Tea drinking

[cria]

I fairly recently took to Birchall's Great Rift loose Kenya tea. Really, really good - & goodbye Waitsose etc for now.

[cloughie]

I've recently changed my second (and last) coffee of each day for a herbal tea (currently camomile and limeflower, but I do like fennel too). For some reason I found I wasn't really enjoying the second coffee. Later in the day I have Earl Grey or Empress Grey and later still PG Tips with M.O-H.

Drink mostly tea, preferably loose leaf Yorkshire Gold, coffee 11am - full caffinated, decaff after evening meal. Last drink before bed is Water or a Twinings Sleep!

[gradus]

Anyone for Redbush?

[smittims]

I've recently changed my second (and last) coffee of each day for a herbal tea (currently camomile and limeflower, but I do like fennel too). For some reason I found I wasn't really enjoying the second coffee. Later in the day I have Earl Grey or Empress Grey and later still PG Tips with M.O-H.

[anorak]

I've been a tea fanatic for many years. Strictly loose leaf. And NO milk (sorry for shouting). Right now I'm sipping a cup of Keemun Mao Feng which is probably my favourite. I take tea as seriously as some people take malt whisky, which I used to take seriously but had to give up for a variety of health reasons, so tea has become my main beverage. I have about a dozen different varieties on the go, for different times of the day, for different moods.

[Padraig]

Heaney was somewhat older than me, Padraig, but I got in first with that thought - 1952!

And it's the thought that counts, f f

( You'ld have to get up early to catch you out!)

[oddoneout]

How are you to know your fortune if you use a tea strainer?

Make sure it's got big enough holes?
I don't use a caddy spoon as I have a selection of teas which stay in the pretty blue bags they are purchased in, in a tin, and need the longer handle of a teaspoon to reach the contents.

[french frank]

Great minds, f f.

A Drink of Water . . .

Where I have dipped to drink again, to be
Faithful to the admonishment on her cup,
Remember the Giver, fading off the lip.

Seamus Heaney

from Field Work 1979

Heaney was somewhat older than me, Padraig, but I got in first with that thought - 1952!

[Padraig]

When you make a cup of tea
I hope you'll always think of me

Great minds, f f.

A Drink of Water . . .

Where I have dipped to drink again, to be
Faithful to the admonishment on her cup,
Remember the Giver, fading off the lip.

Seamus Heaney

from Field Work 1979

[vinteuil]

Timely for us as my wife rediscovered a half pound of loose tea we bought in Cornwall ...

https://tregothnan.co.uk/

... Cornish tea - to re-use that Johnsonian quote employed by FrenchFrank recently - "... like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

[french frank]

When I moved on from my small village primary school, my mother chose an antique silver caddy spoon to give to our 'headmistress' (only two teachers, but the head was the fixture). Mother suggested I should write a poem to accompany it, which I still remember:

When you make a cup of tea
I hope you'll always think of me

But I don't know what eventually happened to the caddy spoon. Probably inherited by a second cousin's daughter. I just use an ordinary teaspoon, though I do have a caddy.

[Bryn]

Timely for us as my wife rediscovered a half pound of loose tea we bought in Cornwall well over a year ago with use by date March 2021, we've just got to find a strainer now.

How are you to know your fortune if you use a tea strainer?

[gradus]

Timely for us as my wife rediscovered a half pound of loose tea we bought in Cornwall well over a year ago with use by date March 2021, we've just got to find a strainer now.

[Pulcinella]

Watching ‘Bargain Hunt’ today and one of the items purchased was ‘ Caddy Spoon’. The auctioneer Philip Serrell said ‘no-one these days uses caddy spoons’. I still do, but I wondered if anyone else on the forum still uses loose leaf tea rather than teabags and also uses a caddy spoon.

Certainly do!
And Chatsford teapots, which have a removable strainer incorporated.

[vinteuil]

.

... sadly no caddy spoons here - must put on my 'must-have' birthday list for June....

(what an admission - "The sort of people who have to buy their caddy spoons!" [apologies to Alan Clark].)

But yes, loose leaf tea here - various combos of waitrose assam/ceylon/darjeeling

.