Tea is a great beverage. It's warm, it's helps you relax, it goes with almost all kinds of meals and has a number of confirmed health benefits. I was always an avid tea drinker but really became a fan when I discovered a small tea store in the city that sells really good loose leaf tea. I've been trying out different kinds for years and regularly import stuff from China via eBay.
If you like tea and know of a place where they sell it loose, I suggest you give it a try sometime. You can use a filter or a
tea egg like DietCoke mentioned or you can get
tea sleeves (which I use).
Making tea is easy, but if you're going for the fancy stuff there's a few things you should know:
1. There's more than just black tea. The most important types are black (also called red), green, oolong and white tea. They each have different processing types but all use the same basic plant.
2. Different tea types require different water temperatures and infusion time. This is especially important for white, green and green oolong teas, which need water between 80-90 degrees centigrade (176-194). Green tea should typically only be infused for 1 minute (make sure you steep it during that one minute), oolongs for 4-6 minutes, black for 4 minutes, and white tea for 6-8 minutes. Black tea and black oolong usually need boiling water. Ask your tea vendor to write it on the label.
3. Don't spend too much money buying tea blends or flavored crap like wolfberry or banana tea. They're usually just poor quality Earl Gray with some spices, dried fruit or additives thrown in and sold at exorbitant prices.
4. Try to find a store that sells tea rather than ordering stuff online right away. Believe it or not but you might actually save money that way. I've compared the store I go to with the online stores and found that they're actually much more expensive most of the time. This shouldn't be true since internet stores are supposed to have a lot of competition that drives down cost, right? Well, quality tea is such a niche that many people searching for the stuff online don't know exactly what a fair price is, whereas the quality tea stores usually have to sell stuff at slim margins to prevent themselves from going out of business during a time when people are getting rid of luxurious commodities.
By the way if this post seems incoherent or poorly written, it's because I'm really tired at the moment and really just want to drink some tea.