I’m a big tea drinker. I tend to stay away from coffee, except as an occasional treat. Wegmans and Adagio have nice selections of loose-leaf teas, (a friend also recommended Upton). I would be cautious at Teavana, they are like used car salesmen and will try to oversell you at every opportunity.
Mate isn’t technically tea, and it contains significantly more caffeine than even black tea (though still less than coffee). I tried it for a while but didn’t stick with it. White is my preferred tea, and I use this infuser for loose-leaf stuff. It’s reasonably easy to clean and very easy to use. I purchased it for $10 about 6 years ago and it’s still going strong. Enjoy your foray into the world of tea!
BigT, have you tried rooibos? It has a much more robust flavor than most herbals. I’m not sure what you mean by “not too much work”, since pretty much any infusion is the same amount of work, but you can get rooibos at most grocery stores.
it is small enough to fit in an ordinary insulated stainless steel coffee cup, which I use as a small teapot. I put loose tea in the infuser, drop it in the cup, fill it with water & seal it. After a few minutes of brewing, I pour hot, fresh tea into an ordinary ceramic mug, which I drink from. (The water in the insulated cup stays too hot for me to drink comfortably.) My mug is a little smaller than the insulated cup, so I re-fill it, and then drop the tea ball out and shake the rest of the tea out of it, and open it over the trash can. Most of the leaves drop out. (This works better with larger tea leaves.) Then I let it and the insulate cup dry. I tap out any remaining bits of dry tea leaves right before re-filling it. (over the trash) Easy and tidy.
I have tea coming out of my ears - and tisanes - though I prefer tea.
I like Harney and Son’s Earl Grey Supreme and Tea Forte’s ginger pear white tea.
My husband had a team in Asia that would give him tea as a gift. I’ve given a bunch of it away (since they’d exchange visits often, and all visits came with a gift), but it was usually a whole leaf green tea. For someone who usually drinks Earl Grey or English breakfast, its a different taste - much more subtle and yes, sometimes a little like drinking hot water compared to a strong black tea. They also gave him (me - he doesn’t drink tea) a absolutely wonderful award winning oolong - the problem being the packaging is all in Mandarin and so that’s all I know about it. Its incredible - and again, whole rolled leaves so when you get done, you have whole tea leaves in you cup.
And the vast majority of my tea is loose. I put the loose tea in a pot and pour through a strainer.
White tea is made from the flowers, rather than the leaves, of the tea plant. It has a much lighter, more subtle, flavor than black or green tea (both of which are made from the leaves, but black is aged first).
White tea is one of the four major types of true tea (i.e. made from the leaves of the camellia sinensis “tea tree” plant). What makes a tea black, oolong, green, or white is based on how much oxidation it is allowed to undergo after being picked (they halt the oxidation by drying the leaves). White tea is dried out the soonest after picking and black tea the latest. White tea tends to be lower in caffeine, and has a more subtle flavor.
That’s a very simplified explanation, of course. There are sub-types of each color, and tons of other things colloquially called “tea” that technically aren’t (e.g. mate, rooibos, herbals, etc.).
ETA: Partial ninja by Chronos!
Also ETA: I prefer the infuser I recommended to the ball infusers because it’s really easy to just dump whatever you want into it and fill up with water. Ball and other similar, small infusers always gave me problems breaking tea leaves while closing. Not so with the mug sized basket.
I believe you’re thinking of something different. White tea is made from the same leaves as black and green (and oolong) but it’s just processed less. I like some white teas (this one especially) but they have a much weaker flavor and require a lot more leaves in the pot.
In my area, Tealuxe goes for an old school vibe, with lots of dark wood and tin canisters. Don’t get me wrong, they have good teas, but I prefer the friendlier customer service at David’s Tea. And, as I said, you can get delicious “basics” at David’s Tea - their Nepal Black, for example, is simple and delicious. It’s not all flash. I happen to be someone who likes sweetened, flavored teas, so it’s ideal for me. I’ve been loving their Cardamom French Toast, for example - dark, sweet and spicy!
Tealuxe was where I had my first encounter with loose-leaf tea and I’m not too embarrassed to say it was a near-magical experience. That was back when they had “over 100 teas and 1 coffee”. They had a about 5 branches at one point but now they’re down to two.
It depends on what you like. Most people think tea tastes better when grown at higher elevations. I personally like Darjeeling which is grown up to ~4k ft in elevation. There are no places in the continental US (dunno about Hawaii) that have a high elevation and get the same amount of water as India and China.
I’ve tried a few US-grown teas and I find them too strong and musty.
One warning on Rooibos, it is tiny and therefore is not compatible with many infusers. I bought “fill your own” tea bags that I use for Rooibos instead to avoid floaties everywhere.
I love using an electric kettle to heat the water. I no longer have the patience for a kettle of water on the stove. It’s really sad, but when I want tea (or cocoa), I WANT IT NOW!
Moonlitherial, I make rooibos in the teapot, then pour it into the cup through a little fine-mesh tea strainer.
Seconded. If you like spices, rooibos pairs nicely with cinnamon and so on. I have a mixture of rooibos vanilla and rooibos chai that is delicious. I’m going to break open some rooibos with orange and cinnamon tonight, in honor of this thread.
