Fine tea is so much easier than coffee !!

I was raised on coffee and drank it for years before I discovered tea. I still like an occasional “good” cup of coffee or espresso or latte. Recently I started seeing a woman who is almost as dedicated to strong coffee in the morning as I am to tea, and so I decided to get a good espresso maker to brew her a fine morning latte. Then I headed over to the coffee sites to learn how to become a good barista.

Geez is making a good espresso/latte complicated – and expensive! A decent burr grinder alone, which they all insist is necessary, can be hundreds of dollars. More than some espresso machines. Then there is of course the machine itself and the choice of pressurized vs. unpressurized portafilters (only non pressurized apparently give good “crema”), but then the grind and the tamp (with tampers that cost more than a serviceable Yixing teapot) become critical and require lots of practice. While tea drinkers discuss tea types and tea pots on Steepster, coffee geeks engage in endless discussions over fineness and tamping of grinds, different brewing methods and machines, how to extract crema, how to froth milk. One almost has to be an engineer to properly use or modify an average (but still expensive) home espresso machine to extract good crema. More and more apparently roast their own beans because they go bad or deteriorate over a short time after roasting, and within days of grinding.

Thank your lucky stars, tea drinkers: even the most persnickety, didactic tea drinker’s daily ritual is positively idyllic and bucolic by comparison.