When I think of 'comfort food' I think of assam brewed for 4 minutes
with lots of leaves and served in big mugs with milk. I like teas and
have purchased varied kinds at local tea shops and Murchies when in
Canada. I read your discussions and wonder about all the varied kinds
and forms you drink and wonder if I will ever have an opporunity to
taste some. Where may I go to find out the different ways to brew. I
have a white tea I got at an asian grocery and it is yuck. How should
I treat it to get the best flavor from it? Or can I? Possibly I just
will not like it but I would like to try. I suppose I could add a
little Lapsong Souchong to it, that will overwhelm the flavor. (Just
joking.) Suggest a brewing website or give me some ideas please.

Mary from Oregon

Mary,

If you've been drinking black tea all your life (like I did until a
few years ago); you'll want to work your way up (or is it down?) to
white tea. I first tried white tea about 10 years ago, when I knew
nothing about tea except for grocery-store teabags (Red Rose and
Tetley were/are my favorites) and the occasional "treat" of Twining's
loose tea. I thought the white tea tasted like... nothing. I realize
now that I needed to learn about the range of flavors contained in
different teas. Now, I LOVE white tea (especially Silver Needle). In
fact, I recommended white tea to a friend who drinks nothing but green
tea from a teabag. This past monday he told me he stopped into our
local tea shop (Seven Cups in Tucson), bought some Silver Needle, and
loves it.

So, my advice is to work your way from black (what the Chinese would
call red), to Oolong, to Chinese green, to Japanese green if you'd
like to try it, then to white.

You should also check out the FAQ for this group. TONS of good info in
it. http://pages.ripco.net/~c4ha2na9/tea/faq.html

And I'm with you on the "comfort food". My parents are Scottish, so I
grew up drinking black tea with milk and sugar. That's my drink of
choice when I'm feeling like I need something comforting. Otherwise, I
drink tea without any additions (something else I had to learn over
time).

Happy Drinking!

Alan


On May 18, 2:18 pm, hilltop > wrote:
> When I think of 'comfort food' I think of assam brewed for 4 minutes
> with lots of leaves and served in big mugs with milk. I like teas and
> have purchased varied kinds at local tea shops and Murchies when in
> Canada. I read your discussions and wonder about all the varied kinds
> and forms you drink and wonder if I will ever have an opporunity to
> taste some. Where may I go to find out the different ways to brew. I
> have a white tea I got at an asian grocery and it is yuck. How should
> I treat it to get the best flavor from it? Or can I? Possibly I just
> will not like it but I would like to try. I suppose I could add a
> little Lapsong Souchong to it, that will overwhelm the flavor. (Just
> joking.) Suggest a brewing website or give me some ideas please.
>
> Mary from Oregon

hilltop wrote:

> When I think of 'comfort food' I think of assam brewed for 4 minutes
> with lots of leaves and served in big mugs with milk. I like teas and
> have purchased varied kinds at local tea shops and Murchies when in
> Canada. I read your discussions and wonder about all the varied kinds
> and forms you drink and wonder if I will ever have an opporunity to
> taste some. Where may I go to find out the different ways to brew. I
> have a white tea I got at an asian grocery and it is yuck. How should
> I treat it to get the best flavor from it? Or can I? Possibly I just
> will not like it but I would like to try. I suppose I could add a
> little Lapsong Souchong to it, that will overwhelm the flavor. (Just
> joking.) Suggest a brewing website or give me some ideas please.
>
> Mary from Oregon

Mary,
while I agree with Alan that working your way up to white tea (or, more
correctly, down the oxidation levels) would possibly be the ideal way,
you said you had some white tea and I suppose you want to drink it.
You made it and said it's yuck. Besides a possibly low quality, the
main reason for making white tea taste unpleasant is to "cook" it
during infusion. White tea is a very fragile product, it consists of
only the youngest shoots and hasn't undergone major processing.
Never brew it with boiling water! The exact water temperature depends
on the type of white tea. In my experience, Bai Mu Dan (usually the
furry bud and one or two leaves) can take between 75 - 85°C (Darjeeling
Bai Mu Dan tends towards the upper limit), while Yinzhen (Silver
needle, just silvery, fat buds) is best brewed not hotter than 80°C
(usually around 75°C).
A lot of online vendors publish the parameters for steeping their tea,
so that might be a good starting point to do your research into brewing
a specific tea.
But there's tons of information out there, you just have look for it...

Jo
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