I love me some tea...
 

I've always loved me some tea. When I was little, my mom used to bake scones and every day after school we would have tea and scones at 4:00. Through high school and college, I always drank hot tea whenever I could. After I started working and got married, I had a little hiatus, but started making cups of tea to drink on the way into work in the morning.

I was satisfied. But then I decided that I would try real tea. I went down to World Market (only place in Memphis I know that has real tea) and picked up some Orange Pekoe Earl Grey tea. I never knew what I was missing! The first night I had four cups of the stuff in an hour it was so good. Only problem was that I drank the stuff after 9 PM. I got to sleep, but after my 2 year old woke up at 10:45 I couldn't fall back asleep until about 2:30 in the morning due to the caffine.

My wife made the comment after I made the first cup that she never saw me so content sipping tea before.

Anyway, I thought I would share with all the other tea drinkers out there, get some good honest to goodness Orange Pekoe, you won't go wrong!

For the uninitiated, Orange Pekoe is a classification for tea leaves where an actual leaf is used (more or less). Most of the stuff you get from the store in tea bags are the fannings which is the dust left over from processing the good stuff. Only problem with orange pekoe is that you have to steep the leaves in a tea pot with no strainer or balls to make sure the leaves "bloom" and give off all their goodness.

I've always had tea from tea bags but recently had some "real tea" and wow, the difference is unbelievable! At first I thought, $8.00 for a little bag of loose tea? But it really goes a long way and the intensity in flavor is so worth it.

Never tried Orange Pekoe, but the way you talk about it I just might :)

The loose leaf tea and the orange pekoe might just be the same thing.

http://www.asiafood.org/classification.cfm

This link has some info on the different tea classifications.

Dunno why, but I've never liked 'real' tea. Pyramid bags by PG Tips for me.

I love me some tea too. My mom is as Irish as Patty's pig and would give all of us "bobba and tea". Tea with a lot of milk and sugar in our baby bottle. We would fight over who got it first. It was the best. We would go to the couch with a blanket and it would put us to sleep.

When we were older she made us tea for every ailment, and damn if it doesn't help. It's the old Irish remedy for whatever ails you. I think long after my mom is gone I'll never be able to make tea and not think of her.

I drink stuff from Britain. It's a whole different ballgame. When I drink American tea it's like watered down blech.

I think that's the second Irish remedy for whatever ails you, Guiness is the first!

Also great in a baby bottle.

Ok, these directions are on the back of a can of tea I just bought. WTF am I missing

- Heat pot with boiling water until warm to touch
- Discard that water and put a teapoon of tea for each cup desired.
- Pour boiling water over tea and steep
- Pour through a strainer.


Uh... heat the water and discard then in step 3 it magically reappears???

you don't use all of your water in step 1, only enough to warm up the pot. I think you'd boil the water in another pot and would have enough to pour some first, then pour some over the tea... Makes any sense?

FM

Yeah, the first part of water is to warm the pot so the pot doesn't cool the tea too much.

I don't think that was tea.

Heat the water in a tea kettle. Pour some of the water from the tea kettle into the tea pot to warm up the tea pot, then pour that water out. Put the tea leaves into the tea pot, and then fill the tea pot with the rest of the water that's in the tea kettle.

gottimd wins teh thread...

I am new tea lover, but so many kinds of tea, actually i only know a litlle about green tea, for other kinds of tea, i really do not understand how to identify them. Tea classifications is what i hope to know right now.

bot? i'm not that good at this game... looks like a bot to me...

Even bots need to drink tea. Over the past year or two, I have become a Green Tea w/ Lemon fan. Drink 5ish large coffee cups of it each day.