Tea Rituals
When you want a cup of tea, how do you go about making it?Hi! Xyra stepping in for a moment to reflect on tea rituals. I hope you enjoy this post. I'm sorry no photos today.
Our tea reviews give you an idea about our normal ritual. It goes something like this: heat water, choose tea, add tea to pot/cup/mug/travel mug, pour hot water over tea, steep, add sweetener and milk, enjoy. The sweetener and milk are optional. There are times when we expand preparation and it's usually a special event.
I recently read an article by the Tea Maestro about the Seven Steps to Making Tea and learned a few more things about making a good cup of tea. Please check out his thoughts when you have a moment.
The article made me laugh a bit because I realized some tea aficionados would not be happy with my ritual. For instance the coffee maker. I TOTALLY agree that a coffee maker that has been used to make coffee is absolutely no good for making tea water. However, in our house we have two little four cup coffee makers. One is for Franz who does drink coffee; the other is for us to heat tea water. It is used only for tea water and while the water does not come to a boil it heats hot enough to steep green and white teas properly. So it is my morning kettle. Evening tea water is heated on the stove kettle. (We do not use the microwave for tea, but we don't look down on those who do.)
The other point where some would look sideways at me has to do with how long to keep your tea. I have so many teas in my collection invariably many are older than 9 months old. Some we use very quickly; others are for special occasions or specific moods. All of our teas are in air tight containers. We transfer those sold in paper to thoroughly cleaned tins as soon as we can. (We do not serve exceedingly old tea to our friends.)
When Melody and I went to the Coffee and Tea Festival Philly in 2014 we met several tea purveyors who were really helpful in telling us about their teas. A couple even said we could contact them for finer points in our review. That was really nice.
The Tea Maestro, Bruce Richardson, is a regular contributor to TeaTime Magazine.
What is your tea ritual?
Best wishes,
I still drink tea from my grandmother's collection. It really depends on what kind it is and how you keep it. I'm sure that would highly offend some people lol.
ReplyDelete:-D Not these people.
Delete~Xyra