yeap,you can find sideritis almost anywhere in Greek mountains,
and its a great combo with just honey but i like to add
lemon for a bit of sour taste and of course for the extra
vitamins. x)

I know it's silly but I don't like buying stuff online. I haven't liked any of the ones I've seen on the net so far. My local tea store has a shipment of yixing that they haven't shelved yet so I'll wait and see what they have before I consider the internet.


I'm planning to get one for every sort of tea (so like 3-4 pots max), but not all at once of course. They're supposed to get better with heavy usage, which is why I care so much.


Nah, dropped them on the floor. I'm terribly clumsy (and I was super careful with those things).


As I said above I don't really like ordering online, but the site is looking very good. I might order something from there.

Green tea with jasmine, i leave the tea bag in and have it as is.

ok so I recently really started liking green tea.

what kinds of tea do you guys think a person would benefit the most from drinking on a regular basis?

If you're talking health benefits I have no idea. Gunpowder and sencha are good, standard, everyday cheap teas. This doesn't mean they're bad teas, they're just cheaper to produce and face more competition in the market.
Oolong and more expensive teas are more for special occasions.

I want to start drinking better tea. What kind of hardware should I be looking at?

I typically drink green teas, with a tiny, tiny smattering of black. I have a variable temperature kettle that I've measured to be within 1 degree fahrenheit of accuracy on holds.

With oolong and pu'erh you might want good teapots. There are buying guides for these if you're into that. You shouldn't use good teapots for more than one tea category (light oolong, dark oolong, pu'er).
For greens it's not as important or even advised against.
So, for greens you really just want a gaiwan. Smaller ones are more consistent to my understanding.
A gaiwan is the only thing I would consider important, but you could weigh your tea and measure the temperature to get more consistency.
The exception is with japanese teas you might want to get a kyusu, but gaiwan works just fine.


Here's a good temperature guide
http://www.inpursuitoftea.com/The-Go...e-Tea-s/99.htm
General rules are that oolong and puer have higher resistance than greens, which will get bitter if you have too high temperature. You should avoid "full boils", and if you do full boils don't keep it rolling as it "kills" the water. You also want good water quality. Water that tastes good is generally good for tea but there are certain things you want to avoid in water and don't ask me what they are. Try googling "tea water quality" or something if you're interested.
Temperature and amount of tea will affect the taste, but there's no "true" way to brew teas, you're encouraged to experiment.

Most of my knowledge comes from reading more than practical usage so take it as you wish.

I'm not really a big fan of (japanese) green teas, but I've drunk a lot in the past. To me the best green tea is gyokuro, which is steamed shaded green tea. The particular variety I'm thinking of is first flush but I'm not sure that all gyokuro is. The flavor has a lot more depth than sencha (which tbh I don't really like, I've drunk a lot of senchas but never have I been impressed). If you like health benefits a lot, then I guess gyokuro is good because it has some nice amino acids and a lot of antioxidants (more than sencha I think).

Lower grade gyokuro is on par with sencha in terms of price I think, and it's not like mid grade is that expensive anyway (maybe 15c/g, so depending on your brewing technique it could cost as much as a dollar per brew, with the number of cups again depending you how you feel like brewing...)

Here's some pretty cheap stuff that tastes really nice IMO http://www.ebay.com/itm/Japanese-Gre...8AAOSwll1WzwgW
The same seller actually has a 7 tea sampler that is nice, but be aware none of the teas are top tier (the gyokuro genmaicha is pretty unique and tbh best genmaicha I've ever drunk).


Disregard my advice if you are into the hardware side of tea (I get it, ceramics are nice, but it's not necessary to brew tea).

You don't need any special hardware mate, just throw some leaves in a cup (glass, mug, stein, whatever you have) and then add water. Either pour it off into another cup or drink straight from the cup with leaves (referred to as 'grandpa style' because apparently elderly chinese drink like that, constantly adding water until the brew is too weak, then toss it).

Probably 90% of what I drink now days is straight from cup (gaiwan or mug depending on how floaty the tea is, genmaicha for example has roast rice so it has floaty rice bubbles that you will accidently drink if you don't have a gaiwan, where as most puerh can be drunk from a mug since the leaves are large and heavy - though you may want to rinse any dust first).

I guess you know this already, but black is brewed at 100c, where as green typically 85 or less. Since you have a variable temp kettle it's not a big deal for you, so if you want to make the best of your kettle get a small pot (80ml?) and you will have a ton of control over your brew. Though really, it's not too important. Most tea is not very sensitive to minor temperature and timing changes (eg if you leave gyokuro in a cup it can overbrew and get bitter - though if you know this you can just brew at a lower temperature in which case it will be fine to leave).

So IMO, don't feel like you /need/ to get any special equipment to brew tea. You don't need a dozen woodfire yixing teapots and point temperature control with a teapot warmer and sharing pitcher and a handful of whatever kinds of cups. Just put some tea in a mug and drinkkkk


I don't usually think of oolong as green, but I guess it's just oxidized green? Silver needle is pretty nice, but tastes nothing like most greens :P Then again, it's not like japanese and chinese greens taste similar either...

I enjoy the hardware side of things very, very much. Here's a picture of my coffee setup at work. (this is my secondary kit...)

In that case, the major tea 'styles' would be gongfu (gaiwan, sharing pitcher, cups, tea tray, tea pet), English tea set (teapot, teacups, saucers) - and similarly the Chinese equivalent which would be something like yixing teapot + tea cups, and then Japanese tea ceremony which is just bowls.

If you are going to be brewing green and black with same hardware, then glazed teapot is the way to go IMO. Glazed because black and green are very different so you can't use yixing (or, you can, but glazed will stop your chun mee tasting like orange pekoe), and teapot because 100c black tea in a gaiwan doesn't sound all that great to me. There's also many informal ways to brew tea, like in a cup drinking straight from the same vessel as you brew in ('grandpa style') (lots of people make nice cups, eg Novák), or with teapot in bowl (particularly popular with xishi pots I think).

Something to note is that smaller pots will give better brews since you can have better water/tea ratios without spending as much, a 120ml pot can use 6-8g of tea, but to get the same ratio in a 240ml pot you need 12-16g of tea. You can only really brew in multiples of your teapot, and good tea usually takes multiple brews. If you want to steep 6 times in a 240ml pot, then you're gonna have a lot of tea...

Beyond size, glazed or not, and gaiwan vs teapot vs cup, it's basically just whatever you like the look of. Since you have steel and glass already, glass teaset would look nice and matchy?