I've been extremely sensitive to caffeine and so coffee doesn't work for me. Recently I've been enjoying the ritual of preparing white tea from one of those hard tea disks. I have a special tea knife that lets me pry away layers, I then put them in a small tea pot (8oz) do a first rinse, and add the specific water temp and the specific time. I've found the ritual itself to be quite tactile and pleasing and the caffeine to not be too overpowering. It's a lovely way to wake up or take a work break.
White tea is actually closer to black tea than the name implies. Because – unlike green tea – it is not steamed to stop the oxidation process, it oxides naturally as it dries. This puts it somewhere between green tea and black tea in terms of oxidation (which is also where oolong is BTW[1]). Some oolongs and white teas – if brewed similarly – are very very close to black tea in terms of flavor.
[1] The technical difference between oolong and white is simply that white is processed naturally, whereas oolong has more “steps” (oxidation, drying, steaming, etc.). The steps can be manipulated to give the tea a different character. Oolongs are often roasted, for example.
Silver needle is a wonder, when the preparer has decades of experience.
A good friend was such a master, and I had the joy of learning how to prepare Silver Needle with mastery. I had brewed it hundreds of times, but when he did it, it was inexplicably different. Same leaves, same water, same vessel. White tea is a portal to a world of subtlety that I had never experienced previously, and have rarely encountered since.
I helped open Tao of Tea in Portland in the late 90s. We had over 250 fresh loose-leaf teas with which to experiment. Paradise!
I have only met two. My connection at Tao of Tea (incidentally, the original 'tea master' there), has vanished into the clouds again it seems. How astounding it would be to connect with him somehow. The other was an elderly man named Joe with an eternal smile, who was proprietor of Ten Ren in Seattle. As a gift, he gave me the teapot he had used through most of his life, which sits before me today. I suspect that he has since passed on.
Both were 'drunken masters'. When they brewed, they did it with no concentration - the mastery flowed through them. Joe, actually, was quite sloppy at the tea table, never talking, always smiling. It would be hard to describe how impossibly different tea was when brewed by these two.
I dedicated two years of my time in an adventure to possibly reach the lowest rungs of this kind of mastery. I think I may have hit it here and there, but never consistently. These were perhaps the most useful and educational years of my life.
Unfortunately even tea is too caffeine intense for me so I've been sticking to decaffeinated coffee. A factoid, the color of a tea does not relate to its caffeine content.
There is still a world of tea for people that are caffeine sensitive. I find a lot of jasmine teas are light on caffeine, cha hua is tea made from the flowers of the tea plant and that is barely caffeinated and if that is still too much there is always rooibos, honeybush, and other herbals.
Came here to put in a good word for rooibos. When I went through a caffeine-free phase for several years, it was my go to drink. It also makes fantastic iced tea.
> A factoid, the color of a tea does not relate to its caffeine content.
While it is not exclusively true, there is a pattern. You do have a general rule of thumb that black > green > white. These, of course, assume you follow the "proper" steeping times and water temperatures. Your caffeine content will vary with both these factors. The longer and hotter, the more caffeine.
If you want a low caffeine test I would take green or white tea and blanch it with hot water. Then make the tea. Or alternatively throw the first steep away and drink the second one.
You can buy loose leaf tea and brew your own concentration. I brew about 1/4th of a gram per liter which is... probably imperceptible to most (which probably brew about 4 grams per liter)
Decaffeinated coffee has 2-20% of the original caffeine. Tea appears to be around 18% percent, but many teas starts out with lower caffeine anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination
If you enjoy white tea in cakes you may consider aging your white tea cakes in humidified bins. They get deeper and richer in flavor as they age that way, but the humidity is important.
So have I. At 33 I decided fuck it. I’m going to drink coffee everyday until it works for me. And after 1-2 weeks it worked out. I still get stressed out, and if I drink more than one espresso I’ll get anxious, but I can drink one coffee per day now and it brings me SO MUCH energy it’s crazy.
Btw the same was true with weed. Weed used to make me sick like hell. I decided to just keep smoking and in a few times my body just adapted to it. I can’t smoke too much otherwise it’ll get mental, but I can smoke a bit and be happy.
His point wasn't as much about the caffeine content, as about the culture.
Besides, breakfast tea doesn't have anywhere near "almost as much" caffeine as coffee. At best 45-50mg on average. Coffee starts 20-30 mg above that and the sky is the limit with a large latte or cold brew.
It really depends on what tea and how you use it. Steeping the same tea for 1 minute or 3 minutes will result in a vastly different amount of caffiene in the cup. And then it depends on how much tea you use in the first place, so giving tea a "mg per cup" measurement isn't very repeatable. Coffee is much more standardised on how much you use and how long it is brewed for.
My breakfast tea consists of 3 teaspoons of loose Assam, 2 teaspoons of brown sugar, left to steep for around 5 minutes until it starts to become bitter, then topped with a generous serving of cold milk. I believe the official description would be a 'proper builder's brew'.
The caffiene in that is going to be completely different to an Earl Grey you have after work to chill out. I can't stand the taste of bergamot when it's left to steep, so I usually only let it sit for 30 seconds.
In my experience it keeps you awake but it doesn't give the same kind of productive buzz that coffee does. I think this is to do with not just the caffeine but the general combination of other chemicals, such as l-theanine.
I recently had to drive 5 hours on very little sleep, and I only had tea available. I had to stop at a gas station to get coffee because the tea wasn't cutting it, even at triple strength.
T will stop me from being able to fall asleep, but it does not keep me alert in the same way that coffee does.
To nitpick breakfast tea isn't a type of tea. There is English Breakfast Tea which is a specific blend of black tea and spices.
Black tea usually have 50 mg of caffeine per cup, roughly half what coffee has. Oolong, Green, and White tea all have even less. Yerba Mate has more caffeine but that is a different plant than true tea.
None of the English/Irish/Scottish Breakfast Teas are spiced, they're blends but pure tea, and they do tend to feature Assams and other high-caffeine varieties.
> the author has never tried breakfast tea which has almost as much caffeine
Tea time is a better cultural marker than the drink itself.
And probably why you jumped to breakfast tea, because you're thinking of something occupying the same role as a morning cup of coffee.
Most people wouldn't have a coffee break at 4:30 in the evening, but a tea break at 4:30 is perfectly okay.
But the whole point of a "tea time of the soul" is to contemplate over tea before drinking it. Coffee offers no such moment to wait for it to cool, because a big cup would be too much coffee, but just enough tea.
I thought that's the actual point of the article too.
And then you start back at what you were doing, but a little more deliberate about it.
I like to think that the act of making tea takes my concious mind off the task, just long enough for my unconscious mind to push solutions to my current problem into my wakened mind.
Came here to say that - I just checked, my preferred breakfast tea (Brooke Bond Red Label) has 60 vs. coffee 95 so definitely in the ball park. I always thought it was like a quarter of coffee.
We're talking about standard behavior. People regularly drink taller coffees, there's cold brew, etc.
And, of course, you could always drink 20 cups too and have more caffeine than an intravenous shot even. But if we go with just drink the required amount of cups for your target caffeine level, there's no sense in discussing which has more caffeine.
Tea is better for planning and thinking alone, coffee is better for repetitive work once you've planned it out with tea, and for discussing things with others.
That being said, coffee is essential in the morning for low blood pressure people. Tea doesn't quite start the engine up the same way - clearing and waking up the brain is no use if the heart is still at 50 bpm and the eyelids are as heavy as the Iron Curtain.
I think when most people opine on tea there's an unspoken, and often unrealized, assumption that it's uncaffeinated tea. Because often when people discuss the relaxing aspects of tea or making tea what's really being described just seems like a purposefully self-occupying nothing action that offers little in the way of chemical stimulation. Which is fine, I'd agree such things can be both relaxing and good for giving ourselves time for certain kinds of reflection, but try it with a competitively caffeinated tea and I suspect the reality would be much less relaxing than the hypothetical.
Does such a thing exist? Usually "tea" is made from tea leaves and other similar drinks are called "infusions" or "herbal tea" instead. I have never heard of decaff tea, but maybe it is common in other places?
Most tea brands in the UK have a decaf version e.g. https://www.pgtips.co.uk/our-teas/tastydecaf . It tastes almost the same as black tea although I think I can detect a slight difference. My understanding is that there's a post-process treatment of the leaves to remove the caffeine.
You're right that drinks not brewed from camelia sinensis leaves should technically be called an infusion or tisane. That includes fruit "tea" and infusions like rooibos, chamomile, nettle, or maté. However it's very common even in the UK to say "fruit tea" or "chamomile tea".
I disagree. The kind of wakefulness you get from a strong caffeinated tea is very different to the kind you get from coffeee. It's like a relaxed glow whereas coffee is an animated buzz.
The author surely means taking occasional breaks that involve just tea and doing nothing else. Otherwise how does one earn a living and support their dependents while doing nothing as much as they love it?
In "Action and Contemplation", Aldous Huxley wrote the following:
"Pragmatism regards action as the end and thought as the means to that end; and contemporary popular philosophy accepts the pragmatist position. In the philosophy underlying Eastern and Western spiritual religion this position is reversed. Here, contemplation is the end, action (in which is included discursive thought) is valuable only as a means to the beatific vision of reality."
So you can take a break from work to improve your overall productivity and that's okay. But you could as well consider work as a necessity of our material lives while the peaceful moment where you can make and drink tea is in itself the real deal.
I loved reading this. I'm someone who actually enjoys going in to office and working with really smart folks on technically challenging problems, but once I come back home, I used to always end up bringing the "baggage" of work back home with me (Anyone who enjoys the world of tech would relate I'm sure).
Until, that is, I started making tea as a buffer between work and the rest of my life. Making tea is something that's nearly mechanical process for me now, but gives me that much needed 20-30 mins where I'm physically doing something, but my mind is allowed to just wander around a bit, settle down, "suspend all the work-related tabs" in my brain, and refresh information for the rest of the day.
An added bonus is that I always start my evenings with brownie points, earlier with my roommates, and now with my wife, since they know that me getting home means in a few mins, a nice hot cup of tea will be served to them ;)
There is some great content on substack, but it is invariably too verbose. As much as I’m glad anyone can now indulge themselves in unrestrained quill scratching, 95% of substack content needs to be edited for length. Surely there is an NLP solution for this.
You put a very subjective opinion in very objective language. Some people prefer lingering in an essay, or meandering through musings, to reading executive summaries or condensed arguments or whatever. It's just a style. Sounds like it's not yours.
Yes it is my opinion of course, what else could I provide? But let's be pragmatic - there is an astounding amount of content in the world. I am not asking for a dot point summary as you seem to suggest, I am asking for cogency and well-styled economy of phrase. I mean the author of this post even says "But anyway, I’m getting off track here." in the 3rd paragraph. There are other easy to fix problems like run-on sentences, spamming adverbs, clunky use of cliches as concatenated adjectives ("can’t-see-the-wood-for-the-trees pursuit")... are you saying that you enjoy meandering through this 'style' of writing as you put it?
Has anyone done work on genetically engineering tea for higher caffeine content? I imagine there'd be a decent business for tea with coffee-bean caffeine level parity.
OT but anyone know how the author made that floating subscribe button happen? I inspected the code but I'm not a web dev and can't entirely tell how that was done.
AFAIK this is not a native Substack thing, and also AFAIK Substack doesn't allow CSS modification or injection of code.
Er, what? This article seems to be starting from a weird premise. Even the very first sentence, "It is a rare person who can do nothing- purely and without guilt- especially in our current culture of busywork." I can't relate to. Is it really so uncommon for someone to just do nothing... or does the author just surround themselves with such people?
Also, this:
> I suspect this is why from China and Japan to here in the UK, slow and elaborate practises have formed over centuries around the proper way to drink tea. Rituals that the takeaway cup and drink-at-the-desk culture have been unable to entirely erase.
Is comparing apples to oranges. You could easily flip the drinks, and make a point about how the ritual of brewing coffee, taking a cup out to your garden, and drinking it in the sun, is more relaxing than the UK office culture of making (and offering to make) cups of tea which are then consumed at your desk.
If you clear up 3 days next week.
During those 3 days you are to do nothing.
Could you do it?
I will catch up on my reading.
> Nope.
I will get better at meditating
> Nope
I will try that new recipe and so if it's better than
> Nope
I will just clean the living room
> Nope.
Doing nothing is not the same as having free time that you fill with
whatever suits you.
Try just taking 12 hours and do nothing.
No internet/tv/book/gym/running/texts/
No hanging with your mates and chatting
As a fellow ADHD person I relate to this so hard. Today I literally did nothing for about three hours. I stared at a tree. Actually not even a tree. A particular leaf.
I mean it depends on where you draw the line between something and nothing right? If you take it to the extreme, then the only way of doing nothing is to not even exist.
I've started to read all those sweeping statements as projection, the author sharing personal feelings in a way that's a little safer and more "professional".
You sound awfully offended at not agreeing with someone on the internet. I assume you must be in your early twenties because to be able to sustain such an attitude would likely lead to an extraordinarily high blood pressure that could send you to an early grave.
The author obviously has never been to the UK. Nothing happens without tea. Sure, coffee is commonplace, even dominant in some realms, but tea is life.
Have a plumber in to fix a leak, or an electrician to look at a wonky switch? Without the offer and supply of copious cuppas, you'll be lucky if you don't drown/get electrocuted after the job is "done".
Are you sure you actually read the article (this isn't /. don't you know):
"I suspect this is why from China and Japan to here in the UK, slow and elaborate practises have formed over centuries around the proper way to drink tea."
The author is a Brit, ie one of us.
We own a built in coffee machine that does bean to cup - I insist on an Italian standard type blend (but wifey is starting to chafe about that - we'll see, ie I'll change it eventually) - 75% Arabica and 25% Robusta.
We also drink an absolute shit load of black tea. Nothing fancy because all black tea is roughly the same. I use to work in a tea plant in Hampshire (UK) many years ago so I have a fair idea about the stuff. We generally go for Yorkshire for no particular reason.
Tea is superb on a hot day and we have had quite a few recently. I have no idea why it works so well but when it is 40C+ outside then why not reach for a 90C cup of tea?
It's funny how in the West there's a great emphasis on the purity, origin and quality of coffee or wine, but when it comes to tea we'll happily drink a bagged blend of the lowest-grade leaves.
Once you've tried a nice cup of high grade Yunnan gold-tipped loose leaf black tea, a new world opens up.
> We also drink an absolute shit load of black tea.
And notably little green tea.
> Tea is superb on a hot day and we have had quite a few recently.
This is because tea is generally superb. It is the solution to all problems. 'Put the kettle on' is often the first thing said after anything goes wrong.
Maybe tea packets are. Try fresh loose leaf black tea sometime, it doesn't have to be expensive if you buy online. Assam would be close to packets, Keemun, Darjeeling or Lapsang Souchong would be definitely different.
I went there to read the article, but the first thing I saw was a big thing telling me to subscribe to something, before I even know what the something is, because I've never seen the site before.
So I closed it.
I do that a lot. I'll keep doing it. We don't have that many hours on earth to waste on such things.
This one even has a "Hurry! Spots are Limited!!!" infomercial type bullshit call to action. Good grief.
