Blog Archives
A Tea Journey: Your Personal Tea Cupping Journal
Developing a good palate for tea really requires keeping notes. Remembering what teas you do and don’t like needs notes, too, for most of us. And I’ve been searching for a tea journal that I really liked for a while. There are some pretty good ones out there, but I’m an individualist. I had to do my own thing. And my own thing is called A Tea Journey: Your Personal Tea Cupping Journal.
(Caution: blatant self-promotion ahead)
This guided journal is designed to guide you through the next 100 teas you taste. Keeping notes about each cup of tea encourages you to drink your tea actively, paying attention to taste, aroma, appearance, and how it feels in your mouth. When you journal about it, tea becomes an experience to savor and linger over instead of just another drink.
Tea is a subjective experience. Between these covers, nobody’s opinion matters but your own. Don’t worry about what other people think of a particular tea; just record your own impressions.
Each tea page is numbered, so you can see at a glance just how many teas you have tasted and written about. Some tea journals (especially the cupping journals intended for experts and aficionados) use terminology that may not be clear to a beginner. At the front of the journal, I included descriptions of the common tea styles and some related tisanes (rooibos, honeybush, yerba maté, and so forth). Also, on the page facing tea number one, I included short descriptions of what to write in each section.
Comparative cupping is a great way to develop your palate. Get two similar teas and try them side by side, recording your impressions on facing pages of the journal.
Obviously, the best possible Christmas present for a tea lover would be one of these journals and a big box of tea — and maybe a copy of Myths & Legends of Tea.
Enjoy, and thank you for putting up with my utterly shameless self-promotion this week!
While writing this blog post, I was enjoying a cup of Houjicha, a roasted Japanese tea about as different from traditional Matcha, Sencha or Gyokuro as you could possibly get. The roasting adds a nutty flavor and a toasty aroma that go beautifully with a cold, windy Montana day.
Tips for reading news about tea studies
As Dr. Oz is being thoroughly (and rightfully) shredded by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee for pimping weight-loss scams, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that (a) there are a lot of valid health benefits to tea, and (b) virtually every news story about tea and health manages to misrepresent or misinterpret the scientific study they’re describing.
As you read articles about tea and health, it’s important to keep in mind that the person writing the article is usually not the person (or people) who actually performed the study it references, and that the reporter/blogger may have read only the summary, not the whole study. Also, in larger news operations, the person writing the headline isn’t the same person who wrote the article, and if they’re operating on a deadline, the headline may not accurately sum up the story.
Tip 1: Beware of extreme claims
There’s an article on Authority Nutrition entitled,”How Green Tea Can Help You Lose Weight Naturally.” It’s worth reading. There are good explanations of the benefits of tea, and it cites dozens of actual scientific studies. But any article that begins with a statement like “green tea is the healthiest beverage on the planet” should set off alarm bells. No, there’s never been a study that tested every single beverage on the planet (there’s never been a study of every style of tea on the planet, for goodness’ sake). No, we don’t have a generally-accepted definition of “healthiest beverage.” An opening sentence like that one tells you you’re about to read something sensationalistic, and you should view everything they say with skepticism.
Any article that begins with a statement like “green tea is the healthiest beverage on the planet” should set off alarm bells.
Tip 2: They only studied what they studied
There’s an article on Byron J. Richards Wellness Resources entitled, “The Effects of Green Tea on Weight Management.” The author is a Board Certified Clinical Nutritionist, the studies cited all appear to be properly-conducted randomized controlled trials, and the conclusions all appear to be valid. So what’s the problem? Reading this may make you want to rush to your tea cabinet and throw away all of those white teas, oolong teas, yellow teas, and pu-erh teas. You need to replace those all with green tea, right. Wrong!
The studies looked at green tea. Specifically, they measured catechins and caffeine in green tea. They never compared green tea with white tea — or any other kind of tea. White tea may be even better for weight loss. So might oolong, pu-erh, or yellow. If green tea is measured against anything else in a study, it’s almost always black tea. What’s the difference between green and black tea? Black tea is oxidized, and that process converts a lot of the antioxidants into other compounds (catchins are a type of antioxidant). But white and yellow tea isn’t oxidized, and oolong is only partially oxidized. Shu pu-erh is oxidized and fermented, and sheng pu-erh is fermented without being oxidized first. Don’t draw conclusions about your oolong from a study that never even looked at oolong!
Tip 3: There’s more to tea than antioxidants
I think it’s pretty universally agreed that antioxidants are a good thing, but they aren’t the only source of health benefits in tea. When I got in a tiff with Fox News’ Chris Kilham about misrepresenting studies, it related to a study that showed coffee had some great health benefits. Reading the study showed that it looked at one thing: caffeine. All of the health benefits it listed for coffee would apply just as much to tea, guayusa, yerba maté, or Mountain Dew. If you like black tea, don’t let yourself get talked out of drinking it just because it doesn’t have the same antioxidant content as green tea.
Tip 4: All green tea is not created equal
It’s wonderful to see an article like the one titled, “Green Tea,” on the University of Maryland Medical Center page. It has tons of information, cites numerous studies, and explains potential drug interactions and side effects. But, like all of the other articles, it just references “green tea.” Did they test Japanese steamed green tea like sencha? Pan-fired Chinese green tea like longjing? Or was it roasted (hōjicha), powdered (matcha), shade-grown (gyokuro), scented (jasmine), or rolled (gunpowder)? The Kevin Gascoyne study I referenced in my 3-part series on caffeine found tea caffeine content ranging from 12mg to 126mg per cup. Yes, the most caffeinated tea had ten times as much caffeine as the least. He found a similar range of antioxidant contents. If you want to replicate the results of the study, you have to know what kind of tea they used.
Tip 5: Pay attention to who funded the study
If they had done a study that found that green tea gives people smelly feet, how much publicity do you think that would have gotten?
You can’t automatically discount a study because the funding group had something to gain from it. Tea companies are the ones most likely to fund tea studies, after all. But take a look at “Green Tea Promotes Weight Loss, New Research Finds,” an article on Medical News Today (well, actually, it’s a press release, but they don’t make that obvious until the end). It’s very clear in reading the article that Lipton did the research, and that Lipton is very excited about having done the research. It’s a big company, and their PR department did a good job of really spreading the news about that study.
If they had done a study that found that green tea gives people smelly feet, how much publicity do you think that would have gotten? I always tend to pay a little more attention to research coming from neutral parties, or research that’s been duplicated by neutral parties.
Tip 6: Check to see if the methodology was realistic
WebMD has an article entitled, “Green Tea Fights Fat,” which does appear to actually compare weight loss effects of green tea with oolong tea. But read this sentence from the article carefully: “For three months, the first group drank a bottle of oolong tea fortified with green tea extract containing 690 milligrams of catechins, and the other group drank a bottle of oolong tea with 22 milligrams of catechins.”
First, they aren’t comparing green tea with oolong. Both groups drank oolong tea. In one group, they added green tea extract, and in the other, they didn’t. So this study actually compares drinking oolong with drinking oolong plus green.
Second, the average cup of green tea has 50-100mg of catechins. That means the “extract” they fortified the bottle of oolong with made it equivalent to 7-14 cups of green tea. That’s a lot of tea!
If you have specific reasons for controlling your intake of caffeine, L-theanine, catechins, and other components, then there’s plenty of research to plunge into. Focus on people who actually study tea rather than folks like Dr. Oz or Oprah. Look at the paper and see what they actually studied. If it doesn’t apply to you, move on to the next one. If it does, take it at face value without trying to overgeneralize.
But if you’re just looking for a healthy drink that tastes good, stop worrying and buy more of what you like the most. You’re likely to drink a lot more of a beverage you love than one you don’t. If you like to experiment, all the better! If you drink a wide variety of tea, you’ll get a wide variety of nutritional benefits, and you can enjoy yourself as you do it.
Japan – Bancha to Matcha: Stop 4 on the World Tea Tasting Tour
We’re very excited to be working with resident artist Karin Solberg from the Red Lodge Clay Center, and we are featuring some of her matcha bowls in the store, and she came in to talk about them at this stop in the tour.
The teas we tasted were:
- Organic Sencha
- Gyokuro
- Organic Houjicha (roasted green tea)
- Organic Genmaicha (toasted rice tea)
- Organic Matcha
- Kukicha (“twig tea”)
- Bancha (“coarse sencha”)
- Sencha (“decocted tea”)
- Gyokuro (“jade dew”)
Active vs. Passive Tea Consumption
There’s a big difference between the way tea is usually served in U.S. tea shops, and the way it’s served in Asia. I’ve been trying for a while to come up with the right words to describe it, and my friend Kory did the job for me last week.
Kory was sitting at my tea bar, trying to decide what he wanted as I was preparing myself some wild shu pu-erh in a gaiwan. I offered him a taste, and he said he’d give it a try. He watched as I went through the ritual and filled a small cup for him. He tasted it and said, “I’m looking for something more passive.”
My favorite blue flower gaiwan.
My first thought was that he was referring to the process of preparing the tea (he wasn’t, but more on that later), and I realized that he’d just given me the words I was looking for. American/European tea drinking is passive, while Asian tea drinking is more active.
When my son and I went to Bellingham and Seattle last month, two of the tea shops we visited exemplified this perfectly.
The first was an English-style tea house called Abbey Garden Tea Room. We sat at a table and ordered our food and tea. They steeped the tea in the kitchen, and brought us teapots (with the tea leaves removed), tea cozies, and cups. All that was required of us was to pour the tea in a cup and drink it. The pots were large enough that we didn’t need refills during our meal.
The second was a Chinese tea house called Vital Tea Leaf. We sat at the counter and talked to the tea expert on staff (her name was Fang). She asked what kind of tea we liked, and set up a gong fu tray in front of us with an assortment of teaware. For each tea, we smelled the dry leaves and the wet leaves, and watched as she prepared a few ounces of tea in the gaiwan, gently agitating the leaves and fanning the aroma toward us.
The Abbey Garden experience was passive tea drinking. We picked tea we liked, and it became secondary to the rest of our lunch. We focused on the food and chatting with each other. With the larger British-style cups, we only had to refill a few times during the meal. At most American-style tea houses, those cups would have been even bigger — probably 12 to 16 ounces, and there would have been no refills required.
The Vital Tea Leaf experience was active tea drinking. There were no distractions, and we only got a couple of ounces of tea at a time. We were engaged in the process the entire time, and it was all about the tea.
Most of the time, passive tea drinking is fine with me. I am sipping on a large mug of houjicha as I write this, and although I’m enjoying it, the tea in my mug isn’t my primary concern at the moment.
But there’s a lot to be said for the active tea drinking experience. Watching the tea steep (experiencing the “agony of the leaf”), comparing the changes from the first infusion to the next, smelling, sipping, tasting, and concentrating on the tea you drink. I think after I press the “post” button for this article, I shall pull out the gong fu tray and gaiwan and actively drink some tea!
Sidebar: What Kory really meant
In my opening paragraphs, I spoke about my friend who gave me the idea for the terms active and passive, and mentioned that the whole subject of this article isn’t really what he meant.
What he was trying to say is that the taste of the tea itself can be active vs. passive. For you beer drinkers out there, here’s a comparison. You’ve gotten together with a bunch of friends to watch the game on TV. Your friend hands you a glass of beer just as there’s some great action going on. You drink the whole beer without having any idea what it was (it was probably Bud Light). There just wasn’t enough taste to get your attention. That’s a passive drink.
On the other hand, if he had handed you an oatmeal stout, a lambic, or a double IPA, you probably would have stopped what you were doing to focus on the beer. “Wow. What is that?” You would have smelled and sipped, savoring the beer and missing the touchdown that put your team in the lead. That’s an active drink.
The wild shu pu-erh I spoke of at the beginning of the article is most definitely active. There’s a lot going on in that tea. It’s rich, deep, and complex, with flavors and aromas that are very hard for me to identify. Kory was interested in a good, but passive tea. Perhaps a Keemun black. You taste it, notice it, and then drink the rest of the cup without paying attention.
Okay, Keemun tea lovers. I’ve painted the target on my back. I await your wrath.
I am a 
Tea With Gary 