leaving leaves in bottle

[Deleted User #19336]

Hello,

In China you see the local peoples carrying a jar or drinking bottle filled
with green tea leaves and water. They make the tea with boiling water in
the morning and drink the whole day from the bottle, leaving the tea leaves
in it.

I have brought some green tea from china and I’m drinking it the way the
locals do. I like this very much but I’m running out of tea leaves and can’t
remember the name of the tea (I think it’s longjing).



Now I would like to ask which teas I can use for it and won’t become bitter
when you leave the leaves in the bottle?

Thanks in advance

[Mary R]

Teas, Etc sells a bottle specifically made for this style of drinking. At the Expo, they said that you could make any type of tea in it as long as you played with the water temperature. I think with white teas they were advocating starting around 175ºF or so, Chinese greens 160º-ish, and blacks maybe somewhere between 120º and 140º. (You can always send a message to them to ask specifics.) Oolongs are a bit spectrum-y, so they'd likely fall between the green and black temps depending on the specific oxidation level of the tea.

For black teas, Teas, Etc did recommend not using this as a "sip all day" method. It'll get bitter more quickly than anything else.

Xiu Xian sells a model where you put the leaves in an upper compartment that you can later unscrew and attach to the base of the bottle to cease brewing. That might make it more flexible.

[Deleted User #19336]

thanks,

Can you confirm if the tea that I bought is longjing?

[Mary R]

Looks pretty close to me.

And even if it isn't a Long Jing, I'm sure that you would be very satisfied with the named stuff. Darn tasty in anyone's book.

[Pentox]

I'm actually not so sure that's a longjing. The leaves don't look very folded/flat as is somewhat characteristic of a longjing. Although the wildy varying size of the leaf might be an indicator of the harvest for it and just be a lower grade of it.

[Chip]

I am thinking it is just a rather low grade of Long Jing, doesn't make it bad per se, but certainly not as beautiful. But sometimes lower grades are not LJ at all, simply a knock off.

Plastic is convenient, but it scares me to put hot water in it.

At the expo, one exhibitor had a similar version with the recycle #7 on the bottom. I had read somewhere that this was to be avoided recently, especially hot water. I asked about it and was told that this was different and completely inert and safe...I bet they said that about asbestos too.

I don't know...I just feel very strange drinking HOT out of plastic anymore. But at least make sure the plastic you use is deSigned for hot water use...for some measure of safety.

There are several topics on TeaChat about it, here is a recent one...

CLICK HERE

[Mary R]

Asbestos is decently safe, so long as you don't inhale it over a long period of time. Then you get cancer. And die. Unless you're this guy--then you make $10,000.

As far as the tea goes...it is hard to tell, especially without an indication of scale. At first I thought it was a rough-ish sencha or bancha, then thought that it might be a lower-grade long jing. Either way, if you do order a long jing from elsewhere, you'll probably be nicely satisfied with the results. It's a hard tea to hate.

[Pentox]

I vote we move back to using lead cups. Then we don't have to worry about silly plastics possibly affecting us. Lead is a sure thing.

[scruffmcgruff]

Honestly... this plastics scare doesn't bother me one bit. I admit to not researching this as much as I should before making an argument, but has there been any documented report showing any malaise resulting from human BPA exposure? (I know there have been plenty of rat studies, but it's really not the same thing.)