Please let me warn you...with my many Iranian friends during college (I was
a tutor for foreign students), I drank many a fine Golabi or Darjeeling with
sugar between the teeth...and *every* one of us had (or developed in my
case) a huge cavity just in the spot where we habitually held our sugars.
Funny how a good many of those friends happened to want to go into
dentistry!

Ah, those days of "chay-e dam ghand pahlu" (fresh hot tea with a sugar cube
on the side)...

Shibumi

a écrit dans le message de
...
I -think- so - the local Iranian markets have, besides a lot of tea,
various (and many) types of sugar and jam. The sugar is available in
rock candy, cubes, and irregular white 'chunks' which is what I think
you are looking for.

Do you see loaf sugar on this page? Look for 'cone'...

http://www.sadaf.com/store/page32.html

juanon wrote:
Have you found a source for Russian-style loaf sugar? Holding a piece
of
the sugar between your teeth while slurping tea is a custom that has its
merits. I would like to buy loaf sugar in the US.
wrote in message
news
Well, I started a post earlier, and I wanted to summarize my findings.
I was mainly curious as to the 'proper' use of a samovar and teapot.

For the record, I have a German made 'Beem' Rebecca III model in
Stainless.

The general principal seemed to be clear

- heat water in the samovar
- make a tea 'concentrate' (very strong tea) in a teapot
- mix concentrate + water to make tea
- the teapot can be left on top of the samovar to keep it warm while
brewing and thereater

I found a nifty 'howto' at

http://www.fazekas.hu/~nagydani/rth/...-HOWTO-v2.html

What wasn't clear to me was how long you could/should leave the tea in
the teapot. The Beem instructions said you could leave the tea in for
up to 4 hours. The above mentioned HOWTO made no mention of time,
either for minimum or maximum steeping. I wrote to the author of the
howto, and he replied thusly.

Depends on what you call "drinkable". Generally, it's safe and tasty
forabout 24 hours or even a little more. After that it will become
increasingly sour/bitter in an unpleasant way. However, there is a
clear difference between fresh zavarka, and that of yesterday.

Zavarka is "fresh" until the zavarka pot cools down by itself. Which
is about 3-4 hours, if kept warm by a towel or other means of
heat-insulation. But even after that there's no reason to discard it,
unless you're expecting guests or something like that.

Cheers,

Daniel

Now, when I checked with a local Iranian store (Santa Monica,
California), they thought it was a -bad- idea to leave the tea leaves
in the teapot for more than 10 or so minutes. They also have a huge
variety of tea at reasonable prices, and hard sugar/rock candy, and
jam, for keeping in your mouth while drinking tea - very much in the
Russian style, from what I have read.

Nigel from teacraft mentioned in this group that Georgian (traditional
Russian), Iranian, and Turkish tea are low in tannins and can be left
to steep.

So, I went back to the Iranian store, and they did have Turkish tea -
Caykur. They also had Russian labelled "Czar Nicholas" tea - with
labels in only Russian and English - that mentioned the use of a
samovar, but that you should pour the tea - off - the leaves after no
more than 10 minutes. This tea was packed in Ceylon. There were a
few other Ceylon brands that had identical instructions.

So, to keep from running on too long...

- Turkish tea can be brewed indefinitely, it actually tastes nicer
after a while.

- Ceylonese tea gets nasty.

- Chinese black teas remain drinkable (need more data here).

I gather that in Russa, Iran, etc. there has been a shift from local,
or Chinese, teas, to Indian teas, which are a bit more tannic. Thus
the varying instructions.

Logically the prolonged steep + addition of water should act more like
a second steeping - English teas become undrinkable if oversteeped
because the amount of water is fixed. Howevery, the Ceylonese teas
get a bit astringent for me after a little while regardless. I think
that most 'English' style tea is drunk with milk for this reason.

I will probably -mainly- be using a filtered decanted brew in the
teapot so I can just ignore the wait time. I'll fire up the Turkish
tea and leave it in the pot for foodies. The Turkish tea does have
tiny leaf fragments that have to be filtered. I'd be interested in
trying some Georgian tea - there is an interesting writeup he

http://www.meridianworldservices.com/georgiantea.html

I can have tea ready for the family when needed this way, and pour out
40+ cups without having to do anything more than once...

I also think that the availability of lots of hot water with some
flavor to it whenever needed is more valuable in Russia than
California...

I am happy with the samovar, though, it looks great and is practical
for serving -lots- of tea, at varying strengths as well.

Sorry if there are any grevious lapses in content - I don't speak
Russian (or Farsi or Turkish) so I am sure that there is a lot of
information that isn't accessible to me.

- Mike H.