Today’s newsletter:
tea bags
Gong Dan, granola latte
New Cafés
Coffee news
How to jury rig a teapot
Tea bags
Growing up, tea was considered more of a supplement or wellness drink than anything with flavor; something to drink when you’re sick and you need a little bear sitting in pyjamas near a fireplace to feel better.
As customers request things like tea in America, suburban and rural shops sell it in the form of “black”, “mint”, “chamomile”, where the black is a choice between earl grey and english breakfast, and if the restaurant is fancy they will have a green tea [unspecified]. Real tea is delicious!
The point: the tea bag purchased in a bag is just a bunch of sticks and leaf parts. It’s like if you asked me for thyme and i just ground up some thyme sticks and put them in. It’s technically the plant, but you’re going to be dissapointed. Celestial seasonings is garbage, re: the bear from before.
If you are generally drinking Lipton and celestial seasonings, or using tea as an herbal supplement [i.e. ginger mint is kept in your house for colds and that is the extent], take a step into the tea world with Twinings.
I know, I know. Twinings is the ‘tourist store’ for people visiting Britain, but this newsletter recommends them as a starting point because you can actually notice a difference in flavor between their tea. It is the absolute base level for ‘good’ tea that exists.
The Twinings sampler pack is great to get to know new teas, understand how they’re different, and get an understanding for steep times and how much caffeine each tea has.
Here’s the thing: if you didn’t already know this, tea is dried and aged as rolled, curled, or folded leaves, sometimes a combination of a few folding methods. The above picture is lightly rolled.
When you brew a good tea, the tea leaves take in the moisture and unfurl into a beautiful tea leaf in your cup.
Here’s a great video to watch the leaves enlarge themselves as they rehydrate:
The cup on the right is the one to watch.
It’s why a teapot is the superior way to make tea, which allows the tea leaves to freely float around and maximally infuse themselves, whereas your teabag is restricting the tea.
Imagine if I balled up a bunch of tea, and then it couldn’t unfurl! You’d get the most tea extraction from the outer edge of the tea, and little from the center.
But guess what, this is even worse than you think it is!
Let’s say you have balled-up oolong tea (iron goddess of mercy is a great example) and the instructions are to brew it for 1 minute at 190 degrees fahreinheit.
In a perfect scenario, the leaf unfurls and mostly flat leaves are able to extract each part of the leaf equally. The leaves reduce the temperature at an expected rate, each part getting the same amount of heat.
In a tea bag, not only does most of the extraction happen on the outside, but the outside is absorbing much more heat than the inside. Now you’ve got a section of your tea that’s bitter, overextracted, and the inside that isn’t imparting any flavor!
Your use of teabags is ruining the tea experience.
But, if they extract less, then I can leave them in the cup!
Yes, but steeping and removing the tea before handing it to the customer guarantees that the only variable you have to worry about is drink temperature.
You can control the amount of bitterness and flavor if you remove the tea before serving.
Here’s the difference between tea steeped in a tea bag and tea steeped properly:
For the recipe today, we’re going over alternative brewing methods for the at-home tea pre-aficionado, scroll down for more
This week’s coffee shop spotlight!
For someone who makes coffee recipes all the time, it takes a lot to impress me with a coffee recipe, much less an entire menu of them. It’s also why I don’t keep a keen eye on the Korean coffee shop scene, because they’ve probably had every original idea I’ll have a couple hundred times over.
And then I couldn’t say “original recipes” on this newsletter anymore.
Enter Gong Dan, a Korean coffee shop in, again, Flushing.
This absolutely brilliant menu (positive) rides on the coattails of a very interestingly (negative) designed shop, at the corner. It’s noticably uninviting, hostile to any thoughts that you might be able to sit and work there.
Luckily, it’s not designed to be that kind of place. It’s a place to have something special, and then take an instagram picture and then move on with your life.
Here’s the non-coffee part of the menu; simply non-caffeinated beverages:
Recommended from online people is the “Gosu Ade”, the cilantro drink. If I could try something, it would be the Podo, I think. Muscat grapes, yeah.
And now, a menu that has meringue affogados, a granola-inspired drink, and a similar drink to an all-time legend at Dayglow, the Totoro.
Just look at that menu. Wow.
It is a crazy day when the dark chocolate latte is a drink you’d be inspired to try last.
Gong Dan, in Flushing.
What’s new, Jude?
Concept Coffee NYC — Long Island City
Sìyì Tea & Incense — Little Italy
Break time!
It might have been a while, but you should make a cup of tea.
If you like Twinings sampler pack, I really recommend What-Cha tea for the next step in your tea journey, and for all I care, it can be your last step [just before hitching an airplane to China], because they are really that good.
If Twinings is the absolute bottom of the ‘quality teas’, What-Cha is near the top. Similar to Twinings having a cheaper option to try things, What-Cha has a ‘mystery pack’ that is generally tea from last season [not last year’s] which is imo worth like 35–45 dollars but you get for just a few [maybe 10?]. It’s a lot of tea too, especially as you can re-steep a good-quality tea a lot.
And now…
Coffee news!
First, Starbucks has fired their CEO because the poor baby shareholders were upset that boycotts and pro-union supporters have cost their company $32 Billion dollars. Good news, though! They had enough money left over to leave the CEO with around $10.6 million in cash and bonuses.
Yeehaw! Starbucks is an evil company.
What’s more, they hired the Chipotle CEO (read: p o a c h e d) and yes, you’ll be glad to know they let him be remote!
But don’t worry, despite really wanting him in office [pretty please?], they copmromised! They will have him commute to office a few days whenever he feels like it with a private plane they bought for him.
Seriously, these companies are evil.
Speaking of CEO’s, Peet’s CEO stepped down unexpectedly and their CFO is stepping in in the interim.
Califia, who make alt milks, acquired a dispensing station making company. This will likely be a part of a push to get into college food halls—they will make agreements with food companies, like Sodexo and CulinArt, and they will package them in their bids for food contracts at schools.
Best of Panama coffee “shatters” price record at $627/pound on average. The previous top seller was at $601.
A very cool poster for varietals
It’s a little clunky in design, but nice nonetheless.
I-don’t-have-a-teapot brewing methods
Method One
The easiest way is what I did above—simply put hot water and tea into a cup, let the tea steep for the time it says on the packaging, and then strain it out.
If you don’t have a strainer, then it’s method two:
Method Two
Steep the coffee as per above, stirring once about 1/3 of the way through to make sure the leaves don’t get clogged and clumpy.
Then, get a lid and place it on the cup, then pour out the tea through the spout. Be careful you don’t burn yourself! You might get a few tea leaves but this is good enough to try a tea in your shop. You can reuse the lid on the new cup so you aren’t wasting an extra lid.
Notes
The temperature really matters for tea, so a sleeve around the cup or double-walling the cup is important. If you brew the tea with two cups and then use the outer cup to hold the finished product, you will have a much different tea than a single-walled brew.
Temperature matters a lot differently for cheaper/lower quality teas (yes, Twinings is part of this), as they are expecting the temperature to drop while the tea is brewing. Luckily, lower quality teas are a lot more forgiving in how much time you can brew it for.
Thanks for tuning in!
Enjoy your coffee!