Tea Blog - Learn All About Tea

Call it popped rice tea. If America is symbolized by baseball and apple pie, then Japan's symbols are rice and tea. Genmaicha is just that.  It's green tea blended with roasted and popped white rice. This blended tea creates a nice balance of the vegetal flavors of the green tea with the nutty, somewhat sweet flavor of the rice.  The roasted rice sometimes pops, not unlike popcorn, leading to the nickname "popped rice tea". Genmaicha is also called "poor man's tea".  Rice was added to green tea as a filler, to make the very expensive tea last longer.  It also added a...

The Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival  Every spring all across Japan, as the weather gets warmer, there is great anticipation for the blooming of the Cherry Blossoms which marks the passing of winter and the arrival of spring.  The anticipation is just like when you were in school and counted down the days to summer vacation or counted the days to Christmas. You just couldn't wait for it happen.   When the trees blossom, the party begins. All over Japan people flock to parks to sit under the trees and take in spring and the joy of winter passing.Having lived in Japan as a...

Our best selling one-person tea making system In our last blog post, we discussed the importance of water in making tea. In the video below, we demonstrate our best selling one-person tea making system.  The secret sauce is the stainless steel infuser basket. One important feature not mentioned in our video is the ability to monitor the tea steeping process. Because the tea mug is made of heat resistant, Pyrex glass, you can watch the water turn into tea. This allows you to remove the infuser at the perfect moment when your tea is done. This is really useful when making green...

Good clean water at the right temperature Three ingredients are essential to making a great cup of tea. Good clean neutral water Great loose leaf tea Hot water at the correct temperature   1. Good clean water Water  without too many minerals, makes the best tea. Too many minerals and metals and your tea will taste bad (think sulfur) and too few will make it flat.  Do not use distilled water because it is devoid of minerals. Chlorine which is used to make drinking water safe can also ruin a cup of tea with its harsh chemical smell.If your water has...