Fresh Cup soiree

Last night, there was a mixer hosted by Fresh Cup. It was interesting to say the least. The evite we received said something about getting all of the local coffee shop and tea shop owners to meet and mingle. I would love to say that was the case, but it was definitely more of the distributor people and not the coffee shops. Apparently there was another food expo which is where most of the people came from.

But we did meet some interesting people as well as the great people from Fresh Cup and SCA. (Specialty Coffee Association).

It was a great meet and greet.

Dr Smoothies

Going from drinking tea to drinking smoothies isn't that big of a jump. Both are healthy. Both are good. But finding a good smoothie is difficult. I usually go to Jamba Juice, but the costs has just gone out of control! Especially during these hot summer days.

In order to curb costs, I decided to make my own smoothies. I mean, I make my own tea, so why not? I've tried quite a few smoothie mixes and decided to go with Dr. Smoothie. They have all natural smoothie mixes. Just add ice. Blend. Enjoy. They use real fruit for their smoothies and its so cost effective!

If you don't like that idea-r you can create your own fruit smoothie. It's really simple. Get a cup of your favorite fruit. A cup of crushed ice. I like to add 2 scoops of sorbet but thats really up to you. And there you have it!

I would do this but buying all that fruit really doesn't work for me. Indolence is definitely a factor, from having to buy the fruit to cleaning up afterwards.

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Dr. Smoothie

Clear water for tea!

Due to tea's light flavor, the quality of water is crucial to the end product. Clarity, color and taste are most important iced tea characteristics. Clarity can be adversely affected by high mineral content in water. Tests show any hardness in excess of 200 ppm can cause clouding in iced tea. To minimize problems associated with a less than optimal water supply, the Tea Associate of the U.S.A. recommends using a water filter.

Brought to you by: Tea Memories

To get the best tasting teas use one of the best water filters around which is made by Cirqua.

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Cirqua

a lil tea muse

"A hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea muses the evenings with tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes the morning."

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Famous lexicographer

Brought to you by: Tea Memories

Got old tea?

If your tea is old, don't throw it out. Instead, after brewing a pot of tea, use the tea leaves for fertilizer in your garden to help condition the soil. Give your fern a drink of tea every once in a while for a more lush looking plant.

Let chamomille pave the way to relief

Try a soothing cup of Chamomile tea to get relief from post-menstrual stress. Chamomile tea is great for easing muscle cramps, irritability and headaches.

Brought to you by: Tea Memories

For adults only

Trolling the web for some great tea recipes, I stumbled across this site. Get Tipsy, which has quite an extensive list of alcoholic recipes. Especially some really great recipes that can be created with coffee and best of all, TEA!

We at the office knew there had tto be more than just a handfull of us to mix tea with alcohol. Now these guys at Get Tipsy has totally confirmed this!

So here at the office, we will have some taste testing to do!

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Get Tipsy

Never brew a bad cup again!

The Tea Spot has created wonderful little tea pot, that has a built in timer that once it winds down to 0, will automagically pull up the teas from the pot. So no mess once its done, and you can just keep on drinking until you want to enjoy another perfect cup.

The beauty of this tea pot is in its simplicity. This tea pot has a "why didn't I think of that" quality to it. Try one for yourself and you'll see.

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The Tea Spot

Organic certifying process under fire

It seems that the organic certification process has some questions to answer.

Here is an excerpt.

...The Center for Food Safety, a Washington, D.C., and San Francisco-based nonprofit organization formed in 1997, alleges that USDA may be allowing "sham" certifiers to participate in the National Organic Program, citing the "unexpected increase" in the number of agents—from 49 to more than 120—since 2000. Although the final rule for organics was published in 2000, it was not fully implemented until October 2002.....

The rest of the article is here.

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Organic process

Behind the scenes

First off, I want to apologize to everyone for not updating the site as much as usual. We have been busily working and putting the finishing touches on the new site. Which brings me to....

The countdown has begun (matter of days now) to the launch of the new tea site, Paper Street Teas. We have taken all of the great parts from the original site, Teanas Tea Co. such as our Tea Lab, where you can create your own tea blends, and of course our wonderful teas!

Some of the things we have done is create our point system, so that for every dollar you spend you get points which can be redeemed for anything in our store. How wonderful is that!

And because many of you have spread your love of tea and our company, we wanted to reward you, so we have created our affiliate program which will give you a percentage for every sale for the life of the customer. Now thats nothing to steap at!

Better categorization of articles and tea tips, and much, much more!

Thanks to everyone for all of your input and recommendations for the new site build.

Tea World Cup

It's that time of year again. The Tea & Coffee Word Cup is gearing up in singapore, Oct. 10-12. For those of you that don't know about this, this is the Consumer Electronics Show of Tea and Coffee. All of the major growers and distributors will be there to see how the coming years crop turned out as well as to see new stuff. We can't wait to go. We'll have more information when we get back from it in October.

We hope to discover some new teas and teawares for all of you.

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Tea World Cup

a whole lotta tea

2,340,000,000 kilograms of tea are produced in the world each year. 768,500,000,000 cups of tea are consumed around the world annually making tea the second most popular beverage in the world next to water. Now that's a lot of tea!

Brought to you by: Tea Memories

Taking the pulse of specialty tea

Great article at freshcup about the world of specialty tea and how the industry can benefit from it.

Definitely worth a read for any of you out there that are planning to start your own tea company.

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freshcup

naturally decaf coffee plant

In Brazil, it seems a naturally decaffeinated coffee plan has been discovered. The plant is called Coofea arabica. These plants have a caffeine level of only .07% as opposed regular Arabica coffee plants which contain 2%.

That doesnt sound like much but it really is. The greatest thing about naturally decaf is that the bean can keep its full flavor.

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new scientist article

Bagged vs loose leaf

There are usually two schools of thought when it comes to drinking tea and how it should be prepared. There is the bagged camp and the loose leaf camp.

Bagged teas are usually made up of crushed tea leaves which, which gives it a powdery consitency. This causes many of the essential oils and flavor in the tea leaves to evaporate. But the convenience usually outweighs this.

Then there is the loose leaf tea drinkers. You can immediately tell the difference when drinking loose leaf tea vs. bagged tea. Loose leaf tea has a richer and bolder taste and is more aromatic.

With loose leaf teas, you also have actual tea leaves which in itself is interesting to watch as they unravel, also known as the agony of the tea leaves.

Recently there have been companies that are selling loose leaf teas in nylon bags. These are quite wonderful and can be found at Tea Forte.

With these new bags, there is no excuse for drinking bad tea!

Give up bad tea for good!

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Tea Forte.

amazon tea items

This page has some great stuff from amazon. Books, cds and tea items. Just thought I'd share them with you.

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amazon tea page