Hagakure (Opinion)
Hagakure is a Japanese philosophical text written between 1709 and 1716 by a samurai named Yamamoto Tsunetomo. It is a reflection on the samurai way of life, its morals and […]
Matcha Blending Attempts in 2024
Matcha Blending Attempts in 2024 I’ve gotta say: grinding matcha is a lot of work. It’s worth it when you can drink your creation, or see the look of happiness […]
Milk and Sugar in Tea (Comprehensive Article)
Milk and Sugar in Tea. A generally ignored topic in my mind. Friends, I’ve been sitting on these notes for a couple years. Hidden away in a folder, in a […]
Shikoku Tea Map
Shikoku Tea Map: Since I began doing my ‘subscription box’ which is not a subscription… due to lack of eCommerce skills… I’ve had to double down on making educational content. […]
Factors that Influence Enjoyment of Tea
When we sit down with a cup of tea, we continue a journey enabled by millions of years of evolution in both our bodies and the tea plant. Physical and […]
Tasting Notes and their Relevance
“The nose knows things that the mind does not understand” – Blaise Pascal The benevolent reason for tasting notes to exist and be shared is to inform our colleagues/friends/customers about […]
Sencha brewing fun with Mine no Kaori
It’s Wednesday morning and my daughter is in school. I finished reading my novel ‘Buddenbrooks’ thanks to a stint of several 4+ hour reading sessions. It’s a quite lengthy classic […]
Matcha Cultivar Comparison
Matcha Cultivar Comparison As some of you may know, I am planning to get into the world of selling matcha on this site and preparing it in my tea room […]
Shino and Oribe Ceramics
(Pictured Above: Shino Tea Bowl) Mino Province, the now defunct name for an area just Northeast of modern-day Nagoya constituted the lower part of Gifu Prefecture. Mino pottery was made […]
Does Teaware make better tea?
(short answer: yes, but) I want you to come to your own conclusion, and to help you do that, I’ll lay out as much relevant information as I’m able to. […]
A Primer on Yellow Tea
https://www.sommerier.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Yellow-tea.mp4
A Primer on White Tea
A little series I’ll start doing, hopefully soon with a better mic and a script. 🙂
Sumi-E
The art world, so intriguing. A few weeks ago I picked up a book called ‘The Mindful Artist: sumi-e’ and read through it cover to cover. Sumi-e is ink bush […]
Salted Water for Tea
Above: 0.15g (roughly) of kosher salt, thumbnail for comparison. Adding a pinch of salt to tea to improve its flavor was already common knowledge to tea drinkers by the year […]
Making Houjicha (Roasted Green Tea) at Home
Do you have green tea which you bought years ago still sitting in the cupboard? If yes, it’s probably not very good anymore. Rather than throwing it out you can […]
What happens to tea over time? What can you do with old tea?
What happens to tea over time? What can you do with old tea? You might have heard that tea has a shelf life and the claim that you should drink […]
Evaluating Tea
A disclaimer before we begin: This is not a science, this is entirely opinion based. Over the years of discovering how to assess tea better I have arrived at a […]
The History of Tea
If you would rather watch a video of me talking than reading this, a good amount of this article is presented as a video. I’m new to making videos, it […]
Gyokuro (and Tea of the Sages)
Gyokuro is on my short lists of favorite teas. I’m reading a book called ‘Tea of the Sages’ by Patricia Jane Graham which included the origin story of gyokuro. I’ll […]
Gongfucha and Chado — Inspiration from Inspiration
Recently on MarshalN‘s blog I came across a very interesting article about the origins of Gongfucha (China’s ceremonial tea preparation). I’ve included a summary of what I think the important […]
Iron vs. Silver II
Following up on my previous post I would like to share information about brewing different teas with water boiled in an iron kettle vs a silver kettle. The test was […]
Building a Theory
Months ago, I wrote an article about my experience comparing water boiled in silver vs water boiled in iron. In the past few days I have had some motivation to […]
Edible Plants of Canada
Something I have decided to study for 2020 and beyond is how to showcase more of our unique Canadian agricultural products, especially those which are practical to grow in Alberta. […]
Iron vs. Silver
Recently I have found myself in a position to purchase a 990 grade silver tea kettle. It has been my goal for many years to contribute to the discussion on […]
Understanding Water, a Primer on Water for Tea
I’ve procrastinated writing this due to the sheer amount of information I have to post. Water was a topic I did quite a bit of studying of back in 2016. […]
Baking Soda
A can of worms indeed. Today as I was thinking about Hibiscus tea and wondering if I could put it through a Malo-Lactic fermentation similar to what is done in […]
Hibiscus
Today I showed up at work 2 hours earlier than I needed to because I misread my schedule. Naturally I sat down with a flight of hibiscus and drank until […]
Lavender
Well this was unexpected. After the article about Chamomile I felt I should get to know 2 other major herbal ’tisanes’ — Lavender and Hibiscus. Herbal teas have always been […]
Chamomile
Of all the 2019 teas I have imported, my sampling this year starts with Chamomile. It was surprisingly hard to brew a tolerable or even acceptable flavor. To reach the […]
Emerald Crystal – Flight of Matcha
As I was enjoying a bowl of matcha whilst daydreaming on one sunny afternoon, I thought that doing a flight of matcha is akin to starting a fantasy adventure in […]
Matcha 2018
I recently purchased a ‘comparative set’ of matcha from yunomi.life ranging from ‘culinary grade’ to ‘master class ceremonial’ It’s Saturday June 30th, before I started work I flew through all […]
Magnoila Berries / Schisandra Berries
On a recent episode of Shokugeki no Soma (‘Food Wars’ in English) the students were studying regional foods of Hokkaido, Japan. A tea made of ‘Magnolia Berries’ aka Schisandra Berries […]
Care for your Tetsubin!
Finally something important I feel I can contribute to the tea world — my poor habits of caring for my iron kettle (tetsubin) I am starting to develop some bad […]
Maillard Reaction
Feeling a little sick, I guess this is something I’ve been fending off while I was busy with the ‘Big Taste’. I had a nap today, now I’m up at […]
The Flavors of Metal Imparted During Boiling
I’ve lost some important notes, likely because I procrastinated too long to write this post. I did a salt tasting a few months back and had the intent to post […]
Translation of Japan’s Top 100 Aromatic Landscapes?
Already the title sounds poorly translated. fml.I was watching a documentary from NHK about the importance of aroma in Japanese culture, there was mention of a list created by the […]
Strawberry Leaf Follow-Up #2 (Flavor’s)
I wasn’t originally planning to taste these but felt it would be a missed opportunity if I didn’t. Here are the results. Everything with brewed at my tea testing strength. […]
Strawberry Leaf Follow-Up #1 (Aroma’s)
Original Article: Strawberry Leaf Cracking open the jars, it was pretty disappointing for the most part. I felt for 2 of them the aroma was unpleasant without any redeeming qualities, […]
Aromas of Sunday
I was watching a documentary on Saturday evening about the perfume industry, it would be an adventure to get into an industry like that, maybe in another life. I thought […]
Strawberry Leaf
Last year (2015) I took all the strawberry leaves from my backyard, wrapped them in tinfoil pouches, and baked them until they were dark brown. I blitzed them up in […]
Rum Notes
Ever since watching Black Lagoon while I was in high school, I wanted to drink and enjoy rum. We have 4 — lets say ‘premium rums’ to offer at Q, […]
Oat groats, fuck yeah
Sick of playing video games, my cycle of habits is back to creation. It’s 1am, I was digging through my cupboard for the wheat berries I thought I bought 3 […]
Wine Grape Test~
Grape Varieties A test I wrote for myself many years ago, likely when I was first starting to cram wine. It was lost in time between all the files in […]
Backyard clay test firings at other cones
Susan at Wildflower Arts Center did some test firings for me to see the vitrification point of my backyard clay. I really like Cone03, it’s a beautiful red, exactly what […]
Difficult Alcohol Test
I’d first like to say that I didn’t write this, and I don’t know where I found it. In any case, if you think you know a little bit about […]
Cultivars of Japan, the future of Japanese Tea
Cultivars of Japan, the future of Japanese tea Josh Linvers, Umijoshi @ teachat.com ————————————————————————————————————————————— In the 1970s, alongside the economic growth of Japan, drinking green tea was getting more and […]
Health Benefits of Tea
I’ve read into the anti-oxidant stuff around the forum, and while the popular opinion seems to be AO’s are bullshit or bad for you, my knowledge and thoughts on them […]