Steep Stories

Tag: Tea

  • Dark Tea from Burma/Myanmar

    No one likes to talking about Burma . . . or Myanmar . . . or whatever it’s calling itself, now. Even the name of the country is a hotly contested issue. At college parties, whenever some Eastern Philosophy major brought up Buddhism as an example of a nonviolent religion, all someone had to do…

  • 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…

  • Tea and Bullshit with Rajah Banerjee

    Two weeks ago, I attended the Northwest Tea Festival. For both days, even! It was an epic time of tea drunkenness and cuppa camaraderie. But when the time came to actually write about the two-day tea-stravaganza . . . I had nothing to say. Sure, I drank a lot of tea, met new people, reunited…

  • Reading the Coffee Leaves

    In the spring of 2013, I tried a tisane made from the dried leaves of a Hawaiian coffee plant. And I wasn’t a fan. The flavor was not overly offensive, just . . . herbal. And nutty. Nutty-herbal. Okay, on “Internet” paper that doesn’t sound too terrible or unappetizing, but it wasn’t very palatable, either.…

  • Summer Time Tea Montage

    It’s officially the first day of September. The outside temperature has dropped twenty degrees. Skies are gray, and big-ass raindrops are falling. Yep, summer time is just about over. And I couldn’t be happier. Not that I bear summer any ill will in general, and not that this summer was bad, but—y’see?—I’m a fall kid…

  • Cups, Crossroads, and the Way of World Tea Expo

    It was the last day of World Tea Expo, and I seemed to have lost my “Way”. That’s how I felt that morning—kinda lost. Rousting out of bed was difficult, as per usual. But today was particularly hard. Last days of anything usually are. To kick the tiredness to the curb, I went from zero-to-“wake-the-hell-up”…

  • A Tea Pairing in the Sky

    Let me tell you a little about my “Tea Uncle”, Austin Hodge. Why is he wearing a Zhong Shan Zhuang, and how did someone convince me to wear a suit? I’ll get to that.

  • Tea-Fueled Las Vegas Tourism

    I needed a vacation. And I needed it as soon as possible. That was probably why—when I planned it—I decided to leave for Las Vegas four days earlier than I really needed to. The original intent was to go down just for the days of World Tea Expo. Well, I decided to tack on a few…

  • Ba Xian: Oolong of the Eight Immortals

    Seven Days of Seven Cups, Day 3 – “Ba Xian: Oolong of the Eight Immortals” Ba Xian literally means “Eight Immortals” in Chinese. The name refers to the tea plant cultivar used to create this particularly odd Wuyi oolong, but it also has a legend attached to it. Don’t they all? The name is a…

  • Times I Actually Left the Apartment for Tea

    I don’t get out much these days. For tea or anything else. Not sure if it’s by accident or by design, but in the last couple of months, I’ve preferred to take tea at home. Perhaps it’s the allure of the natural light hitting my personal tea tray, or the sheer ease of never having…