Tea Angle Blog
Quick Tea Studio Update
Our purpose here at Tea Angle is to make high quality Chinese tea accessible and available to everyone, everywhere. Starting off as an online business only, we decided in 2019 to open up a physical space – a tea studio – where we could meet and serve tea to other tea lovers. As we’ve seen over the last few years, despite all the convenience of virtual meetups and hang outs, nothing comes close to face-to-face interactions with other like-minded folks.
Teas the Season to be Jolly
As we inch closer to Christmas, there are certain smells and tastes that immediately make us think of the holidays. Whatever your signature flavours of Christmas may be, there's bound to be a tea that matches. Here's a list of a few teas that we think are perfectly suited to the silly season.
4 Great Tea and Mooncake Pairings to celebrate the Moon Festival
The general theme for the tea and mooncake pairings this year was "harmony". Given the occasion – the Mid-Autumn / Moon Festival being a time of family reunion and harmony, we figured that would be our guiding principle to judge if a pairing worked or not. And we're happy to report that it did!
Seasoning your Yixing zisha teapot
Before using your Yixing zisha pot, it's best that you season it first. Because these teapots are unglazed, they tend to have a clay-like aroma attached to them that can have unwanted effects on the tea that you’re brewing. Seasoning the pot will remove this effect and will allow you to start brewing better tea.
Good or bad: The top 3 things we look for in good tea
We don't go through and attempt to judge/grade every single tea that we sample or check it off against some specific list of criteria. Where's the fun in that? That being said, there are 3 specific things that we do generally look for when it comes to deciding whether or not what we're drinking is in fact "good tea."
What's with the small tea cups?
When brewing tea in the traditional, Chinese, gong-fu way, small, somewhat tiny cups are traditionally used. But there are good reasons for why the tea cups are small – taste, appreciation and there's a social aspect as well.
Tea and Mooncakes: Pairings to try during the Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival (aka Moon Festival here in the Southern Hemisphere) is one of the most significant and important holidays in the Chinese calendar. In 2019, we held a Tea and Mooncake event. As a bit of a throwback, we thought we'd highlight the 4 tea and mooncake pairings we featured at our event last year.
Tea Studio Update
We're heading towards the tail end of 2020 and unfortunately, COVID-19 still continues to be a pain in the butt for all. There were promising signs here in Sydney a few months back when things began re-opening again but alas, fluctuations in cases up and down have meant that there's still a whole lot of uncertainty around what's safe and what isn't. Because of this, we've decided to try something new, making a few changes to our Enmore tea studio and how it's run.
Oolong Tea: What is it and why do we love it?
Simply put, Oolong tea is a type of tea that sits somewhere between a green and a black tea, with some leaning closer to the green side and others lean more to the black tea side. The many different varieties of Oolong teas make it one of the most interesting types of teas to explore for tea nerds.
Getting into Chinese Tea: A Beginner's Guide
In this article, you'll find a few handy hints for beginners wanting to dive deeper and explore the complex world of Chinese tea.
Tian Di Ren (天地人)
A good cup of tea is the result of three elements: the heavens, the earth and the people – tian (天), di (地) ren (人)
What is Dancong?
Phoenix Dancong tea
Fenghuang Dancong tea (or Phoenix Dancong) is a type of oolong tea from Guangdong province in sou...