My new favorite tea is from Stash. White Chocolate Mocha and it's reaaalllyyy good! Especially if you like those types of coffee drinks as well! You can choose the sweetener you put in your tea, as well as whether you add cream. It is quite wonderful!

Haven't encountered it myself.

I just tried Murchie's Chai yesterday. Tastes like chai, but very mild. I think I still prefer Stash or Twinnings over it, or the discontinued David's Bollywood Chai.

(You suck, David!

I got a new loose leaf and am disappointed.
It was an Apple Spice Tea (smelled exactly like apple cider) I tried it in store mixed with a pomegranate chai and it was wonderful and fall-feeling....
Bought it, brought it home...... The chick put almost no apple tidbits in my bag and it's mostly different variations of cinnamon.
I then tried to mix it with my orange tea to make orange spice.....
nope.
Adding honey made the spice taste worse after I tried to fix the orange tea....
Ended up throwing the whole cup out T.T

Teavana's got a new seasonal caramel tea; I forget exactly what it's blended with, but it's good. :9

Okay, I got out the tea I bought. It's Caramel Almond Amaretti herbal tea. There's also a Caramel Coconut Sea Salt herbal tea.

I have sleeping issues and I encountered a sort of "banana cinnamon tea" (tea in so far as you boil the bananas in water) that I figure I'll try. Commercials teas don't always seem to do the job.

So where does one get Cinnamon oil? No dice at the grocery store, though I haven't checked health food stores yet. I'm tempted to just crack out my plain pu'ehr and add some Goldschlager.

Oh, hello. I saw this thread and I felt I needed to be here. I'm a definite tea lover, it's almost an addiction. Actually, my desk is currently clogged with containers of tea... If there's ever a Tea Hoarders show, I'll be on it...

What kind of teas do you like?
How do you brew?

I like my tea strong and my blends mostly plain. I can only go for an addition of jasmine, bergamot, orange peel or lavender. Even that's on a rare occasion.

I bought a big kettle recently, and it's amazing. Sadly, I have to boil the hell out of my water because local water has a lot of calcium. I like to let my tea steep for at least 10 minutes to get all the leaves to surrender their goods.

I buy 5-gallon jugs of water on a delivery schedule in order to sidestep the tap water quality issue. My family goes through roughly one a week.

I drink Arizona Tea (that not-even-really-tea crap, I know) and my grandmother's sweet tea.
She's dead though, lol.

I dump boiling hot water on tea leaves or matcha powder these days. There's something tasty about that in the cold weather. If it's not boiling water I won't drink it though x'D

That's a good idea, about the bottled water, but that's really the only issue and otherwise it's natural and high quality water. Plus, I don't trust the plastic bottle people... They're shady.

From what I know, and I don't want to claim to know a lot, boiling water kills off the vitamin C in your tea, and it might be better to let the water cool off for a bit.

Ideally, you boil it first, then let it come down to the proper temperature -- 170-190F depending on the type of tea; some herbal tisanes go up to 205.

I've not had any shady experiences with Sparkletts / DS Waters. I couldn't tell you about any other water delivery company.

mmm, I love lavender.

This year I bought myself a tea advent calendar that I've been enjoying, especially since it has teas in it that I'd normally never try myself. I was really surprised how much I liked the oolong and coffee bean blend. (I have a coconut blend right now. Not bad.)

I find that I do enjoy chocolate in my teas, as long as it's more towards the dark end. I'm still debating the letter I want to write the tea guys who discontinued (another) one of my favourite teas, my garcinia pu'erh tea. *Gripe.* I understand that they can't stock everything, and they have two teas that assist digestion. The other tea is one of their top sellers I believe, but has ingredients that I can't have, so darn.

Ohh, well, that sucks. The reason I use boiling water on matcha is because it's pretty much the only way I know to make it taste good. I pour the water from up high and make it frothy and spread out for me too xD.

I should cool the water more for tea leaves though--since it doesn't make it taste any better boiled.

Haven't tried the high pouring with tea but I used to do that with coffee when I worked at Tim Hortons because it was fun and the pot was conducive to it. Pouring from a higher height actually made the waves in the cup smaller so that the drink would settle faster and you could fill it higher without slopping over the sides. Apparently it also aerates the coffee and is important in some tea/coffee services.


Plain old Red Rose tea today, regular and decaf. A cousin who was over is also fond of decaf Red Rose, specifically. Who knew? I am the provider of tea!

No really, that's my job. If a guest arrives at the house and wants tea, I'm the go too person because no-one else has a selection.

I also collect teacups. Because I'm an old lady in a young person's body.

All I know about matcha is that she's one finicky, green lady.

I have two sets (one that is missing. Alas!) and several individual cups. I don't often get them out though. Usually, if I'm having an occasion where I would use my cups, there are more people around than I can swing.

I have several teapots, though I'm not sure if I can say I collect them, or not. I have one stainless steel that is my go-to (at these are personal sized), one light blue ceramic that is modern looking, one brown English guy with a teddy bear tea cozy that is broken somewhere (alas!), one white thing with a modern lady design with the lid resembling a hat (mom got hat one for me), and two yixing clay: one that looks like a horse (Earl grey tea only) and one that looks like a pig (for genmaicha).

I suppose my blue and gold steeper cup could count as a pot of sorts.

EDIT: today's advent tea was cardamom French toast. Actually pretty good.

My wife and I used to collect teapots but we ultimately had to make ourselves stop because we didn't have any place to put them. ^^()

Yeah, space is a thing, and price. Some of those pots and cups can be amazingly expensive. I stick with personal sized teapots, only.

English toffee tea, today. A little over-sweet, but not too bad.

I like green tea with mint. Im not coffee drinker as i hate the smell of my piss when i drink coffee

I don't drink coffee. I drink a fair amount of tea. I like my tea very very weak and cool or room temperature. Sometimes I drink it plain, sometimes I add a lot of lemon, depending on the flavor. Other than that I am not picky. I often brew it at the wrong temperature and for too long, and I don't taste the difference (possibly because I make it so weak). I like green, black, rooibos, herbals, etc.

D:
TERRIBLY NEWS
TEAVANA IN MY MALL IS CLOSING DOWN BECAUSE THE MALLS RENT IS TOO HIGH
http://i0.wp.com/fmshooter.com/wp-co...-damn-high.jpg

So I have to search for more loose leaf suppliers in town.

Maybe. The longer you brew tea, the more bitter it gets because the bitter stuff comes out last. Since I constantly add milk or sugar to black tea I don't notice as much as with green or white, which get bitter quite fast. I try to avoid over steeping now (easy to do because I like strong tea) because my docs were giving me some flack for it.

I used to drink coffee, when went to tea, then finally started with coffee again, first as a Sunday after dinner thing because we always had it, and then because I noticed that it helps out some of my gut troubles. The fact that I was working reception at a law firm at the time was completely co-incidence, I assure you! Nothing fancy for me though, just regular old drip coffee.

Not a fan of rooibos, myself, but I am taking a liking to oolong now.

Sucks that you're losing it! I only know of one Teavana around and I'm not sure they are still there. I should check their stock sometime. I am still on my quest for more pu-erh tea. I buy most of my stuff online now, once I know what a store has, which does not help a location pay rent.

Yeah I really SHOULD start buying everything offline but I still like paying cash for everything, and am the kind of person to pay my bills in person XD
I also finally made room in my cupboards for my tea instead of having it sit on top of the microwave XD

I got some tea boxes today. Some citrus tea, a different citrus tea (I love citrus teas <3), and a green tea. All bagged. My family has loose leaf but I don't like stuff getting in my mouth x'D.

iam a totally coffee person! i need my coffee every morning i like tea too but i just dont need it ^^

I hear coffee is supposed to mess with your hormones. I don't really know since I do not drink coffee. As a stereotypical southerner, I am a Tea person. I prefer to make my own Tea than buy it at a restaraunt.

I've heard people say bad things and the opposite good things about both tea and coffee, so I sort of ignore most of it. Habits seem to be more important than the actual drink.

For example, whether one loses or gains when when they quit drinking coffee depends more on how many calories a person has in their "coffee" in the first place. (milk, sugar, flavouring syrup, mocha, whipped cream, etc.)

I've been told to avoid having too much strong black tea is bad for my already iffy bones, (not sure why, but maybe too much tanic acid) but I've already read in several places that tea (especially with milk, of course) is good for your bones.

So yeah.

Citrus teas are really nice, if you consider caffeine-free herbals "teas" to be, well, teas. Orange and Spice? Sign me the heck up.

Haha, I consider dried-stuff flavored-water teas so long as it's not coffee xD.
Both of the boxes are Orange and Spice--only while the tea from one box is good for, a regular cup-sized drink, the other one gets super sweet and dark really fast.

If I'm really sleepy, I eat chocolate instead of drinking coffee xD

There are people who drink coffee right before bed. Coffee is supposed to make you wake up. PLus if you eat chocolate before bed, you get better energy in the morning. Milk chocolate before bed is supposedly help you have good dreams. I hope thats true lol

There are some people that get sleepy when they have caffeine. That's the sort of person who'd have coffee before bed, I think. :P

I happen to have just finished drinking a nice cup of tea. Tazo vanilla caramel chai, with a bit of honey added. It sounds so pretentious when I type it out.

Oh wow, that sounds like fancy tea.

My mother gets sleepy when she drinks caffeine--but she drank it in the morning anyway xD. (We don't have coffee anymore though.)

Chocolate makes me have better concentration and feel less need for sleep--but it doesn't keep me from falling asleep xD

I have two cupboards of tea. I'm gradually moving them into tins, because we have mice, though they haven't invaded my tea yet.

I buy online since it's convenient, especially since I used to live in an area where the nearest tea place was a couple hours away. Still, I prefer to buy online only if I know what I'm looking for. I prefer in store if I'm browsing, so I can look at and smell the options, and inevitably get into conversation with the staff about tea. Also, free samples. :)


I get nerve jitters a lot, or that's what I call them. I think things like coffee straighten them out enough that it's easier to sleep, even if I'm less tired. It just gets my brain back into some manner of order instead of constant mental channel surfing.

FYI, dark chocolate is considered great study food.