Steep Stories

Category: Tea Musings

  • Confessions of a Tea Cake Artist

    This all started because of a tea cake. No, not that kind of tea cake. An actual cake. The kind you eat; not drink. Instagram has been a useful tool for several reasons. One, it put me in contact with new tea people across the world—some personal, others professional. But it has also helped me…

  • Bros, Bug Shit, and Black Tea

    I don’t get out much. Of course, with how “well” these brew-based blogs turn out, that goes without saying. In the last couple of months, I tried to make a concerted effort to step out of my comfort zone (i.e. my basement) and—maybe—explore new teashops. Well, that didn’t happen. I mean, there are places I…

  • Looking for Hui Gan in High Mountain Oolongs

    “This tea had quite a bit of Hui Gan,” someone said to me once. “Who’s Hui Gan?” I asked, thinking they were referring to a Chinese scholar. Clearly, I’d never heard the term before. Several people had used it in my presence, and I nodded as if I knew what they were talking about. Of…

  • Attack of the Adorable Tea Vloggers

    One of the biggest challenges to tea blogger productivity . . . is the Internet. Yes, all of it. While social media is the biggest time-suck—keeping me away from what little writery discipline I possess—YouTube is a close second. My addiction to that streaming site is as old as my tea habit. However, there weren’t…

  • Should “Tea” Be a Safe Word?

    Let’s talk about tea, oversharing, and consent. Of course, in order to do this I will have to—y’know—overshare. So, continuing past this point, or clicking the “Read More” button, will be considered a form of consent. Understood? Are we all on the same page? Great, let’s begin.

  • Tea Will Change the World

    In the not-too-distant past, I was reading one of my fictional stories to a friend. He stopped me within the first paragraph and asked a very simple question, “What are you trying to say?” Not as in, what was I trying to say in the story, but rather, what was I trying to say as…

  • The Parts of Portland’s Tea Culture that The Oregonian Missed.

    In the summer of 2015, the unthinkable happened. I scheduled an interview with an honest-to-Lu-Yu newspaper. Our local rag, The Oregonian, to be precise. They wanted to talk to me in my natural habitat, as a tea drinker. The reason? A soon-to-be-established feature on Portland’s tea culture. Lauren “Mizuba Tea Co.” Purvis recommended they talk to me,…

  • Tea Tales and Mocktails

    Two weeks back, I received an invite to go here: Okay, I go to both Smith Tea locations quite a bit on my own, but this was a special occasion. Like last year, this was their media-only holiday pre-release party. They were going to be showcasing their upcoming blends, partnerships, and limited edition holiday offerings.…

  • A Transparent Tea Liquor

    This is a white tea called Doke Silver Needle. I . . . may have written about it several times. I know exactly where it comes from. (The Doke tea estate in Bihar, India.) I know who owns the estate. (Rajiv Lochan.) I know who makes it. (Rajiv’s daughter, Neha “Dolly” Lochan.) And I know…

  • My Detox Horror Story

    Over the last year or so, I’ve expressed my . . . displeasure with detox culture. I particularly took issue with the belief that someone could eliminate “toxins” from their body by ingesting weird herbs and other unlikely ingredients (like literal silver and gold). When talk of these practices spilled over into my tea life…