I'd consider myself proficient with using a gaiwan now, but I wasn't for the first few years of my tea journey. I was scared of them.

That's not going to filter the tea properly. That looks uncomfortable to use. I'm gonna burn myself!

At first, I used tea infusers that sit in your cup. These bothered me for a few reasons: some tea types don't expand and steep well in a confined space; they clogged constantly; and they can be annoying to clean.

I then took my first baby step towards gaiwans - with an "easy" gaiwan. It was a nicer experience, but still had some of the same issues: it tended to clog and was annoying to clean. It has a lip that is difficult to clean under. And it actually lets quite a bit of tea bits through.

Similar to this one:

After a few years, I got my first gaiwan for cheap, and I'm so glad I did! It was just easier. You can keep the lid mostly closed and it somehow filters tea bits better than my "easy" gaiwan. It's soooo easy to clean. Now, I do actually use a filter sometimes to catch fine tea dust, but I don't actually need to.

I'm sure gaiwans are synonymous with loose leaf tea for many people, but they aren't common where I am in the US. So for anyone who hasn't tried one, I say give it a try!

-- PS - One cool looking kind of teaware I have yet to try is a shiboridashi. This looks like a better version of my "easy" gaiwan:

Hi all, I'm looking for genmaicha suggestions. I love green teas and recently(ish) discovered genmaicha. I first tried it at a Japanese restaurant and set out to find something near me that I could pick up at a store so I have been drinking Yamamotoyama genmaicha from my local Japanese grocery store.

That said, I'd like to step up my tea game and was wondering if anyone had any genmaicha that they loved? Online stores are good with me. Thanks!

So as a way of weaning myself away from less healthy beverages I've began a little foray into teas. Does anyone have things like little cheat sheets/charts, dos and don'ts or even just general tea recommendations for someone who has no real tea knowledge?

This post assumes you are as obsessed about tea as I am. If you are not, you have my permission to just wonder, "What's up with this guy?" :D

I find it handy to have a list of the teas that I've tried and my detailed thoughts on them, as I can't remember everything since I've tried so many teas at this point. Keeping a list has helped me avoid re-sampling the same tea accidentally and to learn what styles and regions of tea I enjoy.

I use airtable.com (shown in the screenshot). I started out using Google Sheets, but I was feeling limited. I wanted to dynamically sort, filter, and search my spreadsheet - as if it were a UI form. I also wanted to add tags to describe my teas, again for quick filtering and such. airtable.com seems to be everything I need.

Sweet, a good mid body strength, and a strong cherry taste and aftertaste.

Black teas from Tong Mu have become my favorite of all black teas. I love to have them hot and flash chilled.

They're my go-to if I want to introduce people to artisan tea. My family and friends drink iced black tea, so this flash chilled is safe enough to get them to try it.

Aroma and taste profile is lightly sour underripe melon, mellowed by a light roast.

I don't drink Chinese oolong very often, and if I do, they are typically more roasted than this one. I think the profile is balanced and ok, but it feels like it is lacking some intrigue. I've been favoring bitey sheng puer lately.

This is my tea setup at work. I pick a tea and resteep it all day long. If I don't use it up fully, I'll take it home and put it in some water in the refrigerator to drink it cold the next day.

I just tried this tea and it was very good. I'm not a big fan of cherries but I have been drinking it almost every day and like it more than the Cinnamon Black Tea I bought at the same time.

There's a debate amongst my internet community on whether drinking tea with a splash of milk in it is blasphemy or not. Thoughts? Opinions? Hot tea takes? I come here to query the communi-tea

I super duper miss working on the tea farms in Japan. It was a golden period in my life, and to this day, if I take a moment, I am transported back to the sounds, smells, and feeling of being surrounded by the tea trees in the hot and humid summer.

I say that green is for foreigners and black tea is for gentlemen.

I've generally had good luck finding this at Asian grocers... It can be used as the base for the kind of Thai tea you get from a restaurant, just add sweetened condensed milk. I'm not a huge sugar fan so I drink it straight. Even then, it has a nicely bold flavor, and an incredibly high caffeine content.

As requested in the meta thread, here's a space for discussing tea and tea related things. I'm not a big tea person, so I'd love some suggestions for an icon/banner/sidebar description. Let me know in the comments!