/tea/

Tea brewing infographic:
Covers leaf to water ratio and temperature for each type of tea
https://meileaf.com/resources/pdf/mei-leaf-tea-brewing-guide.pdf

Info for beginners:
Major types of tea

Green tea is a type of tea made from leaves that have been withered, fixed, then dried. The defining step in green tea production is the fixing step, which arrests any enzyme activity responsible for oxidation.

Yellow tea is defined by a unique processing step known as heaping or piling and involves piling and covering the leaves after fixing, allowing them to yellow slightly.

White tea is a type of tea made from leaves that have been withered and dried. White tea is the least processed tea. During the long withering period, the leaves oxidize slightly.

Oolong tea is a type of tea whose leaves are semi-oxidized, meaning that during production, oxidation is initiated, controlled and halted at some point before the leaves are considered fully oxidized. A distinct step in the processing of traditional oolong tea is the bruising step (also called rattling or shaking) where the leaves are shaken, lightly rolled or tumbled until the edges bruise.

Black tea is a fully oxidized tea wherein fresh tea leaves were withered, rolled, allowed to oxidize, then dried. The goal of black tea production is to induce (by rolling, cutting, etc) and control (by closely monitoring humidity, airflow, and temperature) oxidation until the tea leaves are fully oxidized.

Fermented tea refers to tea that is intentionally fermented. Primarily, fermented tea refers to tea that was fermented during processing via a pile fermentation step called wo dui such as shu puer and heicha. The fermented tea category also holds several fermented teas from Japan and teas that are intentionally fermented after processing, such as sheng puer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_processing
https://tea.fandom.com/wiki/Tea_types

Linda Gaylard's book on tea, not super in depth but helps with understanding the differences between kinds of tea and in tea culture around the world
https://mega.nz/#!RZZliIZb!mOD6Ky0B9S489hrcQVIQ4R4aZxNXJx45prNVrSCT_ts



Tea sourcing:

General
Your local tea shop
https://what-cha.com
http://www.uptontea.com

Chinese
https://yunnansourcing.com/ (chinese shop with larger selection)
https://yunnansourcing.us/ (US based shop for domestic shipping)
https://kingteamall.com/
https://white2tea.com/
https://puerhshop.com/ (US based, they also have smaller inventories in Canada & China)
https://www.chawangshop.com/
http://www.dragonteahouse.biz (also on ebay)
https://www.bitterleafteas.com/
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/13C2EA08-0075-49A9-BFCD-163233DD6D39 (amazon store for dayi tae tea, ships from amazon warehouse)

Japanese
https://www.o-cha.com/
https://yuuki-cha.com
http://www.yunomi.life/pages/tea-market
http://hojotea.com/indexe.html (stick to their japanese tea)
https://shop.ippodo-tea.co.jp/kyoto/shopf/index.html (japanese shop)
https://ippodotea.com/ (usa & canada shop)
https://www.chadoteahouse.com/
https://www.denstea.com/
https://www.thes-du-japon.com/



Subscription services:

Yunnan Sourcing
Has multiple options depending on what you want, monthly. 30 dollars, or 50 for premium. They also offer several types of tea samplers.
https://yunnansourcing.com/collections/tea-club-boxes

White2Tea
30 dollars a month, mostly used to educate (e.g. comparing two teas that have been processed differently, mao cha vs raw pu erh, young tree vs old tree)
https://white2tea.com/pages/tea-club



Blogs/yt:

Teadb: Good content, chill, two guys drinking tea and talking about it, their website also has a ton of resources on brewing and articles on different types of tea, they respond really quick to comments and questions, both on the website and on their fb
http://teadb.org/
https://www.youtube.com/user/teadborg

Marshaln, extremely interesting, puer focused but talks a bit about everything, a lot of the other sources quote him often
http://www.marshaln.com/

Akira Hojo, owner of Hojo Co., of a degree in agricultural chemistry and one in food science & nutrition, has a bit of a broken english but knows a lot of stuff about tea, writes about particular teas or about the characteristics of a family of teas or about agriculture or sometimes about more technical stuff
http://hojotea.com/en/

Don mei's blog/ chinalife's yt, there is quite some shilling and memeing involved but their content is good, especially for beginners getting into gong fu
https://teatipsy.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/chinalifeteabar

2Dog, owner of white2tea, puer focused, has some funny stories and nice pics, a lot of insight on sourcing and the making of puer, his snapchat is pure gold
http://white2tea.com/blog/

Thejadeleaf: This guy is a potter in taiwan and has some nice teaware, he also sources tea, a bit on the expensive side but his blog is interesting none the less
http://thejadeleaf.com/blogs/news

Farmer Leaf: Runs a small puerh focused business. He has some excellent videos showing tea processing and explaining the teamaking process. His video about fake tea is a must watch for puer drinkers.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOgkLFmMkJLSEP9-n6hZ08A

FAQ

>How to make tea
Infographic:
Covers leaf to water ratio and temperature for each type of tea
https://meileaf.com/resources/pdf/mei-leaf-tea-brewing-guide.pdf

1. Get a scale
Scales are useful to measure amounts of tea as their density vary widely. A rolled oolong, for example, is quite a bit more dense than a silver needle tea (not to mention silver needle would be quite hard to measure with a spoon).

2. Get a kettle
A Japanese water boiler works too, don't microwave your tea (hard to judge temperature, unevenly heats), stove top kettle or electric kettle are both fine it's mostly up to preference

3. Temperature
Different tea types require specific temperatures to bring out their best qualities, and to avoid their bad ones. Green teas for example do not generally handle boiling water well as they will scorch. Other teas (eg black tea) may be too faint if you brew them too cool (besides intentional cold brewing). Raw puerh is mostly up to preference, and many start at one end of the spectrum and work their way up or down until they find what temperature the specific puerh shines with.
You don't necessarily need a thermometer, although it is helpful. You can eyeball (roiling boil, steaming but not boiling, no steam, etc), use a water boiler or electric kettle with built in temperature settings, etc. However, a thermometer is useful when you're newer to tea as you can more closely follow other's instructions and adjust to preference.

4. Timing & quantity
Most teas become bitter with oversteeping and extremely faint when under steeping. There are two main ways of preparing tea, one is gongfu (traditional chinese method) and the other, much more common one, is the western way (see ISO3103).

Western stye brewing
Heat water in a pot or kettle.
Add the appropriate amount of tea (refrence the infographic or use 1 teaspoon) to your tea infuser. Place the tea infuser inside your teapot or mug.
When the water reaches the desired temperature, pour it over the tea infuser into your mug or teapot. This will allow the water to circulate through the leaves.
Time your tea. Once the time is up, dunk the infuser a couple of times to circulate the water. Remove the infuser and set aside for a second infusion, which most leaves should be able to handle.

Gong-fu Style Brewing
Gong-fu style brewing is often done in a gaiwan (a lidded cup) or a small teapot. Common sizes of these brewing vessels range from 75ml to 150ml.
Place leaves in your gaiwan or small teapot.
Add water at the correct temperature for the type of tea you are brewing.
Steep for only a few seconds. The first couple of infusions usually take around 5–30 seconds depending on the type of tea and your preferences. Tightly rolled or compressed teas may need longer first steeps as the leaves take time to open up.
With puer and oolong you should do an initial 10-20 second brew and discard the liquid. This helps remove any dust or debris left over from processing.
Pour into mug, teacup or other vessel.
You will need to experiment with different infussion times for each tea as the speed with which the leaves brew can vary dramaticaly depending on processing.

"Grandpa Style" Brewing
The idea is to put leaves in a large mug, and continue to fill with water, never removing the leaves from the cup. This means the leaves will always be steeping. For this reason it is best to avoid teas that get bitter easily.
Add leaves to your mug, 3 - 4 grams in a 10oz mug is a good starting point.
Add boiling water.
Once you have drunk 1/2 to 2/3 of the liquid, refill with boiling water.


>New to tea what do I try?
A little bit of everything.
Go to upton (or any other decent place with samples) and try some greens, oolongs, blacks, whites, etc (Sencha, tie guan yin, moonlight white, etc pick some that interest you) get some 15g samples. Try them. If you like one, explore that subvariety more, learn what you do and don't like, then try to get some better quality (yunnan sourcing, what-cha, etc).
What-cha also has an intro sampler with a little bit of everything, which may make it easier.

>But tea bags are so cheap!
Yes, and they contain the lowest quality tea possible (laymen translation for the technical term for the content of tea bags is "dust"), but loose leaf tea can be fairly cheap unless you buy organic japanese top quality first flush (picked during the first harvest season of the year, aka in spring, usually the most expensive and highest quality) single estate small field green tea grown in a bushido-law-observing farm by the 23rd generation of samurai farmers.
Twinings' bagged tea costs around €60/kg here, and for the same price you can get a mid quality chinese oolong from ebay, or organic genmaicha from one of the websites listed at the top, and those two can be re-steeped, so even if you bought good quality taiwanese oolong for €180/kg you could steep it (at least) three times, and while effectively costing you as much as twinings' bagged tea it would be considered much better by most.
You still can find cheaper tea bags at the corner store during the week it's on sale, and that will likely cost you less money but still taste like bagged tea.
If you like bagged tea enough tho nobody's to stop you from buying that and enjoying it.

>Does all tea come from the same plant?
No, but it's all from veeery similar plants, all of the Camellia sinensis specie.
For centuries, people have selected and crossed and cloned different bushes to get the tastier leaves and the bigger bushes, and different varieties of bushes are found in different regions (for example the variety that yields da hong pao is found in the Wu Yi mountains in the Fujian province of china, while the variety that yields sencha is found in almost all Japan, but not in China or India) - these different varieties of bushes are called "cultivars", short for cultivated variants, which means they were selectively cultivated (by men) slightly different varieties of the same specie of plant.
Different varieties of Camellia sinensis are also found in different climates - when, for example, tea was exported to India, the bushes changed slightly to adapt to the different weather and heat conditions; from that originated the Camellia assamica variant, short for Camellia sinensis var. assamica, where "variant" is the technical term to refer to slightly different variants of the plant that naturally occur(red) in different places.

>Raw pu erh? Ripe pu erh?
Raw pu erh is lightly fermented, steamed, and (generally) pressed into cakes, bricks, or other shapes. Then it is aged. The fermentation process continues as it ages developing a more complex flavor over time.
New raw pu erh can taste very vegeteal a little bitter or overly smokey, but these flavors generally mellow with time.

Ripe pu erh is wet pile fermented in a process that takes 25-50 days. It tastes much "darker" with flavors of chocolate, leather, nuts and loam. Sometimes it smells a bit fishy. It is easy on the stomach and is a popular tea for mornings.


>I want to get into pu erh what should I try?
https://teadb.org/puerh-for-beginners/
White2tea has both a raw sampler and a ripe sampler to show the differences it can have to let you experiment a bit. It has worldwide free shipping.
Yunnan sourcing also also offers several puer samplers.
Avoid puerh from random ebay shops and asian markets. There is a lot of very low quality and fake puerh on the market, so it's best to stick to the listed vendors untill you know what you are doing.

>What if I want to try something from somewhere like white2tea or yunnan sourcing but I'm not sure if it will be good?
Look it up on steepster. It's not guaranteed, and you shouldn't pay attention to the scores. Someone may have rated the tea low because it had notes of liquorice or apple and they dislike these things as preference. It doesn't mean the tea is bad, it just means it wasn't for them. Read what they say and decide why they rated it low, and if the reasons are some you'd agree with.

>How should I store tea?
Normal tea: in airtight tins away from light, heat, humidity, smells, and temperature fluctuations. In a tin inside a cabinet, in a glass jar away in a cupboard, etc are fine. Tea absorbs smells very easily so make sure the container is SEALED and do not store two types of tea together, or anywhere near strong smells of any type.
Pu erh: Its best to store in a cabinet or on a shelf away from direct sunlight.  Pu erh, like any tea, picks up smells easily so avoid storing it near anything with a strong scent, or in cardboard. You can store in pretty much anything as long as your pu erh won't pick up the scent and it can breathe a bit.
You should generally avoid storing puerh for more than a year or two unless you are willing to get very autistic about it. Improper temperature an humidity conditions will make your tea taste off.
The following article details the amount of autism needed for long term puerh storage.
https://teadb.org/puerh-outdoor-indoor-home-storage/
Also if you are storing pu erh in a high humidity environment like a cellar be sure to check for mold often. And in general, check for bugs and signs of pests trying to get in to your stash (nibbled wrappers, spider web, etc).

>Places to avoid
Teavana (overperfumed, expensive, shit quality), starbucks (same shit), any place that sells lots of flavored tea that isin't french. Tea sellers that make lots of healh and weight loss claims, though this can be unavoidable with chinese vendors.