What is Craft Tea and How Does It Compare to Craft Coffee?

Do you remember…

When coffee used to be the gross stuff your parents drank?

When you went into a Starbucks for the first time?

When you learned that there was good coffee and bad coffee? (And Starbucks was to be shunned?)

Do you remember when you first heard the term craft coffee?

How about the term “tasting notes”?

I have little key memories from all of the moments of coffee discovery. Moments that opened up my world to just how cool coffee was.

Many of us fell in love with not only the drink, but the appreciation… the details in the process.



It wasn’t just a cup of coffee anymore. It became:

What are the tasting notes?

What country is it from?

What’s the intensity of roast, and how fresh is it?

You got a goose neck or naw?

Is it ground properly?

What temperature is the water?

Did you time it right?

Look at the crema!

The latte art.

The aesthetic!

Well, that journey got interrupted in my life when I realized there was a world of tea that had the same depth and excellence.

It felt like I had encountered buried treasure!

It turns out, right under our noses, there had been another craft process, but with the mastery of another ancient plant.

Just like the switch from Folgers to light-roast-Ethiopian-single-origin-blackberry-lemon-notes, I went from Lipton bags to Chinese Tea Ceremonies.

It all started because I got to work at a traditional Chinese teahouse in Colorado: Ku Cha House of Tea 



One of my first findings in the tea world was that the word “Tea” is like Mushroom Coffee.

Huh?

The Mushroom Coffee Dilemma

What the heck is mushroom coffee? If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a growing trend. Pulverized mushrooms, spices, oils, and other superfoods are becoming a new morning drink.

And there’s zero coffee in it.



Photo by Innerbody Research.

So, why do they still call this coffee?

Well… how does Mushroom Potion sound? Or Morning Fungus Delight?

It’s a marketing thing.

This stuff is dark brown, you can mix it with hot water or milk, and you drink it in the morning.

Why not just call it coffee to get the point across?

Welcome to the conspiracy.

So What Can Be Tea?
Genuine Tea consists only of the leaves of the Camellia Sinensis plant. How it is grown and processed divides it up into the categories of green, white, oolong, black, or puerh.



Contrary to what I thought before, black tea does not come from a black tea plant.

So how what about mint? And chamomile? And blueberry streusel pie tea?

Does the yummy blueberry streusel tea come from the blueberry streusel pie plant?

The mushroom coffee dilemma, just like the almond milk dilemma, hit tea only a few decades ago. Before that, tea was tea. Always caffeinated and typically from china/india/japan.

Herbal Tea

Celestial Seasonings, based out of Colorado, started selling herbs collected from the Rocky Mountains in 1969.

You’d probably be familiar with their bestseller Sleepytime by Celestial Seasonings



In their beginning, Celestial Season’s founders were having a hard time marketing their herbs. Herbal Potion? Medicinal Concoction?

So they made the switch to calling it Herbal Tea, which improved their sales. People associated using these herbs similarly to how tea was infused with hot water.

Thus begin the dilemma.

It’s now possible that there’s no Tea in your tea.

Ever wondered why some teas naturally have caffeine, and some don’t?

Well, it may not have any Camellia Sinensis in it!

What is Craft Tea?

Similar to coffee, there are certain levels of care, detail, and excellence.

Craft tea celebrates and brings out the best in the Camellia Sinensis plant.

Here’s what tea people pay attention to:

Tea quality and sourcing

(loose leaf & single origin is the golden standard)

Tea varieties, varietals, and flavor profiles

(There has been 2,000 years of agricultural experimentation and post-harvest processing. It is wild how much tea variety exists around the world.)

Tea serving aesthetic

(the service and hospitality around tea is a big deal. Look up Japanese tea ceremonies sometime. They go hard in the details.)

Tea tradition according to a certain culture

(really important in many areas of the world!)

I would not recommend doing a pourover with Nescafe instant coffee (although I think the idea is hilarious).

Both the preparation and the quality of the tea matter!

Tea Ceremonies are the Pour-Overs of the Tea World

If someone means business with their coffee, they have probably got an impressive setup at their house. Breville espresso machines, Fellow kettles, Chemex carafes… these are the masters of the coffee-at-home world.

It’s possible to spend tons of money on the gear. What’s the point?

Precision and good designs help to bring out the best in a cup.

In the tea world, the level of seriousness and craft exists, in an ancient, rhythmic design.

One of my favorite methods is Gong Fu Cha, the Chinese Tea Ceremony.

When I was first taught the gong fu cha by the owner of the tea house, she explained that it meant “Taking a long time to do something just right.” I liked that.

Slow.

Precision.

Chinese Tea Ceremonies - Gong Fu Cha

Little cups, pots, and instruments are placed on a table.

There are rinses, steepings, and servings.

Each part is key to making the perfect cup of tea.

One of the things I love about Gong Fu Cha is that its extremely slow.

To fully enjoy a tea, you’ll need at least 30 minutes/an hour to really get to know it.

Why?

As you pour each small infusion with the same leaves, the tea changes in texture and notes. Imagine if every time you pulled the same shot of coffee grounds, a nuanced, perhaps even improved espresso came out.

Of course, a second steeping of coffee is best utilized as compost.

In contrast to coffee, quality loose-leaf teas can be re-steeped many times. A good tea can give 5-40 infusions, some even more.

The ceremony is beautiful. Typically there is bamboo, wood, stone, or ceramic at play, with water being poured and spilled. Over time, you learn the certain rhythms of serving the tea, and you practice making the perfect steeping.

I began collecting my setup and now get to prepare tea ceremonies in my own house.



Tea and Friends

As a lover of quality time in friendships, doing a tea ceremony with people is one of my favorite ways to spend time with them. And it goes a few hours more than coffee.

Coffee will get cold in 10-20 minutes, and it’s not often you will then order/make another one.

With a tea ceremony, you could sit for hours, and eventually rotate several teas.

Together we try each steeping, take a moment to enjoy, and comment on what we experience… notes can be smoky, grassy, woody, earthy, fruity, musty, or spicy.

Then the deep question gets posed. And we drink on.

Tea Drunk?

Fun fact.

Tea does alter the mind.

If you drink a lot of it, you start to really feel it. Because it is both an upper and a downer, (energetic yet calming), getting “tea drunk” means after an hour, you can start to feel really relaxed, yet fully present and aware. It’s great.

That’s the tea for today. Let me know what your favorite tea is (its ok, we can use the broader term of tea) in the comments!