How do I tea?

[rhiannonstone]

Tea friends:

I am spending way too much on delivery boba and Thai iced tea, and have decided that it's silly to not learn how to make them myself the same way I did with coldbrew and espresso drinks. So I want to buy a couple good black teas (Assam? Probably? I think?) to start experimenting with.

Just like with coffee, I don't believe that drinking it iced or with other flavorings means you should use the crappy stuff, so I want the good stuff. Affordably so, especially until I learn how to not ruin it and confirm what I like, but still the pretty good stuff.

But I am like a little baby in tea land, where there are many, many different options for purchasing tea and I don't know how to assess whether the names I recognize are the ones actually worth trying, or whether $25 for 2 oz. is in fact a reasonable price.

Where should I start?

Please consider this a solicitation for any and all tea-related advice you'd like to share.

Comments

[ivy]

My reasonably-affordable favorite place is the New Mexico Tea Company. I like their Assam if you're looking for stronger black tea, and they have many blends as well if you want flavoring.

[rhiannonstone]

Thank you! You were definitely one of the tea friends I thought of first. :)

In coffee-land, beans with added flavor is a reliable indicator of low quality. I have the vague impression from listening to tea friends over the years that this is probably not the case for tea. Is that impression correct?

And what on earth makes the difference between a $3/oz. tea and a $12/oz. tea?

[ivy]

There are a couple different ways of adding flavors to tea. If you do it by putting other dried things in with the leaves, that's not as looked down upon as spraying some kind of concoction onto the leaves, which, yeah, generally gets done onto lower quality teas. So, like, my favorite anti-drama tea is a black Ceylon with vanilla, cornflower, and blueberry bits in there. I can only think of one flavored tea I like that uses the spray-on method, which is an Ontario Icewine. (It's not white tea and grape bits, it's white tea and spray extract. But it's still good. I like it like I like marshmallow peeps.)

A fair bit of tea is finding out what you like, and how that stacks up against what other people like. There is an axis along which I have refined tastes (I usually prefer plain tea to tea with flavorings), and an axis along which my tastes can be viewed as either refined or barbaric (I prefer single-note flavors, so I like White Peony and Assam and Darjeeling and most Japanese green teas, and I do not like oolongs or pu-erh or any of the more complex teas which are the basis of a lot of Chinese tea culture). There, fancy vs. lowbrow is all a matter of whether your tastes align with what's made for gourmets. Any lover of Chinese tea, I'm a hopeless taste lout in comparison, don't waste the good stuff on me. Pricy Japanese teas, I sometimes can appreciate the differences.

So, I'd start with the more affordable ones unless something in particular is calling to you. If you'd like, I can send you some samples from what's in my cabinet, and you can see what you like and use that to walk yourself in without having to buy 9408390243 different possibly spendy kinds.

[rhiannonstone]

I would love that, thank you! What's the best way to send you my address?

I bought my first experiment at the farmers market yesterday. A local company called Yerba Buena Tea Co. Not that I actually understand what "local" means when it comes to tea companies, since I don't think they grow or even age/ferment/oxidize/whatever the tea--I guess they do the blending? I'll share my results!

[rmd]

Upton Tea sells my favorite Irish breakfast tea (an Assam blend), but they also sell their tea in little samplers at a reasonable price. I drink a lot of tea, but I'm not much of a tea gourmet - I like my Irish breakfast tea with milk and sugar.

I'm in the odd position where I've ended up with a bunch of teas I'm unlikely to drink. (A combination of buying tea to try it and it's still not as good as my usual, because sometimes I am a creature of habit, and people leaving tea with me or Upton sending me random samplers because they'll throw those in sometimes.) If you'd like, send me your mailing address and I can mail you a bunch and you can try things out.

(I'll be curious about your results with Thai iced tea!)

[rhiannonstone]

Thank you! And I'd love some things to try. I'll DM you my mailing address on the other place where we interact more. :)

I'll share my results with Thai iced tea, for sure. From my research, most places, even the fancy places, all use the same tea: Number One Brand. It has Yellow Number 6 to make it orange. I'm curious to see if I notice a difference between regular loose-leaf black tea and Official Number One Brand.

Little different but amazing fancy beverages

[threemeninaboat]

For fancy tea latte time, I like this one, fruity and delicious:
https://www.tazo.com/us/en/products/lattes-iced/green-tea-matcha-latte.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuja_tea
I get the same brand pictured at the bottom at the asian market. Winter with hot water, summer over ice and bubble water.
They have "jujube flavor" I don't like that one, it's like raisins.

I can't find this stuff very often, I could just order it.
https://shop.celestialseasonings.com/the-godfather-tea-latte-concentrate/p/cel-529856&c=celestialseasonings@concentrates

I love jasmine tea with lemon and honey.

I love mint tea with honey.

In the summer, I love an arnold palmer...

Re: Little different but amazing fancy beverages

[rhiannonstone]

Ooh yes I also love mint tea. Which is very weird because I loathe fresh mint almost as much as I loathe all things licorice-y and anise-y. But dried spearmint is magical and comforting. And nice over ice in the summer.

Innnnteresting about the raisins one. Given my favorite beverage is the subject of an incorrect but understandable urban legend that it's made with prune juice, I might actually like that one.