Hello everyone.  Sorry I’ve been so quiet in the blog area lately.  I plan to be changing that.  I just want to announce that over the last (nearly) two days we have been applying a major upgrade to the online store.  This is a significant undertaking and it never goes ...continue reading]]> By John Rice, General Manager

Hello everyone.  Sorry I’ve been so quiet in the blog area lately.  I plan to be changing that.  I just want to announce that over the last (nearly) two days we have been applying a major upgrade to the online store.  This is a significant undertaking and it never goes as smoothly as it seems like it should.  Previous customers will notice that some things are in a different place.  The search window is now at the top right instead of top left and the mini cart is now on the left instead of the right.  There are also some changes which improve ease of use, such as you can add items to your cart from a category list and when you search, the results are no longer just a list but now include pictures and the beginning of the description.

Of course, we will be discovering various bugs and other things which need correcting over the next several days.  If you run into anything that doesn’t seem to work correctly, please send me a description of it through our Contact page or in the comments field of your order.  Thank you for your patience during the last two days and as we fine tune the new site.

One thing which is not functioning properly at the moment is when you try to order something that is out of stock.  Currently it does not inform you that the item it out of stock on the item description page and then you see an error when you try to add it to your cart.  It is also not currently possible to buy or use Gift Certificates.  We are working on correcting these.

Despite my love of a wide variety of teas, for the last ten years, I had pretty much settled on one tea to drink every morning, Royal Golden Yunnan, which, as some of you surely know, is no longer available.  Since I knew this was about to happen, I started ...continue reading]]> by Lori Way, MS, RD

Despite my love of a wide variety of teas, for the last ten years, I had pretty much settled on one tea to drink every morning, Royal Golden Yunnan, which, as some of you surely know, is no longer available.  Since I knew this was about to happen, I started to drink smaller portions, always re-brewing the leaves, in an effort to delay the inevitable loss of my favorite.  Well, it’s been gone for some time now, and I’ve been drinking –gads– “other” teas.  Here are some observations:

On the one hand, to my surprise, it hasn’t been the end of the world.  Some days I drink whatever I grab out of my copious tea basket.  It’s always at least pretty darn good, and after all, it’s hot with caffeine, so that’s part of what I’m after first thing in the morning.  I drink my pot and move on with the day none the worse for the experience.

On the other hand, darn it, it’s not the flavor I’m used to and crave.  All those years really created quite a habit.  I can’t help but compare whatever I’m drinking to my favorite taste, and usually it falls short.  Some days, I really want my beloved, and I stare into my tea basket and grudgingly choose something else.

Still, it’s nice to experiment with other teas.  I’ve remembered how much I enjoy certain others, and it’s a refreshing change of pace.  Back when I had the Royal Golden Yunnan every day, I would notice that after a few weeks I sort of couldn’t taste it anymore, and I’d have to cleanse my palate by drinking something totally different for a few days.  Then I’d go back to the Royal Golden Yunnan and it would taste amazing again.  Changing things up like that made a huge difference, and I highly recommend this practice to any of you who routinely drink the same tea each day.

I had hoped that after a short while we would be able to find a tea so similar to Royal Golden Yunnan that it would completely pacify me.  Alas, that has not happened yet.  We have tasted every so called “Royal Golden Yunnan” that we have come across and not one of them matches the flavor profile of our old one.  Apart from being from the Yunnan province in China and having the general characteristics of teas from that region, they have all differed greatly from each other and from our favorite.  This is another good thing to keep in mind when tasting teas — the name of the tea sometimes doesn’t mean that much.

I know we have lots of customers who are dedicated to their favorite tea.  We get orders for pounds and pounds of one single tea by the same folks all the time.  I’m thrilled to see such adoration for any tea, but I also worry — what if something happens and that tea goes away?  How will you cope?  I know this has already happened to some of you, and now that I’ve joined your ranks I understand the struggle.  I strongly suggest that you find other teas that you enjoy, just in case.  Do it while it isn’t urgent, so you can relax about it and know you have your favorite at hand if you don’t like whatever you’re trying.  You’ll probably be able to find a handful of others that like well enough, and you might be surprised to even find one you like better.

(For those of you who are interested, instead of Royal Golden Yunnan I’m drinking Nine Bend Black Dragon, any Keemun, Antony and Cleopatra, and Tippy Mangalam Assam the most often.  None of these really tastes much like a Yunnan, but they each have a distinctive character that I enjoy in the morning.)

So, paradise lost?  To some degree, yes.  I remain not completely satisfied, but still finding much enjoyment in tea.  If you’ve been down this road, feel free to comment on the experience!

Anyone who has read the About The Tea Table page will know that I initially started working here doing photography for magazine ads, then eventually for the first version of the web site.  Commercial Photography is actually what my education is in, so it’s hard to believe that was ...continue reading]]> By John Rice, General Manager.

Anyone who has read the About The Tea Table page will know that I initially started working here doing photography for magazine ads, then eventually for the first version of the web site.  Commercial Photography is actually what my education is in, so it’s hard to believe that was also my first work with digital photography, after a lifetime of shooting on film.  It’s amazing how photography has changed (mostly for the worse, I think, but that’s another story) in the roughly 11 years since then.

What the info page does not say is that prior to my career in Commercial Photography, I worked for several years, right out of school, for a large, global corporation.  It was that experience which has shaped how I run The Tea Table more than anything else.  Maybe not in the way you would expect, however.

Like so many people, I came out of college ready to take on the world.  I was hired for my Corporate job the day before graduation.  What I didn’t expect is that my time in the corporate world would leave me so disillusioned and even a little disgusted.  I was probably naive, but I didn’t expect the business world to be more about appearance, ego and immediate sales at all costs, rather than simply conducting business in a sensible way.  I certainly didn’t expect it to be so short sighted.

What struck me the most is how bloated businesses tend to be.  At The Tea Table, I have made a point of operating in a manner where we are agile, streamlined and extremely efficient.  Many tea sellers have elaborate packaging and marketing programs, requiring them to make long-term commitments and produce expensive materials prior to adding a new tea to their line-up.  With our simpler approach, when we find a new tea we like, we can be selling it later that day.  This also keeps our operating costs and selling prices much lower.  A more “Corporate” approach would also require that all teas meet minimum sales requirements.  While there are many teas we purchase in large volume and sell hundreds of pounds of per year, there are still others we insist on offering simply because we think they are spectacular, even if we only sell a few pounds.

The bottom line is, our goal at The Tea Table is rather simple.  We seek out the best teas we can find and sell them at a reasonable price.  We are not marketing an attitude or appearance and we are not in the tea business to be “trendy”.  We don’t have high paid executives or expensive marketing, all of which simply would increase our prices and lower the value of the product we provide.  I never expected my corporate experience to be so useful as a bad example, but what I learned not to do there benefits all our customers at The Tea Table.

One area we have been diving into more at The Tea Table is the craft of blends.  While we have always offered our own flavored blends, in the last couple years we have ventured further into unflavored ones.  Normally, unflavored blends are commercially developed using teas from dozens or even ...continue reading]]> by John Rice, General Manager

One area we have been diving into more at The Tea Table is the craft of blends.  While we have always offered our own flavored blends, in the last couple years we have ventured further into unflavored ones.  Normally, unflavored blends are commercially developed using teas from dozens or even hundreds of farms with the purpose of assuring they have little or no variation from year to year.  While this creates a high degree of consistency, it tends to virtually eliminate any distinctiveness a tea could have.

What we have found while developing more of our own unflavored blends is that we can not only create a better tea, but they always have a more distinctive flavor and are sometimes actually less expensive than the tea they replaced.  Two recent examples are East Fresian and Five O’Clock Tea.  Both of these teas were previously made by a large tea blending company, but in the last few months we have introduced our own versions.  The new East Fresian is a smoother, slightly richer offering with a bit less astringency than the original.  By recreating this ourselves using a limited number of single estate teas, the characteristics of each can come through, while still giving a remarkably similar overall impression.  Anyone who takes the time to savor the new East Fresian will find a complexity that was absent in the original.

New blends typically begin with a carefully thought-out, educated start based on the taste profile we are aiming for.  What follows can be an extensive stream of fine tuning and discussion about what our ultimate goal is.  In a sense, this is a purely creative process, since there are very few “rights” and “wrongs.”  A frequent comment I would hear from Sharon, who managed our tea room for several years, was “some people like astringent.”  Referring  to my slight aversion to that particular sensation.

The process of developing our new Five O’Clock Tea was a bit different.  We began with the same three basic varieties (Ceylon, Darjeeling and Oolong) as the original, but selecting large leaf, singe estate varieties rather than blends.  The major decision was what Oolong to start with.  Since Oolong covers a wide range of flavor profiles, it would set the tone for the overall taste of the tea.  In the case of the new Five O’Clock Tea, there ended up being no experimenting.  When we tasted our first attempt, it was clear we had knocked the ball out of the park on the first swing.  There was still a bit of argument, because it tastes nothing like the original version.  In the end, the unique complexity and subtle richness of this new blend won out.  Quite honestly, this Five O’Clock Tea is the best blend I have ever tasted.  Anyone looking for a hearty breakfast tea may be disappointed.  While it is, technically, more or less a black tea (the Oolong is a “blacker” formosa variety) it is quite light with a sweet, toasty, caramel character that is remarkably complex and pleasant.

I’m sure you’ve heard that tea bags are made from the sweepings of tea factory floors.  Now I’ve always figured that was not true, but at the 2011 Tea Expo, Nigel Melican gave a scientific argument explaining why it can’t possibly be true.  Get a load of this:

Ahh, the fiery sting of hot peppers, the refreshing cool of peppermint, the sinus-clearing jolt of horseradish. Without these kinds of sensations, a lot of foods would be pretty dull.  For this third part of my posts about tasting, I’d like to focus on mouth-feel, also known as chemesthesis, which ...continue reading]]> by Lori Way, MS, RD

Ahh, the fiery sting of hot peppers, the refreshing cool of peppermint, the sinus-clearing jolt of horseradish. Without these kinds of sensations, a lot of foods would be pretty dull.  For this third part of my posts about tasting, I’d like to focus on mouth-feel, also known as chemesthesis, which is sensed by the trigeminal nerve.  Chemesthesis encompasses sensations of texture, pain, motion, and temperature.  Here are other examples:

• The tingly sensation from carbonated beverages
• The mouth-drying nature of astringent tea
• The actual temperature of foods
• The bite from raw onions or garlic
• The slippery feeling of an oyster

The trigeminal nerve has three branches:  The mandibular branch goes to the lower jaw and tongue; the maxillary branch goes to the upper palate, back of the throat, and nose; and the opthalmic branch goes to the eye.  Many common odor and flavor compounds have trigeminal activity, adding much to the appeal (or lack of appeal) of all kinds of foods and beverages.  Note that other nerves around the body can also sense these types of chemical irritations, which you’ve no doubt noticed if you’ve ever gotten hot pepper juice on your fingers.

In our tasting workshop at the 2011 Tea Expo, we measured our baseline trigeminal activity by using regular peppermint candies.  Each person was given a peppermint Lifesaver™ and was instructed to put it in the mouth but not to open the mouth.  We were asked to rate the strength of the flavor (from “strongest imaginable” to “barely detectable”).  Then we were supposed to crunch down on the mint and again rate the flavor intensity.  If we got a rush of flavor when we crunched on it, we were to rate the rush also.  Then finally we were asked to open our mouths and again rate the intensity of the flavor.  I found myself to be awfully “moderate,” which I thought sounded a bit dull.  I didn’t get much of a rush, and I didn’t find the taste of the mint at the end with the mouth open (when it should be the strongest) to be dreadfully strong, although there was a difference.  So, I suppose with regard to trigeminal activity, I’m in the middle somewhere.  There was one person in the class (of about 50-60 people) who could hardly taste the peppermint at all, and one other who thought it was just overwhelming.

Putting it all together

At the end of our class, in an effort to combine all that we had learned, we got to taste actual tea and record our sensations of taste, smell, and mouth feel.  We were given three different pots of tea to brew, plus two pre-brewed iced teas.  We were not told what the teas were, but we were given brewing instructions, water of the proper temperature, and pre-set timers so everyone would be on the same page.   For each tea, we were asked questions such as:

• How familiar is it?
• How intense is the flavor?
• Describe the aroma as you inhale from the cup.
• Describe the taste as you aspirate the tea into your mouth.
• Describe the nerve response of this tea as you savor its liquor.
• What words come to mind when you taste this tea?

Etc.  The five teas were very different and easily recognizable (Sencha, Oolong, Assam, Ceylon, and a nameless Japan green), although they weren’t all very good teas (according to me).  It was helpful to have the list of questions in front of me while tasting to help me focus on different aspects.  One question gave suggestions of flavor qualities, such as woody, grassy, smoky, seashore, spicy, etc.  This would be a nice thing to have in front of you as a novice or if you are conducting a tea tasting event.

It’s also important to pay attention to what visions or feelings the tea creates for you because this will help you remember the taste later on.  For example, if you taste a tea that instantly brings you to back to a moment of your childhood, say being at your best friend’s house on a summer afternoon, that memory detail will help you later on to remember, “Oh yeah, that’s the tea that tastes like Susie’s house.”  Notes of this kind would be wonderful to include in a tasting journal to help you keep track of teas you really love or hate, much more so than just a rating of 8/10 or something like that.

What I found so fascinating about this Tea Expo class on taste is not just the science of it, but how varied everyone’s perceptions and preferences can be.  Of course, we’ve all noticed that our own taste perceptions don’t exactly match those of our friends, but there was something about having it more scientifically demonstrated under controlled conditions that drove home that point.  Sure, we may talk about “good” tea and “bad” tea, but at the end of the day, all that matters is whether you like it well enough to drink it.  At the same time, to some extent you can improve your palate and learn to discriminate more.  Some of this happens naturally as you taste more types of tea (or wines, or chocolates, or what have you).  I remember when I first started to drink tea, I couldn’t tell a Ceylon from an Assam from a Darjeeling.  Now it’s easy for me to forget that everyone can’t automatically taste those differences, and I’ve been disappointed when I’ve shared my favorite tea with the uninitiated, and their only comment is,” Yes, that’s a black tea all right.”  They didn’t taste what I did.  But eventually, as you familiarize yourself with the beverage, the subtleties present themselves.  The first step is being open to it, then simply pay more attention and practice–and that’s the fun part!

References:

Can anything be more disappointing than not being able to enjoy your favorite food when you’re clogged up with a cold?  In this second part of my series about taste, I’d like to talk about the importance of our sense of smell as it relates to perceiving taste.  (Here is ...continue reading]]> by Lori Way, MS, RD

Can anything be more disappointing than not being able to enjoy your favorite food when you’re clogged up with a cold?  In this second part of my series about taste, I’d like to talk about the importance of our sense of smell as it relates to perceiving taste.  (Here is part one, if you missed it.)  When you stop and experiment a bit with tasting and smelling, it really is amazing how crucial aroma is.  Not only does it greatly enhance our ability to taste, but it is also linked with memory and emotion such that it can create a truly unique experience for each person.

Here are some interesting facts about smell:

• Humans can distinguish among at least 1,000 different odorants.
• Highly trained people, such as perfumers, can distinguish up to 10,000!
• There are two kinds of smelling: orthonasal (sniffing) and retronasal (via the back of the throat).  Different parts of the brain are activated by each of these mechanisms.
• Try an experiment.  Taste two red jelly beans, one cherry and one strawberry, with your nose pinched.  You can tell they’re sweet, but you can’t identify the fruit flavor until you open your nose.  That’s retronasal smelling.

Smell tells us three important things about what we’re eating:

• It helps us identify the substance (is it tea or coffee?).
• it triggers our memory so we know whether we’ve had it before and what that experience was like.
• and it triggers an emotional response to the food (is it disgusting?).

All of these can play into our taste preferences, even if we don’t realize it.  If an odor is associated with something unpleasant, it can be very difficult to enjoy whatever foods have that aroma.  If you’ve ever had food poisoning, you know that just the merest whiff of that food, or any others you ate along with it, will make you queasy.  (I’ll spare you my olive story . . .)  Luckily, tea is one of those foods that often has very pleasant memories associated with it.  I’ve had many customers talk about memories of having tea with their grandmother when they were a child, or things of that nature, such that tea really gives them a “warm and fuzzy” feeling.

In our workshop on taste at The Tea Expo, we were asked to smell 14 bottled aromas (very concentrated) and identify them from a list of possibilities.  All 14 were aromas common to unflavored tea, such as lavender, walnut, honey, malt, etc.  We were also supposed to rank how familiar the smell was, how intense it was, whether we liked it or not, and what tea it reminded us of.  You could say I really stunk at this task, which surprised and disappointed me.  Many people have told me what a good sense of smell I have.  Nevertheless, I only got 5 of the 14 correct.  (I took some solace in the fact that the gal sitting next to me only got 2 right.)  I also rationalized that “seaweed” isn’t really a familiar smell to me, so naturally I got that one wrong.  But I was absolutely blown away that I missed “vanilla,” which I use all the time and consider one of my favorite aromas and flavors.  Once I had all the answers I smelled again the ones I had missed, and while some seemed painfully obvious once I knew what they were, some just didn’t register.  At the time, all I could think was that the aromas were so very concentrated that they just didn’t seem familiar.  Another possible cause is that the aromas were totally out of context (which I suppose is part of the point in testing your sense of smell).  It was just a little plain bottle, rather than a piece of fruit, for example.  You see a piece of fruit and you have an expectation of how it should probably smell.  You approach a little bottle, and it doesn’t give you any visual cues.  Research has shown that aromas seem more familiar when they are paired with an appropriate taste.  For example, vanilla paired with a sweet taste is familiar, but when paired with a salty taste seems unfamiliar (reference).

While most people don’t have these purified samples sitting around to practice with, we do certainly have smells all over the place that are easy to get our noses into.  Smell fruits and vegetables, the dirt,  flowers and other plants, nuts, and food extracts.  Then smell your tea and see if you notice anything.  Smell the dry leaves, the brewed liquid, and of course, focus on the retronasal sense as you swallow.  When you sip your tea, make sure it is not too hot and aerate the liquid by slurping.  This will help bring the aroma molecules to the olfactory nerve endings in the roof of the nose.  And pay attention to not just the taste and smell, but also to the feelings and memories that may come to you as you sip.  It’s very easy to miss these if you’re doing anything else at the same time, so try to quiet your mind a bit and slow down.

Next time, we’ll discuss the trigeminal system, which is what gives us a sense of the mouth-feel of a food or beverage (think spicy hot peppers or cool mint).  And by all means, feel free to comment here about your own experiences and opinions.

References:

Have you ever tasted a tea that a friend recommended and absolutely hated it? Or you’re reading tea reviews online and see your favorite tea bashed. You can’t understand how someone could not enjoy your favorite, nor how anyone on earth could like the one you just threw down the ...continue reading]]> by Lori Way, MS, RD

Have you ever tasted a tea that a friend recommended and absolutely hated it? Or you’re reading tea reviews online and see your favorite tea bashed. You can’t understand how someone could not enjoy your favorite, nor how anyone on earth could like the one you just threw down the sink in disgust. Sure, sometimes you can chalk it up to the brewing method, which can indeed lead some teas to taste more bitter, for example. But YOU didn’t brew it wrong — it was just bad tea, right? Well, as usual, it’s more complicated than that.

While at the World Tea Expo 2011 last weekend, I attended a very interesting workshop about the science of taste, specifically as it relates to tea tasting. It was a combination of lecture and hands-on tasting and smelling of various flavor components and, of course, tea. Although I had been exposed to the science of taste while in college as part of my dietetics training, I am by no means an expert. I found this introductory course to be something I could really, um, sink my teeth into, and am planning on delving deeper into this topic to improve both my understanding of the science and my palate. So I’m presenting this information not as an expert, but more as an exploration. I welcome your comments, corrections, and insights.

The point of the workshop was to find out our baseline tasting abilities and to learn how to improve it. In writing about this, I’m hoping some of you will be able to improve your own skill. My tasting ability wasn’t quite as acute as I thought it might be, so I have some work to do. Luckily, tasting things is not really what I consider an unpleasant job!

Among the first things we discussed was that taste and flavor aren’t exactly the same thing. Taste refers to the sensation from your taste buds, and is commonly broken down to bitter, salty, sweet, sour, and umami (the savory taste of high protein foods). Flavor on the other hand involves taste, smell, and also the trigeminal system. This refers to the trigeminal nerve, which innervates the jaw, tongue, nose, throat, palate, and eye, and helps us determine the mouth-feel of a food. The astringency (or drying nature) of tea would be an example of mouth feel, or the hot feeling of certain peppers. Smell is also a critical component of flavor, as you have probably already noticed when you’ve had a cold and can’t taste anything.

I’d like to spend a bit of time on each of these three components of flavor: taste, smell, and the trigeminal system, so I’ll focus on taste for this post and devote another two to the others.

A few quick facts about taste:

• The map of the tongue you may have learned about in the past has been disproved. All taste buds can taste everything.
• We each have about 10,000 taste buds, and damaged ones take 7-10 days to heal.
• Caffeine contributes to the bitter taste of tea.
• L-theanine contributes to the umami taste of green tea.
• I just read an article about fat as another possible taste. Here it is, if you are interested: Poor ‘Fat Tasters’ May Tend to Be Heavier.

Taste serves us well by alerting us to potential poisons, which are often very bitter. It can also help us distinguish some of the nutritional value of foods. High protein foods, for example, have the umami taste due to the presence of the amino acid glutamate; sweet can indicate ripe fruit; sour, unripe fruit and/or vitamin C.

In our workshop, each table was given five large cups of liquid, labeled A-E. We each took a small sample and tasted it. Then we had to decide which of the five tastes the sample represented. Each sample had dissolved in it a precise amount of either sugar, salt, a bitter compound (primarily caffeine), citric acid (for sour taste), and MSG (monosodium glutamate) for the umami taste. The samples were created such that the percentages of each flavor component were equal among all the samples (0.25% by weight). Nevertheless, for me, the samples seems to vary in strength. I found the sweet sample to taste just like plain water (although we didn’t have plain water to compare with). The umami seemed relatively mild also. I found the salty and bitter tastes to be somewhat moderate in strength. But the sour one almost took my head off. I hated it. At first it didn’t even register as sour, it was so strong to me. I found that odd, because I like lemons, for example, and hot and sour soup, and things of that nature. We were also asked to think about a tea that each sample reminded us of. This was harder than I expected it to be. I came up with Sencha for bitter, hibiscus for sour, white or oolong for sweet. The salty sample didn’t remind me of any tea, and I fear I just didn’t spend enough time with the umami to get an association going. It was fairly subtle to me. Maybe I’ll buy some MSG and make my own sample.

Getting back to our scenario above where you hate your friend’s favorite tea, people’s sensitivity to tastes can vary quite a bit. In our workshop, not everyone reacted the way I did to the various tastes. You also may have heard of “super tasters” who are the most sensitive and tend to not care for overly spicy foods, for example. They are also good at discerning individual tastes and smells in a mixture. But other people are much less sensitive and need more of any given substance to be able to taste it. Likewise, they are less adept at identifying tastes and smells in a mixture. This sensitivity can depend on how many taste buds a person has, the number of receptors on those taste buds, and genetics. Research shows that not everyone can taste certain bitter chemicals, and in fact, almost 50% of the population does not have a functional taste receptor for bitter.  This alone can go a long way to explaining tea preferences, since tea can definitely contain bitter tasting components. Also note that adding sugar or lemon to a bitter substance decreases the bitter perception, also helping to explain common tea serving practices.

Next time we’ll talk about aroma, an essential part of flavor. In the meantime, next time you’re browsing tea reviews, keep in mind that the reviewers’ taste mechanism may not resemble yours very much. The best way to tell if you like a tea is to taste it yourself, and preferably under the same conditions that you are most likely to drink the tea. In other words, if you have a breakfast tea sample, taste it with breakfast rather than in the middle of the afternoon. Time of day and food can greatly influence the taste!

References:

In the ten plus years The Tea Table has been in business, tea has been steadily becoming more popular. The positive side is that there are more and more teas available. One of the down sides is that the quality of teas can, in general, steadily decline. While we are ...continue reading]]> By John Rice, General Manager

In the ten plus years The Tea Table has been in business, tea has been steadily becoming more popular. The positive side is that there are more and more teas available. One of the down sides is that the quality of teas can, in general, steadily decline. While we are constantly finding fabulous new teas, the percentage of ones we reject keeps going up. In fact, we recently received a box of around 50 samples from a well known tea seller and distributor, and after sampling dozens of them, we pretty much gave up after finding only one tea we felt might be good enough for us to sell.

After all, tea is an agricultural product. It isn’t simply manufactured. So, as popularity and demand increase, quality can tend to decrease. Through all of this, the priority at The Tea Table continues to be providing the highest quality teas possible while maintaining reasonable prices. Sometimes the quality of a certain tea will deteriorate and we have no choice but to discontinue it. We will always seek out a replacement, and we constantly look for improved teas to offer, but we will not continue to sell a tea that no longer meets our standards. If you find one of your favorite teas is suddenly not available anymore, you can always ask through our online form and find out if a replacement is on the way. Be patient. It can sometimes take quite a while to find a replacement as good as the previous tea. As an option, we can often suggest one (or several) alternatives. Frequently, this leads to a tea you like even more than the one you wanted to replace.

A good friend recently asked me a question about making iced tea, and it occurred to me that others may have the same question. She usually makes her iced tea with our Cinnamon Orange Spice tea, but the other day made it with Yorkshire Gold. She used the same method ...continue reading]]> by Lori Way, MS, RD

A good friend recently asked me a question about making iced tea, and it occurred to me that others may have the same question. She usually makes her iced tea with our Cinnamon Orange Spice tea, but the other day made it with Yorkshire Gold. She used the same method as with Cinnamon Orange Spice, which always turns out great, but the Yorkshire Gold turned out unpleasantly strong. She wondered what she had done wrong. The answer is in the leaves. Yorkshire Gold is a very fine cut tea; Cinnamon Orange Spice is not. The smaller tea particles have greater contact with the water, so whether you’re making hot or cold tea, it will brew more quickly than full leaf tea. Your options are to shorten the brewing time and/or use a smaller quantity of tea leaves. I always like to try using fewer leaves first since it’s nice not to waste leaves.

She also mentioned that the Yorkshire Gold became quite cloudy, while the Cinnamon Orange Spice does not. While the common remedy for this is to let the tea cool to room temperature before refrigerating, it could also be due to either the hardness of your water or the type of tea you’re brewing. Calcium and magnesium in hard water react with the theoflavins and theorubigens in black tea forming an insoluble precipitate that is most visible when the tea cools. However, not all clouding is due to hard water. Some teas have a tendency to “cream down” (as it is called) more than others. Assam teas from India are well-known for this trait. To see if your tea is cloudy due to hard water or not, brew a cup with distilled water and compare to your regular water. In the case of my friend, I conclude that since her Cinnamon Orange Spice does not cloud, and she did not alter her brewing method, the cause is the Yorkshire Gold tea itself, which does contain Assam.