Any Tea Drinkers Out There?

[Pedersen]

Okay, so I'm in the midst of switching from being a soda drinker to a tea drinker. Soda does too much bad stuff to my body, especially in the quantities I drink it. Thing is, I don't know what constitutes good tea.

Being a stereotypical American, I employed my knowledge of stereotypical Brits, and asked Raps. Then I realized that I should ask here, since we've got rather a few from the UK alone (so if that stereotype is true, there should be some good advice from the Isles), plus I'm sure a lot more tea drinkers elsewhere on the board.

So, background done, here's what I've done: I bought a box of Twinings, a variety pack. It had English Breakfast tea, Irish Breakfast tea, Earl Grey, and Lady Grey. English Breakfast was my favorite, followed by Lady Grey, Earl Grey, and then Irish Breakfast. I've now tried Lipton, too, and discovered that calling Lipton the McDonald's of tea is doing a grave disservice to McDonald's.

So, with that in mind, what are your favorites? Which one should I try next? How do you rank any of the ones that I've tried?

ETA: Oh, I forgot to mention, I'm just doing straight tea. No milk, no sugar, no lemon. I want to know how the tea tastes before I doctor it up. I've also tried a Twinings cold brewed tea, which was right on up there with their English Breakfast tea. Quite nice, and even nicer was that it was cold on a hot day (and was the first iced tea I've liked that I brewed at home).

[Sheldonrs]

Earl Grey is my favorite for both hot and iced tea. For sweetener, if it's hot i use Equal, if it's iced, Sweet'n Low.

[Rapscallion]

As mentioned on MSN, I'd always prefer Assam, though Ceylon is always good. There are some decent blends, usually the breakfast ones. but my taste is for the former two.

I have to agree - no milk and no sugar is the way to go.

Never could stand Earl or Lady Grey. Tastes like a mouthful of perfume. Darjeeling is bearable, but similar. Never really drunk much Lapsang Souchong or Oolong.

Rapscallion

[Bardmaiden]

As mentioned on MSN, I'd always prefer Assam, though Ceylon is always good. There are some decent blends, usually the breakfast ones. but my taste is for the former two.

I have to agree - no milk and no sugar is the way to go.

Never could stand Earl or Lady Grey. Tastes like a mouthful of perfume. Darjeeling is bearable, but similar. Never really drunk much Lapsang Souchong or Oolong.

Rapscallion

As a British person and tea drinker, don't drink coffee . Lady Legira says I sound like Arthur Dent in the US.

Assam is really nice tea, next time one of the family is down London way I'm getting some more from Fortnum and Masons, they have some really nice blends too. Ceylon is good haven't had that for a while though, tried Lapsang Souchong along time ago and remember that it tasted good.

The only way I could even drink a cup of Earl Grey was to put so much sugar in it that I could barely taste the tea (it was a managers favourite...).

[Victory Sabre]

I just go for regular decaffeinated tea. I drink it cold, with nothing in it. Sometimes I drink green tea.

[MaggieTheCat]

There are a variety of different kinds of teas. Right offhand, I can think of: Black, white, green, red (aka rooibos), oolong, and herbal. Black is my favorite, followed by herbal and oolong. Red and green are okay and I can't stand white. This is all personal choice, since I know my husband likes white pretty well. We drink a lot of tea, BTW. We have a whole cabinet in our kitchen dedicated to tea and tea-brewing stuffs.

Black tea is the "typical" tea that you think of, like earl grey and English breakfast. Herbal tea is usually like a flavored black tea, such as peppermint or berry. Oolong is usually the stuff you'd see in Chinese or Japanese restaurants, like jasmine tea. Red tea is from Africa and actually isn't "real" tea; I think it's made from the leaves of a bush in Africa, but it's prepared the same way "real" tea is (steeping in hot water.) It often comes in similar flavors as other teas (like Earl Grey and Jasmine) but often has more natural sweetness than black tea.

Here are two great websites to order tea from. In our opinion, the stuff from these places is better than just about anything you can get in a grocery store. It's also more expensive.

http://www.republicoftea.com/Default.aspx

http://www.adagio.com/

I would recommend anyone who drinks a lot of tea to get a tea kettle/water boiler. Both of the places I linked sell them in various sizes. You can use it for other things besides tea, too, such as boiling the water for simple syrups, hot chocolate, instant noodles, etc. My husband got a very nice one from Adagio that allows you to set what temperature you want the water to heat to. This is nice, because some teas, like herbal teas, should be steeped at slightly cooler temperatures than boiling to prevent the tea leaves from scalding and getting bitter. Adagio has steeping times and temperatures listed for all of their teas.

I would also recommend getting some disposable tea bags, if you decide to get any loose leaf tea. Adagio sells them in packs of 100 for like $5. It's a very quick and easy way to make loose leaf tea in single servings without messing with a metal ball infuser that you have to clean each time you use it.

Adagio has some great sampler packs that they offer 4-6 different varieties of the same type of tea (for example, the "black sampler" that they sell has 6 different kinds of black tea included.) Getting a couple of these is a great way to figure out what types of tea you enjoy.

[Jack]

Tea bags = cheap price, cheap taste.

Buy looseleaf at Whole Foods or Teavana or some such place.

I don't find black tea any good without milk and sugar, so unless you like it bitter, I'd go for white, oolong, green, or an herbal "tea" (not real tea unless it's tea leaves).

As said above, a pot and kettle are your friends. If you really get into tea you might want an electric kettle, makes it a lot faster. I'd advise finding a sampler pack of various types of tea (like white/green/oolong/herbal/black/etc.) so you can see what you like in general, and then narrow it down from there.

Me, I love white tea of most sorts.

P.S. My two cents on putting looseleaf tea in a basket, bag, or ball: Doesn't allow the tea to spread and infuse well. Here's what I do:

- Heat water in kettle
- Put tea leaves in pot
- Pour water into pot
- Wait for infusion (about 2-3 minutes for white tea)
- Pour tea through a tea basket into the kettle
- Rinse pot with hot water, removing stray tea leaves
- Pour tea back into pot
- Serve

This could probably be improved somehow, perhaps with an extra teapot (one for infusing and one for serving).

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I sorta prefer green tea with plenty of honey. Especially if I'm feeling under the weather.

For not-green tea, I have some huckleberry tea I purchased out west last year. It's pretty good.

[BookstoreEscapee]

If you like flavored teas, I like Spiced Apricot from Eastern Shore Tea Company (only place I know that carries it is Wegmans). They have a ton of flavors. Also Harney & Sons (B&N carries a handful of flavors, and so does Williams-Sonoma, but their website (www.harney.com) has more.) My favorite was always the Vanilla Comoro (which B&N no longer carries ) and peach.

My work cafeteria has recently started carrying Honest Tea iced teas. They're really good, "Just a tad sweet" (they also make unsweetened). I'm not usually a fan of lemon iced tea, but theirs is really good.

[XCashier]

So, background done, here's what I've done: I bought a box of Twinings, a variety pack. It had English Breakfast tea, Irish Breakfast tea, Earl Grey, and Lady Grey. English Breakfast was my favorite, followed by Lady Grey, Earl Grey, and then Irish Breakfast. I've now tried Lipton, too, and discovered that calling Lipton the McDonald's of tea is doing a grave disservice to McDonald's.

I like the English Breakfast tea best, too. The Adagio sampler pack sounds good, as well. I had jasmine tea at a Chinese restaurant once, and was amazed at the wonderful taste (and lovely scent!).

[Nurian]

I drink Earl Grey occasionally, flavored with Agave Nectar.

[lupo pazzesco]

<looks at the 42 different varieties of teas she has in her pantry> Um...hoo boy, where to start?

I guess the first question is how much of a caffeine fix are you looking for? Herbal and rooibos teas are caffeine free, but there are some fantastic flavors out there. White tea has small amounts of caffeine, then green, black, and oolong are all caffeinated to certain degrees.

Now, if you're just starting out and want to stick with tea bags, Twinings is a good choice, but look for the Stash tea or Yogi teas if you can, or Allegro. all three make really good bagged teas. Republic of tea is also wonderful, but they're also a bit pricier, and difficult to find in a standard run of the mill grocery store. (I get mine at Whole Foods)

If you're willing to try loose teas, then definitely look into Teavana, or perhaps Adagio (Adagio has wonderful sampler packs so you can try a variety) My current tea of choice is various flavors of green teas, and are as follows:

Rishi - blueberry green tea. Lightly sweetened on it's own, and tart because of the berries, so it doesn't need sweetener. Yogi Green tea pomegranate, and Republic of Tea's acerola cherry green tea are tasty. Rishi also makes pretty good iced tea bags, their ceylon green is good, and so is the blueberry red, or peach red.

In regards to black tea, I've found the stash tea company makes fairly good bags of black teas. Try the chai. I cannot sing the praises of chai enough. I love any kind of chai - be it rooibos, white, black, or green. Chai = YUM!

If you're looking for a tea that will give you the energy (i.e. caffeine-like) equivelant of soda or coffee without the bad body effects look into mate teas (spelled with an e with an accent on top, which I can't figure out how to do here...) Teavana has a couple of wonderful flavors of yerba mate teas. The samurai chai latte and my mate morning is really really good.

Further, I've found it best not to fully boil the water, and to keep an eye when steeping, so as to avoid making the tea too bitter. the ideal temp (I've found) is around 180F for most teas, probably about 160F for white teas, as they're more delicate and require lower temps and less steeping time.

Um, yeah, I could go on, but may end up boring people, so I'll just stop here.

[Whiskey]

I've never had a bad cup of apple cinnamon tea

[RetailWorkhorse]

I drink Luzianne black tea (http://www.luzianne.com/) in the red box. Other than that it's generally Celestial Seasonings (http://www.celestialseasonings.com/). I like their herbals and the Cold Brew Peach is pretty good for a cold brew.

Lipton tastes like coloured water. But then again, it's personal opinion, so be free to ignore it.

[Whiskey]

I drink Luzianne black tea (http://www.luzianne.com/) in the red box. Other than that it's generally Celestial Seasonings (http://www.celestialseasonings.com/). I like their herbals and the Cold Brew Peach is pretty good for a cold brew.

Lipton tastes like coloured water. But then again, it's personal opinion, so be free to ignore it.

Thats the brand of apple cinnamon I drink, coincidentally.