B Green

Who wants some B Grade tea? I know I do. It can't all be fine tea so I've been hitting a bag of Gunpowder Green from the World Market, formerly Cost Plus. In general, green tea doesn't have a very long shelf life which was a problem when shipping was a business of creaky wooden ships and caravans featuring mules. Gunpowder Green's leaves are very tightly rolled so it could stay fresh on long trips from one side of the world to another, hence its popularity in the West. These days the market is crowded with refined green teas because we've all web-enabled our e-commerce platforms to bring the world to our doorsteps 24/7, but Gunpowder Green is still a pretty common variety. Personally, I like it for the way it looks kind of like Nerds (tm) candy. It also resembles Cocoa Pebbles (also tm) and in a pinch you can sprinkle it around your kitchen counters if you need to give someone the impression that you have a rodent problem. It also tastes fine when submerged in hot water.

Also, please people, pay attention here, it really makes a difference if you brew it correctly. I'm not ordinarily a purist about method but with the greens there is a world of difference between right and wrong. Let the water cool down before you add the leaves and let it steep for 2, maybe 3 minutes tops. You'll feel like a champ when you've done it right.

Lunchism/Fetishism

I was in a bad mood yesterday after getting jostled by the lunch crowd at Teaism. There I was, just an honest, tea-drinking guy trying to get some tea in a sea of expensive-pants-wearing, pseudo-pan-Asian-lunch-ordering people who were all positioned between me and the not very helpful staff. They didn't have the tea I wanted anyway. Today is different, in part thanks to my ipod churning up Boston's Hitch a Ride right as I got off the train. There is plenty to like and dislike about Boston, but Hitch a Ride has one of the greatest, totally overblown guitar solos of all time. Pardon me, guitar duet. Anyway, it improved my mood.

Since I couldn't get the Dragonwell tea I was hankering for I fell back on the Jasmine Green tea from Ten Ren that my secret santa gave me. Ten Ren, based out of Taiwan, is a big operation with stores all over the U.S. and a heavy presence in the tea aisle at your local Asian supermarket. Seems like most of their tea falls into that comfortable B grade which is a solid step above regular commercial grade but not fine tea either - Outback Steak House, not French Laundry. They do offer some very expensive teas but I've never tried them. I enjoy visits to the Ten Ren store in Rockville, MD, partly for the bubble tea but mostly, honestly, for the staff who are all beautiful, young, Asian women who entice customers like me with great big canisters of loose tea and good attitudes. I like this jasmine tea - it does the job with no questions asked. I especially appreciate the detailed information on the package:

Degree of Baked: (Totally Dried)

The recommended brewing time is one minute and 50 seconds. No more, no less.

Green Tea Linked to Football Violence, Hooliganism

According to this article green tea might have some genuine cancer fighting properties afterall. Real science giving the props to the tea. Oddly enough, this story was hiding in the "Oddly Enough" category of my Yahoo news feed which is usually reserved for articles of the "Norwegian Scientists Uncover Remains of Wolf-Boy" and "Man Mistakenly Chops Off His Own Penis While Watching Football Match" variety. No matter, news is news.

Loving Yunnan is Easy...

I'm back on the horse today, thoroughly enjoying some Golden Yunnan from the Tea Spot. Yunnan was sort of kind of like my first "real tea" so it has special place in my cupboard. There are just so many things to like about it - the sweet clay smell, the total lack of bitterness, the way you can brew the same leaves again and again and never get tired of it. It has a gentle, enduring strength. I am in love with this tea, plain and simple.

Caramel

I can't stop with the silly teas.. Spring is almost here and I've placed an order with the Tea Spot to deliver to my door, in plain brown wrapping, discreetly labeled, a half pound of good old-fashioned self-drinking tea. (If you're not hip to the lingo, the term "self-drinking tea" is used in tea circles to describe high quality tea that can stand up on its own without blending. That's not to say that teas in blends aren't high quality or anything like that. It's just a thing tea people say while waiting for the kettle to boil). In the meantime I am over the edge, looking down into another cup from France.

In the cup is Les Classiques from Betjeman & Barton. It's a nondescript black tea which has been heavily flavored with caramel and vanilla. In fact, there's so much flavor I can't taste the tea. It is weird to encounter caramel flavor in liquid form because it smells great but tastes like nothing. I suspect this is why you don't see a lot of caramel sodas on the market. I tried sweetening it and adding milk and brewing it really really strong and even rebooted but it was still missing the buttery richness my nose was expecting. It works fine in certain situations, like with sorbet after a big meal, but a nice Darjeeling would fare just as well if not better. Overall, I'm a little disappointed. I suppose I had unrealistically high expectations for caramel tea.

Girlie Tea

This cold, gloomy weather has driven me to the brink of violating all my personal rules regarding the consumption of flavored beverages. Gripped by a February malaise, I've been haunting gourmet shops lately and bringing home tins with fancy lettering on the outside, fru-fru tea on the inside. Before having kids I used to spend much of this time of year brooding & listening to old-fashioned symphonic music, but coming up with the odd hour and a half for Mahler to make his point (and he does have one) is getting harder and harder to do. These days I settle for a pot of tea and a good long stare out the kitchen window.

Today's flavor is Eden Rose, another fine offering from Betjeman & Barton in France. It's pretty sturdy for an afternoon-grade girlie tea from France and there are two things in particular that I like about it: one, it smells like truffles (the chocolate kind) which tend to smell nice and two, it tastes like tea (you know, tea) which often tastes good. That's a winning combination. The base tea is a decent, non-controversial, jeans or slacks-wearing, regular haircut type and it's wearing a t-shirt that says "rose, lavender and a bit of vanilla." In French, of course.

Gourd

A friend recently returned from Argentina and brought me an ornate little yerba mate gourd & bombilla set as well as some yerba mate "tea" bags. If nothing else it looks great and lord knows we never have enough gourds in the office. The beverage itself was pretty satisfying. I'm not sure what was yerba mate and what was gourd pulp but what the hell, it was fine. Come to think of it, by about the fifth infusion I was desperately sucking on the bombilla (straw) for one last sweet drop. It reminded me of the Pu-Ehr tea I tried a while back - sort of earthy, but much less intense. According to the internet yerba mate is even more nutrient-rich than green tea and it has some caffeine (or something) which provides stimulation without the jitters, hallucinations without the paranoia, you know. Nutrition: Feel the Buzz! I think it might also increase penis size and help you find information about anyone, anywhere. I drank it with the same keen awareness for sensation that I had when I tried smoking bananas and nutmeg in my youth with about the same results, minus the headache. Very curious to try the loose leaf. I love the little hookah-like bombilla. Makes me feel good.

Details

All this delicious, delicately scented tea I've been drinking lately has made me very curious about the process of making blends like the Pouchkine that I can't shut up about. What I'm looking for is details, details, details about the process itself, which is relatively undocumented in the public forum. I read that John Harney uses a small cement mixer to make his blends (duly noted, and very manly) but that's all the info I've got. How exactly do you apply bergamot or other oils, for example? Do you put it in a spray bottle and spritz the leaves? How much oil can you use without making a soggy mess? Do you just let it air-dry or do you fire it up to seal in the flavor? I'm sure I can figure it out by trial and error but I'd rather be told.

Please advise.

Thx.

Sniff

I've been using this Tea-in-Mug brewing/drinking contraption each morning for the past few months and today I managed to drop the mug. Sad face.

Instead of dwelling on my failure and loss, however, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to try out some other technology vis-a-vis tea brewing. The all-in-one mug solution is nice but it's also pretty anti-social. A nice teapot might serve as a beacon for guests, a steamy welcome to my little corner of the world. Everything's gonna be better from now on, I can feel it.

PS. Football season = 7 months from now. Crap.

Shut Up About the Pouchkine Tea Already

Still mulling over my aged tea theories of late. I've decided to put one of the Pouchkine tins deep in the back of a cupboard so I'll forget about it for a few years. About the time we re-do our kitchen I'll stumble upon it and brew up a big pot to share with the workmen while they're on break, smiles and laughter all around. I'm sure they'll enjoy it and reward me by finishing the project ahead of schedule. Implied in this is the hope that I'll be smart enough by then to hire experienced professionals to do major home renovations as opposed to the usual idiot-husband-learning-as-I-go routine. Besides, I'll be a tea millionaire with other things to do like outfitting my Escalade with a samovar.

Meanwhile, Erik and I have plans to visit every Williams Sonoma in the DC area in search of 'expired' tea. And cranberry-walnut pancake mix.