How To Drink Yerba Mate

We could sum this one up lickety-split and be done with it - toss a yerba mate "tea" bag into a cup and add hot water. Done!

But if you really want to enjoy your yerba mate to the fullest you should try drinking it in the traditional manner, with loose leaf steeped in a gourd (mate) and sipped through a filtered straw (bombilla).

This is a time-honored ritual in South America, where yerba mate hails from. While it's not quite rocket science, there is an optimum way of going about things in order to get the best results. Tea Guy's hardly an expert on the topic, so I'll point you in the direction of some people who are.

How to Make a Great Cup of Unsmoked Yerba Mate, from the EcoTeas' Web site, is a pretty basic look at yerba mate preparation, as is Mate for Life's Preparing Yerba Mate.

For a slightly more involved look at how to go about things head over to the Natural Latitudes site and check out The Art of a Perfect Mate.

The Traditional Method, from the Ma-Tea.com site, presents both simple and more detailed explanations of yerba mate preparation and even throws in some helpful visual aids.

Over at My Mate World they've put together a similar explanation - How To Brew Yerba Mate - in the form of a nine-part slide show. This one is helpful for novice users who are having trouble visualizing one or more of the steps.

Yerba Mate Information, at The Yerba Mate Tea Gourd site, offers up links to a number of good informational resources, plus recipes and several helpful explanations on curing your mate and preparing the drink in various "styles".

For an intricate and detailed description of how to to prepare and drink yerba mate, plus some assorted and sundry facts, check out the Yerba Mate entry at Wikipedia.

Of course, if you don't have a bombilla, a mate or anything to put in the latter all this information is worthless. Fortunately all of the sites listed here - except Wikipedia - have a wide selection of all of the above. Enjoy.

Shop For Yerba Mate

tea, food, food and drink, yerba mate

Shiny Happy Water

Perhaps I'm straying off-topic a bit with this one. After all, this is not Water Guy Speaks. Then again, try imagining what your tea would taste like without water. A bit dusty, I should think.

So the next time you brew up a cup you might want to try making it with H2Om Water. It's "the world's first vibrationally charged, interactive, bottled water" and it comes to us from none other than the great state of California. At this point, I'll pause while you emit an appropriate wisecrack.

Here are a few highlights from a recent press release issued by H2Om LLC:

"H2Om is a crystal clear natural spring water infused with the power of intention. It resonates with the highest vibratory signatures available."

"When I awoke I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful to create a bottled water that could inspire people to think positive, live healthy, experience gratitude, and absorb all the positive energy that the water itself could hold?" After two years years of research and development, the first ever H2Om infusion process was created...As you imagine pure love or perfect health energy being absorbed by your body, you've created an energetic interaction with the very element that sustains your life."

To enjoy the press release in it's entirety, check it out here.

Visit H20m's site here.

tea, food, food and drink, bottled water

Ripped On Tea

I frequently pass a convenience store that boasts something called Hyper Bean, a coffee with twice as much caffeine as the regular stuff. This can't be a good thing. I think we have enough twitchy, ill-mannered people running around as it is.

But if you've gotta have your mega-dose of caffeine and you don't care for the likes of Hyper Bean, Jolt Cola or Vivarin, you're not completely out of luck. Tea is generally considered to have less caffeine than coffee but there are exceptions. Actually there's only one exception that I'm aware of - and maybe one other sort of exception.

Matcha is a form of powdered green tea used in the Japanese tea ceremony. Because it's powdered this means the entire tea leaf is consumed, as opposed to steeping the leaves in water in the standard manner. What this means for caffeine lovers is that matcha typically packs quite a potent kick. Experts love to point out that determining the caffeine content of tea is an inexact science but, according to some accounts, matcha has considerably more of the stuff than the average cup of coffee.

Then there's chifir, the sort of exception. Chifir, a drink that's apparently quite the rage in Russian prisons, is really just highly concentrated tea that's been boiled to within an inch of it's life and made slightly more palatable with a good dose of milk and sugar.

Accounts vary as to exactly how strong chifir is and, given it's nature, there's probably no definitive answer. One source suggests that it's twenty times as strong as a regular cup of tea, while another reckons on twenty grams of black tea brewed in eight ounces of water. For comparison's sake, the recommended measure of tea for a standard six-ounce cup is 2.25 grams.

So it should come as no surprise when, in Vodka For Breakfast, the "quirky, existential thriller" by Russian writer David Gurevich, one of the inmates of a Russian prison camp who's hopped up on chifir, "stripped naked outside the barrack in the forty below weather and did cartwheels until the guards finally 'calmed him down'." You would too.

All of which makes Tea Guy want to cringe and go wee-wee in his pants. For you see there once was a time when I too was quite a caffeine fancier. But, as I've related before, those days are long gone and nowadays the stuff doesn't sit well with me. But you can't get good tea without caffeine and I'm not ready to swear off of good tea yet, so that's that.

Did I mention that these chifir drinking stunts are carried out by trained Russian prisoners who are undoubtedly much tougher than you and that you really shouldn't try this sort of thing at home? You really shouldn't, you know.

Looking for more info on caffeine? Check out my book review of The World of Caffeine here.

Dying to know how much of your favorite caffeinated beverage it would take to kill you? Check out Energy Fiend's Death by Caffeine calculator here. Alas, there's no category for matcha or chifir.

Update 01/27/2007:
For more on caffeinated delights, see this entry from my other site - Weird Eats.

Shop For Matcha Here


tea, food, food and drink, caffeine, matcha, coffee, chifir

Wacky, Zany Tea Video

You'll never catch me stating that about ninety percent of all Internet usage is devoted to the fine art of goofing off - though I may be thinking it.

In the interest of enriching your goofing off time, I'll pass along a link to the Illimms Productions Web site, where you can find a "spoof tea video" called Lazy Sunday UK or We Drink Tea.

Illimms Productions is the work of teenaged filmmakers Sam Baron and Raph von Blumenthal. We Drink Tea is a response to a Saturday Night Live video called Lazy Sunday, and a followup titled Lazy Monday.

If you can't get enough of this thrilling genealogy of a silly gag video type stuff, be sure to check out this article in the Cambridge Evening News. That's Cambridge, England - now that you mention it.

Happy viewing. Tea Guy hasn't actually screened this opus yet, thanks to my archaic lo-speed Internet connection, but them's the breaks.

tea, rap, humor, video, We Drink Tea, Lazy Sunday, Lazy Monday

The Cup Of The Irish

I woke up today with the strangest compulsion to write someting about Irish Breakfast tea. I can't imagine why that would be, but I've decided not to fight it. So onward.

Here's a brief article, from Seeds of Knowledge, about Irish tea traditions. Also five related recipes. Over at Barry's Tea is a recipe for a full Irish Breakfast, which is not recommended for anyone with delicate appetites.

Here are just a few of the many varities of Irish Breakfast tea. It's still Assam month here at Tea Guy Speaks and since most Irish Breakfast teas are made with at least some Assam tea this entry fits right in in more ways than one.

Last of all, let me remind you that the Irish put us all to shame when it comes to tea drinking. So everybody run and put the kettle on and we'll do what we can to catch up.

Adagio Teas (loose)

Alltea.com (assorted - loose & bags)

Barry's Tea (bags)

Culinary Tea (loose & bags)

English Tea Store (loose)

Harney & Sons (loose & bags)

Mark T. Wendell Tea Company (loose & bags)

Stash Tea (loose and bags)


Shop for Irish Breakfast tea and related items

Grown In The USA

No, Assam Month has not run off the tracks. In fact, we'll soon have a review of one of the best Assam teas I've tasted. So stay tuned.

In the meantime I thought I'd share some information on a lesser known tea growing region - the United States. I touched on the topic briefly in an earlier entry, which also mentioned a tea-growing project in England. You can read that entry here.

Not long ago Reuters ran a fairly lengthy piece on the Charleston Tea Plantation, which is now owned by tea giant Bigelow and which grows the leaf that makes up American Classic Tea. Read that article here.

After reading the Reuters article you might think that South Carolina is the only place in the United States where tea grows and on this scale it certainly is. But tea is also starting to turn up in a state that's a lot better known for its homegrown coffee. That would be Hawaii, of course.

The Associated Press recently ran a piece on tea cultivation in Hawaii, where they are apparently in the early stages of trying to come up with a tea geared more toward connoisseurs. The article ran in the Honolulu Star Bulletin and the Honolulu Advertiser. It's essentially the same story, regardless, and you can read it here or here.

While we're on the subject of Hawaii and tea it's as good a time as any to mention Hawaii Tea Factory. Though they don't use any native grown tea, they do make two flavored black teas and an herbal variety with flavorings usually associated with the islands. They've got a Mango Tropical Black Tea, Passion Fruit Black Tea and Pineapple Herbal Tea.


Click Here For Gourmet Teas!

Books On Assam

As Assam Month rolls on here at Tea Guy Speaks, I thought I'd throw out few resources for anyone who would like to find out more about the region. I've already mentioned and reviewed The Empire of Tea: The Remarkable History of the Plant That Took Over the World, by Alan MacFarlane & Iris MacFarlane, a great book that's merits another mention.





Tea - Legend, Life and Livelihood of India, is a coffee-table book by Gautam Prasad Baroowah. It's being distributed in this neck of the world by Cool Grove Press. It's not listed with the big online book sellers yet, but you can find more information at Cool Grove's Web site and in this piece that appeared in the Calcutta Telegraph a while back.

In Villages and Tea Gardens: Forty-three Years of Missionary Work in Assam, by O. L Swanson, is a somewhat more obscure work on the region. At last count there were two copies available at Amazon. You might have some luck finding it elsewhere, as well.





As we veer a little farther from the subject of tea, but still sticking with Assam, there's Ralph Izzard's The Hunt for the Buru. This one tells the tale of a 1948 expedition to Assam in search of a strange reptilian creature.





While we're veering, why not throw out a quick mention of Darjeeling: A Novel, by Bharti Kirchner? I know, it has nothing to do with Assam and perhaps all that much to do with tea, but there is at least a marginal connection to another great Indian tea-growing region.





Back to Assam. Here's an article from Tehalka - which appears to be a regional publication - on wildlife preservation and Kaziranga National Park.

Finally, from Assam.org, an article on the Lalung people of northeastern India.

Evolution of a Tea Drinker

Growing up in a thoroughly middle-class, suburban white household in the heartland (Pennsylvania), I was subjected to cuisine that was pretty much thoroughly middle-class, suburban white bread, meat and potatoes and a squishy vegetable on the side because someone said it was supposed to be good for you. No big deal really. That's just the way it was and I'm pretty sure I didn't suffer any lasting trauma as a result.

As for beverages, let's just say that tea was an unimaginably exotic sort of thing, perhaps not so out there as mangosteens or monkey brains served fresh from the skull and still steaming, but pretty damned close.

We did actually have tea in the house at times, but it was iced tea from a powdered mix that came in a jar and I never developed a taste for it - imagine that.

What I did have a taste for in those tender years was milk. I drank the stuff in sufficient quantities to keep quite a few cows off the unemployment line. As for my preferences, it was mostly white milk at home and occasionally some chocolate on visits to my grandparents. I also liked soda, but that was strictly rationed and thus I never developed too much of a taste for it.

There wasn't much coffee around our house either, if you can imagine such a thing, though both my grandparents drank it regularly. At a rather tender age, I too became a coffee drinker, feeling rather grown up and proud of myself as a result. But this phase was brief since I ultimately realized that coffee was pretty nasty no matter how much you doctored it up.

As I grew up and the parental yoke loosened and finally fell away I made up for some lost soda drinking time, eventually switching over to diet when I was diagnosed with a blood sugar condition. By this time milk had fallen by the wayside. Then, at some point in my late twenties or early thirties, a new beverage appeared on the scene, at least for me - tea.

I don't recall how this came about, but for a decade or so I was only an occasional tea drinker and mostly consumed it during the winter months as a way to keep warm and only herbal teas.

Of course, somewhere along the line I discovered "real" tea, starting with Stash tea in bags, if memory serves correctly. Then, at some point quite a bit further down the road, and again thanks to Stash, I began to dabble with loose teas. And the rest is pretty much history, if only personal history and one still in the making.

Little Bit Of Tea, Little Bit Of Chocolate

Something tells me I should write about chocolate today. I'm not sure why that is. But, this being a tea site, the best I can offer is to examine that space where tea and chocolate intersect.

To start with, here's a list of chocolate-flavored teas. It's by no means comprehensive, but rather a jumping off point for those of you who might like to try such a thing.

Adagio Teas (Ceylon)
Boston's Chocolate Tea (Bulk Lot)
Harney & Sons
Scent By Spirit (Chinese)
SerendipiTea Chocolate A-Peel (Chocolate, Orange)
SerendipiTea ChocolaTea (Chocolate, Vanilla)
Spotted Leopard Teas Out Of Africa (Coconut, Chocolate, Vanilla, Rooibos)
Stuffed Chocolate Ltd.

Here's an interesting Georgia tea room - the Craving For Chocolate Tea Room - that combines what, for a lot of people, is the best of two worlds.

Last, but certainly not least, is an article Fox News did a little while back about chocolate - in solid form - that's been infused with assorted and sundry varieties of tea.

More Philadelphia Tea

Tea Guy set out yesterday - in the company of the lovely Mrs. Tea Guy - to check out another of Philadelphia's purveyors of tea. Actually we came up a bit short of the city this time around, running to ground at the King of Prussia mall, an impressive bastion of material excess so vast that it can't be contained in one building.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Teavana is gunning to become the Grand Exalted Poobah of the retail tea world. The company is based in the Atlanta area, but is gradually fanning out around the country. According to their Web site, Teavana currently has 35 locations in a whole bunch of states and even one in Mexico City.

The Teavana at King of Prussia is their only Pennsylvania location - sort of. You see, there is actually a Teavana in each of the King of Prussia mall buildings - these are called the Plaza and the Court, if you're scoring at home. This seems a bit odd, but nobody really asked me what I thought. They just went ahead and did it.

Crack, detail-oriented journalist that I am, I can't tell you if we were in the Plaza or the Court, but I'm sure it was either one or the other. Anyway, Teavana is a nicely appointed kind of place that fits in rather well in this upscale palace of conspicuous consumption. The store is not very big and most of the display space is given over to a wide variety of teapots, along with a few other accessories.

The decent, but not staggering, selection of tea is kept behind the counter and there is also a nicely designed leaflet that describes each variety. A helpful gentleman approached us as we entered the store, pressed a number of samples upon us, dogged our every step and kept up a running commentary on the health benefits of tea and so on. A little more hard sell than I prefer, but no big deal really.

The samples were quite nice, especially the Assam Golden Rain. In the end I decided that since I have so much "real" tea around the house I'd just go with a Rooibos Peach, which turned out to be very nice. I also picked up a proper tea measuring spoon and we were on our way.

All in all I declare Teavana to be a good thing. Personally I'd prefer a place with a little more tea, not so many teapots and a bit less of an aggressive approach from the sales staff, but these pretty much fall into the category of minor quibbles.

See the previous installment of Philadelphia Tea here.

Philadelphia Tea

Tea Guy was born and raised in central Pennsylvania, so I'm no stranger to gloomy winters. But, after seven years in warmer climates, I'd forgotten how the unremitting bleakness begins to work on you (or maybe it's just me).

Mrs. Tea Guy and I decided to take a trip to Philadelphia yesterday and seek out some tea houses. Lo and behold, it turned out that we had an unseasonably sunny and warm day for it. Nearly brought a tear to my eye.

I initially planned six tea-related stops, but since we started late we shaved that number in half.

First up was Great Tea International, a small tea house near 18th & Sansom. It's located downstairs from street level and has about ten tables in one room, along with a nice selection of teas, teapots and other merchandise. I chose to take my tea with me, selecting a few ounces of rooibos and moving on to our next stop.

Which was Bubble House. It's also on Sansom, near Drexel University, at 34th Street. Bubble House is a nice, airy place, with plenty of light natural wood furnishings. We decided to have a little something to eat and, of course, some tea. It was quite delightful to be presented with a menu and a tea list.

Anyway, it was a day for firsts. Mrs. Tea Guy ordered an almond latte bubble tea - the first experience either of us have had with bubble tea. I don't see myself ever acquiring a bubble tea habit, but it was a nifty novelty type drink.

As for your humble author, after much study of the list, I decided to go with Pu Erh Mini Tuo Cha, which was another first for me (pu erh, that is). It was quite nice and I look forward to trying some more.

From there our next stop on the tour was supposed to be Teavana's King of Prussia location. But, due to some sort of directional befuddlement and accompanying flabbergastery that portion of our program had to be pushed back to a later date.

Tea & Stinky Old Eggs

I'm sure there are uses for tea that are far more off the wall than making stinky old eggs, but I haven't discovered any just yet. As to why you would want to eat stinky old eggs, well, it beats me. But I've heard that there are people who voluntarily consume chunky peanut butter so obviously anything's possible when it comes to the wide and weird world of foodstuffs.

If you're like me and you were clueless about the existence of Century Eggs or pidan or whatever you want to call it/them, you can read more about this "delicacy" in a Wikipedia entry or as a part of a Webdietitian article in which we're also informed that the egg did indeed precede the chicken.

Cheap Tea

According to a fascinating factoid at the Twining Teapot Galley Web page, in the early 18th century a pound of topnotch tea might cost as much as a skilled craftsman would make in three weeks.

The Salary Wizard Web site suggests that today the median salary in the United States for a level III carpenter is $44,380. Assume a similar price for today's tea using the carpenter's salary and we'll come up with $2,560 per pound or $160 per ounce.

Enjoy your cheap tea.

I'm A Little Teapot...

I'm neither short nor stout and I don't get too awfully worked up over teaware, though from time to time I do run across something that catches my eye.

My only real requirement regarding tea paraphenalia, as I've mentioned before, is a reasonably eye-catching glass to drink my tea from. The key word here is glass, as in the clear variety. Nothing else will do. I don't care how nice some ceramic ware is. There's something about the light refracting through the brewed tea that, for me, just can't be beat.

But enough of my prattle. If you are into teapots and you're going to be in Salem, Massachussetts in the next few months, head over to the Peabody Essex Museum and check out The Artful Teapot: 20th–Century Expressions from the Kamm Collection.

If that doesn't work for you, you might want to try the Twining Teapot Gallery or the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware.

If neither England nor Hong Kong are on your itinerary, try some virtual teapot gawking at English teapot designer Andy Titcomb's Web page or his blog, Teapots, Teapots, Teapots. The latter has enough links to other teapot related sites to keep you busy for about the next decade or so.

If tea bag wrappers are what strikes your fancy then get thee on over to this site, which displays numerous wrappers from a rather astoundingly large collection.

Coffee, Tea or Kootee

Contemplating a switch to tea, but not quite ready to make the switch from coffee? Maybe a cup of kootee would help ease the transition. Or maybe not - who's to say?

Kootee, also known as qutti, is an Ethiopian tea brewed from the leaves of the coffee plant (yes, you read that right) and sometimes doctored up with milk and spices such as cardamom.

I haven't had the chance to sample any kootee yet but I located a few Ethiopian cafes and restaurants in the United States that serve it. If you're in the neighborhood of any of these be sure to drop by and give it a whirl.

Cafe Lalibela (Tempe, AZ) - I ate here when I lived in Phoenix, though I wasn't aware of kootee at the time. Worth a visit for the food and atmosphere even if you're not in the mood for coffee tea.

Enat Ethiopia Cafe & Mart (Atlanta, GA)

Moya (Decatur, GA)

The Nile Ethiopian Restaurant and Café (Richmond, VA)

How Not To Make Green Tea

In an earlier entry I included tips on selecting green tea from Kevin Moore, Supreme Tea Poobah at O-Cha.com. Kevin was kind enough to provide me with samples of a few of his green teas. I'll be reviewing them soon, but let's just say that my review of the Uji tea bags, the only one I've tried so far, will be very positive.

O-Cha.com includes explicit brewing instructions with shipments and at their Web site. After reading them I've got a better idea of why my green tea infusions have so often been less than impressive.

First on the list - water. I think I've got this one pretty much figured out. I use tap water filtered into a Brita pitcher and chilled. I think I've also got my proportions figured out, for the most part. Moore's instructions call for a heaping teaspoon of green tea per 10 ounces of water.

Temperature is where things start to fall apart and, as Moore notes, "this is where most mistakes are made." I was aware that green tea needs cooler water, but I had a tendency to boil mine and then wait only a few seconds before steeping. No good. As Buster Poindexter would say, "hot, hot, hot."

Another one of my screwups has been in allowing the tea to steep too long. I've been going with the three minutes most tea merchants recommend. Moore suggest two minutes. He also cautions against mixing, stirring or shaking while steeping, which was a new one to me.

There are various other points covered in O-Cha.com's instructions, but these, at least for a knucklehead like me, seem to be the most pertinent. As a matter of fact, using this advice and one of O-Cha.com's Uji tea bags I managed to come up with a killer cup of tea - well, several actually. But more about that in another installment.

Energy Fiend & Death By Caffeine

Tea Guy doesn't spend much time reading other blogs. Nothing personal, but there's only so much time in a day. However, I happened to run across Energy Fiend the other day and found myself lingering for a while.

The site offers an appreciation of caffeine and energy drinks and whatnot. It also features Death By Caffeine, a nifty calculator that tells you how much of various caffeine containing products it would take to kill you, based on your height and weight.

As an example, it looks like I'm in no danger of dying from an overdose of green tea any time soon, since it would take 737.1 cups to do me in. Thank you, Energy Fiend, for providing such a valuable public service.

Tips for Selecting Green Tea

Courtesy of Kevin Moore, president and founder of O-Cha.com, here are a few things you should know about purchasing green tea.

Green tea from the first harvest is always superior to subsequent harvests.

Most green teas available to North American consumers, both at the store and on the Internet, have spent considerable time in storage and transit. Freshness is very important with green tea; know when it was packaged and when it expires.

Green tea should always be consumed within a relatively short time period after contents of the package have been exposed to the open air. Once exposed to oxygen, its shelf life drops to three months or less.

Avoid flavored green teas. High quality green teas do not need added flavorings or herbs to make them palatable, and most such teas are rarely going to be fresh.

Telling Fortunes By Tea-Leaves

Telling Fortunes By Tea-Leaves
By Cicely Kent

Hmmm. I'm never quite sure what to make of this sort of thing. You see, Tea Guy is perfectly willing to believe that there is more to existence than what we ordinary muttonheads are able to sense. But then again nobody ever went broke preying on the great multitude of suckers Barnum alluded to.

So what's up with reading tea leaves? Is it the real deal? Damned if I know, but Cicely Kent, author of Telling Fortunes By Tea-Leaves, seems pretty darned convinced that it's on the up and up. The book is apparently in the public domain now, by the way, so you can read it for free at Project Gutenberg and various other online archives.

The "meat" of Kent's book is informative, but actually rather short - weighing in at about eight thousands words or so. The rest is given over to various sections full of information on how to actually interpret symbols that appear during a reading.

I'd venture to say that anything you'd want to know about reading tea leaves
- and probably a good bit more - is covered here. Kent runs the gamut from very down to earth, nuts and bolts advice on technique all the way to rather fine and esoteric matters of interpretation.

The book was apparently written in 1922, but the information contained here doesn't strike me as something that would have dated much in the intervening decades.

Beware though, as the author notes, "Indian tea and the cheaper mixtures"
should be avoided since they contain "so much dust and twigs" that make it difficult to get a good reading. You've been warned.

The Wet Stuff

What's tea without water? Well, it's still tea but it sure doesn't go down as well.

My point being that a good cup of tea really only has two ingredients - unless you like to desecrate yours with milk, sugar and whatnot. That said, it's in your best interest to make sure that you're using good water to brew your tea.

Tea Guy swears by a Brita pitcher for all water drinking and tea making needs, but if you're one of those bottled water types here are some resources you might find useful.

The Bottled Water Store - Features a Water of the Month Club and waters from about sixty different manufacturers.

Mineral Waters of the World - A site maintained by a Swiss gent with no apparent connection to the bottled water industry. He says, "My aim is to create the largest database of bottled waters in the world and a valuable resource in finding your favourite water."

Fine Waters - This one is described as "a site designed to be the definitive voice for water connoisseurs and their accompanying lifestyle."

And a few industry sites:

BottledWaterWeb
International Bottled Water Association
Canadian Bottled Water Assocation
The Australasian Bottled Water Institute Inc.