Sunday TeaDay 4/25/10 Tea and gender bias?

[Chip]

Welcome to a TeaRoom TeaDay, TeaMales and TeaFemales. I hope we can all share what is in our cups today, all day today.

Yesterday we discussed caffeine. You can still vote and discuss yesterday's topic.

Today's TeaPoll and discussion topic is about gender bias and tea tastes. Today, share your favorite type (black, oolong, etc) and your gender. And what is it about your favorite type of tea that makes it your ... favorite?

I am looking forward to sharing TeaDay with everyone without gender bias! Bottoms up.

[Ebtoulson]

I'm a male and I'm not real sure if I have a favorite type of tea but its really close between greens and oolongs.

Just finished some genmai and just switched to some mate with lemon grass (reminds me of a mellow lemonade) which is amazing.

[artmom]

Female and favorite is black. At this point in time, I expect that black is my favorite due to familiarity. Loooooooooong time imbiber!

No tea yet today as it is 4:15 a.m. Bed at 9:30 p.m. - up at 3 a.m. Don't know why.

[omegapd]

Male/Black during the week

Female/Green on the weekends. (just kidding! )

[msmeghann82]

@ omegapd! Enjoy your green today

I'm female and love whites, although I drink blacks, oolongs, rooibos and greens (in that order usually) throughout the week. I like to try all teas but enjoy savoring my white teas the most.

Having a huge mug of chai this morning as I can't get moving and I hope it will help!

[artmom]

I've been experimenting this morning and have probably committed what many of you would consider a sacrilege!

I steeped some Maestro TKY per instructions this morning and found it a bit too "grassy" or "vegetal" for me--remember, I haven't developed a taste for greens, yet.

So, thinking of my hubby's remark "Cooking some tea again?" the other day, I decided to Google to find out if you can "roast your own tea." Yep. So, since I just wanted to do enough for an experiment, I took a small saute pan, heated on high flame, and tossed in some TKY leaves and shook the pan over the flame for about 3 minutes. Loved the roasting aroma! Then, steeped some, and sampled it.

For such a rough and ready experiment, it tasted pretty good--no charcoal-ly taste, just a definite "roast" aroma, and stronger "briskness." I drank the whole cup!! (Unlike the 3 ounces of original TKY.)

So, I found out that I probably need to stick to the oolongs that have more oxidation until my palate changes.

[Ed]

Male/Black during the week

Female/Green on the weekends. (just kidding! )

LOL! That was awesome, omegapd! TeaDay needs more humor like that.

[rabbit]

23/m/usa ... er.... male/oolong.

This is actually an interesting pole, I'm interested to see what results are after many votes. I'm going to guess the majority will be f/black ( and male/green (or maybe oolong).

[laura99]

female/green - with black a close second. Started today with Black Dragon pearls and then some Sencha. Already maxed out my caffeine tolerance for the morning . So it will be hojicha later, maybe some Roobios.

[JBaymore]

Male / green

[Victoria]

Female and oolong but all y'all know that.

Black Pearls in my cup this morning ... Arrr!

[brad4419]

Great topic Chip, this should be interesting

Male and Oolong is my favorite
More specifically Wuyi's followed by High mt.

shan Lin Xi in my cup today.

[AdamMY]

Male/ Oolong but I've been well known to be friends with the Greens and puerh quite often.

Getting ready to have some Yancha, and actually for the life of me I can not remember which bag I took it out of now, as I already put the bag away. I think its White Rooster Crest

[murrius]

Male and green. Case in point: last of my 2009 Yutaka Midori in my cup this morning.

[debunix]

I decided to Google to find out if you can "roast your own tea." Yep. So, since I just wanted to do enough for an experiment, I took a small saute pan, heated on high flame, and tossed in some TKY leaves and shook the pan over the flame for about 3 minutes. Loved the roasting aroma! Then, steeped some, and sampled it.

For such a rough and ready experiment, it tasted pretty good--no charcoal-ly taste, just a definite "roast" aroma, and stronger "briskness." I drank the whole cup!! (Unlike the 3 ounces of original TKY.)

So, I found out that I probably need to stick to the oolongs that have more oxidation until my palate changes.

If that works for you, great! It's not what I would do to a lovely green TKY, but better than feeding the too-green-for-you directly to the worms! And learning about your palate is good too.

Still, curious about what you didn't like in the greener version, because lighter oolongs usually elicit lots of wows when I share them with casual tea drinkers who mostly do bagged teas etc.

Did you find it too astringent, bitter, or sharp? Those are characteristics that usually can be fixed by finding the right brewing conditions (shorter/cooler/less leaf). Was it too bland, light, delicate? That too can be changed a bit by your brewing (more leaf, longer/hotter steeps).

But if you're missing the astringency and briskness of your black teas, that's harder to pull from these greener oolongs especially, because they're so carefully prepared for a mellow brew that it's hard to make them bite like a black tea.