Any serious tea drinkers?

I have been into tea on and off for 20 years, got more into coffee (espresso) for the majority of that time and have been back on the tea kick for a year or so now. I generally order Assam and Oolong teas (my favorites) from uptontea.com but cannot help but to often reach for PG Tips despite having finer offerings in the house. I would say a nice pot of tea, listening to the radio in the morning, with some snuff on the side is my favorite part of the day…

Same here, off and on again with tea. I normally drink decaf bagged tea on work nights, but on weekends I enjoy a good darjeeling, or a high grade japanese green

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Earl Grey all the way

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I tend to love some golden and black yunnans. Maybe some dark puerrh or a dark oolong.

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I’ve found tea and snuff complement each other beautifully. It seems they bring out nuances of flavour I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. There are so many teas and so many snuffs and similarly I often find a bog standard English Breakfast from the local super market hits the spot particularly when trying a new snuff.

Other favs include dark roast Oolongs, Taiwanese Assam and Chinese green teas. 

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Lapsang souchong might be the ultimate snuff taker the as its smoked in the drying process, very good with spicy food. I am generally not into herbal teas but drink roobois at night when worried about caffeine, it was an earthy profile with a slight sweetness, really worth trying?the Bos brand comes in a nice tin.

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Yup, get through about 10 mugs a day. Nice strong black tea, with the teabag left in the mug. Sometimes I’ll drink Chinese Gunpowder tea or oolong, but I prefer straight black.

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I love tea. Generally prefer black to green, loose to bags. Non-sweetened and nauseatingly strong in-cup brew for a drink, sugared and milk-whitened for my meal.

Better eye-opener than any coffee!

I am herbal tea drinker as well. As of late, my mainstay is fireweed (both green and fermented black). I like St John’s worth (in winter only) and hyssop, too (been ages since my last sip, still haven’t checked if my local drug store sells it). Considering going back to yerba mate, but I need to procure a new set of paraphernalia (a gourd and bombilla), which is not sold locally.

@dan11, teabag left in the mug is my way, too. That is, when I’m up to teabag (mostly when I’m out in the city).

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@volunge leave the gourd etc to the gauchos! Coincidentally, despite eating a lot of meat, they have a lower rate of heart disease than the rest of Argentina likely due in part to their high consumption of yerba mate.

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Take a look at Vahdam teas on Amazon.  It’s a company founded by pickers in India.  

The down side it it’s only Indian and local Himalayan teas (Nepal, Tibet, etc.).  The up side is top-notch tea for an excellent price.

Compare the prices for Assam or Darjeeling at Upton with Vahdam.  

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Sorry but I do not do amazon, I do not care if I pay more from Upton, I have been ordering from them for 20 years now…

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You would rather pay extra to a tea house, rather than a much cheaper worker based company?  

Hell, Vahdam is lifting tea pickers outta poverty AND supporting education for their children.

I understand not liking Amazon, but it is one of the few ways for folks in the third world to get their products to the first world without alot of middle-men.

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@moemojo you have a good point… perhaps their tea will be available elsewhere, otherwise, I might try some via amazon as painful as I would find it.

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If what you mean by serious is drinking it everyday then sure, I drink Yorkshire Gold almost exclusively. I used to be more into trying different kinds of tea back when high quality loose leaf teas were accessible to me. I’m too lazy to order anything other than tobacco products online though, so only common black tea for me. Sometimes black, but mostly with a splash of milk.

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Yesterday was a Duck Sh–t Oolong kind of a day, very fortifying in the aftermath of a storm. 

Today is just Earl Grey.

Thanks for the link @moemojo definitely worth supporting.

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I am very into all types of raw puerh that have not been aged for long. Whenever I have splashed out a bit and bought a more mature tea cake, I have found it to be too soft; I like a reasonably astringent feel to my tea. I usually buy online from the tea guru. Though not a connoisseur, I do recognise and love the chi factor in good tea and count myself a fairly serious tea drinker. Occasionally I will have a coffee, but I usually find that I have lost interest in the taste half way through the cup. The aroma is gorgeous to begin with, of course, but I inevitably end up pouring half of it away cold! Having said that, on the rare occasions I take menthol snuff, I do find coffee goes better with it; menthol overwhelms and spoils the taste of tea for me.

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@omgroma I too have lost interest in coffee, not sure where you are, but in the US we have many options via new roasters but most do not appeal to me. At home I use a moka pot with Bustelo when I do have coffee (my preference is something close to espresso) but now find tea to be a much more enjoyable and reflective pursuit. I have not had a puerh in ages…maybe I will order one soon.

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Yes, reflective; that is a good way of describing the engaging art of tea I think.

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There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life. -Lin Yutang

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IF anyone likes a good chinese tea, especially puerh I highly reccomend https://yunnansourcing.us/

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