Dragon's Treasure Teas · 10:57pm Feb 1st, 2021
I don't often post about stuff I buy, but this place has had some of the best tea I've ever had, and it's a company made by bronies/anime fans.
https://www.thedragonstreasure.com/
For big-time tea aficionados, I recommend the ti kuan yin (Iron Goddess of Mercy) and the jasmine silver needle (Tea That Will Pierce the Heavens!). The jasmine silver needle is very high quality, completely intact and fresh-looking tight young leaf buds, and natural sweet jasmine floral aroma (which those with a good nose can tell from the extracts of jasmine oil cheap flavored teas use). It's important to use water that's well below boiling for this tea (about 180F). The flavors are very delicate and will be destroyed in boiling water.
The ti kuan yin is equally high-grade, with intact rolled leaf pearls that gradually unfold through steepings and release more flavor. It has a fresh, flowering meadow scent like spring, and a lightly fruity-floral flavor with no bitterness.
Make sure never too over-steep any lighter-colored or flavored tea, or it WILL turn bitter, even if it's high quality. 30 seconds for a white or green tea is the MAXIMUM per steeping. Oolongs can go up to a minute, and black teas can be left longer... depending on how much bitterness you desire, as the tanins and heavier polyphenols are more the point of black tea flavors.
Pure herbal decoctions can be made from steeping longer. Especially with mints. They really don't have any bitter compounds in them. Those should not be overheated. Do not let the water for herbal leaf teas reach boiling. It adds unpleasant 'vegetable' notes to the tea as well as driving off the volatile oils which compose most of the desired flavors.
Teas (actually 'infusions', if there is no actual tea leaf in it) with heavier spices need boiling water as their dense structure makes it more difficult to release the flavors with cooler temps, such as cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, tumeric, clove, etc.
As for rooibos...eh... what little of it I've had years ago tasted weird to me. But that may not have been a good example of it since it was from a typical mass-produced tea company that tends to be really low-grade dust, so I'd have to try some confirmed high-quality rooibos.
Huh, never knew there was more to tea than just hot water and dry leaves. Very curious. Now I wonder if I've wasted my life drinking coffee with sugar and cream.
IME, rooibos is odd in that it mellows the longer you steep it, reducing the sharp, medicinal notes. It oxidizes pretty badly if you let it sit too long after brewing (in a thermos, insulated pot or thermal cup), so drink it fresh.
Neat; I don't know if I'll order anything from them, but thanks. :)
(And interesting teamaking details; thanks for those too. I, uh, well, I don't just use the hot tap, have a proper kettle and whatnot, but I didn't even know there were circumstances one didn't want boiling water for. And I also tend to stew my teas. [shrugs] Probably going to keep doing both of those, at least for my normal practices, given it's what I'm used to and have been for many years now, but thank you for showing me a glimpse of more elaborate and careful preparation.)
5446103 It's why I think the low-grade stuff I got in tea bags wasn't a good representation of rooibos.
I'm just not willing to buy a bunch of the high-grade stuff unless I'm sure I'll like it.
5446065 Even coffee has special brewing tips that drastically alter the flavor. And the quality and roast of the beans is also critical.
Cheap coffee is made with a different species of Coffea, that being robusta versus the better-flavored arabica, that is more bitter and has a much higher caffeine content. It has a very high yield per shrub and is more resistant to pests and disease, however, which is why it's grown for mass-production and used in many big-chain blends to stretch the more expensive beans.
I actually have two coffee shrubs in my office. They produce well for about 2-3 years, then fizzle out to just a handful of the berries that hold the seeds. They're self-fertile, so I always start a new pair of seedlings as soon as the second big crop is ready, so the new shrubs will be ready to produce as the older ones wane.
You can increase the flavors by letting the seeds sit inside the dried berries for a year, making sure they remain in a temperate location away from sunlight, usually in a paper bag. The sugars and other compounds in the berry react with the outer hull of the seed and make a much richer flavor palette when the beans are roasted.
When I roast them, I have to wait for a warm day and open all the windows and doors in the house, as it's a very smoky process! There are two 'cracks' to listen for as the beans roast, which is done in a single layer on a cookie sheet. You hear a sudden crackling sound from the beans, which is the endosperm swelling and cracking the outer hull as all the water turns to vapor. Once that crackling stops, the beans are considered 'light roast'. You can wait a minute or two longer, before the second crack begins, to get 'medium roast'. The second crack is where the dark roasting begins. That's the bean beginning to carbonize, and sounds rather like tinkling bits of glass as the little fibers and crystalized sugars shatter.
The darkest roasts allow the second crack to go almost to completion, but those are done at a lower temp. Usually for a home oven set-up, you want to yank the tray out about 30 seconds into the 2nd crack and dump the beans into a cool metal bowl and toss them about to lower the temp quickly and prevent over-roasting. If they stay hot too long, you just end up with charcoal.
5446065
Between Japan and Britain I was reasonably sure of that myself, but never bothered to look into the specifics because I'm too lazy to brew regular tea so the good stuff would just be wasted on me.