Tea drinkers unite

Does anyone here find tea to go really well with a nice cigar? It's not the traditional bourbon on the rocks with a stogie, but I find a hot cup of Yerba Mate and a cheap Dominican Cohiba to be quite satisfying.

Bonnonon wrote:

Rooibos tea is great, I suggest it to everyone. Try to get loose lead and a good strainer. In my area a number of places sell looseleaf combo's Rooibos with strawberry, or Rooiboos with green tea.

Rooibos is the only tea I usually drink, but it's a herbal so I wasn't sure if this was the place for a recommendation. I drink it at night because it's caffeine free, black and strong with a bit of sugar. It also makes a great iced tea.

I find regular teas very earthy tasting compared to rooibos, and if I want caffeine I just go for coffee.

I usually stick to green teas these days, although I still love my Earl Grey, and have a new favorite in The Republic of Tea's Mango Ceylon blend.

The hot water spout on the water cooler in my work's kitchen is the perfect temperature.

Like most everything else one might enjoy in life I'm starting to stumble on the fear mongers in my tea research.

Talk of heavy metals (particularly fluoride in Rooibos and Pu'erh), salmonella contamination (wouldn't hot water -specifically above 160F/71C- kill this anyway?), residual pesticides, etc. There's even cancer talk, specifically for Yerba Mate:

[url wrote:

http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/canc... did determine that if prepared in the traditional way and consumed in amounts typically enjoyed by South Americans who drink mate, the intake of certain carcinogenic PAHs was comparable to what a person would get by smoking a pack of cigarettes per day.

Of course that's awfully specific with the traditional way and amounts, it seems the issues are mainly when you have more than liter a day.

I'm sure moderation is a good start and none of the above terribly concerns me but it does raise a question for the more experienced and knowledgeable here:

Are there any particular teas (or perhaps source countries) that actually should be entirely avoided for safety/health reasons? If so, which?

Teavana has two good teas worth their price. Their darjeeling and their English Breakfast - the English Breakfast only because it is cheap. The rest of their teas are overpriced and often include too little tea in the blend compared to the rooibos that they add as flavoring. For that reason, I go with Adagio in my online orders. The quality there is more hit or miss, but it's significantly cheaper. My absolute favorite from Adagio is their Jasmine #9.

For those of you into green teas, there are some positives in skipping both of those companies and looking on Etsy. You can find better compacted longer-lasting green teas for very low prices there. Of course YMMV, but I've had two teas on there that have had interesting and versatile flavors for between 3 to 7 steepings per bit of tea. That variability is what I love about green tea.

I'm an equal opportunity caffienator - coffee, tea, whatever. I usually go with Tetleys or P&G Tips in bags for busy days. I have a half-canister of Teavana's Black I do when I've got time to get out the proper teapot and etc.

We have an extremely good Asian grocery store in the Seattle area called Uwajimaya, and that's where I get my serious teas. Like go in there and find something I can't completely read (but can puzzle out enough to know it's not completely weird) and take them home and see.

They've got a large selection of tea in brick or disk form which can be interesting if you like the stronger, darker flavors. Last time I was there, I bought something very similar to this, but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

krev82 wrote:

Are there any particular teas (or perhaps source countries) that actually should be entirely avoided for safety/health reasons? If so, which?

I haven't heard of any reasons to be concerned with any teas. I suppose moderation should be used with anything as you mentioned, though.

Tea! I love a cup in the morning and afternoon. Any kind of green, black, or oolong. Not a fan of "herbal" teas. Don't take sugar or milk. Death to rosehip.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
krev82 wrote:

Are there any particular teas (or perhaps source countries) that actually should be entirely avoided for safety/health reasons? If so, which?

I haven't heard of any reasons to be concerned with any teas. I suppose moderation should be used with anything as you mentioned, though.

I hadn't heard about this and since I just branched out into that new kind I did a little research.

There are none I know of that should be avoided utterly. The only thing I've found had to do with drinking brick tea, which is compressed and concentrated, brewing it with a very long steeping process (like boiled hard and left to steep overnight), and drinking a heck of a lot of it. Like more than I drink coffee and doing it for a very long time.

In general, the regions tea is grown in have a lot of the mineral flourine in the ground and it gets leeched into all the plants in the area as they grow. Not just tea, it's in their flour and everything else, as well as in the water they drink. This is not the same as the fluoride in our water; the naturally occurring levels are much much we would allow to be added.

My take is unless you want to take and make your entire diet match that of a rural Tibetan and import very authentic ingredients, you should be okay.

http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/f...

krev82 wrote:

Are there any particular teas (or perhaps source countries) that actually should be entirely avoided for safety/health reasons? If so, which?

I remember rumors about certain tea producers in China driving over their tea leaves on the warehouse floor with trucks to crush them and using the diesel exhaust to dry out the leaves, but I think that was right around the time of the baby formula scare, so there were probably a lot of exaggerated/fabricated stories.

I'm working through a batch of green rooibos (unoxidized rooibos) at the moment and I'm rather enjoying it. It may be a little on the light side for green tea purists but I think it strikes a pleasant balance.

Ghostship wrote:

When I'm trying to cut down on coffee intake during the day, I'll try a tea branded Tazo. It's spearmint and tarragon. I like spearmint and would like to find some just spearmint tea. I think the flavour I don't like in that one is the tarragon. Anyone have some tea-wuss tea suggestions.

Our tea is usually Twinnings or Tetley. My wife is bound to Orange Pekoe. I personally like the peppery kind of lemon flavour in earl grey. Not sure what the flavours would be described as by tea connoisseurs.

Tarragon is quite bitter, so I understand your objections. You can still grow your own spearmint if you want, it's pretty much a weed, it grows and spreads like crazy with minimum attention. Just don't set it free on your lawn, it's very aggressive and tends to push out other plants.

Earl Grey flavor comes from bergamot, which is a citrus fruit alright. I love it as well. Just try and find the brand of Earl Grey you like, as lots of teas now use artificial bergamot oil for flavoring. The real thing is on the more expensive side.

[quote=Crouton]Harney and Sons makes excellent teas. You can find them in tea shops and gourmet boutiques sometimes or you can order from them online. Their Genmaicha and Darjeeling are excellent.quote]

I'm also a fan of their cinnamon spice. I got my entire Monday night dinner group hooked on it. When I don't have it around I've found that Good Earth Original Blend has a very similar taste. A little lighter on the cinnamon but still with it's own sweetness so you'd never feel the need to add anything.

krev82 wrote:

Like most everything else one might enjoy in life I'm starting to stumble on the fear mongers in my tea research.

Talk of heavy metals (particularly fluoride in Rooibos and Pu'erh), salmonella contamination (wouldn't hot water -specifically above 160F/71C- kill this anyway?), residual pesticides, etc. There's even cancer talk, specifically for Yerba Mate:

[url wrote:

http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/canc... did determine that if prepared in the traditional way and consumed in amounts typically enjoyed by South Americans who drink mate, the intake of certain carcinogenic PAHs was comparable to what a person would get by smoking a pack of cigarettes per day.

Of course that's awfully specific with the traditional way and amounts, it seems the issues are mainly when you have more than liter a day.

I'm sure moderation is a good start and none of the above terribly concerns me but it does raise a question for the more experienced and knowledgeable here:

Are there any particular teas (or perhaps source countries) that actually should be entirely avoided for safety/health reasons? If so, which?

My completely uneducated and uninformed response to the fear mongers is to ignore them entirely.

Even if mate does contain carginogens, the one or two cups of it I drink a week (at most), made from bagged mate (i.e. not made in anything like a 'traditional' style) are unlikely to screw me over. My guess is that mate is in the same category of carcinogens as cellphones now are, that is to say, it's a possible carginogen.

But like I say, completely uninformed.

Late to the party, but the Native American Tea Company makes awesome teas, particularly the Chief's Delight.

How important is descaling your kettle? Water here is fairly hard and there's a visible build up rather quickly. I gather it can affect the efficiency of your kettle but my palate is not yet refined enough to know how this might impact a tea's flavour.

Assuming it is a good idea to descale is there a particular method that works better than others? From what I've read the main suggestion seems to be boiling either diluted vinegar or diluted lemon juice to descale followed by a long water boil to remove the taste of the vinegar or lemon from the kettle.

krev82 wrote:

How important is descaling your kettle? Water here is fairly hard and there's a visible build up rather quickly. I gather it can affect the efficiency of your kettle but my palate is not yet refined enough to know how this might impact a tea's flavour.

Assuming it is a good idea to descale is there a particular method that works better than others? From what I've read the main suggestion seems to be boiling either diluted vinegar or diluted lemon juice to descale followed by a long water boil to remove the taste of the vinegar or lemon from the kettle.

Back in England, grocery stores would sell pouches of powder that would descale your kettle. But unless you're somewhere where pretty much every kitchen in the country contains a kettle, you may not find the same kind of product.

As to how important it is, my rule of thumb was to descale it when there were free-roaming bits of scale in the bottom of the kettle - I think that scale attached to the heating element isn't going to affect efficiency that much, but I could be wrong. Ultimately, if you can't taste a difference in the tea, then the scale isn't a big problem.

krev82 wrote:

How important is descaling your kettle? Water here is fairly hard and there's a visible build up rather quickly. I gather it can affect the efficiency of your kettle but my palate is not yet refined enough to know how this might impact a tea's flavour.

Assuming it is a good idea to descale is there a particular method that works better than others? From what I've read the main suggestion seems to be boiling either diluted vinegar or diluted lemon juice to descale followed by a long water boil to remove the taste of the vinegar or lemon from the kettle.

That's basically it, though I just rinsed it out really well rather than boiling it again.

I have used one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Craft-.... It did pretty well. Where I live the water's not that hard, though.

Another idea might be a glass kettle: http://www.amazon.com/GROSCHE-INDIGO...

Hard water definitely affects tea quality, both taste and visual quality. I would recommend a filter, Brita or such, as it will affect the quality tremendously. You can really see and sense it, just make the same tea with filtered and normal water and compare. The hard water tea will be darker, more bitter and will create an oxidized layer on top when left to cool a bit. Filtered water will provide a better way to taste the tea's own flavor.

wanderingtaoist wrote:

Hard water definitely affects tea quality, both taste and visual quality. I would recommend a filter, Brita or such, as it will affect the quality tremendously. You can really see and sense it, just make the same tea with filtered and normal water and compare. The hard water tea will be darker, more bitter and will create an oxidized layer on top when left to cool a bit. Filtered water will provide a better way to taste the tea's own flavor.

It also drastically increases the amount of time between kettle descales.

wanderingtaoist wrote:

Hard water definitely affects tea quality, both taste and visual quality. I would recommend a filter, Brita or such, as it will affect the quality tremendously. You can really see and sense it, just make the same tea with filtered and normal water and compare. The hard water tea will be darker, more bitter and will create an oxidized layer on top when left to cool a bit. Filtered water will provide a better way to taste the tea's own flavor.

Bear in mind also that tea blends are localized for water hardness. The PG Tips you buy in London are not the same as the PG Tips you buy in Newcastle. Most of the time when people talk about the tea tasting better back home it's the water quality that's the factor.

I have a Zojirushi auto-boiler. It boils water, and then keeps it at a pre-set constant temp (either 208*F, 195*F, or 180*F). Whenever we need a tea fix (which means "always"), the hot water is right here. Just remember to refill it. 2.2 liters is about enough to brew a teapot and to make a couple of mugs for me, my wife, and my older kid. If our family had a godswood, this kettle would stand in the place of a weirwood.

IMAGE(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31h7gkDLOiL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)

As far as water and descaling goes, I have an undersink 3-stage Reverse-Osmosis filter in my kitchen (installed it myself a few years back). The water is clean and tasty. The kettle NEVER gets scaly. It's as clean and smooth as on the day of purchase. You can buy a filtration kit for about $150-180 at Home Depot or Lowe's these days. It takes only about 1 hr to install it. Very much recommended.

There are basically two choices -- easy-plug filter cartridges that let you to replace them easily without having to drain the system (Whirlpool), and older, drop-in-style conventional filters that are messier to replace, but tend to have greater longevity (this is the one I have). In my circumstances, I am replacing the cartridges about every 6-8 months. We use filtered water extensively because we do cook a lot at home.

Teavana, in my opinion, sells some pretty average teas the mediocricity of which are masked by very strong flavorings. The tea itself is small-to-medium leafed and not very robust.

The Russian teas usually involve blends were a robust, fully fermented and roasted tea is mixed with a little bit of greener leafs, meaning that they weren't fully fried, and thus retained more oils. This is what gives the "Russian tea" that smooth, slick after-taste. A piece of Russian culture trivia: an EXACT same effect is achieved when you mix in young pinecone buds.

In the 12 years I've lived in Central Oregon, We've never once had to descale our kettle. Probably has to do with the fact that we're on a private aquifer that requires almost zero filtration before it comes out the tap. So my suggestion is to just move to a place with better water!

I just found this thread, I have been a avid tea drinker since college, where the culinary students got me in to loose leaf teas. We would have tea parties where everyone would bring the latest creations and share them. Great times. Now I tend to like a nice rooibos or honeybush in the morning and then love a nice mix of camomile and lemongrass in the evenings. I have gotten a small collection of the dried ingredients and mix blends blends to my moods.

I also use an electric top and usually steep in individual cups.

And Tigerbill, most white teas should be steeped in 180deg water so you don't scorch the leaves and harm the flavor, I will do white if I am in a rush. I have found that I try not to rush tea, I like the process and the mellow that comes with waiting for the tea to reach the right temperature for drinking. My usual rule is if I can't hold the cup in my hand it is still too hot.

Wow, you can make tea with gin?

theditor wrote:

Does anyone here find tea to go really well with a nice cigar? It's not the traditional bourbon on the rocks with a stogie, but I find a hot cup of Yerba Mate and a cheap Dominican Cohiba to be quite satisfying.

I never thought of that. I really like coffee + cigars and always figured that tea wouldn't have enough punch to go with a cigar.

I'll have to try one with tea.

Some teas have a lot more caffeine than coffee. I think it would be awful with a cigar, but one example is the Lipton orange spice tea. I think it's called Constant Comment. I haven't had it for a long time, but it used to pack an incredible wallop. A pitcher of that would probably be about the same as two pots of coffee.

But orange spice tea with a cigar? Oh god, that would be horrrrible.

Actually, Bigelow does not have a tea with more than about 60mg caffeine per 8 ounces. Constant Comment, being a black tea is about 40mg or so (Oolong goes higher). Lipton Orange Spice is 35mg. Coffee goes up to around 100mg.

Weird what perception does, eh?

Well, maybe it's changed, since my experience is almost twenty years old, but when I was a youth, I'd set myself up with a pitcher of that stuff and get WAY WAY more wired than I would off coffee. But twenty years is a long time, and who knows what's changed since then?

You'd think I'd know better than to treat memories from almost a generation ago as if they were still fresh. A kid born back then would be old enough to vote now.