Ottawa, Canada

A Cup of Tea and a Chat

ALOHA Trial: Tea Sampler Pack

Lisbon

Sencha from Japan!

50g from Nara Tsukigase
http://www.yu-nakagawa.co.jp

10+ Questions with Dax Miller of Tea Amigos

According to my Gmail inbox I have been receiving Tea Amigos tea reviews since March 2011. In that particular e-mail an Amazon Spice Tea was described as having the "aroma of a fighting champion". I finally got around to asking Tea Amigos co-founder Dax Miller to explain himself. (All questions conducted via e-mail).   

1)   For those who aren’t familiar with Tea Amigos, could you give us a rundown of the site?

Tea Amigos is the home to the most comedic tea reviews out there.  We keep it real on all levels, delivering unbiased, real-talk reviews of teas you’ve heard of, and teas that you’ve never heard of.

2)  When did you first come up with the idea for e-mailing tea reviews?

It started as just a joke.  Mike and I are marketers, and seeing all of the funny made-up phrases that people use to describe products needed a parody.  We decided that all the tea we drink on a daily basis would be great candidates to clown.  Then Tea Amigos was born.

3)  When did you first start sending them?

From day 1 we always had the email option for people that wanted to subscribe, and day 1 was sometime in late 2008.

4) Why tea reviews? Why not review something else?

We steep tea on the daily.  Having tried hundreds of tea, we know what we are talking about.

5)  Do most of your friends know about your website?

Most definitely.  People know what’s really good with the Tea Amigos.  They don’t even have to steep tea to appreciate the humor.

6)  There was a recent hiatus with your reviews. Would you like to say anything about it?

I started getting very involved with a personal project now turned corporation (namely The HOTH Corp), and Mike was traveling a lot.  TA got put on the back burner, but the love was never lost. 

7)  If you could choose three historical figures and/or modern day celebrities to read your tea reviews, who would they be?

Bo Jackson – I’ve been in his official fan club since a youth and I know that Bo Knows Tea

Morgan Freeman – His narration is unparalleled.

Ellen – We’d get on her show and run with it to the moon.

8) Why should people trust your reviews?

We let the tea do the talking.  If it is bad, we will say so.  If it is awesome, the world will know.  Plus, this is a labor of love.  We take no money from the mob nor any tea lobbyists

10)  Do you have a set routine for writing your reviews?

We steep the tea, take a couple of notes, then re-steep the same sachet to check the power of the leaf.  Lastly we steep again just to make sure we didn’t miss any mesquitability or something noteworthy. 

11)  Do you have an ultimate goal for Tea Amigos?

Our goal is to bring tea into the “cool zone”.  Many people don’t understand how great tea is and how many different types there are.   We are bringing the tea culture back!

12) Where do you live?

I currently live in Tempe, AZ, while Mike resides in a Chicago suburb named Buffalo Grove.

13)  Are there any tea shops and/or cafes near you that you particularly like?

In Chicago we really like DarkCloud.  Great people, great steeps.  Also, Wormhole in Wicker Park is the jam as well.  We do a lot of hothing there.

14) What’s your daily tea consumption like?

I’ve been steeping a lot of Yerba Mate lately, to the tune of 3 cups per day.  Throw in about 4 other random tea for the love or for the game and we are at about 6 cups of tea per day each.

We steep hella.

15) Do you have a favorite tea of all time?

Personally, my favorite tea of all time has to be Organic and Pure White Tea with Lemongrass.  This is a rare find and is only available in random grocery stores in Chicago.  Peep the reviews on Tea Amigos and you’ll see exactly why this mystical blend is a mainstay in my pantry.

16) What do you envision for the future of tea drinking in America?

I see either us, or another figure in the 20-35 age market making tea cool again.   I envision people showing up with full teasan status, whipping out their own tea bags at cafes.  It will get gangster.

17)  Is there anything you’d like to add?

Thank you for this opportunity to put more people onto Tea Amigos and our reviews.  Shout out to thehoth.com and lookout for GroupHug (grouphugapp.com) that will most likely change the internet as we know it.  Steep on…

David Mitchell on Coffee

Mitchell tells it like it is.

Orwell on Tea

"I maintain that one cup of strong tea is better than twenty weak ones."

Read George Orwell's full opinions on tea here.

The tea made me feel peaceful and relaxed, and I went to sleep.

From Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock:

They brought me tea. The nurse had me sit up against my pillows and placed a tray in front of me. She poured some steaming water into a cup with a little bag in it. Go slow, she said, it burns. What do you mean, slow? I sniffed the cup and detected the odor, I wanted to say, of smoke. I wanted to see what tea was like, so I took the cup and swallowed. Dreadful. A fire, a flame, a slap in the mouth. So this is boiling tea. It is probably the same with coffee, or chamomile, which everyone talks about. Now I know what it means to burn yourself. Everybody knows you are not supposed to touch fire, but I did not know at what point you could touch hot water. I must learn to recognize the threshold, the moment when before you couldn’t and after you can. I blew mechanically on the liquid, then stirred it some more with the spoon, until I decided I could try again. Now the tea was warm and it was good to drink. I was not sure which taste was the tea and which the sugar; one must have been bitter and the other sweet, but which was the sweet and which the bitter? In any case, I liked the combination. I will always drink my tea with sugar. But not boiling.
The tea made me feel peaceful and relaxed, and I went to sleep.

Pipar og Salt

Klapparstigur 44
101 Reykjavik

(+354) 562 3614


Pipar og Salt (lit. Pepper and Salt) is not just a Scandinavian comedy program, it’s also a store in Reykjavik (though the two do not seem to be related in any way). Anyone who has tried to find reasonable tea in Reykjavik knows it’s not easy. The supermarkets don’t carry many brands of tea and what they do carry is not very good. If you are thinking that a country so close to the UK would at least stock some PG Tips on their shelves, you are in for a major disappointment. Fortunately for the discerning tea consumer all is not lost.

Pipar og Salt carries a variety of kitchen items, many of them spreadable. Glass jarred preserves, marmalades, and curds abound as do tea pots, coffee pots, tea cozies, and bird houses. Amongst such odds and ends in this small store is a shelf dedicated to loose leaf tea. The tea comes in blue, 125 gram packages that show little more than the name of the variety (no descriptions, no stories, just a name and the Pipar og Salt logo). I decided to buy a package of Darjeeling mostly because I hadn’t had Darjeeling in years. The decision did not disappoint.

Brewing to a deep amber color, the tea has the light smoky flavor one can expect from a good Darjeeling. Strong, but not knock out strong, it is a worthy choice for a place of such extreme weather as Iceland. If brewed just right, the tea finishes with a touch of sweetness.

Due to the apparent lack of loose leaf tea competition in Reykjavik, Pipar og Salt could probably get away with carrying second rate stuff. If the rest of their tea stock is as good as their Darjeeling, it is safe to say that they do not.

Sacred Grounds

Cupping, digital scales, stolen cherries. Have a look at how the other half lives in Kelefa Sanneh’s article about coffee. At no point in the piece does drinking coffee sound like fun.

Reykjavik, Iceland

Bees

The Poor Man Lost His Name

From Nicholson Baker's novel A Box of Matches

I once saw the earl of Grey on The Merv Griffin Show, an afternoon program hosted by the always cheerful and always tanned Merv Griffin. The earl of Grey had three things to say: one, that you can’t make good tea in a microwave; two, that the water shouldn’t be boiling but just on the verge; and three, that he wished that Twinings had trademarked the phrase Earl Grey, which was used by everyone. The poor man had lost his name.

More bombillas?

Thanks to Angela for the picture.

Review: Stash Green Tea Sampler

18 Foil Teabags, $3.47, EnglishTeaStore.com

Anyone with a certain amount of musical hipness has made a mixtape (or CD or mini-disc or wax cylinder depending on who you are and what you believe in). From ancient Make Out Club threads to movies starring John Cusack, a lot of time has been wasted on figuring out how to get your mixtape just right.

As someone who used to be into that sort of thing I will say I always tried to use variety within a theme. For instance the theme of the tape you make for that slender legged gal that caught your eye on the L train might be I Want to Have Sex with You (preferably soon). The variety then might include a range from the playfully forward “Never Say Never” by Romeo Void to something a little more flattering like “She’s a Rainbow” by The Rolling Stones.

In this sense the tea sampler pack is a lot like a mixtape, there is variety built around a theme. The theme of this Stash sampler is green tea and the variety ranges from chai to decaf. What follows are some of my thoughts on the nine flavors included.


Chai Green (Blended green tea, cinnamon, ginger root, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon flavor, clove, clove bud oil, and cardamom oil):

Never had Green Chai before, didn’t know it existed
Nutmeg and allspice make themselves known
The green smooths out some of the spiciness
Surprisingly pleasant

Fusion Breakfast (Indian Assam black tea, Indonesian black tea, Chinese green tea, Japanese green tea, African black tea, and Japanese Matcha):

Peachy green aroma
Dark amber brew
Generic flavor
Like too many stars crowded into a mediocre movie
Good but no big standout

Fusion Green & White (White tea, Japanese green, Chinese green, Assam green, Darjeeling green, and organic green teas):

Clean floral scent
Mild green tea flavor
Flavor could be fuller after such a rich smell


Ginger Peach (Green tea, ginger root, peach flavor, and Japanese Matcha):

Have you ever been punched in the nose by the ginger bread man while walking the peach orchard?
My least favorite of the sampler

Organic Premium Green (Blend of organic green tea):

They only give you one
Much like the Premium Green albeit a little lighter
Tastes the same as any other green tea in the box

Moroccan Mint (Green tea, spearmint, lemongrass, and peppermint):

Rich peppermint smell
Rich peppermint flavor
Just enough of a whisper of green
Top marks

Pomegranate Raspberry (Green tea, chamomile, hibiscus flowers, orange peel, citric acid, pomegranate flavor, raspberry flavor, and Japanese matcha):

Sharp pomegranate odor with a dash of hibiscus
Not too much raspberry
Tamer than your average pomegranate product
Not too much zing

Premium Green (Select blended green teas):

Grassy fresh odor
Light green liquid
Roasted green tea flavor
Very good for a bagged tea


Decaf Premium Green (Select blended naturally decaffeinated green teas):

Just like the real thing

Review: Calpico Lychee Drink

1.5L (Amazon.com, $6.60)

There is an Asian supermarket close to me called Asian Food. For someone like me who has never really been in an Asian Supermarket there is a lot to see and touch and laugh at and be disgusted by. From the silly cartoon people on noodle boxes to the wads of tripe in the cold section to the 30 some odd types of tofu, it is easy to spend an hour and a whole spectrum of emotions in the store without really accomplishing anything. How am I supposed to figure out which Korean BBQ sauce will go best with my bok choy? What are you supposed to do with black duck eggs? Why is this herbal tea not safe for children?

Amongst the exotica there are all kinds of neat things to drink that I have never seen before, including this lychee flavored drink from Calpico. While trying to find more information about it on the internet I learned that it is a Hello Kitty drink. It is unclear as to why but sometimes this product comes with a Hello Kitty logo and sometimes it does not. A quick Google will tell you that some people only like it because of the Hello Kitty appeal. The one I bought (along with its sister flavors available in the store) did not feature any sign of Hello Kitty however it did show up on my receipt as “Hello Kitty Lychee Drink”.

Sans Hello Kitty (such as in the picture above), the product immediately reminded me of a prize you might come across in the Nintendo game Bubble Bobble. It would please one of those dinosaurs to devour a bottle of white sugar milk amongst their 8-bit cakes and pies. Make no mistake, dinosaur or not, there is a certain attractiveness to the packaging. It feels kind of good to look at and hold the bottle. The white plastic is not like a regular plastic water or soda bottle. There is something a little more futuristic going on. It’s the kind of plastic children of tomorrow will be familiar with, something they will recall as a fond part of Saturdays filled with Ultra-Comics and Hyperball. It’s a reward their parents will give them for walking Rex the Electro-Doggie all week.

Within this plastic the ingredients are pretty simple. Consisting mainly of water, sugar (52 grams), and non-fat dry milk it is a dessert kind of drink with a hint of lychee at the end. Kind of like drinking a melted sorbet it’s not exactly liquid candy, but it is a close runner-up.

Costa Rica

10 Questions with Gentill Abdulla

Gentill Abdulla is a young man with ideas for a time machine. You can read more about his project on CNN's iReport. You can also e-mail him directly at g_mobster2@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter.

1. Do you like tea? If so, any favorite type or brand?

I do like tea. I don't know what type of brand my mom buys but it tastes good all the same.

2. Could you give us a typical day in the life of Gentill Abdulla?

Wake up, shower, brush teeth, change clothes, go to school, eat breakfast, eat lunch, come home, do homework, eat dinner, and go to sleep.

3. If you could go back in time and have tea with any historical figure, who would it be?

I would go back and talk to Einstein.

4. What got you interested in time machines?

When I first heard about time travel in the TV series Dragonball Z.

5. When you first tell people you want to build a time machine what is their reaction like?

They usually don't think I'm all that smart first, so I really have to explain it a lot.

6. What has the feedback on your project been like?

Mostly good feedback. Lots of people have told me that I was smart and they hope for the best. Also some kids from my school keep asking me if they could be the first person to go back in time.

7. What was it like to be on Coast to Coast AM? Had you ever heard of the program beforehand?

I did hear about the program before, but I had never listened to it. I wasn't really nervous on Coast to Coast I think it was because it was just explaining what would happen and how.

8. If time machines already existed, what do you think you would be working on instead?

I would be working on getting to places faster than the speed of light.

9. If you could have tea with any living physicist, who would it be?

Kip Thorne.

10. Is there anything you would like to add?

Not really.

Reichel Talks Gourmet

Just in case you are still not tired of hearing about the end of Gourmet, former editor Ruth Reichel talks about her post-Gourmet world with WNYC's Leonard Lopate.
A few notes:
1) Yes, the infamous David Foster Wallce lobster story is mentioned.
2) At one point Reichel starts to expound on the magic of a post-print world. I have to say I agree with WNYC listener Ihk who posted the comment "haha lose the new media guru hat keep the chef's"
3) In case you were wondering but do not want to listen to the show, Gourmet's cookbook collection is now housed at NYU's Fales Library.