Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Iced Tea Round-up
I'm very lazy so I pretty much never make my own iced tea. Too much effort required - multiple containers, ice cubes, you know, all that business. I'm pretty well-trained around the house so using ice cubes means refilling ice trays (old school!) which just pushes the whole project over a line I'm not willing to cross. I do, however, love to drink the stuff and have found that the tea has to be "OK" but not too good or else the whole thing is crap. For this reason I really like the iced tea at Starbucks which, I believe, is a newish offering. Their tea is OK - not great - but they make it really strong and add ice and it's pretty fine on a hot day. Even better, it's priced comparably to a Big Gulp which makes it one of two or three things you can order at the Buckstar that won't make you feel like a money-wasting chump. Also, the process is hidden so you never see the tea bag which means there is no chance of accidentally reading the clever tidbits of copy on the package (hint: not clever).
So the Starbucks iced tea is pretty good. This is what I'm trying to say. Here I am, all loving Starbucks, humming along to the compilation CD I impulse bought at the counter, trying to decide whether to get the current logo or the original logo for my next tattoo. Meanwhile, across town these Honest Tea people are making a difference with their wholesome, organic, good karma-enhancing, ethical corporation-style bottled teas that I find myself buying at the hip, urban eateries I sometimes visit and you know what? I don't like them. I want to like them, I want to cheer them on and feel good about where my money goes but I don't like the tea. It's weak and I'm confused by the sweetening. Is it sweetened? if so, make it sweet. Otherwise, don't bother. It tastes like maybe there used to be a sweet drink in there and they forgot to rinse out the bottle before filling it with weak tea. Oh, I thought you were going to wash those. You didn't wash them? Damn. I always forget to do that. Come to think of it, I believe they got their start in a garage filling old snapple bottles with weak tea so I may not be that far off the mark.
So the Starbucks iced tea is pretty good. This is what I'm trying to say. Here I am, all loving Starbucks, humming along to the compilation CD I impulse bought at the counter, trying to decide whether to get the current logo or the original logo for my next tattoo. Meanwhile, across town these Honest Tea people are making a difference with their wholesome, organic, good karma-enhancing, ethical corporation-style bottled teas that I find myself buying at the hip, urban eateries I sometimes visit and you know what? I don't like them. I want to like them, I want to cheer them on and feel good about where my money goes but I don't like the tea. It's weak and I'm confused by the sweetening. Is it sweetened? if so, make it sweet. Otherwise, don't bother. It tastes like maybe there used to be a sweet drink in there and they forgot to rinse out the bottle before filling it with weak tea. Oh, I thought you were going to wash those. You didn't wash them? Damn. I always forget to do that. Come to think of it, I believe they got their start in a garage filling old snapple bottles with weak tea so I may not be that far off the mark.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
blah blah Tea blah blah
Yunnan tea seems to be cathartic, for me at least, and so three solid days of the stuff has me jonesing to write some crap on the interweb about tea. Yeah, it's been a while but I talk to all three of the people who read this once, maybe twice a day and I live with one of them so it's no big deal, really. Really. So I'm on the Peet's Yunnan again. Yunnan is rumored to be one of the oldest varieties of tea, perhaps, in fact, the very most oldest of them all. It's so damn good I can see why it would be the alpha tea and if it's not I'm willing to revise history as needed to make it so. News flash: It's still good. Hasn't changed any. Just fine, thanks.
Anyway, now is a prime time to revive this writing habit as I am on the cusp of becoming a fledgling tea entrepreneur and I feel the need to document the process - watch this space for sensitive industry secrets! Watch as I undermine our profitability! Watch me blow the whistle on Erik's ethical lapses! The shock & awe of the 2006 World Tea Expo in Vegas is slowly wearing off and has been replaced by a comfortable sense of inevitable success and fortune through tea sales. In fact, Erik & I have been so slack about getting our crap together to do this that it has started to feel a little like a real job, which in a way makes me feel like we're already well on out way to grand achievement. Less is more. Yin and yang. Trust me on that.
Oh, and just to prove we really were at the World Tea Expo for at least some of the time we were in in Vegas (wives, take note) here's a photo of me with a clearly insane person who is a) not a stripper and b) sort of has something to do with tea:
Anyway, now is a prime time to revive this writing habit as I am on the cusp of becoming a fledgling tea entrepreneur and I feel the need to document the process - watch this space for sensitive industry secrets! Watch as I undermine our profitability! Watch me blow the whistle on Erik's ethical lapses! The shock & awe of the 2006 World Tea Expo in Vegas is slowly wearing off and has been replaced by a comfortable sense of inevitable success and fortune through tea sales. In fact, Erik & I have been so slack about getting our crap together to do this that it has started to feel a little like a real job, which in a way makes me feel like we're already well on out way to grand achievement. Less is more. Yin and yang. Trust me on that.
Oh, and just to prove we really were at the World Tea Expo for at least some of the time we were in in Vegas (wives, take note) here's a photo of me with a clearly insane person who is a) not a stripper and b) sort of has something to do with tea:
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