I like the above quote about tea. It truly is a form of art to make a great cup of tea. In my last post about tea I talked about letting the boiled water cool down to 80°C when preparing a cup of green tea, so you don’t burn the fragile green leaves. But you also have to consider the amount of tea you use per cup and how long you let it steep. One of my pet peeves is when people dunk their teabag in their cup for half a minute at call that a cup of tea. You have to give the leaves time to release their taste and, apparently, their cancer fighting antioxidants.
The last batch of tea I ordered from de Theefabriek was gone in no time. I clearly underestimated my ability to drink large amounts of tea. My favorite of the batch, the elven tea, was gone first and I’ve thought about it every day since. It was exactly what I craved after breakfast and in the afternoon. So, this time I decided to order the 400 grams package. It’s an astounding amount of tea, but I think I’ll manage to drink it all before we move to Canada.
Besides some favorites, I also ordered Kukicha tea, which is a Japanese blend made of stems, stalks, and twigs; parts of the tea plant that are excluded from most other teas. I’d never drank it before and was intrigued by it’s look and description. It has a nutty, woody and slightly sweet flavor. I love it.
This is white tea with roses. The tea leaves are large and there are lots of small roses. I love tea that actually looks like it came from a plant, where you can see the different leaves. The addition of these roses makes it even more beautiful and flavorful. This blend is called silence and it does cause me to pause and be silent for a moment. You should try it.
I love that you have pet peeves regarding tea. I do as well! Tea snobs unite. haha :]
Right now I’m obsessed with Rishi’s Lavender Earl Grey and Republic of Tea’s Cinnamon Plum.
Yeah, I suppose I am a bit of a tea snob. I prefer the term “tea purist” though ;)
Those teas sound delicious!
Haha, I’m guilty as hell, I’m a teabag dipper :p
I know! Everybody I know is a teabag dipper. That’s the official term right there ;)
I am thinking most of the teabag dipping may be caused by the teabags not being worth steeping for very long seeing that they contain pretty average tea… But when you drink real tea like the ones you describe, you soon learn that it is a crime to not let the tea steep for a while and let the flavours develop.
I think you’re probably right. The “regular” tea bags do seem to give off their flavours relatively fast.
one of my huge pet peeves is when people dunk tea bags into a cup in general since it’s so wasteful and can make a few cups perfectly and because it’s just so silly to waste so much packaging to not even cover it to let it brew so I loved that you have pet peeves w/ it too : ) you took such beautiful pics of the tea leaves!