Is It Tea? Or Is It Coffee?

We heard some interesting feedback at the Duke University farmers’ market today.  More than one customer, independently of each other, tasted our sweet tea made with the beautiful Sewpur Estate Assam black tea, and offered the following observation… “tastes like coffee”.

Since I was not at the market, this message was relayed to me this afternoon, with some concern about my competence and attention to detail.  After all, it was Yours Truly who made the tea.

I had cleaned the brewer thoughly before brewing it (yes, I use the coffee brewer to brew black teas in large batches).  I cleaned the urns.  All the utensils.  The countertop.  Even the scales.  So I was puzzled.

With great trepidation, I just tasted the offending tea.  And since it is a cold sweet tea, I even heated some up to see if temperature made a difference in the volatiles.  You know what I tasted?

Tea.  Just tea.  No coffee.

Just to be sure, I had my teenagers taste it.  They have highly sensitive and pretty sophisticated palettes.  And they don’t like coffee.  If there was one part per million of caffeol (the water-soluble substance that gives coffee its aroma and flavor) in that brew, they would be all over it.  You know what they said?  “Good tea.”

That rich, complex flavor the customers were talking about?  The malty, slightly floral, beautifully nuanced beverage, with a fairly full mouthfeel?  It’s called TEA.

I don’t say this to be some kind of smart-alec.  Part of me wanted the complaints to be correct, because that would be easy to fix.  The problem, I realize now, is that too many people have never actually tasted a really GOOD tea (and for that matter, if they thought the tea tasted like coffee, they’re not drinking good coffee, either).  One with rich, full flavors that compel you to taste it over and over, because you get a new experience with each mouthful.  One that’s lovingly grown, carefully fermented, skillfully sourced and thoughtfully brewed.  One that’s treated like a beautiful, seasonal agricultural product, which, of course, it is.  That stuff chopped up in bags you buy in the supermarket?  It bears a passing resemblance to tea, but is no substitute for the real deal.

So if you were one of those customers who thought the tea tasted like coffee today (or any other customer, for that matter) – I invite you to contact me to arrange a private or semi-private tasting.  I would be thrilled to have you cup teas and coffees of the world with me to show you what you’ve been missing.  Please give me a call, seriously.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

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Organic Red Rooibos Now Available

Quick note to let you know our Organic Red Rooibos “Tea” is now available on our website.  Here’s the description I posted to the site:

Tasting Notes

Full bodied infusion with aromas of cedar and very subtle menthol. Hints of root beer, anise, and vanilla. Naturally slightly sweet, without added sugar. Makes a nice espresso shot.

Product Details

Sold in 50 gram quantity (25-30 cups) in a foil backed window bag

Organic

Naturally caffeine free.

Preparation

Infuse one teaspoon per cup for 3 minutes or longer in 180F water.

Rooibos can be infused for extended period without becoming bitter.

Rooibos is not suitable for more than one infusion.

The Backstory

Rooibos (pronounced “roy-bos”) translates to “Red Bush”, and is grown only in a small area in the Cedarberg of the Western Cape province, South Africa. Technically a member of the legume family, Rooibos is actually not a tea, per se. The plant reminds me a little of rosemary in it appearance, and the fine needles of the bush are used to produce the “tea”.

This rooibos is red, or oxidized, rooibos. Oxidation of rooibos is analogous to fermentation of traditional tea leaves to create black tea. Unlike black tea, however, rooibos can be steeped for extended periods without becoming bitter.

Rooibos is becoming more popular in Western countries particularly among health-conscious consumers, due to its high level of antioxidants, its lack of caffeine, and its low tannin levels compared to fully oxidized black tea or unoxidized green tea leaves. Rooibos is purported to assist with nervous tension, allergies and digestive problems. Traditional medicinal uses of rooibos in South Africa include alleviating infantile colic, allergies, asthma and dermatological problems.

This organic rooibos makes beautiful, reddish-tinted cup, with aromas of cedar and flavors reminiscent of root beer.

Organic Red Rooibos

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My #1 Fan

As in first, not necessarily biggest.  Although that may be true, as well.  I live for this kind of feedback:

[Your new Hojicha Yasashii is]…meaty, roasty, bready, and full-bodied, but still manages to be crisp. Like a satisfying hot breakfast on the porch in October, in a cup! Love it!!

Cheers,

Friedrich

Looks like I need to draft Friedrich to write product descriptions.

Seriously, this is a great new product for us, unlike anything you can buy here.  I had some hoji shipped from a friend in Japan.  A friend (non-American tea drinker) and I cupped the Japan hoji and mine side-by-side yesterday, and he vastly preferred mine.  The reason it’s so good is freshness, and my unique and admittedly non-Japanese firing process.

http://www.greenroasting.com

 

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Fire in the Hole!

<Read this post in your best Anthony Bourdain voice and I promise you it will sound better>

Tonight I made my first fired tea.  In several batches.  It was harder than I thought it would be, and it didn’t come out exactly right each time.  In fact, it came out exactly right only once, curiously enough the first time I tried.  My shop smelled like a 1970′s Pink Floyd concert.  But it worked.  And thus begins another life-long obsession, I suspect.

What is fired tea, you ask?  It’s green tea, roasted.  The one that got me started on this is hojicha, a tea I first tried while Japan.  Hojicha, the traditionally charcoal-fired version of bancha, or second blush of sencha, sounds like a romantic, artisan creation.  And it is.  But in that uniquely Japanese way, it is also eminently practical.

You see, bancha is an inferior tea.  The first of seasonal green tea is called sencha, and it is universally prized around the world.  After the branches are bare, the second push arrives, and is harvested.  This ugly duckling of a tea, coarse and twiggy, is called bancha.  If bancha were coffee, it would be Vietnamese robusta.  Yuck.   So in true Japanese fashion, they take something undesirable, and turn it into something prized.  With fire.  Hojicha.

Sencha

Bancha. This is actually the best looking bancha I've ever seen; it looks better than some sencha. I wouldn't fire anything that looked this good. Well, OK, maybe I would. Fire, heh heh.

It’s understandable why the Japanese were driven to do this.  Any of you who have been to Japan know that real estate is at a premium.  They can’t just farm more land and harvest more sencha to make enough to earn a living.  No, they need to utilize the land to its fullest.  And hojicha is one way of doing that.  Hoji magically transforms the rough and relatively flavorless bancha into a beautiful, less astringent tea, with lovely grain and cereal flavors.  It’s just short of miraculous, really.

Hojicha. This one is a little twiggy.

So once again, I had the distinct advantage of knowing just enough to be dangerous, and not nearly enough to be useful.  If there’s one thing I can do, I figured, it’s roast.  And roast I did.  How hot?  How long?  How much air?  How much agitation?  All complete mysteries to me.  And they pretty much still are.  But I got it right once, and that was all it took.  I am hooked.

It turns out that hojicha is usually pan fired over charcoal.  In retrospect, I can clearly see the wisdom of this technique.  As you might have guessed, that’s not exactly what I did.  What I did… is to remain a secret.  Why? Well, the obvious reason is proprietary competitive advantage.  And that’s true, to a certain extent.  But the real reason is embarrassment.  I know I looked like Rube Goldberg, but with enough BTUs to torch a house.  What I did tonight was dangerous and silly.  And fun.  And unexpectedly productive.  And my secret.

I would offer you some of my hoji to try, but the batch I got right yielded just enough for a few servings.  I sent what was left after my sampling to a friend in Atlanta with his coffee order.  I look forward, as always, to his sometimes harsh, but always honest feedback.  I suspect he will encourage me to continue.

And as I research the field, I realize that hojicha is but one type of fired tea.  People have been doing this to all kinds of beverages for a very long time.  Looks like I have some catching up to do.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

WWJD (What Would Jim Drink today?): Hoji!  I drank all of the batch that worked, now I’m working on some of the less perfect batches, and they’re still good.

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