Category Archives: Thoughts
Blogging on a schedule
I originally wrote this article in 2013. I came across it a couple of weeks ago and decided it definitely needed to be updated. For those who read the original, please check out this new and improved version. For everyone else, strap yourself in and enjoy!
When I’m bored and not inspired enough to write something, I sometimes read silly things like blogging tips. They always seem to include the obvious, like “write interesting things” and “allow your personality to show through.” They also all seem to include, “always blog on a regular schedule.”
Somehow, this doesn’t seem to work for me. When I raised the question at the tea blogging roundtable at World Tea Expo last month, I couldn’t find a single serious tea blogger that blogged on a regular schedule. Why is that?
According to the pundits, having a regular update schedule gives your readers something to look forward to.
Perhaps so.
But what does a regular update schedule do to the quality of your blog?
I understand deadlines in the magazine and newspaper business. I’ve been on both sides of those. And books. The editor needs to know when the manuscript will be complete to schedule copyediting and cover design and all of that other fun stuff. None of that, however, applies to a blog.
In my humble opinion, a blog like this one can be badly damaged by the obsessive urge to post on a schedule.
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
—Douglas Adams
I do not presume here to speak for other bloggers. In fact, I would love to hear the opinions of other bloggers in my comments. Speaking just for myself, then, I believe that two things inspire good blog posts: inspiration and breaking news. Neither of those things is enough by itself. They both require passion and at least a smidgeon of writing skill.
Neither of those things happens on a schedule.
I may see something new and interesting while scanning a news site, tea blog, newsletter, or social media. What would be the appropriate reaction?
(A) This is cool! I must let all of my readers know about this post haste while I’m still excited about it and it’s still news!
(B) This is cool! I must put this on my schedule of things to write about. How does three weeks from Thursday sound?
I don’t know about you, but for me writing it now produces a good blog post, and by the time three weeks from Thursday rolls around something else has caught my interest.
“I am definitely going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.”
—Louis E. Boone
Or what about the flipside? It’s blog update day. My deadline is coming at me like an enraged ROUS (that’s Rodent of Unusual Size for those of you who aren’t fans of The Princess Bride; that’s an ROUS in the picture at the top of this post) with its tail on fire. I can’t think of a bloody thing to write about. I scratch out something marginally adequate, thus making my deadline. My dear readers say, “Gary’s certainly off his game lately, isn’t he? Mayhaps we should read Robert Godden instead. He’s not boring.” I’m having a hard time seeing the win in this scenario.
I will continue, then, writing when the spirit moves me or when I have something to write about. This is my sixth post this month on Tea With Gary. I think I’ll celebrate with a nice cup of pu-erh.
Mind if I throw in a little bit of xkcd? Of course you don’t. Unless you don’t like four-letter words. In that case, stop reading now (or skip ahead to the “AI artwork” section below).
AI artwork in a tea blog?
I have a confession to make. Sometimes creating the header images for my articles can take as long as writing the article. When I wrote this article from 11 years ago, it didn’t have a header image. I decided that since I had a reference to Rodents of Unusual Size from The Princess Bride, that’s what I should use as a header image.
DISCLAIMER: As a content creator, I do not approve of using artificial intelligence to replace human-generated content and deprive artists of income. In the case of Tea with Gary, however, the only artist I’m replacing is myself, so I have been having some fun with AI image generation here.
I plugged the prompt “princess bride enraged rodent of unusual size with its tail on fire holding a calendar” into some AI art generators. The images were nothing at all like what I wanted. I spent a good bit of time messing with the prompts and finally gave up, creating the header you see at the top of this post from a screen grab from the movie, edited to add the calendar and the flaming tail. That gave me the enraged vicious animal I wanted. By contrast, here’s what some of the AI art generators produced:
In order, starting with the squirrel with the crown (?), these were generated by Adobe Firefly, Dream by Wombo, Imagine with Meta, and PhChroma V3. Interestingly, Stable Diffusion 2.1 crashed with this prompt.
I did actually get some better results by adjusting the prompt, but nothing came close to the vibe I was after. The images above all came from the same original prompt.
Can you smoke tea?
My response to this question on Quora has gotten more views than any other tea-related response I’ve written, with over 100,000 views. Apparently, this is a question in a lot of people’s minds. Given that, I’ve decided to expand upon that answer for my friends and readers here on Tea with Gary.
The original question: “Is it possible to smoke tea leaves? If so, is it harmful?“
Why yes, it is possible to smoke tea leaves. I drank a cup of smoked tea yesterday. It’s lovely. Look up “lapsang souchong” for more information.
I assume, however, that you’re not talking about drinking tea leaves that have been dried in smoke, but about lighting the leaves on fire and sucking the smoke into your lungs.
Again, the answer is yes, it is possible to smoke tea leaves. I’m really not sure why someone would want to do that, though. It doesn’t give you a buzz like nicotine nor a high like THC, yet it still fills your lungs with harmful particulate matter.
I have enjoyed a fine cigar from time to time, but I still get that inhaling smoke—any kind of smoke—is bad for your lungs. I gave up the cigars years ago, but I continue to enjoy smoked teas and smokey single-malt Scotch whisky. I get the aroma of the smoke but I’m not getting the harmful effects.
If you want to try rolling up a tea-leaf cigarette, by all means give it a try. Doing it once isn’t going to kill you, though it may thoroughly annoy everyone around you.
Five bits of tea trivia that are WRONG!
I suppose tea trivia is like any other kind of trivia. Some of the most fascinating trivia is also some of the least accurate. I did a little bit of searching around the web for tea trivia, and found some that were a little bit off, some that were just badly phrased, and some that were flat-out wrong. Here, for your reading enjoyment, are five of those inaccurate gems I dug up.
1. Iced tea was invented at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair by an Englishman named Richard Blechynden.
WRONG! This was the first “fact” in the top Google search for tea trivia (“51 Tea Facts Every Tea Lover Should Know”). They present a compelling explanation that it was hot, and his tea wasn’t selling, so he poured it over ice, thus inventing iced tea!
That’s a cool story — and it’s one you can find all over the Internet, but it’s all ruined if you happen to take a peak at Housekeeping in Old Virginia, by Marion Cabell Tyree. It was published in 1877, proving that iced tea had been around long before the St. Louis World’s Fair.
As a side note, Mrs. S. T. wouldn’t have had to “correct the astringent tendency” if she had used cooler water and not left the leaves sitting in them all day long.
2. The only tea plantation in the United States is located in South Carolina.
WRONG! Or at least quite out-of-date. This is the first piece of trivia on the tea page at funtrivia.com. There is, indeed, a fairly sizable plantation called the Charleston Tea Plantation in South Carolina, but they are far from being the only tea plantation in the U.S. There are also producing tea plantations in Washington (I have some of their white tea), Oregon, and Alabama. There are dozens of small growers in Hawaii, and new plantations that aren’t in production yet in various other states.
3. Tea bags were invented in 1908 in the United States by Thomas Sullivan.
WRONG! We’re going back here to the “51 Tea Facts” website from our first false “fact” above. This is their second piece of trivia, and so far, they’re batting zero. Again, they tell a fun story, but the story doesn’t address United States Patent #723,287, which was filed in 1901 and issued in 1903.
This pretty clearly indicates that Roberta C. Lawson and Mary McLaren invented the teabag well before Thomas Sullivan supposedly sent out little fabric pouches of tea that confused people put in their teapots.
4. Restaurants in Georgia are required by law to serve sweet tea
WRONG, but with a kernel of truth. Georgia Representative John Noel (D-Atlanta) did indeed file a bill with four co-sponsors just before April Fools Day 2003. He said it was “an attempt to bring a little humor to the Legislature.” The bill never made it out of committee. It said:
(a) As used in this Code section, the term ‘sweet tea’ means iced tea which is sweetened with sugar at the time that it is brewed.
(b) Any food service establishment which serves iced tea must serve sweet tea. Such an establishment may serve unsweetened tea but in such case must also serve sweet tea.
(c) Any person who violates this Code section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature.”
Although I have a lot of friends in the South that would have supported this bill, it definitely did not become law.
5. The tea dumped in Boston Harbor in 1773 was in bricks
WRONG! I’ve seen this picture all over social media today with the caption, “This is what the tea looked like that was dumped into the Boston harbor.”
No. No it isn’t. As this excellent debunking points out, historians at the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum say that the three ships that were raided that night contained 240 chests of Bohea, 15 of Congou, 10 of Souchong (all black teas), 60 of Singlo, and 15 of Hyson (both green teas), all in loose-leaf form. Not a brick of compressed tea to be seen.
While writing this post, I’m enjoying a cup of wild shu (“ripe”) pu-erh, which has been out of stock in my tea bar for months. I’m very happy that we just got it back in. It’s a 6-year-old pu-erh that comes in brick form (unlike the tea at the Boston Tea Party), and it is one of the richest, earthiest, most complex shu pu-erh teas I have. I love this stuff.
The Dream and the Dancer
I stepped away from the horse and let the saddle fall in the mud. The old Arab mare looked dejected, embarrassed. As well she should be. Anger still flashing in my steely eyes, I reached for my teddy bear cup on the post by the barn door. I needed the warm, soothing taste of a good first-flush Darjeeling. Despite the cold, a bead of sweat ran down my temple as I lifted the cup to my lips. Tepid. Of course. Just like the horse’s performance when we rounded up the bulls.
Oh, wait. Robert Godden asked for a non-fiction blog post. He and two other studly tea bloggers have a blog called “Beasts of Brewdom: The Men of Tea. Huzzah!” Yes, it appears that while biting the top off of a whisky bottle and wiping the excess testosterone from his eyes, Godden decided to use the word “huzzah” in the name of a tea blog for men. Strange creature, this Godden.
Then, to make things even manlier, he decreed that challenges would be issued to grizzled specimens of manhood such as myself, and that the title of the blog post must be the title of a romance novel from some British publisher called Mills & Boon. Somehow, I was lucky enough to draw the title, The Dream and the Dancer.
I lowered the cup and glanced to the house. Lo, what vision of loveliness to my virile eyes did appear? My wife, Kathryn, dancing in the living room as she did her dusting (don’t look at me like that — everyone’s wife dances while she dusts, right?). I took another sip of the lukewarm Darjeeling and set the cup down on the post. I hefted a pair of 12-pound double-bit axes to my shoulder and set out to the shed. I had three cords of wood to split before I could go inside to my wife and the delicate new Taiwanese oolong we had just purchased. The splitting would go faster if I used an axe in each hand.
Tea is oft considered a woman’s domain. We muscular paragons of manhood are expected to go more for coffee sludge that’s been boiling over a buffalo chip campfire for the last 12 hours. Or perhaps a pint of Jack Daniels downed in a single long draught. But tea should not be the demesne of the ladies. Was the Emperor Shennong (who reputedly discovered tea five millennia ago) a woman? Charles, the 2nd Earl Grey, for whom is named perhaps the best-known tea in the western world? Sen no Rikyu, who developed the Japanese tea ceremony? Of course not! They were men!
I have a dream.
I dream that men will someday realize that there’s nothing feminine about a hot steaming cup of smoky lapsang souchong!
I dream of women saying, “Look at that sexy studmuffin over there drinking pu-erh tea. He must be a staunch fellow, indeed!”
I dream of sweaty rugby players saying, “Put away that girly java and get me a proper cup of sencha.”
The chores done for the day, I headed back to the house. I stretched my aching muscles as I strode up the front walk, and looked at the window to see if I could catch another glimpse of my wife dancing through the living room. That’s when the mountain lion appeared. He stepped out from behind the tractor, muscles rippling under his thick pelt, and stopped in the middle of the walk, his yellow eyes flashing at me. I continued walking toward him, our eyes locked. We both tensed as the distance between us closed. “I want tea and you’re in my way,” I growled at him. The lion looked down and slunk away, recognizing that I was in no mood to deal with him. I stretched my sore shoulders and continued to the house, where Kathryn met me at the door. With a smile, she held out a hot, fresh cup of jade oolong. I held it to my nose, closed my eyes, and inhaled deeply. “You might want to shower before dinner,” she said softly.
Yes, we are men. We can use our rippling muscles to stack ten tons of hay, and then relax with a delicate cup of tea. We can sip an Earl Grey with our friends while debating whether that noise coming from the Camaro is a tappet problem, or just a loose fan belt. We can drink half a glass of iced tea, and then pour the rest over our heads to cool down after setting a new obstacle course record. We can share a pot of tea with a friend after beating each other bloody in a boxing ring.
Tea has been the drink of manly men for over 100 generations. So, gentlemen, the question isn’t whether tea is manly enough for you; the question is whether you are manly enough for tea.
(Caution: Just in case the title of this video doesn’t give it away, it does contain some foul language)
OMG! Twins! Tea With Gary and Gary With Da Tea
Every now and then, I check my site statistics. This is to serve you better, of course, and not because of some neurotic compulsion to see whether I have more followers this week than last. Among other things, I look at the search terms that you have typed into Google (or whatever) that brought you to my humble website. One that took me by surprise a while ago was “Gary Wit Da Tea.” I understand how “Tea With Gary” could be transposed easily enough into “Gary With Tea,” but “wit da tea?” Hmmm. So I did a little search of my own and discovered this fine fellow named Gary Hayes.
Now, it’s understandable that Mr. Hayes (a.k.a. “Gary With Da Tea“) had escaped my radar. After all, the fellow’s only been doing his radio show for a couple of decades, and he has a paltry 65,000 followers on Twitter (I’m still not calling it “X”). That’s only about a hundred times my humble Twitter readership. Oh, he also has an IMDB page. Here are a few excerpts from their mini bio of that other Gary with that other kind of tea:
His ever-popular “Colour of the Day”, fashion reports, flawless entertainment news and celebrity gossip (which Gary calls “Da Tea”) are can’t-miss features for Rickey Smiley Show listeners and Dish Nation viewers. At every radio appearance and community event, listeners flocked to his live remotes to see for themselves just who was pouring “The Tea”, and serving up the celebrity dish! It wasn’t long before he was asked to join The Rickey Smiley Morning Show team, where “Da Tea” is now poured daily.
Brimming with curiosity, I searched for pictures of Da Tea Man. Holy cow! We’re virtually twins. All I have to do is shave my beard, buzz my hair, and acquire a shiny suit and you’d have trouble telling us apart. I’m telling you, next time I’m in Dallas, I have to get my picture with him. Wait a minute. He is the one in Dallas, and I am the one with the cowboy hat? Hmmm again. Since I’m sure a daily radio show doesn’t take much time at all (trust me, I used to do a 2-minute weekly live segment on KMXE in Red Lodge, MT, so I’m clearly an expert), I’m going to check in with him. Maybe we can write guest posts for each other’s blogs.
You know how I’ve been adding that little paragraph at the end of my blog posts that tells you what tea I was drinking while I wrote it? As you might have guessed, I’m not drinking tea at the moment. I’m having a glass of red wine. That must mean Gary Hayes is the one having tea at the moment. Darjeeling, perhaps? Yeah, he looks like a Darjeeling kind of guy.
Fine Words Butter No Parsnips – and I’m not talking about Tibetan Yak Butter Tea
I have some strange friends. One of them is a rather … unique … tea blogger from Australia named Robert Godden (his blog, for those who dare to look, is Lord Devotea’s Tea Spouts). One day last week, I signed on to Facebook, only to see that Robert had tagged me in a post. That’s never a good sign. I followed the link to find this:
My first thought was, how do you punctuate that? I imagine a restaurant reviewer getting a call from her editor. “Yeah? What do you want?” The editor responds with, “Fine words. Butter. No parsnips.” Check. Got it. Like her other reviews, this one should be fine words. Maybe the next issue of the magazine has a Paula Deen theme: every article must include butter. And the editor probably hates parsnips. It makes sense, in the same kind of twisted way that any idea of Robert’s makes sense.
But what does all of this have to do with tea bloggers? Should I write about Tibetan yak butter tea? There aren’t any parsnips in Tibetan yak butter tea. But then it hit me. He’s using “butter” as a verb. Buttering parsnips is a good thing. You want to butter your parsnips. But you can’t do it just with fine words. It requires action. Fine words alone ain’t going to butter any parsnips.
That does mean something in the tea world. There are all kinds of ways to promote tea. You can describe a tea using fine words: “This astonishing infusion has sylvan aroma, full buttery mouthfeel with floral overtones, notes of antebellum parsnip and yak musk, and a mild nutty aftertaste.”
You can pitch the benefits of a tea using fine words: “This health-laden tea is Ethical Tea Partnership certified, loaded with theanine and antioxidants, 100% organic, and picked only by virgins on the full moon. Oh, and the label was drawn by a Seattle artist who dresses only in all-natural fair-trade hemp.”
You can market the tea shop that sells a tea using fine words: “Our tea house was founded in 1492 by two monks and a tea farmer. We have buyers in 17 countries who hand-select every single leaf that appears in our shop. Every one of our stock clerks has a PhD in botany and is an ITMA Certified Tea Sommelier™.”
But none of those fine words are what really butters your parsnips. What’s important is whether you like the tea, not whether the barTEAsta is a stunningly-good-looking expert in selling tea. You don’t want to get sucked in by all of the fine words on the label, buy a $20 bag of fine tea, and then have it rot in the pantry because you don’t want to drink it. Instead, buy your tea from a shop that lets you taste it before you commit. Buy a cup, or avail yourself of a free sample if they offer one.
If buying tea online is your thing, ask if you can get a sample with your next order. If you’re buying $50 worth of tea, I doubt they’ll begrudge you a tablespoon or two of some other blend — especially if you’re a regular. Don’t ask them to send you a sample for free if it’s not piggybacked on an order, though. That’s not nice. Even if it’s just ten grams of tea, they would still have to pay for the packaging and shipping. Taste it. Enjoy it. Make sure it’s a tea that you’ll actually drink a big bag of. Then make your purchasing decision. Read the fine words. Listen to the sales pitch. But remember, the proof is in the pudding … err … parsnips.
While writing this blog post, I was drinking tieguanyin (a.k.a. Iron Goddess of Mercy), a soft, flavorful oolong tea. I brewed this cup for 3:00 using boiling water. I often do it with cooler water, but I’m feeling saucy today. Not saucy enough to add yak butter, but saucy nonetheless. In my not-so-humble opinion, the second infusion is better than the first.
POSTSCRIPT: Posts from the other bloggers that have answered the challenge are starting to appear. I shall add each to this list as I discover it:
- Robert Godden: thedevotea.teatra.de/2015/02/27/fine-words-butter-no-parsnips/
- Jo Johnson: scandaloustea.teatra.de/2015/02/27/fine-words-butter-no-parsnips/
- A. C. Cargill: accargill.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/fine-words-butter-no-parsnips/
- Rachel Rachana Carter: iheartteas.teatra.de/2015/02/fine-words-butter-no-parsnips/
- Jen Piccotti: internationalteamoment.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-fine-words-butter-no-parsnips-moment.html
- Ken Knowles: lahikmajoe.me/2015/03/01/fine-words-butter-no-parsnips/
- Nicole Schwartz: amazonv.blogspot.com/2015/02/fine-words-butter-no-parsnips.html
- Naomi Rosen: www.joysteaspoon.com/blog/fine-words-butter-no-parsnips-ummm-what
- Jackie Davenport: cupsofteawithjackie.teatra.de/fine-words-butter-no-parsnips/
Canon cameras and oolong tea
I know what you’re thinking. Has Gary lost his mind? Well, you probably think that anyway, but bear with me for a moment here…
If you can name three styles of oolong tea, one of them is probably tieguanyin, also known as Iron Goddess of Mercy. It’s a wonderful, mellow oolong that’s become one of my favorite teas. I’m drinking a cup even as I write this, and the story behind the name will be featured in the first volume of my upcoming Myths and Legends of Tea short story collection.
And if you can name three brands of cameras, one of them is probably Canon. They make a wide range of consumer level cameras, and they’ve been around a long time — since the 1930’s, in fact.
Tieguanyin comes in tightly-rolled leaves. When you steep the tea, those little tadpole shapes open up into full Camellia sinensis leaves. The tea is named for Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, or more correctly, the bodhisattva Guanyin, since Buddhism doesn’t have gods and goddesses in the Western sense. There are a lot of ways to spell tieguanyin, and a lot of ways to spell Guanyin’s name as well.
This brings us to cameras. The Canon company — originally known as Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory — developed prototypes of a camera back in 1933. They named this camera Kwanon, which is an Americanized version of the Japanese transliteration of Guanyin’s name. It was a camera named for the Goddess/bodhisattva Guanyin.
The name of the company is, in fact, a simplified version of the name of its first camera, the Kwanon. So next time you pull out your Canon camera, make sure to brew up a cup of tieguanyin oolong to sip while shooting your photos. I recommend brewing it for around 2-1/2 to 3 minutes in 175 degree water. You can easily use the leaves four or five times. Just add about 30 seconds to the brewing time for each additional steep.
Oolong-related articles on Tea With Gary
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The Iron Goddess of Mercy – Part 1
The Iron Goddess of Mercy Part 1 — China, 1761 — It was the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, the sixth emperor of the Qing Dynasty in China, but our story concerns no emperors, warlords, or nobles. It is just a tale of a humble farmer by the name of…
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The Iron Goddess of Mercy – Part 2
The Iron Goddess of Mercy Part 2 — China, 1761 — It was the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, the sixth emperor of the Qing Dynasty in China, but our story concerns no emperors, warlords, or nobles. It is just a tale of a humble farmer by the name of…
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Canon cameras and oolong tea
Why should you drink oolong tea when you’re taking pictures with a Canon camera? Let me explain…
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The Oolongs of Taiwan: Stop 6 on the World Tea Tasting Tour
Taiwan may not have originated oolong tea, but it is definitely at the forefront of oolongs today. At this stop on the tea tour, attendees learned about what oolong tea actually is, and tasted a variety of Taiwanese oolongs, including Bao Zhong, White Tip Bai Hao, and of course Tieguanyin,…
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Free mystery tea (Tieguanyin)!
A friend stopped by the tea bar the other day and brought a bag of tea from China that a friend had given her. She didn’t know what it was, and she’d had it for five years, so she asked if I’d like to have it.
Tagged! A tea background story
Oh, these silly tagging things that go around. Normally, I ignore them, but Geoffrey Norman (a.k.a. the Lazy Literatus) tagged me for a tea-related Q&A and it’s hard to resist when he looks at you with those big puppy dog eyes…
(1) First, let’s start with how you were introduced and fell in love with the wonderful beverage of tea.
Easy. I hate coffee.
I got my start with tea as a comfort thing when I was little. Any time I got sick, Mom’s immediate response was tea and toast. Tea relaxes me and makes me feel like I’m being taken care of. It was many years later that I discovered the amazing variety of beverages you can produce with the Camellia sinensis plant. There’s a lot beyond black tea in teabags and loose green tea leaves in the Chinese restaurant!
(2) What was the very first tea blend you ever tried?
I hereby define the word “blend” to mean a combination of ingredients, thus disqualifying Lipton teabags and the aforementioned green tea in the Chinese restaurant. That means the answer is “Morning Thunder” from Celestial Seasonings (tagline: The Awakening Power of a Thousand Charging Buffalo). I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, which is where Celestial Seasonings is based, so it was ubiquitous when I was in junior high and high school. Then, my junior year in high school I got a job driving a delivery truck for an office supply store, and Celestial Seasonings was one of my stops.
(3) When did you start your tea blog and what was your hope for creating it?
The first tea-related post I wrote on my other blog was in June of 2011, shortly after opening my tea bar. About four months later, I gathered all of the tea-related posts from that blog and split them off into a new one: Tea With Gary. That’s what you’re reading now.
(4) List one thing most rewarding about your blog and one thing most discouraging.
Rewarding: I have met some awesome people through tea blogging, and I feel like I’ve debunked some myths about tea.
Discouraging: Where are my tens of thousands of screaming fans? Hey, no offense to the hundreds of readers I do have, but I had hoped for more after 2-1/2 years.
(5) What type of tea are you most likely to be caught sipping on?
I drink a lot of different kinds of tea, but the two I’m most likely to be drinking are Iron Goddess of Mercy oolong (a.k.a. Tieguanyin) and various shu pu-erhs.
(6) Favorite tea latte to indulge in?
When I make myself a tea latte, it’s almost always masala chai. I like a nice spicy chai with frothy milk, a dash of agave nectar, and a sprinkle of cinnamon on the foam.
(7) Favorite treat to pair with your tea?
A lightly-salted big soft Bavarian-style pretzel.
(8) If there was one place in the world that you could explore tea culture at, where would it be and why?
Oh, my, that’s a rough question. For tea culture, it would have to be Japan. When I was last there I hadn’t really explored Japanese tea culture and ceremony, and I’d like to go back now that I know a little bit about it. As for tea horticulture, I’d like to visit some tea plantations in either China or Kenya.
(9) Any tea time ritual you have that you’d like to share?
Unfortunately, I don’t take the time for ritual very often. Most of the time I’m making a quick cup to consume while I do something else.
When I do observe a ritual, it really varies with the type of tea I’m drinking. I prepare and drink my pu-erh differently than my matcha, obviously.
(10) Time of day you enjoy drinking tea the most: Morning, Noon, Night or Anytime?
Any time. Any time at all. Due to my ADHD, the caffeine doesn’t affect me the same way it affects normal people. I do have a tendency to drink tea that’s lighter in the caffeine at night, though (e.g., houjicha), or even switch to rooibos.
(11) What’s one thing you wish for tea in the future?
That there’s never one single business and one single variety that reaches the levels of dominance that Starbucks has reached in coffee. I like tea being a different experience depending on where I go and who I’m with. I enjoy every tea shop having a unique atmosphere, a unique selection, and their own way of presenting the tea. Diversity is a great thing, and I want the diversity in the tea world to increase rather than decrease.
Tea Dragons
Sometimes my wanderings around the Web are a pure waste of time, and sometimes I end up finding something delightful. This is one of the delightful ones.
While browsing DeviantArt (a website for artists), I decided to search for tea-related stuff. Lo and behold, I found some wonderful drawings of “Tea Dragons” by Thomas S Brown. The dragons are whimsical, and each one just cries out for a story — or at least a good caption. My favorite, with my own caption added, is the White Tea Dragon:
Tom, who goes by “CopperAge” on DeviantArt, said that he originally started doing tea dragons as sketch cards for cons and steampunk events. He’s done about 20 of them so far. When he showed them to his wife (and creative partner), Nimue, she came up with the idea of writing a tea dragon book. They are currently shopping the book around with different publishers. According to Tom, she channeled Lewis Carroll a bit as she wrote it.
The steampunk origins of the tea dragons show better in “Tea Dragon Moon,” which I’ve also taken the liberty of captioning. Note that I haven’t read the book, so these captions are coming straight from my imagination and have nothing to do with Tom and Nimue’s book.
“Quite right, Abernathy, quite right. I do believe I have a few extra sheets of copper laying about. Mayhaps you could whip something up in that lab of yours?”
I’m sure the question running through everyone’s mind, though, is what Tom’s favorite tea is. Looking at the “Tea Dragon Moon” illustration, I figured it would be some kind of über-industrial super-smokey lapsang souchong. I suppose his response fits just as well, though. He said he likes a strong black tea, but he’s “not averse to Earl Grey and occasionally a bit of Jasmine.” I suppose, actually, that his “Grand Tea Master” might be brewing up a batch of jasmine tea, or maybe lotus blossom…
Since we’re on the subject of lapsang souchong, though, Tom did mention that he was recently commissioned to produce a tea label. It’s for an Earl Grey/Russian Caravan blend. Hmmm. That could end up similar to my own Mr. Excellent’s Post-Apocalyptic Earl Grey. I’ll have to track it down when it’s ready and give it a try.
A final note on DeviantArt: don’t be put off by the name, or because members are referred to as “deviants.” The site is simply a great place for artists to share their work and communicate with each other. Sure, it has nude elves, but there’s a lot of wonderful traditional art in there, too. There’s a “family filter” you can turn on if you’re offended by nude bodies. If you’re an art fan, go take a look at the site.
Random observations from the tea bar
Looking for something pithy and educational about tea today? Well, you picked the wrong blog post. Today I am just posting a free association of recent observations and happenings at the my tea bar.
Never give up. Never surrender.
I love pu-erh tea. I have far more of it in the tea bar than our local population can justify, especially if you include the “dark tea,” which is tea fermented like a pu-erh but not produced in Yunnan. I have grown used to having to explain pu-erh to every person I mention it to. It’s part of the education mission of the tea world.
Then, one of my regulars brought in a friend from out of town. He bought a quarter-pound each of Irish Breakfast and my own Scottish Breakfast blend (which I call “Gary’s Kilty Pleasure”). He asked for something different, and I asked if he’d tried pu-erh. He knew what it was! He liked it! We probably spent 15 minutes talking about pu-erh and he bought a tuo-cha (bird’s nest shaped pu-erh cake) and some loose pu-erh. The education efforts of tea shops around the country are paying off!
I hate cheap equipment.
Some of the equipment in the tea bar has worked beautifully since the day we bought it. Some has been a source of endless frustration.
The milk heater/frother units we got from Keurig? One broke in just over 3 months, the other in just under a year. Fragile parts, hard to clean, cheap construction. The ones we got from a company I’d never heard of, on the other hand, are both working beautifully.
Tea timers? I suppose it’s not the manufacturer’s fault that we drop them from time to time. But some timers survive multiple drops and some die after the first.
Frothing wands? I just had to deal with our third dead wand in a year. They really should last more than six months. This just isn’t acceptable.
Never put out pressed tea samples
Found this out the hard way. One of our distributors carries these wonderful little pressed hearts of tea they call Antony & Cleopatra. I thought it was a cool novelty idea and ordered a pound of them. They’re black tea, not a pu-erh like most pressed teas. They are actually halfway decent black tea, which makes them better than just a novelty item. Just drop it in the teapot, pour in boiling water, and in a few minutes you have a cup of tea.
I put a big jar of them (sealed, of course) on the tea bar and a little plate (actually a cute little teapot-shaped teabag holder) in front of the jar with some of the tea hearts on it. Can anyone guess what happened? Anyone? Bueller? Yeah, that’s right. People ate them. Apparently compressed tea leaves make pretty yucky-tasting cookies. Who’d have guessed?
Bleach is your friend
Ever hear commercials for cleaning products that say “even gets out tough tea stains?” There’s a reason for that. Tea stains everything, especially infusers, filters, and teapots. Luckily, a tablespoon of bleach in a pint of water will get rid of all those tea stains in no time flat. Of course, you’ll be rinsing the bleach smell out for a little while, but it’s worth it. Sparkly clean!
Everybody thinks lattes have to have coffee in them
“Latte” is used in English as a short form of the Italian “caffè latte,” which simply means “coffee with milk.” Other drinks can have milk in them, too. Tea lattes are absolutely wonderful drinks. Generally speaking, they have two ingredients: tea and heated/frothed milk. Sometimes a sweetener. So why is it that people keep asking what kind of coffee we add to our tea lattes? They aren’t tea caffè lattes. They are tea lattes.
There. I feel better now.
Tea With Gary 