come fill the cup-

I've given up on everything but glass. It is easier to clean plus added visual aesthetics. When you pull the innards from a Tea Press it makes a nice glass cup. That rim spout makes a wonderful sipping trough. I also modify the innards and use them as a teapot. My smallest is 100ml and largest 1.5l. I just wait to find them at discount. They've just started to appear in Asian stores and much cheaper than the equivalent Western retail. And I use my share of styrofoam cups. They also come in various sizes. It's good for judging color and instant pristine odor/taste free cup. You can only use them once because tea will leave signature footprint immediately. I'll sometimes do that to measure the relative strengths of multiple infusions. A styrofoam cup never forgets. I picked this habit up from my local tea shoppe because they only use styrofoam for takeout and I'm too cheap to dinein and pay $1.50 more for a pot.

Jim

pilo_ wrote:

Yes, that's why I use a glass mug, but I can't drag myself away from the others, yet. The mug that I now use for rooibos used to be my black tea mug before I got the BB cup and glass mug. I still like it, but it's significantly harder to clean and rooibos doesn't stain.

Which raises a question I don't think discussed before. Does your spouse/so also drink tea? In my domicile I pick and prepare the tea with my wife drinking the whatever so long as it isn't some smokey Chinese. On the weekends she'll drink hot tea but the weekdays she likes it cold from the refrigerator after work. We have a ritual where any tea I buy she gets to smell first too let me know if she can drink it even is some innocuous Ceylon. It has to pass her smokey test. The last TGY I bought just about passed that test. I was so close. She said she could probably drink it weak and chilled with lime. She knows when I make the Chinese teas she doesn't like and she'll let me know in a condescending way. Other than that we're on the same tea scale. She knows what to buy in tea accoutrements. She bought some $10 closeout tetsubins for Christmas.

Jim

Derek wrote:

snipped-for-privacy@individual.net/4/05 10: snipped-for-privacy@is.invalid

So, the first is the professional and the second the amateur, in a sense. I'll be the latter. I'm not brainy enough for the former, and besides, knowledge is the booby prize of life. I actually looked in the dictionary -- American Heritage, 4th ed. BTW, since you can now get a copy of MW Third International for around $40.00 in NYC, are they on the verge of putting out another edition, anyone?

Michael

I'm drinking a Tie Lo Han, which is quite nice with touches of sweetness in a rich body alternating light wood and a toasty roasty bit that's not overdone and so not obtrusive. There's a little metal thing in the aroma and in the taste when you steep longer, but not a bad one.

I'm listening to the earliest Bessie Smith recordings I've got (from

Don't know about Ti Lo Han, but Bessie is tasty!

Blues

Blues Lyne2rydnVsBaosjwM snipped-for-privacy@adelphia.com/5/05

Tie Lo Han (Iron Monk) is yet another varietal of Oolong in the WuYi Mountains group. I've given WuYi teas a very broad and careful trial over many months, and I've come to the conclusion that they are much too fickle for my money in the sense that one might be quite nice and the next not so. Phoenix Mountain Oolongs, of which there are several prominent varieties, are more consistently delightful from type to type and from level to level. You can get a cheap one and enjoy it immensely. That's my take on it, not that anyone asked. (A thoroughly delightful Da Hong Pao [Big Red Robe] WuYi is hard to beat, but also nearly impossible to get, and price will *not* tell the tale.)

Michael

My exso spent several years in the East, mainly India, and came back unaccounably with an antipathy to Eastern food and drink. He won't touch curry, even to be polite. He will drink instant decaffinated Lipton tea with lemon and artificial sweetener. Toci

Bluesea wrote: "How do they clean the inside of the straw?"

I have at least one answer: churchwarden length pipecleaners :) In all seriousness, any chemistry lab supplier has long pipette brushes, which would work perfectly. They shouldn't be too expensive.

Joshua Sasmor

Hey Eric, while we're on the subject...can you describe the difference in taste between roasted yerba mate and green? I have some roasted and I can't say I like it very well, so I thought maybe I'd have more luck with green...but tell me if you happen to know, what the difference in taste is.

Melinda

Oh i don't drink the stuff.

I just know people who do, and the coworker who is kinda/sorta my supervisor (but doesn't do my performance reviews) can't stop drinking the stuff.

Ahh, pipe cleaners, of course. Can you tell that I don't smoke? :)

Thanks for that and the pipette brushes. I knew there had to be something!

As for stainless steel having a flavor, I find that a slightly odd concept - but there are varying grades of stainless steel. There might be some electrolysis or something going on. *shrug*.

Um...what's going on is that it's chrome-plated, not S/S.

"Sometimes, I jest plumb fergit."

Yes. She wasn't much of a tea drinker before we were married. I pretty much introduced her to loose leaf teas rather than bags. She's pretty happy with whatever I bring in.

Neither of us drinks coffee. Both of us drink lots of iced tea - it's a southern thing. And every morning, I'd make her a fresh cup of hot tea and take it to her in bed.