Solace and pressed things

I love coffee- understatement.

I dream about it. Am constantly planning the ways that I'd love to set my own personal shop up. Bugging friends on trips to stop at any coffee shop that I see along that way. Attending classes. Conversing about it. Reading about it. Thinking about it. Making it. Teaching it. Managing it. Roasting it. Drinking it. Comparing it.

Then I met tea, and now I want to get that into tea as well. I've also been reading about tea houses, nice ones. The ones that if you didn't know how they worked ahead of time, you'd be offended or maybe astonished. Ones that have a no carry-out policy.....let it sink in...yeah, they won't let you leave with their premises with tea....NO CARRY-OUT. My first thoughts are," That better be a damn good cup of tea!" But as a coffee professional for almost four years now, a very short amount of time I know, I distinctly recall describing, and to multiple people, coffee as a sommelier would a wine; talking of things to pair it with, but then also explaining how I have tasted these things on my palate and you may not, and how that's not just with this one coffee, and not even necessarily with that individual coffee every time, if it has been roasted by two different roasters or at different roasts. So every sip is important to me. Every single cup, should reflect the shop it came from, the ability of the barista, the craft of the roaster; who should in turn be working their hardest to represent the farmers who have toiled over the picking drying/ washing/ fermenting/ packing/ bartering/ daily with little to show for the coffee we so nonchalantly guzzle.

So how did you get from tea to the longest run-on sentence in the world about coffee, Chris?.....Let's go back to my last statement about tea:

"That better be a damn good cup of tea!"

When I said this, or better thought it, I wasn't thinking about it in the way that I respect coffee. I was picturing it much like many of my friends see coffee:

Where they see coffee as, at best, something ground just before they buy it and take it home to brew it in the Mr. Coffee, without filtered water or measuring the amount of coffee used out, probably at best measuring it to the standard set by the writing on the side of the bag. ( I'm not trying to come down on any of my friends, coffee isn't their passion, this is merely a comparison)
Much the same, I was only seeing a pre-bagged (filter included), baggy of tea; myself bringing some water to a boil (because that's how you steep all tea....right? wrong, just so you know), and as far as the amount of time steeped goes, I go by whether the water has changed color of, again- at best, by the directions attached to the pre-bagged baggy of wonder.

So what is tea?

I guess I could give you a couple links
Mighty Leaf Tea
Plethora of basic tea knowledge
Adagio tea
Teavana tea

That's the easy way I guess.

and I guess this thing has gotten fairly long, but this whole thing was to say that I have new goal, and that is to become as informed about tea as I am about coffee (that ain't much, I'm not trying to say I have all of the answers, but I want them !)

I also employ anyone who reads this, inquire from your barista of choice, why they do what they do. You may be surprised that they would really like to have a conversation about coffee. If they've been doing coffee for more than a year chances are they like to talk about coffee, or better, a certain coffee that they had in the past, that sold them on what coffee could be, kind of which coffee was the perfect sales pitch for them. Be ware though, it's not a short conversation.

I want to find people like this in the tea world, I have one friend/ co-worker, that is like this, and she kind of sparked this.

Challenge: Ask any professional, what their favorite part of their job is, and then ask a seasoned barista what their favorite coffee is. Then sit back and compare the answers, and you may get to see some of the passion that we in this really nerdy industry carry, and maybe you'll pick up some of that passion. That's what we all want anyway.

bye