Christopher Street

Tea

We've been drinking a lot of tea lately.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when we saw a program on the FoodTV channel on, well, tea. More specifically, home brewing loose tea.

Now, I grew up drinking tea. My parents weren't coffee people....but there was a lot of tea consumed. My mom preferred hers hot; my dad liked his iced. I liked both. But, and this is somewhat important...we weren't particularly sophisticated tea drinkers. We drank Lipton, mostly. Maybe the occasional box of mint or orange tea made it into the house and I do remember a brief flirtation with herbal at one point, but for the most part, we were perfectly happy with a good cup of Lipton.

As a grown-up person, I was slightly more adventureous, venturing into many sorts of flavored black teas. I never drank a lot of green, at least not outside of Chinese restaruants. I mostly brewed in a mug, although I have been known to brew occasionally in a coffee maker as well(although, since it never brewed coffee, I find its moniker problematic). But loose tea was always a mystery. How did you do it? It scared me.

Enter Alton Brown and the Food Network. On the "True Brew 2:Mr. Tea" episode of his "Good Eats" program, Alton explores the wonder of loose tea. Black tea, green tea, some tea called Oolong, which I have never even heard of. Alton tells me that it's important to brew at the right temperature and in the right vessel--he recommends brewing in a cast-iron Japanese teapot, called a tetsubin.

All this seems very exotic and so, last Saturday, I went off with my mom on a quest for a tetsubin teapot and some loose tea to brew in it.

The teapot was actually easy enough to find. Turns out that Sur la Table keeps them in stock. I chose a lovely dark blue pot--$85! Yowza! The loose tea is also fairly easy to find, but only because I did a lot--a lot!-- of reserch prior to leaving the house. We chose a store in Vienna, VA, called "The Coffee Caboodle", which, contrary to what its name suggests, sells over 70 varieties of loose tea. It's also a family-owned and -run business,which is cool. Mrs. Owner helped me navigate through the tea-maze and I left for home with 8 different varieties, black, green, chai and the mysterious oolong.

Well, it's a week later and I will share this: loose tea is a whole different beast. Deeper flavor, more character, to be sure. Less forgiving where steep time is concerned. But it's cool. And it turns out that I don't like oolong. Who knew? :)

Posted by Lori at April 7, 2002 4:31 PM