A Kinder, Gentler Pep Pill

If we're to believe a recent article in the Boca Raton News then that's exactly what a pair of Florida law school students have dreamed up. The duo, concerned by the fact that their fellow students were routinely abusing prescription medications, decided to come up with a "safer" alternative, one that contains various tea extracts and related stuff, among other things.

It's called Focuset, and it's made up of an assortment of vitamins and herb extracts ranging from green tea leaf to guarana seed and yerba mate leaf. For more information about what's being touted as an "Advanced Student Concentration Formula" (hmmm) check out Focuset's Web site.

Link

tea, food, food and drink, yerba mate, green tea, guarana

Teapot Purses & Filter Spoons

Here's a fashion accessory that's gives the words "tea bag" a whole new meaning. The aptly named Teapot Bag is available from the Sarut Group in black and silver and it'll only set you back 25 smackers.

Also from the Sarut Group, as mentioned in the Time article covered in our last post, are these clever filter/spoons. I haven't had a chance to try one out yet, but here's the lowdown from the Web site, "These soft, pliable teaspoons function as a spoon and a filter. Fill the spoon's compartment with tea, honey or sugar, stir and enjoy!"

Not the first gadget to attempt something along these lines, but this one seems to take a slightly different approach than the others.

Image: Sarut Group

tea, food, food and drink, teapot, purse, gadgets

Tea With Time Magazine

Time Magazine is featuring an article called Beyond Lipton. It appears in the May 15 print issue and was posted to the Web site May 7.

The article consists of six brief paragraphs detailing various developments in the tea world, some of which have already been mentioned here at TGS, I might add. Among them are tea desserts from Torn Ranch, Rishi tea, assorted bottled teas including Honest Tea, Tearrow's tea flavored gum and tea gadgets from Bodum and Zanif.

Link

Image: Rishi Tea

tea, food, food and drink, tea cookies, Honest Tea, tea gum, Bodum

Green Tea Magnate

It hasn't been that long since our last article about green tea and Japan. In fact, its only been two days since this piece about a Japanese firm bringing green tea cafes to the United States.

The (London) Times recently featured an article with the somewhat overblown title, The Man Who Plans To Turn The World Green With Tea. The piece appeared in the business section so I guess that overblown stuff is to be expected.

Anyway, the article would have us believe that one Hachiro Honjo is poised to take bottled green tea and make it the drink of choice worldwide, even going so far as to knock Coca-Cola from its current position of prominence. Well, be sure to lift your feet, as the old saying goes.

Honjo is president of Ito-En, said to be the world's largest green tea maker. He "has waged a relentless campaign in Japan against Coca-Cola", since sometime in the Eighties and the firm's Oi-ocha bottled green tea actually captured the title of top soft drink there recently. Now Honjo has set his sights on the rest of the world and...well...go ahead and read the whole thrilling tale, if you're so inclined.

I've actually tasted one of Ito-En's bottled green teas. I don't know if it's the same as the one under discussion, but I found it quite satisfactory, thanks to the fact that it used a good grade of green tea and was not sweetened - no, not even a little bit.

Now, whether an unsweetened green tea is going to unseat Coke's sickly sweet candied water here on these shores is anyone's guess, but I'm not putting up any money just yet. This is the real world, after all.

Link

Image: Ito-En

tea, food, food and drink, green tea, Coca-Cola, Coke

The Business Of Tea

If you're in the tea business or looking to join those ranks, Fresh Cup magazine should probably be one of the items on your required reading list. It bills itself as a "specialty coffee & tea trade magazine", though, not surprisingly, coverage often seems to be weighted in favor of that other hot drink.

Which is the case with the May edition. But, if you are thinking about getting into tea as a business you might want to scare up a copy nonetheless, if only for Bill Waddington's Tea Business column. In "Too many teas, too little space", he discusses the basics of building a tea inventory.

Fresh Cup posts several articles online each month, but alas, this is not one of them. If you want to read it you'll have to round up a copy of the print edition.

Image: Fresh Cup

tea, food, food and drink, tea business, coffee

Charleston Tea Plantation...One More

No, I'm not secretly in the employ of Bigelow Tea, owners of the Charleston Tea Plantation, which I mentioned in my last post and in one earlier this week. I just find it interesting that it should have been covered in three separate articles in three separate newspapers in less than a week. I guess whoever is handling the PR for Bigelow gets a gold star for their efforts.

If you've haven't had enough of Charleston Tea Plantation articles yet, take a look at this one from the Connecticut Post.

tea, food, food and drink, Charleston Tea Plantation , Bigelow

Charleston Tea Plantation...Again

Less than a week ago the Charlotte Observer ran an article on the Charleston Tea Plantation, the only one of it's kind in the entire United States. Apparently this is a topic much beloved by newspaper travel sections, since the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also published such an article.

The AJC article is dated tomorrow - which got the Twilight Zone theme playing in the back of my head - and you can read it here. It's subscription only, but for whatever reason I was able to access the page without subscribing.

To order American Classic Tea, the variety grown at the Charleston Tea Plantation, go here.

Image: Bigelow

tea, food, food and drink, Charleston Tea Plantation, Bigelow

Green Tea Cafes

It should probably come as no surprise that the Japanese are behind what may be the first green tea cafe to turn up on these shores. The Tokyo firm, Foodx Globe Co., will soon be opening a Koots Green Tea cafe in Seattle. Four more U.S. locations are planned before the end of the year. Foodx Globe already operates nine such cafes in Japan.

Koots Green Tea will carry nine varieties of Japanese green tea and will also offer such concoctions as bubble tea, green tea lattes and assorted Japanese snacks.

While we're on the subject of Japanese tea houses, take a moment to check out this article on the topic from Metropolis Tokyo.

Source: Puget Sound Business Journal

tea, food, food and drink, green tea, Japan, Seattle

Black Tea Basics

Here's an article on a topic that's near and dear to my heart. Black Tea: Covering the Basics, by Richard Goodness, is currently appearing in the latest monthly edition of Adagio Teas' Tea Muse newsletter.

To which Tea Guy says "here, here". While I like all kinds of teas and tea-like substances, black tea's the one that tends to really make me sit up and take notice.

tea, food, food and drink, black tea, Adagio

Bottled White Tea

I wouldn't go so far as to say that bottled white tea is becoming all the rage, but there's a lot more of it turning up on store shelves nowadays. Here at TGS we've reviewed the Inko's line of bottled white teas and Anteadote's quite excellent contribution to the sub-category. We've also remarked on - but not yet reviewed - Snapple's new white teas.

Now here comes another beverage giant to offer their take on bottled white tea. That would be Lipton, who recently added five new flavors to their Lipton Original and Lipton Iced Tea lines. One of the new varieties - White Tea with Tangerine.

If you're the type who gets all hot and bothered about the health benefits of tea, then you might want to take a look at this MSNBC article by Today Show food editor, Phil Lempert. It's called - Drink Up: White Tea Is Good For You — Really!

Image: Lipton

tea, food, food and drink, white tea, Lipton, Snapple

Tea Review 69 - O-Cha.com Matcha-iri

Matcha-iri-Teabags
O-Cha.com

I ranked O-Cha.com's Uji Green tea as one of the best green teas I had the pleasure to taste in 2005. It's a designation that was well-deserved. Read my review of it here.

O-Cha.com's Matcha-iri, which also comes in tea bag form, is another truly topnotch Japanese green tea. I'll defer to the manufacturer's description, rather than devise one of my own - "a concentrated sencha grown in Shizuoka Prefecture. A combination of loose leaf green tea and powdered sencha (not tea dust)...This is a strong green tea, and is especially recommended for iced tea, or for use with a larger sushi teacup. For iced tea, we recommend one teabag per liter/quart."

What this description doesn't really tell you is that this is a very fresh, very green-tasting tea. O-Cha.com claims to take packaging and freshness very seriously and it shows. Because the Matcha-iri tea bags are so strong I generally steeped them in a large glass and threw out the first cup. The second cup was always quite excellent and the large bags are generally good for several more brewings, depending on your preference.

O-Cha.com's $14.95 price for 20 tea bags may seem a bit steep at first, but keep in mind that these are large tea bags, good for making more tea than a standard bag. Most important of all is the quality of the tea, which is right up there at the top of the heap.

Highly recommended.

tea, food, food and drink, green tea, matcha, sencha

Caffeine Reducing Gadget

I'll bet you didn't know the Japanese had a governmental entity called the National Institute of Vegetable and Tea Science. I sure didn't. Said department is described as a research entity of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization. I'm telling you this for a reason, by the way, and not just in the unlikely event that it comes up in Trivial Pursuit one day.

Apparently the National Institute of Vegetable and Tea Science and a Shizuoka-based machinery manufacturer called Terada Production have developed something called an LCT160001. This is a device for lowering the caffeine content of green tea. It does so by washing tea leaves in hot water to reduce caffeine by more than 60% and supposedly does not reduce the amount of catechin and amino acids in the tea.

Source: Japan Corporate News Network

tea, food, food and drink, caffeine, green tea

Football & Tea

Most of us probably still hold an image in our minds of tea as a dainty, delicate drink favored by elderly ladies dressed in frilly things and red hats. If a recent report in Brandweek Magazine is any indicator, Bigelow Tea is actively working to change that perception, specifically by signing a pair of big burly football players to pitch their product.

Said burly guys, in this case, are Phil Simms, former NFL star and son Chris Simms, quarterback with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Simms duo follow New York Yankees manager Joe Torre, the first sports figure Bigelow signed to sing the praises of their green tea.

Source: Brandweek Magazine

tea, food, food and drink, football

Killer Tea

I wrote a short piece a few days ago called Killer Chamomile Tea. A bit of an exaggeration, it was actually a story about a woman who'd had an adverse reaction to mixing a certain medication with chamomile, but the reaction was not fatal.

No such luck for a party of funeral goers in China recently. As India's Daily News & Analysis reports, three died and another 16 were taken to the hospital after being served a "milky tea". No clear indication yet of what ingredient in the tea was the actual cause of the problem.

Link

tea, food, food and drink, poison

Online Tea Gadgets & Games

Got a weakness for online gizmos that serve no purpose other than to give you something to do when you should be working? You're in luck.

Head over to the U.K. Tea Council's Web site and check out the Hang-O-Meter. It's a series of four online tests intended to "rate your overall mental aptitude and physical responses" after a rough night of living it up.

A more utilitarian gadget would be Spin the Pot. It's not unlike Spin the Bottle, except that this version allows you to determine who, out of a group of people - office mates, perhaps - should make tea next.

Here's a silly little game we mentioned a while back, but which is still available to fill all your time-wasting needs. It's called Play With ERN and you can find it at the PG Tips Web site.

Image: PG Tips

tea, food, food and drink, gadgets, games