Yurikome said:
About loose tea -
I personally find that tea leaves are often too heavy and won't cling to the cup's walls (maybe that's a problem with my cup? hmmm...) Anyway, what does work, and rather well, is just cutting open a tea bag and brewing the tea with the little ground tidbits from inside. It might not look impressive if you just pull apart a tea bag in front of a client (depends what image you're striving for
) but they read pretty darn well.
Just my 2 cents
that's a VERY good point.
However, I would not want to cut open a teabag...for several reasons. First, the tea they put into the bag is almost dust. You want it in the bottom of the cup, but that is no use if you just end up consuming the bits.
There was a time, not so long ago, when there was no such thing as a bag. You can still find loose leaf tea, just look a little harder. Almost any company that makes tea makes a choice between loose and bagged, but the corner grocer mostly carries bags. Although modern convenience requires a bag, the tea companies get off the hook a little about what they put into it, since the consumer never gets to actually LOOK at the tea, once it's sealed inside. The loose leaf version of *any brand you care to mention* is ALWAYS a better quality than the bagged version.
High volume sellers, such as Twinings, Lipton, PG Tips, DJ Miles, have the finest grains of loose leaf. That should make it easily obtainable for anyone wishing to use it for divination. As a tea enthusiast, I would urge everyone to immediately switch to loose leaf, but then you absolutely must have an infuser. And since I own several, let me impart the wisdom of experience... the mesh (fine wire) ones that fit down into the opening of the pot and just hang there--like an open cup-- are the best. The mesh holds the fines and fannings (aka dust) best. The hardest to deal with are the little ball that closes with a hinge--no wonder tea isn't so popular in the US, who'd wanna deal with that more than just occasionally? what a mess. Also, the bodum yo-yo is expensive and heavily hyped--don't waste your $$. The solid metal with punched holes-type of infuser lets waaaaaaaaay too many bits float in the tea..... hey wait...... oh, that's what we were trying to achieve though, isn't it? oh. well, it stinks for daily use, but it might have great potential for divinitory use!!!
Of course, you CAN just dump loose leaves into the pot and pour on boiling water...but unless you also wait 2-3 minutes then remove the tea, pour it through a strainer into another vessel you run the risk of over-infusing and making it bitter. That's actually what the Chines DO in the gongfu tea ritual. They put leaves into a teeeeensy little pot, pour the water on, wait, pour the tea out of the pot, through a strainer, into a little pitcher then distribute the tea...but I digress. So, if you want leaves floating in the tea to read with, you want to be sure that you only make a small quantity, small pot or single mug since it will over infuse and be bitter if you end up with too much. I guess you could just hurry through the drinking to get to the reading, but I believe that would be missing the some of the point, don't you?
