Glad I ran across your channel. I first started with loose leaf tea back in 2002 with Adagio. Since then I've explored many brands. I credit Rishi for my introduction to Taiwanese oolongs, specifically dongfang meiren. This was about 10 years ago but the quality was great and the tea was very enjoyable. As far as gongfu at work, when I worked in an office setting I found that I was still able to gongfu brew using the Piao I Teapot. There is a small upper chamber that sits within a larger glass container. Once the tea is brewed there is a button to release the liquid into the bottom receptacle. All I needed was that and a kettle and I was good to go. Fortunately I now work from home so I can have my full setup with me.
Interesting tea tour,thanks for sharing! I just had my mind blown today. I subscribed to Global Tea Hut magazine. It arrived in a box! The December 2022 issue focused on Dong Ding. BUT it came with a huge stash of tea!!!! A large bag of loose leaf,2 cakes,and an impressive rectangular brick Puerh! I’m telling you,I am blown away by this subscription.
If you haven’t got a sink in your office there’s still the Gong Fu Vessel from Mei Leaf. Keep in mind: no matter how loose the tea inside might be, the sachets are plastic and there’s some pattex holing the thread to the sachets being rinsed by hot water…
I tried going back to tea bags after gongfu cha and its like walking compared to driving a car. Totally different experience. I found that i would rather wait to go home and drink tea via gong fu set up than drink restaurant tea
I’m not in the camp of “tea bags are the Devil”. But I do have an couple issues with even high quality tea bags like Rishi and others. 1st is I simply don’t care for flavored or scented teas, not loose leaf or tea bags. So far too often the vast majority of tea bag offerings are scented or flavored in some way even when you would expect it from the name. 2nd and far more important to me is the mouth feel and structure of the teas. I’ve never had a tea bag that brewed to a thickness that’s desirable, or with an active structure on the palate and what passes for a finish is often “scent or essential oil”. 3rd there simply isn’t enough “value” for price paid to make it a go to tea or to be in my tea closet. Don’t get me wrong, if I’m on a plane, in a diner, or on a remote road trip I would be happy to find a sencha like you described. I’ve done that before and would again. However I recently drove from L.A. to Las Vegas 4 hours after a long plane ride landing a 5am. I chose to drive sleepless and tired to then gongfu in my hotel rather than stop for a tea bag or iced tea on the road at a coffee chain store or fast food. So that really put this to the test for me. My travel gongfu set was well worth the wait.
Far too little attention is paid to the dosing of teabags - part of the reason American enthuse about UK tea bags is apart from better quality is way higher dose per bag > ususally UK tea bags are 2,5-3g per unit - Liptons I think is 2g and Bigelow even less - with green and other teas they can really skimp on dosage - I guess esp. with the mass market the lower dose green reduces bitterness and games the caffiene since the expect green tea to be 'low caffiene'.
