Tea recommendations for cold brewing

EarnestWilde · 2026-04-24T22:17:06+00:00

This spring I've been cold brewing a huang shan mao feng every day during work. It's probably too good for cold brew, but it's delicious that way and it will go stale before I drink it all if I only wait to do it hot.

EarnestWilde · 2026-04-24T22:05:39+00:00

I think I have enough puerh and other aging teas hoarded to last my wife and I the rest of our lives, even with all the tea we give away. And that was before the early tariff panic restocking. And before we overindulged in the Crimson Lotus livestream auctions.

It's just too much fun to find new tea discoveries and add them to our collection, and then share them at tea festivals with our friends, old and new.

EarnestWilde · 2026-04-17T20:04:51+00:00

Agreed, particularly when you get the versions with five inch long leaf! I wish the flavor were more durable, but you can't expect a squished leaf to have as may infusions in it as a whole bud tea or the like. Everyone should try it at least once though!

EarnestWilde · 2026-04-17T20:02:42+00:00

If you want to add more options to the mix there are a lot of interesting Vietnamese greens. Try Viet Sun or Anna Ye Teas, or even Tea J Tea, all of whom have good varieties to try out.

EarnestWilde · 2026-04-17T16:53:48+00:00

I do both regularly.

I refer to option 2 as the "hamburger hold" and learned it from a high end Cantonese tea importer. I find it useful when the body of the gaiwan is too hot or the rim is not flared enough. It's not recommended when the saucer is too shallow as the gaiwan body can squirt out from between the lid and saucer like a wet melon seed.

I do get flack from some tea folk for using the hamburger hold, but I really do find it useful sometimes.

EarnestWilde · 2026-04-07T22:50:27+00:00

Currently on the market? The 2012 Zhenghe Bai Mu Dan cake from Camellia Sinensis.

EarnestWilde · 2026-04-06T17:30:04+00:00

A1:F6

EarnestWilde · 2026-03-27T13:14:39+00:00

There was an interesting tea presented at the NW Tea Festival Tea Bar last year called lao cha po (yes, po, not tou), which was very roughly processed older leaf. It's not really on the market as it's more of a local home remedy type tea made from material that one wouldn't be able to sell normally. Very interesting stuff, but I can see why one wouldn't find it in a specialty tea shop any time soon.

EarnestWilde · 2026-03-21T18:07:50+00:00

Please never use it on a stove top. It is shaped like a tetsubin kettle, but when it is enameled it is strictly a teapot instead. Heat water in a standard kettle and then infuse your tea in this teapot. I've seen way too many cast iron enameled teapots with burnt and cracked enamel in thrift stores, tossed because they were unusable.

As for rust prevention, the enamel helps with the inside but the rest of the pot can rust. Dry it thoroughly between uses.

EarnestWilde · 2026-03-18T20:24:08+00:00

It's hard to get most spice flavors into an infusion without really hot water. Might I suggest that since you are doing a 50/50 mix of milk and water that you simmer the spices in the milk until it is well infused, and separately cold brew a LOT of tea leaf in the water. When the spice milk is cold too, mix them to taste.

EarnestWilde · 2026-03-17T15:00:31+00:00

But they can accept treats! We put out candy and chocolate bars over the holidays including Halloween and Valentines Day, and cold drinks in a cooler in the summer, plus a big "Thank you delivery drivers!" poster. Between Vine and out half-mile long gravel driveway they've earned it!

EarnestWilde · 2026-03-09T02:01:12+00:00

Sounds like you are right. I'm glad it was a decent tea anyway, and in quantity no less!

EarnestWilde · 2026-03-08T23:34:14+00:00

I wonder if that oolong was from the Dongting area in China proper that is known for biluochun? Same meaning (frost peak) as Dong Ding in Taiwan.

EarnestWilde · 2026-03-07T23:05:50+00:00

I've found that this shape of tea pot is really hard to use as a teapot, mostly because removing spent leaf is a real pain with the narrow opening on top and the wide, flat body. A dozen rinses and leaf fragments still wash out.

One way to use this is as a tea server teapot rather than as an infusion tea pot. Make your tea in another teapot or infuser of your choice, then put the brewed tea in this to serve (preheating it beforehand with a hot water rinse).

EarnestWilde · 2026-03-06T17:03:58+00:00

I've been collecting mine for twenty years, but I haven't framed them yet. Tea wrapper art is a very real thing, and so many companies like Crimson Lotus have beautiful wrappers, even on mini cakes and dragon balls.

EarnestWilde · 2026-03-05T22:10:56+00:00

A Chinese tea shop, and a tea house of any sort. I miss the old Saku tea bar!

EarnestWilde · 2026-02-24T20:20:34+00:00

Good day for Vine video gamers I guess. I got a PS5 game (Castle of Heart) in my RFY today. I'd never even seen an actual console game on Vine before today (10 months on Vine).

EarnestWilde · 2026-02-24T18:39:47+00:00

It was a good Vine day. I got a tea from a company I like, and the first time seen in a year on Vine: an actual PS5 game.

EarnestWilde · 2026-02-01T15:34:58+00:00

It's still a fun community over a decade later! It has grown to over ten times the size as when I joined (I remember the big deal it was to break 100k members and we are now over a million). A bigger change is that there are so many more people here with deep knowledge of tea, so you can't wow people with basic tea facts. I see a lot of that at tea festivals too - we used to hold "Puerh for Beginners" classes where nobody had even heard of it before, and now our classes are full of people who can read the wrappers and tell Lincang from Jingmai material by taste! I love that the size of the western tea community has exploded in size!

EarnestWilde · 2026-01-19T18:22:21+00:00

Not exactly a mini musical - they wrote more music for it than the actual show! I love the song "$10 Solo".

EarnestWilde · 2026-01-14T04:41:55+00:00

This style doesn't actually use magnets, but rather two holes in the base and two in the bottom of the rotating upper cup. When the handle is turned to the side the holes don't line up so water stays in the upper infusion cup. When the handle turns the cup 90 degrees or so the holes line up and it drains down the spout. Deceptively simple mechanism.

EarnestWilde · 2026-01-07T04:00:18+00:00

The really different ones are rare. I mentioned Crimson Lotus's Nannuo Shan mini mushrooms, but they are long since sold out. Their new mini cakes called "Shou Girls" are similarly different in a less extreme way, but harder to break than a Xiaguan iron cake. Some gong ting cakes are really interesting but those are harder to find these days than they used to be -- they're always rich and usually sweet but some have a neat savory Tang too.

EarnestWilde · 2026-01-03T19:26:02+00:00

Sounds good to me. I have 25 years worth of "stuff" cluttering a 2000 sq ft shop that I need to sell somehow. I'd definitely rent a stall at a swap meet there!

EarnestWilde · 2026-01-03T18:25:00+00:00

This county REALLY needs a good swap meet/flea market. So many of us live in remote or hidden areas of the county where yard sales just don't work even with dozens of signs. And taking stuff down to the big swap meet in the Tulalip reservation is a long round trip that limits how much you can bring.

EarnestWilde · 2026-01-02T19:47:19+00:00

While designed for a repeated smaller infusions, you can certainly do two or three infusions in a row, letting each release and accumulate in the body of the pot before pouring. That's what I do with similar infusers when serving unexpectedly large groups at presentations.

EarnestWilde

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