Tea: Ew, Meh, Yum!

[Japan]

Madagascar Vanilla Red, Green Tea, Ice tea, Jasmine tea, chai, I looooove tea.

Whenever I get sick I drink green tea every night. Madagascar Vanilla Red is a roobios vanilla chai tea. I think that has to be my most favorite.

I feel that it is a sin to add anything to tea. It ruins the natural flavor of the brew. Why drink tea if you cloud it's taste you know?

[Ravenstorture]

[quote name='Axel Alloy'][B]Lapsang Souchong+[/B] - Gorgeous and smokey. It used to be one that I drank all the time in place of regular tea. Its an aquired taste, but I find it soothing.[/QUOTE]

[color=darkgreen][font=garamond]Hear, hear! My favourite tea of all time.

I have been drinking tea since before I stopped being breastfed, some people say it's why I have such strong fingernails, as I have it with lots of milk. Mum tried for years to get me to do away with my half teaspoon of sugar, and one day at age 9 I did - and never looked back. Usually I go for a good free trade ceylon, as i do put away far too much tea to spend excess money on it. I very, very rarely drink coffee, and sometimes I force myself to drink a bit of chamomile because I believe it's good for me. I cannot stand green tea and I cannot stand earl grey.

I dream that one day, when I get a house I know i'm going to stay in for a while, I will expand my teapot collection. [/font][/color]

[RiaBinx]

I like to have hot peppermint tea during winter and in the fall I like pumpkin spice tea. In the summer and spring: green tea is the best. But my sis likes orange tea year round.;)


Oh! No SUGAR in peppermint or green.

[Imp]

Ahh, yes, tea. Tea either is or is part of most of my favourite beverages. I like coffee, but I like tea even better. Tea has a wider variety of aromas and tastes, so it's fun to explore, and sometimes I find really good kinds that make me so happy and calm when I drink them... In fact, I think I'm beginning to turn into sort of a tea connoisseur, with all the different kinds I try. But I have quite a bit to comment on tea in general. I think I will organise my comments into tea types:

[b]Black Tea[/b]
The mainstream stuff is okay, but some of the more exotic kinds and some of the flavoured kinds are much better. I like the ceylon teas especially because they don't turn bitter as easily as some do, and can have a nice rich flavour. I notice that when black teas [i]do[/i] turn bitter, I don't find the bitterness too offensive, as in green teas when they turn bitter.

Now, as for how I like it, I usually put about three teaspoons of sugar in black tea, but in some cases I put less, especially if the tea has a good flavour and is not bitter. I [i]always[/i] put it in Earl Grey though--for some reason I can't stand it without. Sometimes I put lemon in as well. On rare occasions I put milk in black tea, but [i]never[/i] in Earl Grey. Milk in Earl Grey is just... wrong. And once I made the mistake of putting honey into a black tea... and had to throw the tea out. Yuck.

I find that a lot of flavours seem to work with black tea. Raspberry and rose seem to work especially well. I once tried a vanilla maple black tea, and even that was good. And for some reason mint and chocolate work well in a black tea. One of the weirdest teas I have ever tasted was one I bought from some chocolate shop in New York City--yup, you guessed it, it was a chocolate tea. But it turned out to be tasty--a tea fix and a chocolate fix at the same time as well. The only bad part about it was that moths eventually got into it and I had to throw the loose tea out... :bawl: I never had a moth problem with a tea before, so that was unusual...

Another very weird black tea I tried had jasmine in it. That one was weird--I'm used to jasmine being in green tea. I don't think I even detected any jasmine in it. 'Tis the problem with black tea--it often hides whatever flavour is in it, it seems. I had a similar problem with a lychee black tea--I bet if I tasted it and the jasmine tea, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two.

[b]Green Tea[/b]
I'd have to say this is my favourite of all the teas. I rarely come across a green tea I don't like. I think the only green teas I don't like are ones that have certain flavours in them. I never saw citrus fruits or mint go well with green tea, for instance, and I found a mango one to be more odd than good. But I have yet to find a plain one I don't like. And there are some flavours that seem to really work with green tea for me, jasmine being my favourite. Green tea with jasmine is probably my favourite kind of tea, although for some reason my mum hates that kind. I mean, green tea already has a nice fragrance, and jasmine really enhances it.

One of the best green teas I've had had cherry pieces and rose petals in it. I often drink that particular kind right before a meditation, due to how relaxing it is. Another kind I absolutely love is a ginger peach tea with both green and white tea in it, which smells absolutely heavenly and tastes just as heavenly. Well, with any tea, I usually find that it tastes as good as it smells, and vice versa.

There appear to be different varieties of green tea, which usually differ by region and/or preparation style. One of the weirdest ones I've heard of was genmai-cha, a Japanese green tea with brown rice in it. (I often call it "popcorn tea" because when it's dry, it looks like it has little pieces of popcorn in it.) But it turned out to be very nice. I think I prefer Japanese green teas over the Chinese ones.

I don't sweeten green tea as much as black tea. In fact, adding too much sugar to green tea detracts from its flavour, unlike some black teas. I might put 1-2 teaspoons in a cup, say. I find that honey works as a sweetener as well, though not as well as sugar does. And for some reason, regular milk in green tea tastes weird to me, but soymilk is just fine. Sometimes I put a little bit of soymilk and vanilla into a cup of green tea, but I don't do it that often, and only to plain green tea. Although once I put soymilk into a cup of chamomile green tea and refrigerated it, and that tasted pretty good.

Of course I also love green tea in other things, such as smoothies or ice cream.

[b]Oolong tea[/b]
I don't have oolong tea as often as green or black tea, so I'm not too familiar with it. But I do love it still--it has a peculiar flavour that intrigues me. I've never tried it flavoured, so I have no experience with that... but it doesn't need flavours. Although oolong is technically halfway between green and black tea, this is the kind of tea I sweeten the least--less than black or green tea. One teaspoon of sugar or less. I put nothing else in--I bet milk would be very weird.

[b]White tea[/b]
This type of tea tends to brew more quickly than the other kinds, I notice. I think it works very well when combined with green tea or fruit flavours, but doesn't seem that special by itself. At least, I've never found a plain white tea I found particularly wonderful. But that wonderful ginger peach tea I mentioned earlier had white tea in it. Another one I liked had pear in it. And the plain white/green fusions are good too.

I sweeten white tea the exact same way as green tea, since they taste kind of similar to me. But like oolong tea, I put nothing else in it. And I find that I always have to be careful of the brewing time, because I've noticed some white teas turn horribly bitter if they steep too long.

[b]Red tea[/b]
A weaker variety of tea in my opinion. Like white tea, I don't really like red tea plain--in this case, it doesn't seem to taste too different from water for me. But then when flavour is added, it seems to magically take on a distinctive "red tea" taste in addition to its flavour. I don't drink too much red tea--I've only tried three kinds. One was a plain red tea I didn't care for. One was a pomegranate-flavoured one that was okay. One had vanilla in it and was wonderful. I guess red tea doesn't go well with fruit flavours.

[b]Herbal/fruit tea[/b]
This category is for any tea that doesn't have any of the tea varieties listed above. And this is the type of tea I like the least. I've found some flavours in this category disgusting, especially anything with orange and/or spices in it. And this includes mint, although I've found one or two peppermint teas I can tolerate. As for the fruit teas... some are better than others it seems. Lemon teas are fairly good, for instance, and raspberry and peach are probably the best fruit teas out there, though they're not nearly as good as green and black teas in my opinion. But strawberry and any tropical fruit taste very weird in a tea unless it's iced. And I've also had raspberry leaf tea, which was also sort of good.

I have very mixed opinions of different flower teas. Chamomile makes a pretty good tea (there's one kind with honey and vanilla that I like), but it's not my favourite. I have the same opinion of chrysanthemum tea. One flower I really hate in a tea is hibiscus. Ugh, how awful--it belongs in a cooler, not a tea, especially not a hot tea. Nor do I care for rosehips in a tea. But rose petals are a different story. Rose by itself takes [i]forever[/i] to brew, but when it's done, I love it. Wonderful aroma, and a peculiar taste that is just the right amount of bitter. And, well... pfft, jasmine tea, of course. Even when not combined with green tea, it's still wonderful.

Finding a sweetening method for this category of teas is often painstaking for me (I've had to dump a few cups due to incorrect sweetening methods), but I'm quite satisfied when I find one that works. To me, it seems that fruit teas, which are awful when unsweetened, taste quite pleasant with a spoonful of sugar and a spoonful of honey. Sugar only makes it taste like lame candy, and honey only makes it too tart, but putting both in works. But for the flower and herb teas, sugar works just fine as a sweetener in my opinion. I can't imagine honey in a rose tea anyway...

Ha ha, it seems that I'm obsessed with vanilla, aren't I? For me, vanilla works in any kind of tea, although because I have a limited supply of vanilla in my house, I don't use it much. But I like to add it in occasionally. Once or twice I've sweetened a black or herbal tea with maple sugar/syrup as well, and that came out good too.

[b]Chai[/b]
Usually I don't like spice teas, but chai seems to work because it usually has black or white tea in it. I [i]always[/i] put milk into chai--otherwise it just doesn't work for me. And this is the kind of tea I sweeten the most, with about 3-5 teaspoons per cup.

[b]Iced Tea[/b]
I tend to sweeten iced tea more than I do hot tea, because the mainstream ones don't have much flavour in my opinion... And sometimes it comes sweetened. But it really depends on the kind of tea. I find most bottled iced teas to be way oversweetened, except for a few certain black teas. I like sweet tea as well, and have never found it to be too sweet. But on the other extreme, one of my favourite bottled tea brands is Honest Tea--not only do they make a lot of interesting types of iced tea, but they don't oversweeten them. I especially like their green teas.

[b]Pearl Tea[/b]
Possibly my favourite drink in the whole world. It consists of iced green (or sometimes black) tea, some sort of flavour, milk (sometimes), and tapioca pearls, and it is weird yet wonderful. I especially like it with either lychee and green tea (without milk), strawberry and green tea (with milk), or jasmine and black tea (with milk). Hey wait a minute--didn't I find a black jasmine tea awkward earlier? Well I guess if you ice it and add milk, it's actually good.

Well, I guess I had a lot to say about tea... Oh wait, one more thing.

*sings*
A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N O P.
Q R S [B]T[/B] U V
W X Y and Z...
T T T T T T T
T T T T T T T!!!
*takes a bow*

[chibi-master]

URGH...Today, my little sister made some tea...my whole house was stunk up for hours! I eventually locked myself in my room, opened my windows, stuffed tissues in the cracks of the door and put on a fume mask. Yes, it was that bad. It was...chai tea, I believe. But now I have a headache from the stench...my nose still burns a little...:animedepr

[Hisamtsu]

I think that the green tea is pretty good once you a bit of sugar to it.