astringency
This is a word I often forget but find useful every time I see it again.
Thanks.

>>20148066
FL just arrived.

>>20164429

It seemed that they were being attacked by evil spirits so I gave them the best solution, Jesus.

>>20165397
nice, what did you get?
and are those the jianzhan teacups from KTM on the left? I got them some time ago, they came wrapped in some newspapers about peach harvests or something like that

>>20164941
When's spring harvest? >>20165397
How's the white teapot on the right pour? Does it pour well? Also what material is it?

>>20166015
>When's spring harvest?
it varies depending on the tea. premium chinese greens tend to be harvested in March, for Japanese greens and pu-erh the harvest is usually later

>>20166097
What about other Chinese teas like black or oolongs? Is that in march too?

>>20148066
got some dragon balls recently but im not sure how to brew them. i have an ~120ml gaiwan and theyre 7g each. i think brewing 7g would be too much but i also dont want to break apart the leaves, but at the same time the water barely penetrates the surface so maybe not? should i just have a long first infusion? it takes a very long time for the leaves to open up

>>20166174
just brew the whole ball and take your time, wait for it to open up

>>20149243
honestly what an odd combination of words

>>20166174
With these I tend to let them sit in the water for a bit and watch the bubbles as water gets in. Then dump that and leave the lid on for a while so it steams and opens up a bit more.
7g is a fine amount

I regret buying a teapot from Taiwan Tea Crafts. They put the air hole in the top of the lid so if I put my finger on it, I burn myself or sometimes water comes out, also burning my finger. None of the Chinese ones that I've seen do this.

>>20165397
Lucky you, my FL order to EU got sacked today by the customs office.
They gave me one week to show up with the original bill or proof of payment so they can tax me. Otherwise they will return to sender.

>>20166705
RIP. How much is your bill?

>>20166705
That sucks. I never had trouble with customs myself. Will probably receive a package from FL next week.

What is the best way to steep kenyan purple? Can i just do it gongfu style like other black teas?

>>20166333
>>20166333
The hole in the lid knob is a pretty standard design for a shu ping style pot. All of mine are like that. Try to hold the knob with your thumb offset a bit so it doesn't cover the hole. Or just pour with two hands and pinch the sides of the knob with your other hand.

>>20166839
>Or just pour with two hands and pinch the sides of the knob with your other hand.
Funny enough that was what I tried last time. It seems to work a bit better, thanks. It still feels cursed though.

>>20166333
Just take lid off to pour

Bump. Just had some lemon verbena and soon I will sleep.

I'm sending my friend some Anxi Tie Guan Yin for her birthday cuz it's my favorite and I want her to try it too, anything I should let her know because she doesn't know shit about tea

>>20168059
Nah. Just be cool and say it's some good shit. If she asks, then let her know.

>>20168059
TGY rules, good choice

Nothing like sheng and incense in the early hours.

>>20168059
>anything I should let her know because she doesn't know shit about tea
Tell her how long to brew it?

Some anon few threads back bought the zhu tang from FL.
Did they post anything about it since then?

Grandpa or western, which results in better quality tea?

>>20149298
based i always mix some lemon juice into every second cup i make it feels amazing in winter really a mood lifter

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26927146/
So brewed black tea has many multiples the amount of fluoride in it than regular fluoridated water. What a nightmare, schizobros.

>>20169760
>bag

>>20169760
yeah and im drinking out lead glazed cups as well. as long as you accept youre fucked you feel pretty much fine.
>Please wait a while before making a post

>>20169137
Grampa brewed sheng, nice

Ive been drinking chinese green tea, any jap greens for recommendation?

>>20170096

>>20170096

>>20170096