Whats missing in the tea world?
It’s really hard to find an all herbal tea subscription. There’s so much variety there, it can be rather overwhelming, so a subscription would be nice.
Interesting point…are there many herbal tea artisans or purveyors. Maybe someone like Namasthe in Canada?
I wish there were more tea houses here in the U.S.
Agreed. There’s one in my town, but it’s mostly black teas with a few oolongs thrown in. Plus two puerh cakes, one raw, one ripe, both horrendous.
True…backyard tea houses are becoming popular in some places many of the big cities have dozens of teashops now. However, there is definitely a void and it kind of goes back to Allan’s point that it would be nice if we could find great tea at other places, because shops made just for us barely exist.
There are a couple of tea houses in Houston which is about 25-30 miles from me but there are some days where I just don’t want to drive that far or deal with all of the Houston traffic :( There is also apparently an English tea house in my city but I’ve heard mixed reviews so I’ve been hesitant about going.
There are a few tea houses on Long Island but I’ve never gone to one, probably because I would have to go by myself.
UGH YES!! I moved to the East Coast and thought I’d have access to tea houses b/c I was moving to a medium-large town/city, but no! Apparently there used to be ONE but it went out of business before I came! (If only they could’ve held on a little longer, lol!) I have to drive half an hour or forty-five minutes out of town to get to something that even resembles a tea shop and is really more about dressing up in hats and having fun lunches with little birthday girls. :(
On Long Island we are fortunate enough to have three tea shops plus a David’s Tea and multiple Teavanas. I have only been to two of the independent tea shops. Never made it to the third one. There are perhaps three or four tea houses that I have heard of. But this is a densely populated area. There are two million people on Long Island. And that doesn’t count Queens and Brooklyn. If I go into Queens a part called Flushing there is Chinatown there with a number of tea shops.
One thing I would change is the caffeine content of some teas. I could gong-fu puerh/oolong all day if the caffeine levels didn’t kick my ass after 1 session.
How about decaf puerh cakes? If they can make ripe puerh certainly they could make it decaf. I once saw a decaf puerh cake advertised on EBay but I’m pretty sure they were lying about it.
That would be perfect. The main reason I drink shou is that it’s supposed to have less caffeine, so if I want to cheat a bit, I’ll have shou in the evening. SO much better than even the best decaf.
I have often wondered if their is something in the processing of puerh that prevents them from making it decaf or if it is something they simply don’t do because of traditions.
I don’t think decaf is something a small operator could attempt. I suppose someone like Dayi could do it but it would be a tiny percentage of their market.
I find that the decaf teas that are made are not the sort of tea that you steep gongfu, they tend to be teas for Western brewing methods.
I have heard that larger leaves have less caffeine. At some point I ordered some from Dragon Tea House I think Grade 9 loose leaf puerh. Should in theory have less caffeine.Now I have no idea where I put it of course. Tea flowers have even less caffeine. I have a couple of tea flower cakes I bought for this reason. They are an unusual taste though.
lol @cwyn. funniest reason for getting addicted to benzos ever, to allow more tea drinking
definitely works for that. benzodiazepine, or valium/diazepam etc the kind your doctor will have considered but not for taking every night, addictive
I seriously doubt I could get my doctor to proscribe that, she proscribes Ambien but I find Valerian root works better in general.
My doctor prescribed turning off the computer, TV, phone etc at 8 PM and just reading a book (and of course no tea after 2 PM). It worked really well; I was asleep by ten every night, then wide awake at 5 AM. After a week I went back to my old routine.
I can’t turn off my computer, I might get an email from the usps telling me my tea shipment has made it to the ISC and has left China. Turning off my phone just isn’t going to happen.
Yeah, the blue light from electronics supposedly messes with your sleep*. I use an app (nocturne) where I can change the tint of my computer to warmer tones in the evening. And I use my Kindle app on sepia instead of reading with a book light as they are blueish LEDs.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/q-a-why-is-blue-light-before-bedtime-bad-for-sleep/
Unfortunately I have blue lights I cannot turn off, my cable modem is in my bedroom. Can’t do anything about it.
It’s the same on my air purifier and multi-cable charger. I put black electric tape over the lights. But I have trouble sleeping in anything but near complete darkness.
I use LightDims stickers on all of the electronics in my room. I like the full blackout stickers for red and blue lights and double up on the regular strength to dim digital clocks but still be able to read them. Then again, I also wear a sleep mask and have blackout curtains… It’s actually to help with my light sensitivity during migraines, but it helps me sleep too.
My body can take a good amount of caffeine and the minimal caffeine from teas, even when consumed later in the day, never troubled me.
I keep minimal electronics items in the bedroom and power off or switch off wifi on them hours before I sleep. I use blackout curtains too – they can turn the room pitch dark in the middle of the day. While I have no problems sleeping even otherwise, I love sleeping in absolute blackness and taking these measures ensures a really deep and peaceful sleep.
I haven’t heard of nocturne before, I use f.lux for the same purpose.
https://justgetflux.com/
+1 for f.lux and its Android counterpart Twilight https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.lux&hl=en. Best thing I ever did for my insomnia.
These apps are almost a medical necessity in this day and age.
What is lacking in this part of the tea drinking world is more people who drink good quality teas.
There isn’t a single person I can invite over for tea or swap teas with!
The one truly good thing about Teavana is they may slowly change this. Because they are located in malls where many non tea drinkers go anyway and offer free samples in store they may slowly change this. That is the hope anyway. I personally know of only one person who drinks real tea other than myself and he was just someone at my last job. We didn’t drink tea together.
Like Allan is saying, I hate to give Teavana credit for anything but they are making tea more widely popular.
It’s a historical accident that tea is not more popular in this country. During the revolution tea came from England. It became unpatriotic to drink tea. There were as yet no direct links between America and China. You had to buy from the British.
Psyck I would think with you living in India, a major tea producing nation that you would have plenty of tea drinkers around?
The only friend I have that appreciates tea like I do is my future sister-in-law…and she lives in Ohio (I live in Texas) so we don’t get together to enjoy tea very often :(
I have always loved tea but I will admit, Teavana was what got me started on loose leaf teas. I think Teavana has helped introduce tea to the general public and drinking tea is starting to become more popular in America.
The very fact that Teavana is present in so many of the shopping malls of America may make tea more popular, even if Teavana itself doesn’t have the best tea.
I know! I totally fail at tea evangelism so far. I gave my sister a bunch of samples of my tea but she seems to have gone back to teabags already :( :( Maybe if I give her some more decaf and herbals, so she won’t worry about the caffeine, and a cool steeper to make it easier? And I usually offer my husband some of whatever I’m drinking but he hardly ever wants more than a taste. (Although I made some masala chai to go with dinner the other week and he drank all of his and then asked for more the next day! So maybe a little success.)
Allan, it is indeed true that India is a major tea drinking nation and not just a producer. The south (where I’m from) consists of primarily coffee drinkers with fewer tea drinkers, while the rest of India is a tea drinking majority.
However, what nearly all of them drink is tea dust and powder – used to make chai. Boiling tea (or dipping teabags) in milk and sugar is the only form of tea most Indians are aware of.
The high-end retail outlets and online stores sell loose leaf Indian teas of varying quality and there are probably a handful of tea rooms in the entire country that cater to consumers of high end teas. Almost no non-Indian tea is easily available in India.
India is quite the opposite of China in this aspect – they keep the best teas and sell the rest abroad, while in India we drink the worst teas and export the best. The only silver lining is that I probably get Darjeelings at a lower price than you folks.
Psych, never would have guessed that. They export the best and keep the worst for themselves? That must be a leftover from the British I would think? No? I would think that they would have done that in colonial days. It is surprising that they do this in India today.
@AllanK, this seems to happen pretty frequently in coffee producing countries, too. Make all the money from the good crop, and make do with the lesser quality beans for yourself.
Can confirm that this is the case for China. About 20% of the tea produced in China is exported. From the 20% exported teas from China, over 99% is tea dust and low quality tea that’s used for processing tea based products.
It is just a matter of supply and demand rather than some colonial hangover. There is hardly any demand for high-end tea in India, hence most is exported.
Indians in general (even the affluent), are very cost conscious – hence if they can get 100g of tea for less than $0.5 (the price of usual tea used for chai), they would not see the point in paying upwards of $5.0 (say for single estate Darjeeling) instead for it.
If I want to purchase good tea, of exactly the same quality that is exported, then I need to do so on Indian e-commerce sites; since only run of the mill Darjeeling/Assam/Nilgiri teas are available in retail stores.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, there are probably a handful of them in the whole country. They are a recent phenomenon begun a couple of years ago as far as I know. What has always been prevalent is little stalls selling tea (chai) and coffee for a dime in every single street.
Coffee and tea is much more expensive here it seems. There is nowhere a dime will buy a cup.
Well it would cost more in a fancier coffee shop… In addition, the fact that we can get a coke for a couple of dimes here, while it probably costs you a couple of dollars, does not mean much if we are earning one tenth of your salaries too.
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_country.jsp?itemId=6
Here the cheapest coffee is probably McDonalds and the like, about a $1. A fancy coffee drink from a Starbucks or the like will cost around $6.
Regular coffee in the typical coffee shops equivalent to Starbucks is in the $1 to $2 range out here.
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_country.jsp?displayCurrency=USD&itemId=114
That is an interesting link. Says coffee is expensive in China. That was surprising but I guess they import most of their beans too.
No but I’ve noticed it on the Yunnan Sourcing website. I don’t drink too much coffee anymore.
Unfortunately Yunnan grown coffee does not mean cheaper coffee. It’s still cheaper (and for the most part better quality) to buy South American beans here. Baoshan beans are probably the best, but there have been more and more beans coming from Simao as well.
@Bitterleaf You are absolutely right, South American coffee roasted by a great roaster (Heart Coffee roaster in Portland or Verve in Santa Cruz) is tough to beat.
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