Friday/Saturday TeaDay 7/8-9/11 Wicked TeaDay!

[Chip]

Greetings TeaFriends. Welcome to TeaDay. Please stop in throughout the day and share what is in your cup with us.

Today is a FreeDay TeaDay. So, feel free to create a topic and discuss!

Or just discuss ... whatever!

[Chip]

OK, a fun topic for Friday. I started this yesterday in Green Tea. "Something wicked this way comes!" (would have been a good friday the 13th topic)

http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=15915

However ... here you can do it for any type of tea.

A "fun" topic to poke fun at some rather evil tea offerings. There is plenty of inspiration for this topic and any tea qualifies as long as it is wicked in the eyes of the poster!

[Chip]

... and this can be a tea you have purchased or simply seen, such as on a site.

OK, I will kick it off first with a tea I purchased. I have many memories of truly vile teas I purchased over the early years, most out of necessity due to lack of availability of finer teas and information sources such as TeaChat.

Certainly a top pick in wickedness would be Au Jasmine. This tea is common in Vietnamese stores, comes in a canister complete with batch numbers which is ironic considering the teas you definitely want to forget.

Impossible to brew, just absolutely vile. The aroma and taste conjure up the worst of worst adjectives, though acid reflux comes to mind.

Simply impossible to drink, though I kept it, still sits in the canister (one reason I bought it). One sip, and you will think you are being poisoned.

[Chip]

... poll added ...

[teaisme]

It's been a long time since I had anything that really disgusted me...
Most recent would be a fake da yu ling which really didn't taste that bad but only went a few infusions and gave me the feeling I was drinking a lot of pesticide, same unbalanced yukky feeling accompanied by so so taste with a tenren sun moon lake high mountain oolong tea, and of course can't forget adagio ali shan from the oolong box pass...yikes...

a pinch of the 8582 from the otti, time to see if storage has been toned down enough
and a nice session of aged dancong at work

[tortoise]

My mom recently brought me a 200 gram bag of strawberry sprayed green tea with bit of dessicated strawberries from Spain. Wrong on so many levels. I thanked her, gave her a big hug, and once she left I threw it in the garbage.

My wife suggested giving it to someone. But as an ambassador for Tea, I found that unconscionable.

O-C YM today. All day more than likely.

[bob]

Luckily, I didn't yet buy a tea that would be undrinkable. But I've bought more than my share of pretty bad ones... No taste, old, extremely low quality, etc., this seems to be the norm here, especially for ooolongs and greens... Blacks are actually quite well represented...

But my mother who likes to occasionally drink green tea (it's getting very popular ) bought a packet of this: http://www.beta.com.tr/BetaGreenTea.aspx

I tasted it and I could barely swallow a sip. The flavour was terrible, nothing like a green tea, strong chemical aftertaste and generally very off taste. I convinced her that it's better not to drink it... But I think she still has the box stored, "because it's bad to throw food away"...

I'm still not sure if there was something wrong with the tea or it was actually supposed to taste this way, but there's no way I'm drinking this... Is perhaps anybody familiar with this Beta tea? The company seems legit...

[artmom]

Some bad teas purchased over the last 53 years (since I got married).

Received a Master Xu Rou Gui from Postcard Teas (UK)today; very tasty.

[BioHorn]

Radiance Tea Oriental Beauty I ($17 for 1 g.) Bought a couple of years ago. Tried it. Broken bits of unorganized unpleasant nasty flavor. My youngish son regularly drinks tea with me. He still talks about that tea!

I keep it as a reminder in my computer drawer. It is ready for anyone wishing a sample (just PM me...)

[rhondabee]

Well I had a dream early this morning about someone doing something very wicked to tea. I dreamed that I was sitting at a large table like in a conference room with other people. An unknown women who was some sort of fitness/health type person had a gaiwan filled with rolled oolong. She proceeded to pour some kind of heavy pink cream and fruit into the gaiwan and then tried to eat it like granola or something. I screamed in horror, "No! That is Li Shan!" What a nightmare. Not drinking tea now, but today enjoyed some Spring 2011 fragrant Dong Ding from Floating Leaves.

[SlientSipper]

One time, they actually almost fooled me with bagged tea at restaurant. I cringed and didn't order tea at place again.

Way back in my teavana days. I brewed some black tea. I followed the instructions and it was terrible. Oh yeah and making those borderline unsanitary samples and having watch people enjoy them!


I was at China town and I grabbed some Pouchong at random and even though it was vacuum sealed it HAD NO TASTE!!!! I filled my tea pot to the BRIM WITH LEAVES!!!...

YET!

STILL NO TASTE!!! what's so ever.
What kind of demon could suck all the flavor out of tea like that.
sure some wicked creature. the horror... the horror...

[Skippyandjif]

I have seen and purchased not one, but several teas that could fit this category. The first one was several years ago, and it was my mom who bought the tea, but I drank some so I guess it counts: "chocolate hazelnut truffle" flavored tea. It's in quotation marks because it tasted like...well, imagine the worst, stalest, most burnt, fakest-tasting hazelnut coffee you can...now pour that into a cup of really sub-par black tea. That's what it tasted like. I took two sips and gagged.

Next up was artichoke tea. Now, I love artichokes. LOVE them. But...to eat. Not to drink. I found this out the hard way. I drank tea made from a vegetable and it tasted like peanut butter. And not in a good way.

Finally, some Vietnamese gourd tea that I got at the Asian market near my school. Holy moley was that stuff vile. I should have just stopped when I smelled the liquid. It was like a combination of composted vegetation, sweaty gym socks that have been left in a locker for a month, and fertilizer.

...So of course, I drank some. It couldn't be as bad as it smelled, right? Well, it was. Then I thought: AHA! Sweetener! It just needs a little honey. That can't make it any worse.

Except that it did. Ohhhhh goodness. It did.

Basically the only good thing that tea did was give me a story that I really enjoy telling.

Anyway, the tea I drank today was wicked... Wicked good! I've been drinking very yummy bi lo chun all day, with a lot of iced green tea because we're still having a heat wave. Green tea is so nice and cooling, even when the tea is hot.

[debunix]

Today has been a wicked-free tea day--did not reserve enough time this AM for sencha, but had a lovely afternoon with the Hawaiian oolong, and this evening have been working on several sessions with Huang Jin Gui from Norbu.

But I have had wicked teas.....every incarnation of Earl Grey I've somehow convinced myself to try, as though this will be the time that I will discover both that I actually like western-style black tea, and bergamot--both highly unlikely prospects.

After enjoying some 'smoky' puerhs, I bought some lapsong souchong that tasted like pine resin scraped off a tree downed during a forest fire, and no amount of dilution and short brewing could redeem it. I was a little surprised that adding it to the compost bin didn't drive the worms to flee!

My most recent wickedly surprising tea experience was at a little Thai restaurant, when I ordered 'chrysanthemum tea', expecting a little teapot of hot water with some chysathemum flowers, with or without a base of some random green tea. The tea arrived as a chilled bottle of highly sweetened water, lightly flavored with chrysanthemum. I managed about to 'give it a try' for 3 or 4 sips.

[Chip]

wickedly funny wicked tales of wicked teas!

A runner up for me was a Wagner brand box of lapsang souchong teabags when I first started drinking tea and would try anything ... once. Just reminded me of childhood when my father would eun a circular saw through plywood. Burnt sawdust smell. I could not get past the smell to take a sip.

This was the first tea and one of very very very few I ever threw away. One teabag was enough to make this decision.

Great TD, no wicked teas. Began with Warashina Supreme Organic with the Mrs. followed by Kagoshima Organic ... both asamushi from the O-C, and lastly Guricha from Xell, a virtual asamushi. So whoever says I only drink fuka should note today included 3 asa!

[Xell]

Back in my home country i've tried to buy loose leaf green tea, it was quite expensive compared to my usual teabags That was a horrible experience, taste was something like really bitter straw. Didn't have any tea knowledge at that time and i thought that green tea is only bitter and didn't try ever again. When i came to Japan it was really surprising to have good free tea even in some simple restaurants. And after i finally moved to Japan i was introduced in even higher grade ones, good first flush teas, gyokuro...

I think there are many people with similar experience, but who still don't know about how tea should really taste.