Some Tea With Me

Category: Processing

  • What are we even drinking? Tea and Tisanes

    What are we even drinking? Tea and Tisanes

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    payton
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    In the US, it’s extremely common for people to walk into a shop asking after “a cup of tea” and then ask for Chamomile, Peppermint, or some blend of flowers and spices. What these customers actually want is a Tisane. Tea : a shrub (Camellia sinensis of the family Theaceae, the tea family) cultivated especially…

  • Taidicha and Gucha

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    Just a short post to mention a link I stumbled upon today. This page by Bana Tea has some really great Puer tea videos. I’m amazed I never encountered them before. I learned the terms Táidì Chá Yuán (Terraced Tea Garden – plantation-style puer) and Gŭ Chá Yuán (Old Tea Garden – wild tree puer). If…

  • Hong Cha? No, I wanted Black Tea

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    Black tea. This can be a misleading term. During my recent visit to Tea Drunk in NYC I really enjoyed that they wrote this little gem on their menu: RED TEA 紅茶: known as black tea by rest of the world for reasons we do not understand When working at the teahouse, this was one of…

  • Differences in Darjeeling

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    Today I was drinking a cup of Darjeeling tea, from a bag as must be done at some point or other in one’s life, and thinking about the emphatic monogram, “The Champagne of Tea” that is printed on the package. I realized that much of the Western world is probably just as confused by that…

  • Painter’s Roast Oolong

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    Of all the many, many (read: too many) teas I brought back from Taiwan, the most eloquent was a small unlabeled pouch of rolled oolong carefully hand-roasted by a man in Lùgǔ (鹿谷鄉). As I’ve just sipped the last of that fine vintage, I thought I might tell you the story of where I found it.…

  • What is Puer?

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    payton
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    I’ve been drinking a lot of Puer tea lately. Possibly more than any other style. Back in the old days I wrote a post on Dobra Tea’s blog about Puer to help with demystifying this wonderful beverage. Since then there has been a lot more accurate information published on the Internet regarding Puer and Hei Cha in…

  • First Pick Korean Wild Green from Franchia

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    payton
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    This Christmas I received a surprising present: a package of the Korean First Pick Wild Green tea that I mentioned in my earlier post about Franchia, the tea house in New York City. Definitely a great opportunity to expand my knowledge of Korean greens. Today I had my first try. According to their website: Our…

  • A taste of Caffeine

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    Back in the old days I wrote a post on Dobra Tea’s blog about caffeine. This is an updated version of that post. The myth of green tea having less caffeine than black tea is rampant in our Western culture. This is even more surprising when contrasted with the attitude I found in Taiwan that…

  • Some Notes on Oxidation

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    payton
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    Back in the old days I wrote a post on Dobra Tea’s blog about tea and oxidation. This is an updated version of that post. If you have learned a little about tea processing, you have doubtless come across the saying that Black tea is more “fermented” than Green tea. This is more than a…