12/21/07 Part III

A letter I wrote to the Adagio people...

Merry Christmas! I love the Golden Monkey. I was on the teavana.com website, and they are charging $18.50 for 2 oz. of Golden Monkey, whereas you charge so much less. Do you know why the difference? I am a customer of yours, and a loyal one, so I'm just curious more than anything.

One other thing, though. I notice that you have musical names to go with your teas. That makes it difficult to compare your varieties with other tea sellers...

I'm not sounding so loyal...I'm just trying to explore the different teas (mainly black teas at this point). Thanks for your help!

Also...do you know of any teapots that have infusers where the infuser has a handle that can be used to pull the infuser out of the pot without having to reach into the pot and burn your fingers (and contaminate the tea), or use some other tool to do that. Because if you don't pull the infuser and tea leaves out of the pot, you have to serve it all at once. Not ideal.

Thanks for everything!

12/21/07 Part II

Golden Monkey...I looked at the Adagio website, and it's $4 for a 2 oz tin, whereas for the same amount at teavana, it's $18.50! Yikes. Not sure why the difference. I'm having the last of the Golden Monkey from Adagio right now, it's a bit weak, and so not as good as I'd like, but still drinkable. It's still soothing to the soul.

Meanwhile, I came across the cast iron teapots...they are soooo nice! And expensive. But I'm back to the infuser problem: they have the infusers that fit into the pot, but how are you supposed to remove them once the tea is done steeping??? They don't have any kind of handle or anything to get them out of the near boiling, cooling liquid. An improvement, no doubt, but still not good enough. There needs to be a handle on these infusers and a slot in the lid to let the infuser handle stick out.

12/21/07

Went to Teavana last night. Lots of teaware, but no tea. They have it in cans behind the counter, so you can't get to it without involving one of the people that works there. They say they have the top 5% of tea from the best tea gardens, but I don't know what that really means. I'll have to research that. They two different Rooibos teas, but I don't like it, and it's not really tea...

12/19/07

Keemun Concerto! Good stuff. Especially when I make it not too strong. No cloudy tea, no bitterness from over-steeping...just good tea. I know why the infuser doesn't make me happy: it's because there's too much tea in it. If I do it right, then it works out. Still not optimal, but good nonetheless. I still have to figure out how to get the amount of tea right for each type of tea. More for the Ceylon, less for the Keemun...and so on.

Keemun Concerto tastes like there's just a hint of lemon...I do like it.

12/18/07

I made the Ceylon Sonata today, a bit weaker...and I regret it. Ceylon tea should be stronger.

Pouring of tea...designed to be slow. And deliberate. You can't pour any faster than the pot, because if you try, it will just spill out the top.

Yesterday I steeped the tea too long, and it was bitter...

12/17/07

I have no idea what I had to drink for tea this morning. So I've figured out that too strong of a tea makes for cloudy tea. I wish I could figure that out. Maybe get a scale instead of trying to eyeball the amount that goes into the infuser that I hate so much.

Over the weekend I had lots of cafe con leche. My kitchen is a disaster...but I won't go into that right now. It's just easier to microwave the water and scoop dried coffee-milk into a cup, and add sugar. It makes me feel full, though. Sometimes too full. Not a pleasant feeling.