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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.That’s right. I wish those farms that comply with pesticide use or organic practices know about tea production for better taste soon.
Both white tea and green teas that are called Silver Needles are not quite suitable for people with cold TCM body type, the green tea more so. If you do not want to waste the tea you already bought, drink it in the early afternoon, say around 3 when the bodily heat is higher after lunch is pretty much digested.
White tea White Peony (again there are green tea varieties of White Peony) is a better choice as a white tea for health benefits for people with cold TCM body type. Matured ones are the safest, so are those from Zhenghe, which are more oxidized than those from elsewhere. White Peony is cheaper than Silver Needles too.Sorry I missed out on this one. In case you do not mind going over to the Hong Kong side, I have a few teashops to recommend. They are all in Sheung Wan, quite near the MTR station:
嶢陽茶行, 林奇苑茶行, 顏奇香茶莊 all on or near 文咸東街 (Bonham Strand East). The second one is most recommendable for their wider selections.I hope if you have explore shops in Zhongshan, you have got some quality selections. Normally shops where tourists have access in China are really not too reliable, but there always are exceptions. I do not personally know of any there though. Have just seen ridiculous ones.Good luck shopping!Yes, any society is a mix of good and bad, but it is the prevalent behaviour that defines the culture of the time. The general lack of morality and self-justification of crimes in the Mainland is beyond epidemic level. They are more common than colds and flus. The horrifying incident of Xiao Yue Yue a couple of months ago in Foshan Guangdong, if you have heard about it, is a truthful reflection of what I said: 18 individuals walked passed a two year old knocked down by a van could be ignoring the dying little girl. Some just stepped over, one even rolled over with his van, twice. There maybe a thousand reasons that one can tell to justify this cold-blooded collective behaviour, and this is not the only incident happening in the past few months that people just ignore the others, but the condition is clear: there is no morality, no feelings for others in this single most massive population on Earth.
It is the prevalent social behaviour that marks the fault of a culture. The greatness of the dissidents or the scavenger old lady who attempted to save Xiao Yue Yue, or the other low profile good people in the Mainland that are the minority are not going to bring about the change you wish for, until a momentum of social behaviourial change is set. Until that day, I am not optimistic about the rotting culture that is contemporary Mainland.
