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That’s right. He shows a true passion and great efforts in pursuing deep understanding of tea. Respectful person. It’s great to know more trade people who are really passionate as such. Will be nice to know him in person.
It sounds like your friend bought the original 30 lbs from a wholesale market. The price was in fact a wholesale/farm price for one of the domestic quality grades in the Mainland 2 years ago. Your friend would have to be somewhere in one of the three major wholesale markets in the south in order to get that price. I don’t believe you can buy at any price lower than that, more so today, when everything has just become more expensive. Not even for the lowest grade.
As for radiation from the nuclear incident in eastern Japan last year, it hardly affected any China soil at all. China is quite a sea away from Japan. The production bases of most tea are in the south, southeast and southwest so they are even further away from the unlucky location. In fact the Japanese has been importing more tea and other farm products from China since.There is much controversy over the product and there are cases of intoxication. The name itself is a big gimmick and a mistake. I advise not drinking it at all. I personally think it is a scam by a packing company wanting to make a fat profit from the tea trend. The thing tastes terrible anyway. You can check Wikipedia about it but also google “Kombucha scam” or “intoxication”. The giant company has tried to wash down entries with a lot of positive entries, have patience to go down the google list.
Pancakes,
The rich taste in roasted green tea comes not from the added oil but from the chemical changes of the content of the tea leaves during production processing. I have already promised a reader that I’ll write in better details about it and hope that you’ll read that article in the future to give me your comments.The tea master only wipes the wok once with a cotton pad dampened with an oil blend before roasting the tealeaves. You can read more about this at:I have not really measured how much oil there is to each kilo of dried tea. I’d say negligible amount, maybe 1 or 2 ml or something like that. So it could be like 1 or 2 parts to each 1,000,000, if there were no oil left in the wok and no evaporation in the process. That is to say it is quite impossible to have visible amount of oil in a few grams of tea on the water in which the tea is infused.As a matter of fact, I have too forgotten about tea in the pot/gaiwan/mug but have never seen oil floating on the surface.My immediate response in reading your post was that the “oil” (whatever that floats on the surface of your cup) comes from the material(s) of the teabag.I know for a fact that the processing of many fabrics or so-called non-woven fabrics for various teabag designs involved various chemicals to make the resultant tea bag looks appealing.Some mechanical parts in the teabag packing machines also needed oiling and that could get into the teabag too. Many people have criticized about the teabagging process and I’d probably do a research on the current situation to give an article later, but not now.There could also be contamination of the tealeaves before packing, but to have left so much of this contaminant in a few grams of tealeaves to be visible the contamination would have to be very bad. If this is the case, the contamination would have to take place after the tealeaves are made and before or during the leaves are fed into the bagging machine.Agricultural contaminants would not be visible, unless they are horrific amounts, such as an oil tank spill on the tea field.I am in holiday mood and have not wanted to respond to things at work but since I think this concerns your health so I am writing this. Please try not to continue using that pack of teabags and perhaps stay away from that supplier; for your health’s sake.Wishing you Health, Prosperity and Happiness for the New Year!LeoIf she was already overweight before pregnancy, better tea than black teas are White Peonies or post-fermented pu’ers (pu-erhs).
If she is normal, or if she has become ‘puffy’ (swollen with water), Phoenix or Wuyi oolongs are the most appropriate teas to help gaining better health.If you are of average size, not particularly allergic to caffeine, not particularly weak in the stomach, and if your mug is also average mug size, ie around 220~250 ml, you can safely have 6 mugs a day. Don’t drink your tea when it’s turn cold though.
Wish you a good healthy baby.Hello Sara, Please let me know how you make tea with that English Breakfast teabag. In particular, how many cups do you make from the same bag, the length of the infusion time, the water temperature (approx will do) and if you repeat infusion with the same bag, how many times? If I remember right, Dragonfly uses the kind of teabag that is a loop so it is rather like two normal teabags in one, right?
There are so many that it is almost impossible for us to evaluate them. However, I shall start one quite soon; please stay tuned in for a reliable and quality one by myself 😉
Let me answer this, Betty.
This is a great question. Information of tea in retail has been mostly kept mystic most of the time. This is bad. It is always better to buy a harvest critical tea such as green style Tieguanyin from a retail or brand who is honest and open with information. However, there are not that many. I began a movement of doing that 12 years ago and many retailers in the West are now beginning to follow.Now the answer: it is quite difficult for even some professional tea buyers to tell whether a tieguanyin is spring, summer or fall. Particularly those who are not familiar with the particulars in taste characters of tieguanyin. It is therefore quite unreasonable to ask a consumer like you to tell whether a tieguanyin is a spring harvest or not. That is why you should always ask before you buy. If you live in an area where teashops conduct tastings, do more of that and ask what you are tasting. After some practices, you will begin to understand the tastes of harvests from different seasons, in addition to different grade quality, different sub-regions, different production styles and even different cultivars.That of course, bases largely also on whether the teashops you go to are really disclosing correct information.For now, for the bag of tieguanyin you have got, I’d say for safety, always rinse the tealeaves before infusion, and always make it not so strong. That’s the best I can do to advise. On the other hand, I am working hard to motivate the trade to improve their practice for all consumers like you.
