Gourmet Coffee Chatter

I’ve branched out lately, as far as tea is concerned. I’ve added African Rooibos herbal tea to my tea palate and enjoy it immensely.

This isn’t my only change, I also moved and inherited a small backyard with a lush flower garden. See the picture for one of the sunflowers that was growing there.

It’s been a fun adventure identifying what was growing and bringing some organization to the untended garden. Some of the flowers have yet to be identified. Among the growth was also some basil, butter lettuce, sage and catnip. A little research reveals that herbal teas can be made from sage and catnip.

I haven’t tried that yet but it points out the fact that sometimes the source of your favorite herbal beverage could be in your own garden.

Until next time – happy steeping.

Don’t know about you but where I am it’s been a pretty mild summer.  But the heat is coming soon, so here’s an adult summer slush drink for the hot days to come.

If you’re trying to cut back on caffeine use loose decaf tea. Serving a non-alcoholic crowd, try it with a fruit juice such as apple or guava juice.

The source of this recipe was allrecipes.com.

Until next time, happy steeping

Most of us are blessed with a tolerance for caffeine in our tea. The energy boost from caffeine may even be one of the benefits we get from drinking our gourmet tea. But there is a case for decaf tea.

Sometimes you just don’t want the pick up when you drink your tea. Tea is a drink noted for contemplation and relaxation, the removal of the caffeine may remove any jarring element in your experience and add to the overall enjoyment.

Of course, depending on the decaffeinating process used, you may want to avoid additional chemical content in decaf tea. Or just create your own – steep the tea for about one minute and throw the first cup out. This removes about 98% of the caffeine. Subsequent steeps are essentially caffeine free without any additional chemical content.

Until next time – happy steeping.

You know something has worked its way into the social consciousness when it is referenced in poems, books and pundit’s quotes. This is true of gourmet tea. What follows are a few notable quotes about gourmet tea.

Li Ri Hua, a Ming Dynasty scholar
One should clean out a room in one’s home and place only a tea table and a chair in the room with some boiled water and fragrant tea. Afterwords, sit salutarily and allow one’s spirit to become tranquil, light, and natural.

Gladstone (1865) Victorian British Prime Minister
If you are cold, tea will warm you; If you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.

Mick Jagger, “Live with Me”.
I got nasty habits; I take tea at three.

Lewis Carroll (1865) Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 6

“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice very earnestly.

“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”

Until next time – happy steeping.

Tea bags have become a fixture of the tea drinking world. They’re convenient and less messy to deal with. So why should you consider drinking loose leaf tea?

First, tea bags are made up of broken tea leaves called fannings. These pulverized remnants of the tea leaf have a shorter infusion time, but many of the flavoring oils are lost to evaporation resulting in an inferior cup of tea. Also, due the to mass production nature of tea bags it is made from mass production, low quality teas.

Pyramid tea bags strike a middle ground preserving more of tea leaf and giving expanded room for the tea to expand. The trade-off is the additional expense of the packaging.

Whole leaf tea is made up of whole leaves or part of of the leaves. This preserves the flavoring oils essential to give a superior cup. Secondly, loose leaf tea has room to expand and unfurl releasing more of the flavoring oils. Quality loose leaf tea will also stand up to multiple steepings, bringing the price per cup of tea very close to the cost of tea bag tea.

As for the mess a wide variety of steeping balls, steeping sticks, steeping baskets, steeping bags, etc. are available to manage the mess and appeal to the the aesthetic taste of everyone.

Until next time – happy steeping.

Ah Summer! Warm weather, barbecues, hanging out at the pool. Here’s a tea treat to take some of the sting off the summer heat. The source for the recipe is the Monin signature recipe series.

Cupid’s Tea

* .5 ounces Monin Raspberry tea syrup.
* .5 ounces Monin Strawberry tea syrup.
* 8 ounces freshly brewed tea.

Combine the tea syrups in a 16 ounce glass with ice. Add the tea and stir. Garnish with fresh berries. Enjoy.

For dieters and diabetics substitute a sugar free tea syrup instead, Monin offers both flavors in the sugar free format.

Until next time – happy steeping.

The cancer prevention component of tea is in the polyphenols in the tea. The processing of green tea maintains more of these polyphenols making it better than black tea overall for its health benefits. But does the process of decaffeinating green tea reduce the health benefits of decaf green tea?

Two processes are used for decaffeinating tea. One, which makes use of the solvent ethyl acetate, retains only 30 percent of the polyphenols. The other process uses only water and carbon dioxide and is called “effervescence.” It retains 95 percent of the polyphenols. Be sure to check labels to see which process was used.

Don’t like decaf green tea, there is good news. The first steep of the tea leaves contains the most caffeine. Each subsequent steep contains less caffeine and by the third steep the caffeine content is reduced to almost 2%. To take advantage of this, steep the green tea for 50 seconds and discard the tea, but not the leaves. Add new water and enjoy your reduced caffeine gourmet tea.

Until next time – happy steeping.

Chinese green tea enriched with the fragrance of jasmine flowers has been a favorite since the Sung Dynasty. Dragon Phoenix Pearl gets its name from the visual imagery of tea bushes “climbing” the hillsides like a dragon coming out of the water.

The tea is picked in April/May and processed by hand by rolling each leaf and a bud into tiny pearl sized balls. Once rolled, the balls of tea are wrapped in silk mesh and dried by fire to set the form. The tea is then held until August/September when the finest jasmine blossoms are in bloom.

The jasmine flowers are picked before noon and set aside until evening when the petals begin to open in the cool night air. Once open, the “marrying” of the jasmine to the tea happens in two applications after which the jasmine petals are removed.

It’s among the more expensive of the Chinese green teas but well worth the cost. Enjoy.

The Camellia sinensis plant can produce different kinds of tea. Among these are black teas, which are a variety of tea that is more oxidized than the green, white, and oolong types. Black tea is generally stronger in flavor and contains more caffeine than its less oxidized counterparts contain. Black tea is often blended and mixed with different kinds of plants to come up with a variety of beverages.

Some of the most famous variants of black tea are:

~Earl Grey
~English breakfast and English afternoon
~Irish breakfast
~Darjeeling or what is more commonly referred to as the champagne of teas

So you’ve got some flavored coffee syrup floating around. What else can you use it for?

There are a wide range of possibilities:

• Coffee, of course.
• Teas and Lattes
• Coffee drinks such as Mochas and Cappuccinos
• Cocktails such as Mojitos, Daiquiris and Martinis
• Smoothies
• Shaved Ice drinks
• Flavoring for food recipes

Until next time, happy brewing.