Home of the brazier

Dig these beautiful braziers and more from this blog post (part of a series of instruction and experimental study) about learning to love the way tea was originally fired. Covet, much.

Do's, don'ts: going out, staying in

An acquaintance writes for Chicagoist and pointed me to this link, a story about how restaurants ruin a simple cup of tea.

One can read this as ever-so justified invective against careless restauranteurs, but one can also take much from its list for our own personal prep. The egregious errors ticked off in the story are as important to be cognizant of at home.

The water temperature issue — burning the tea — is easily managed, though so few do. Green and whites benefit from cooler water. If you don't have an electric kettle that delivers just the right temp, a simple thermometer can set your water straight. I fell in love with a coffee shop on campus not only because they have pretty good tea and selection but because during an early visit one of the baristas asked if I'd like her to put an ice cube in the cup over the tea to cool the water from the instant-boil tap. Not a perfect solution, bu better than nothing — and it showed knowledge and care.

Also, I've become something of an obnoxious evangelist against tea balls and novelty tea steepers. I know, I've posted pics of more than a few of the latter, admiring their design. But the things are really dreadful for tea. If someone finally breaks away from bags only to cram loose-leaf tea into a cramped mesh ball, they don't notice that much difference in taste. Let the tea be. Dream About Tea, a superb shop listed at the end of the story, serves several teas naked in the cup — no bag, no ball, no pouch, just tea leaves directly in the cup. Because good tea sinks.

Crafty projects to dye for

Years ago, I monkeyed with tea-dying fabrics — with varying results. At first, I couldn't figure out what the attraction was to taking a nice, white piece of muslin and turning it, well, dingy brown. Then I learned how to get a little more creative.

Two things changed my outcomes: using a resist to make patterns, and using different liquids.

The resist: Dye the fabric, but beforehand apply a compound in words or patterns that will block the dye, leaving the pattern in the fabric's original color. Some instructions suggest using Elmer's glue; it's often not as easy to remove in the end as is suggested. I've used wax before — I used some beeswax I had on hand in a work bench, but you can buy wax sticks for this purpose, seen here. Crayons work, too, and look here for a nifty technique using bleach to white-out patterns.

As to the other liquids, nearly all tea-dying instructions you'll find discuss the practice in terms of black tea. (And use something inexpensive, of course. Don't waste your fine keemun on the drapes!) I suspect, however, that green tea would provide interesting, if subtle, results, too. I also suspect — having had the misfortune of spilling some on a carpet once — that strong herbals such as hibiscus would also work well. The trick: play around with different dyes on the same fabric. One project I enjoyed a while back: I dyed a set of white napkins with tea, but then I dyed their edges (an inch or two, by suspending them into the liquid with clothespins) with coffee, so there was a nice tea tint to the whole napkin plus ribbons of darker brown at the edges.

Hi, ho, Hario!

Hario is a nearly century-old glassware company in Japan, and they've generated excitement in recent years with new pour-over coffee makers. Now they've added teaware to their innovating.

Dig this Hario Chaor 4-Cup Tea Maker — a nice, big pot, with heat-resistant glass. The best part, though, is the roomy (important) strainer basket that retracts into the lid with a slide of the handle. Perfect.

Even better, if you're (understandably) averse to confining strainers, is the Hario Largo Tea Dripper, a twist on the coffee designs. The tea brews in the top glass bulb, floating free, then drains and strains into the glass pitcher below. Too bad there are no lids in sight.

Tea pot and cup rings

This photo of these adorable rings has been kudzu-ing along Twitter and Pinterest in recent weeks, but without any source information (like where to buy). If you know, do tell.

Celebrating (and rating) the stovetop kettle

I've been using an electric kettle so long now that I'd forgotten some of the actual joy to be had from a stovetop kettle. I adore my plug-in boiler, with its precise temperature settings. But I do miss the whistle of the stovetopper, and the warmth of the flame. Then again, I'm not even sure I remember where my stovetop kettle is, come to think of it ...

A UK blogger named Mike, however, is celebrating all stovetop tea things on a new blog, Stove Top Kettles. He's got 15 models reviewed and rated thus far, and one of his top 5 is an espresso maker.

The other thing I forget about stovetop kettles: their beauty as art objects. Just paging through a gathering of kettles like this blog is a reminder of the captivating design that goes into creating them — certainly much more than the electrics. Like this beauty ...

Happy anniversary (to me)

For our anniversary — 20 years, yegods — my partner presented me with this great set of china ...

Not only is the pattern somehow modernist and classic, colorful and classy — from St. Petersburg, adding to my Russian collection — I adore the silhouette of the pot. The lid is just that slim gold stopper, almost like a bottle, and the spout is a great pour. The cups are perfectly weighted. J'adore.

Tuesday tea TV: A smart kettle!

Nice! Finally, a tea-related app that actually does something super-useful — turns on (or keeps warm) the kettle!

The iKettle calls itself the "world's first wifi kettle," an unsurprising boast. You can program it to put itself to boil in the a.m., and it'll send you the only wake-up text you really want. When you get home — and your phone hits your network — the iKettle asks you if you want it to start up again. Effing genius! Just don't forget to refill it after each use ...

I really should have seen this before Christmas.

Color correction

For those who take their tea with milk, how carefully do you measure the tea and dairy? Are you eyeballing the ratio of the second ingredient (don't reignite the milk-first debate here, please) and getting inconsistent cups?

Here's a helpful tool for getting the proportions just right: the My Cuppa Tea mug, a white mug with color bands printed on the inside of the rim corresponding to various strengths of milky tea. Pour in the milk until the color of the brew matches the Pantone-like shade of your choice, and you'll have a relatively uniform cup each time.

Tea at the (old) boat show

Some tall ships were in San Diego over the Labor Day holiday, in addition to the handsome handful regularly moored on the Embarcadero. We toured several of the boats, many of which had some interesting tea artifacts on board. I snapped a bunch of photos ...

^^^ Aboard the HMS Surprise — a replica of an 18th-century British warship (and the boat used in the fine film "Master and Commander") — this display shows food and drink spread on a floating table, one suspended from ropes in order for it to remain relatively level. In the foreground is a tea pot with a single wooden handle, and I was intrigued by the rough canvas cozy wrapping it up.

^^^ The Star of India was built in 1863, about to celebrate 150 years afloat, and has a storied history hauling workers, immigrants and cargo around the world. It's permanently moored in San Diego, and its on-board cabins are full of requisite tea set displays like those above, each of which I wanted to snatch. Though it once transported a lot of salmon from Alaska canneries, any tea it might have carried during its early runs through the southern Pacific hardly qualified it as a clipper. Still, a prop tea crate is displayed in the hold.

^^^ Also surfaced along the Embarcadero is the B-39, a Soviet submarine built in the ’60s. It's a claustrophobe's nightmare — a long stuffy tube crammed with pipes, valves and all manner of things to knock your noggin against. Between the torpedoes and radio equipment rooms is a closet galley where I at least spied this tea kettle. At least the officers and crew could sip a cup of stout Russian Caravan with their washtub full of stew.

Blomus Sencha Teapot

Wired mag spotlighted this sleek beauty this month, and I covet it despite the steep price tag. Given my propensity for letting the pot sit a while — thus growing cold and bitter — the removable basket and the tea light would be spiffy. Donations accepted.

Le Creuset mugs!

Do you have or covet a favorite piece of Le Creuset bakeware? Silly question. To the point: Did you know they made mugs, too?

Pick out a favorite color — or one that matches your French Oven — and sip your tea with the same high-quality standards as the company's kitchen stuff. Speaking of cleaning tea stains — with this beautiful enamel you shouldn't have to.

Scrubba, scrubba, scrubba

Our new house is cursed with a porcelain kitchen sink, and I've lived most of my life with the glory of stainless steel. So I'm scrubbing a lot. While I was greasing my elbow this week, I thought I should share about Bar Keepers Friend.

I write a fair amount about tea-related cocktails on this blog, sure, and one of the best tips I ever got about keeping my teaware clean was from a bartender. Actually, he recommended Bar Keepers Friend for my stainless cookware — and it's a wonder on that, cleaning and polishing like a dream! — but I began using it throughout the kitchen with great results. BKF is similar to Comet but without the scary chemicals; another great cleanser is Bon Ami. I've used baking soda as well as salt with a lemon, which work fine — I haven't tried vinegar, though I love this lazier related method involving wine! — but when I've neglected a pot for some time and need the big guns to spiff her up, I find Bar Keepers Friend indispensable — and, importantly, soft enough without scratching. Rinse well!

Learning by osmosis

"Mountain water is best," wrote Lu Yu in his still-prized, eighth-century advice for preparing a proper pot of tea. Would that I could dip my ladle into a clear stream, but I was not born into an age (or at least an altitude) where that would be advisable pretty much anywhere on the planet. At home, we must filter out the various age-old natural contaminants and industrial-age pollutants.

Throughout my tea life thus far I've relied on basic filters, mostly of the Brita brand. However, some kind of karma coupon was cashed in recently, and I've moved into a new house equipped with a reverse-osmosis system right there under the kitchen sink.

Safe to say, my tea experience with the super-fine-filtered H20 thus far (good info and diagrams here) has been transformative — both good and bad. I don't claim to know much about the chemistry of tea and water, but experience has taught me that the level of minerals in the source liquid directly affects the taste, color and often odor in the cup. This five-stage filtration I've got now produces a kettle full of water that is seriously free of stray solids. Whereas a Brita filter screens out most visible solids, chlorine and some aromas, reverse osmosis extracts pretty much all minerals from the water.

That's been great for light teas. The herbals and white teas I've brewed here thus far have been nicely flavorful — standing on their own, with a richer mouth feel and no water minerals getting in the way. Greens have been mixed, though many are coming up a bit flat, and black teas swing between the extremes. My morning cup of Rishi China Breakfast is lighter and brighter than ever — a surprisingly good thing, given my penchant for inky-black tea — but my beloved keemuns have wilted without the mineral content, which I'm assuming assists in the spiking of its spicy flavors.

I have not retired my countertop Brita pitcher.

The power of the powder

We recently moved across the country, which meant several days shacking up with hospitable, patient family and friends as well as crummy lil' motels. (I once wrote a song called "The Couch Tour," and here we were decades later embodying it.) Translation: My tea regimen was a mess. I'll spare you the kvetching about the perils of in-room coffee makers, friends who don't have kettles, and bloody Lipton bags.

But I'll share a tip I thought I'd shared here before: Rishi's on-the-go matcha and sencha.

I first encountered these through some samples, which proved valuable additives to my music-festival kit bag. As a pop music critic, packing for a three-day fest such as Lollapalooza or the great Pitchfork Music Festival (both in Chicago — the latter occurs this coming weekend with a lively lineup) involved planning for hydration and energy. While a cup of hot tea could be had at Pitchfork and was refreshing even in the scorching summer heat, tea products often are in short supply at such events (though Sweet Leaf has been a frequent Lolla sponsor). But what can you find everywhere at a festival grounds? Bottled water.

Enter Rishi's clever product. Their portable packets of matcha and of powdered sencha tea are midday life savers in such conditions. Pop a bottle of water, take a sip (to free up a little room), empty the small packet of tea powder into the bottle, shake like a MF. Presto — a cool bottle of energizing, invigorating and hydrating tea! Useful in a pinch throughout our moving experience, but invaluable for outdoors afternoons and events.

Drinking the days away

You've seen this beautiful design, I hope. It's a calendar — and each "page" pulled is actually a square of compressed tea you can drop right into your morning cup.



Knowing me, I'd cut out the middle man and slip them right onto my tongue, like a Listerine strip.

Look at the birds up in the trees!

Saw this over at fair-trade-minded shop Ten Thousand Villages: a beautiful tea tray hand-painted by Peruvian artists. Birds in the tree, sunny warm colors, all on reverse-painted glass. Stylish, handy.

Natural look, natural feel

New favorite home-decor source: Leif, a supplier of artistic living accessories and tabletop pieces hewn from natural materials and designed to look that way.

Dig these cups — this one (pictured) is called Brushed Snow and is made in Japan. Other cups in this same shape are wrapped with wood grain, or real cedar for the sake cups. They also have some beautiful, ghostly glazed tea bowls. Best part: great prices.

For your periodic tea-ble

Making a good cup of tea is, like the baking that often accompanies it, truly an act of chemistry. So this beautiful set of teaware — fashioned from repurposed laboratory test tubes, beakers and such — blends form into function. Alas, it's art, not for sale.

A splendid-looking kettle

More stuff to covet: Here's a splendid-looking — and obviously rugged — tea kettle ...



Spotted it on Uncrate, it's available here. It's also $70, but your kettle (electric or otherwise) is not the piece of teaware you want to skimp on. Dig the stainless steel/zinc construction and natural cork handles (genius).