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Well, my tea arrived on Friday morning at 7am - Friday is my day off, so that disposed of that lie in!
I wasn't quite aware of how much half a kilo of tea is. For people more used to imperial measures it's a little over a pound. I had ordered a caddy from them too, which is not small. Roughly one quarter of the tea fits into the caddy. I've bought what would appear to be many months supply of tea...
As for the tea itself, it's not quite what I had hoped. I like very strong tea. When I brew a cup of tea and it is entirely opaque then I'm happy. My tea looks like coffee if I get the chance. This Orangajuli doesn't do that sadly. It seems to be more "planty" than the tea I'm used to. Perhaps it's fresher, or better handled. Maybe it's less oxidised (I understand that's what makes black tea black tea). In any case my first few cups were sadly a disappointment.
However subsequent to that I left the caddy lid off over night, and have started slightly crushing the tea in the infuser before it goes into the mug. Perhaps a combination of that and getting used to the new tea has had an effect, and I now very much enjoy it. I tried a mug of Twinnings earlier today and it surprisingly didn't feel like any kind of relief. So it took a few days but I'm now hooked on this new tea.
I do regret ordering quite so much of the stuff. It'll take a very long time to get through it all, and I'm inclined to try many many different types of tea to find the "perfect" tea for me. If I go and do that then all I'll do is end up with a huge bag of tea that I'll never drink..... I have some ceylon tea that's been sat in a cupboard for a year, I doubt that'll ever get drunk. I used to mix it with some rather strong (but rough tasting) Kenyan stuff and it made a passable drink.
As for the scissor type infuser I bought I'm not yet convinved about it. It's certainly easier to brew the tea, and it does an admirable job of keeping the leaves separate... But it completely prevents me squeezing the leaves, which I do when I'm brewing tea, which has the effect of reduced strength. I can wave it around in the mug or pot, but that does very little if anything. When i'm brewing tea without an infuser I have two different kind of seives I can use. Because of this I can get a spoon into the teapot and really disturb the leaves to get the goodness out.
I suspect I'll order some of the little samples from one of the places mentioned in a previous post. I think they were 60p each and there was no separate postage cost.
The most difficult part is that I know virtually nothing about tea, nor do I know of a place to learn about it. I understand that different plant varieties grow in different locations, and I'm sure the soil affects that too. Also that there's different ways of the tea leaves being treated which will have an impact, but I don't know of a resource to learn about it. Thus I'm pretty much stabbing in the dark. All I know is I like strong tea without any complimentary flavours like ginger, citrus etc.
Thankfully this little hobby is relatively inexpensive!
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