Wholemeal Crank

By this I mean a light to minimal roast, and usually lighter oxidized and often quite tightly rolled oolong tea that retains a green color, like this Dayu Shan Oolong from Wing Hop Fung by debunix, on Flickr vs a darker roast, and potentially darker oxidized oolong like this Song Zhong Dan Cong by debunix, on Flickr

Hot tea is my favorite tea in cold weather: dark oolong or green/new style oolong, puerh, green, white or herbal, as long as it's hot. I probably drink less puerh in the summer, and cold-brewed tea is only a summer thing, but there's no one winter favorite.

This thread was a bit before my serious tea explorations started--interesting stories. Mom made pitchers of iced lipton when I was little, and it was horrid. Then I started to try the hot tea served in asian restaurants, and then occasionally would share some tea when my father made some at home. He was introduced to it by a Chinese friend from his calligraphy classes. At that time, it was not so easy to get the good stuff here, and he stuck to the SeaDyke Ti Kuan Yin whose tin he could recognize. I would always keep a tin of that on hand, frequently preparing a cup for lunch at work, but when I couldn't find it, I'd occasionally get brave and try another brand. Most of the time I was disappointed, and came back to the SeaDyke TKY with relief, but one day I bought a tin of TenRen BaoZhong, and gradually realized that there was more to life than TKY. I started to explore at health food stores and local chinatown markets, and found this section of the forums, and joined some Tea Tastings, and now I'm a 2 to 4 teas per day fan.

When it's hot enough to put the A/C on, especially if I have work to do in the garden, I like to keep a couple of glass infuser cups in the refrigerator with a small quantity of sencha for a cool-brewed treat--I use an inexpensive supermarket sencha for this. I've also been drinking a lot of various Taiwanese high-mountain oolongs, starting a little leaf in hot water for about five minutes, then diluting with cool water and steeping room temperature or in the refrigerator for a few hours. Again, I use what's on sale from my online sources, because a basic version does just fine 'brewed' this way.

Been drinking plenty of tea, as usual, but not posting about it: 1-4 sessions daily, at work (often shared) and at home. And as time goes by I'm still a tea omnivore--white, greens, oolongs, puerhs, occasional blacks and herbals. Today's infusions, so far: Aoi sencha from O-Cha, vegetal and sweet; Jiri-Mountain Hwang Cha from Morning Crane tea (day 2 with these leaves, still lovely after a 8-10 infusions altogether), fruity and tart and rich; and a sample of Ripe/shu pu from Yunnan Sourcing, 2011 'Man Tang Hong Number 2', bulk brewed in a thermos and deliciously earthy, a touch smoky, and sweet despite the unorthodox brewing. Will have at least one more batch before bedtime, not sure what it should be....need to start dinner and see what feels right.

I've gotten nice quality Jasmine Pearls from qute a few sources--Rishi's are quite nice--although I no longer drink much of it, because I prefer unscented/unflavored teas. I would trust some of my favorite sources for other teas to have good versions, though, like Norbu, but I'd never heard of Yong Xi Huo Qing until this post. I prefer more delicate greens on the whole, probably why I've missed it. One source that does list it is Tea Spring, and though I've not ordered from them, they seem to have a pretty good reputation in several tea forums I frequent, and they've got the jasmine pearls too.

Hibiscus blossoms add a fruity tartness to teas that is quite distinct from citrus. One whole blossom can add pleasing flavor to a cup of tea. I use them in herbal blends all the time, but haven't mixed them with my c. sinensis teas, but I have to think they would be more interesting than phosphoric acid or acid phosphate. Another flower that adds some fruitiness although not as tart is osmanthus blossom--very nice with black teas.

I don't drink coffee and only find myself in coffee shops when dragged there by a friend. But I rarely order tea unless in an Asian restaurant, because most other places I've found serve either black teas that I don't enjoy or green teas rendered unpleasant by overbrewing in too-hot water. What would make me happy in a tea shop? Good teas! Not just Earl Grey and Darjeeling and English and Irish Breakfast and Chai and variously fruited or spiced blends. Oolongs (many of which are very forgiving re: brewing without turning bitter), puerhs, green teas including sencha would bring me in. And the ability to influence brewing parameters--if the staff is knowledgeable to take my request for relatively dilute/milder brew and give me what I want, then I don't have to control all the brewing parameters myself, but if not, letting me pour the tea myself will go a long way.

Many cups: but as the cups range in volume from 2 to 12 oz, what's perhaps more relevant is that I brew up 2-3 sessions with different sets of leaves.

I don't measure by cups--among other things, my cups vary in size from 2 oz to 2 cups--but I usually start at least 3 tea sessions a day, and I may drink 3 to 20+ infusions per session.

And finally, got it together to process and post the images of that very pretty tea:

I more often start my day with hot chocolate than tea, but after that, it's tea all the way. No coffee, and hardly any black tea, because I'm a bitterphobe. Today, started with leftover leaves of a lovely Dan Cong oolong tea, and now I'm working on a nice green Gu Zhu Zi Sun, floral and sweet.

Today, in honor of a persistent cold or flu or whatever, chamomile tea with fresh lemon, hibiscus, & honey. So soothing.

Excellent. If that's the case, you could hardly go wrong with ordering 2-4 different senchas, the smallest quantity available of each, and see for yourself which you prefer, and if you can generalize from that to the kinds you should focus on in the future.

Looks like a nice shop with a fair selection of teas, including a substantial selection of japanese greens, but I'm a little wary when it doesn't mention harvest year. I'd ask about that before ordering. If the sencha is nitrogen flushed, or carefully refrigerated, it can keep a year plus and still be wonderful, but less than utterly meticulous handling will cost you the floral freshness that the best sencha has. As for which variety, well, mileage varies a lot on that, apparently. I tend to like the lighter steamed 'asamushi' senchas, but a lot of people prefer the deeper steamed 'fukamushi' senchas, which have more umami. I'm not nearly well versed enough to have a preference for which varietal the leaves come from--for me, what matters more is the way the leaf is processed. And today, I started with chamomile/hibiscus tea because I've got a sore throat, and then moved on to a deep roast Tie Guan Yin from Mountain Tea (picked for ability to tolerate bulk brewing & holding in the thermos, the better to enjoy tea in comfort of the couch).

Tea hours for me are pretty much the entire day: I drink tea for thirst and flavor and less for the caffeine, and I drink it dilute enough that I get only a little lift from it. On those days that start with hot chocolate, which has quite a punch of its own as I prepare it, I might not get to tea until lunchtime. And while I rarely start a fresh batch of leaves too close to bedtime, I will continue to drink infusions of a puerh or oolong started earlier right up until I go to bed.

I did have some lovely mint tea last night when I was too chilled for ice water with dinner, and it was lovely, but today's standby of Sea Dyke TGY was even better for fighting off chill.

They aren't. They're used to pies with lots of filler and a bit of bland fruit, so a good fruit pie, even if the crust is not outstanding, will always be a winner. It's a tossup whether or not you get more bang for your buck with whole large pies, or with individual tarts.

I've got a fairly sophisticated set of colleagues at present, but still, the classics with minor twists disappear the quickest, particularly those that might be a little sweeter than I really prefer. For example, brownies with dried sour cherries outperformed chocolate cookies with chili, because the chili was a step too far for some. Making things that home cooks rarely attempt impresses, even when they're super easy--saltines, for example, wow more than they ought because who makes crackers? And yeasted sweet treats with just a little extra twist--cinnamon roll baked as a braided coffee-cake twist gets more points than cinnamon rolls. Oh....I always get extra oohs and aahs if I grew some bit of the dessert myself--pears poached with pineapple sage, with bright red sage flowers from my yard are tasty and colorful and 'you grew this? wow!' adds quite a bit to the reception.

Meant to finish that by saying that I prefer the collards cooked these ways to the several times I had them cooked the traditional way for hours.

I fell in love with collards through 2 recipes: greens with pomegranate molasses from Paula Wolfert, which called for mustard greens. I didn't care for the mustard greens very much, and found collards to be just perfect in this dish: a brief boil of torn greens, then sauté with garlic and finish with pomegranate molasses--they end up softened but nowhere as soft as spinach. The other thing I've loved to do with them is a brief pressure cooking of thin strips of leaves, and putting beans over the leaves ("collard spaghetti" from Lorna Sass). Both involve more than a delicate steaming, but not hours of cooking.

I have never been able to enjoy Earl Grey, but fortunately that leaves more for these who do enjoy it. It smells lovely, but like coffee, for me the flavor is too bitter to enjoy. But tonight I'm enjoying a young sheng puerh--a sample of 2010 Lao Ban Pen from Norbu, a tea that can be quite horribly bitter if brewed to be, or mellow and herbaceous and sweet as I'm enjoying it tonight. Recently I was enjoying a very similar puerh when I discover that a nearby colleague also liked tea. I offered her some, and she at first declined, saying, "puerh....that's that horribly strong bitter stuff right?" And I soon set her straight and had hr enjoying a cup of my usual rather dilute and mellow brew. Maybe someday a true Earl Grey aficionado will be able to open my eyes to a tea I've given up on....

When it's colder and greater I drink more earthy puerhs or deeply roasted oblongs. But the temperature that matters is my own chill, so I drink plenty of puerhs in overly air-conditioned offices in the summertime, and light greens in the winter when things are cozily warm. And sencha in the morning is good year-round.

Glad to hear some praise for quarter-inch steel, because that's about as thick as I think I can handle, for a 12 x 21 inch piece to line my oven racks. I can always double it up if I want to get really fancy and am feeling strong. Going to ask my mechanic buddy to ask his machinist friend for an estimate for three of them, one per rack, but making sure I know what's in the steel. Thanks for all the replies.

Just not seeing a lot of danger in non-food-grade steel here--it would have to be something toxic, not removed by washing, not destroyed by oven temperatures, and likely to leach out into bread & other foods in contact with it for short periods of time.