It’s unlikely you would go out of your way for a cup of aged tea, even if someone told you it was a delicacy.  However, there is an exception to everything.  Pu-erh is an unusual kind of tea; in fact, many people think it tastes better when it is old.  Much like wine, it gets [...]

I’ll admit something; until a few years ago, I didn’t know what tea was.  When I was around three years old, I thought it was a type of coffee.  By the time I was five, I thought it was a powder you mix into water.  Sure, it can be, but that kind of instant-made tea [...]

For decades, perhaps over a century, Americans have been making sun tea.  For some people, it is the only way they experience tea at all.  So frequent are customer questions about sun tea during the summer that I have developed a sun tea training guide for my team.  And mind you, we don’t make a [...]

It was a chilly fall day in the 1990s in Edmonton when a group of my friends gathered to indulge our foodie nature in some wonderful eats.  The restaurant was known for its succulent cuts of local Angus beef, aged to perfection and served up to your exact specification.  We had duly filled ourselves and [...]

The story behind this vegetative-flavored tea began thousands of years ago when a servant was pouring green tea for his master.  While in motion, the servant accidentally dropped brown rice from his pocket into the cup of green tea.  The master - a warrior - was so angered he beheaded the servant, but he drank [...]

In my last post, I talked about culture shocks associated with tea, and in this post, I feel the need to talk to those just starting out on the tea path, and share some advice for the beginner.  I often use the analogy of ascending a mountain when it comes to trying tea, which I [...]

My first job, after college, was teaching English in Tokyo, Japan.  That year, I had several “first-time” experiences: first time living alone, first time having a full-time job, first time living in a foreign country, and first time drinking first flush Darjeeling tea.
My first month, I met a new friend at a nice hotel tea [...]

I grew up in the American Midwest, and in doing so had limited exposure to tea as I know it now.  But it seems in switching between styles of tea, you can get a bit of a culture shock without even leaving your home.  It’s amazing the differences that the Western, Japanese, and Chinese tea [...]

Given the high number of Russian immigrants in our area of the Pacific Northwest, we recently decided to try out their time-honored way of drinking tea.  We took a trip to a nearby store that sells groceries and kitchen supplies for the Russian community, and purchased ourselves an electric samovar.  The ladies working in the [...]

Over the years, I’ve read numerous reviews in various coffee trade magazines and on websites about what brewing devices make the best cup of coffee.  Coffee-holics usually arrive at a similar place when they cup the strong brew in today’s conventional devices.  If my memory serves me correctly, the French Press usually ends up on [...]