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Now for an opinion that is sure to ruffle some feathers. C. sinensis-assamica is inferior in taste to the more refined C. sinensis-sinensis. It’s twangy and more bitter. To correct these imperfections you would ideally add milk to attenuate the twanginess and sugar to make the bitterness more palat...

@bentz98125 : you do have assumptions/stereotypes/differences between blue-collar and white-collar workers though, right? I don't really know about coffee - I would assume that Starbucks and similar were more of a middle class thing while cafes/takeaways that just sell tea and coffee would be eithe...

So are tea consumption patterns/preferences and the class system in Britain really so intertwined? If so, does coffee share that characteristic? (I've heard there is some association of coffee houses in the past with political life.) Being from the western US where classless meritocracy is as self-e...

Absolutely, first hand accounts are often the best!

Enjoying a kabusecha that was identified as an easy brewer, but instead I’ve found it to be very difficult to brew. Other ones that are supposed to be hard to brew on the other hand I’ve found easy. Interesting... I’ve steeped O-Cha’s Kabusecha six times now, each time getting varying degrees of bi...

Looks fascinating. Eager to see if it sheds any light on how the tea trade dovetailed into the birth of international heroin narcotraffic as Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Polit ... heast_Asia) alludes to.

Wow, thanks for the most comprehensive and concise explanation of green tea flavor I've seen! I feel my understanding has progressed just by looking at it. Always knew a lot of variables were involved but never seen them organized into such a nice logical format. I'm sure an intricate web of correla...

Not to add another layer on top of what you said, but I am mid-way through a bag of that exact gyokuro, and while I have experimented with infusion at the recommended temperature and a bit above, I have not noticed the phenomenon you describe. There are so many variables having to do with the leave...

How much is actually known about the flavor chemistry of green tea? One of its first attractions to me was how big the differences in flavor are that result from miniscule differences in brewing inputs. Most discussions of tea chemistry I've had start out talking about oxygenation of tea leaves as t...

I shudder to take and defend a coherent position on this because tea crosses a lot of boundaries. Subjective experience is important to appreciating it but the cultivation, processing, and brewing of tea without science doesn't work. Genetic hypersensitivity to vegetal bitterness has been discovered...

bentz98125 I’m not worried about that too much... good tea is already too expensive in the East, so that it wouldn’t sell in the West with the added import/etc. costs even now. Let alone even more expensive if demand would rise. It is and always has been a niche and luxury item for the wealthy. Doe...

bentz98125 I’m not worried about that too much... good tea is already too expensive in the East, so that it wouldn’t sell in the West with the added import/etc. costs even now. Let alone even more expensive if demand would rise. It is and always has been a niche and luxury item for the wealthy. Doe...

This thread beautifully illustrates how appreciating tea is a learning curve. Immediate gratification of a first impression based on uninformed assumptions do not serve deeper appreciation of any great human achievement- music, painting, literature, etc. included. The passage of time and accumulatio...

Wow, sure hope it works for you for tea water because that's as gnarly cool as it gets!

Vanenbw wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 07, 2020 1:10 pm

I can appreciate what it feels like to be "different." Not only am I obsessed with tea (always been a tea drinker, but recently bitten by the tea obsession bug), but I'm a vegan. Talk about being on the outskirts of society. I'm a happy camper though.

Right on!