steeping made easy

found this sexy little website with all your tea steeping info and a nifty timer. it looks great and its well layed out.

http://steep.it/

im going to use it next tea time. tell me if you like it and how it works for you guys.

tea appreciation society

if you are needing some good tea ware from pots to infusers to even tshirts here is the the place tea appreciation society

tea blog directory

just stumbled upon this website from a fellow tea twitterer and thought id pass it on this is a great tool for discovering tea and the culture around it. its full of all kinds resources and is really easy to navigate. if you have a tea blog you can leave a comment with you url and they will add it to the directory. you can search alphabetically and by type, they have a section for vendors and other resource directories. so if you have a blog add it here and if you wanna discover more about tea here is a great place to start. multipleinfusions

My top 5 tea sites of 2008

well a year is coming to an end and as it goes its also a time to reflect, i have only had this site going for a couple of months but what a great time its been. i have learned so much; about tea and its community. to all the people who visited my site and to those who have commented thank you i hope you’ve all enjoyed it as much as i have. doing this blog has gotten me to explore so much taste wise and knowledge wise so i thought i would share my top 5  list of websites for tea in 2008. now if i have missed any sites that are worth note comment and leave the url, I’ve only been doing this for a bit so I’m always looking for more and more.

adagio.com my top online store for tea its so slick and easy to use with a great selection of custom teas and a good community review system. follow their advice on my tea picks.

authoritea another tea head that has some great reviews one of my go to places.

yourteaneeds.com a great online store with a huge selection of tea and ware from oolongs to Birch bark.

Lainie sips lainie gives great tea reviews set up in an easy to understand format the descriptions are great and boy does this lady try allot of teas don’t know if i can catch up also follow her on twitter.

steapTV a great vodcast done by Brandice and friends funny as hell and very informative at the same time.

the onion: chrstmas tea kettle

a funny video from the Onion i thought it fit the whole theme, enjoy.

tea swap program

The group over at tea escapade has come up with a pretty neat idea it’s called the co-op tea swap. They’re setting up a mail service that will allow people to sign up to a mailing list and then trade and receive tea samples. Here are their rules:

“Rules & Regs: Each member of the swap must mail 1 tea package (that includes 2 samples) every two weeks, and can expect to receive 1 tea package every two weeks.  Your package has about 10 days to be received; if you do not mail your sample you will not be permitted to participate in the next swap.

You can receive bonus samples from Jessica (Authori+ea) for submitting a short review of your tea(s).  You will receive one additional sample per review (limit two per swap, obviously).  Please include pertinent information including name, brand, etc.

The Co-op Tea Swap is for personal purposes only; not for commercial use.  Solicitation of members is not allowed.  Those who do use this group for solicitation will be removed from the swap.”

This is a good idea and all but I just don’t think its set up that well there is a lot of grey space in this system but I would like to see it work.  Some of my concerns are you don’t really know who your getting the tea from besides a return address, there needs to be some kind of already tasted list or something so that a person doesn’t try the same tea a bunch of times. I would like to see some kind of price system so that you swap teas of the same price range not that one person sends an expensive pu’erh and then the other person sends a regular old herbal blend. Allergies are addressed in the page but not enough and there isn’t enough safety taken into account at all. This seems like a cool idea but I think it’s still not a finished product ill check back on it in awhile to see if they have made any improvements.

yourteaneeds.com review

This is a online store that covers the gambit on all things tea and herbal you can even get barks, you can search by product and price range, you can get teapots warmers and even those weird siphon tea makers. There is also a full write up on brewing methods and time too. They also have a category called “if you dare” which is full of the weird and wonderful from bamboo pain relief to a brain brew with gingko, ginger root and rosehip. There is also a nice little section on making the perfect cup of tea with great tips like using spring water or bottled and not using distilled because distilled lacks the natural minerals needed to unlock the taste. I do not know how necessary that is but it is just neat to know. This site is defiantly a new favourite of mine and I will keep on coming back to it hope you check it out.

yourteaneeds.com (link)

2BAsnob

Found this little site from a friends email and they have a nice tea section so I thought I’d show you all.
2Basnob.com (to be a snob) is a website dedicated to all things snobbish if you will. With sections on: coffee, tea, wine, and beer. The site is basically your 411 for all those topics giving you information on types, brewing information, storing and pairing (when it comes to wines). The tea sections has information on the types of tea from green tea to Oolong, there is a section on grading and harvesting and brewing information.
The site seems to be in repair at the moment with the help of “site build it”, so there isn’t that much interaction at the moment there also doesn’t seem to be an active blog. So as for now the site is a nice beginners guild for tea and a place to go to for some good links it would be nice to see the updated version of it but as it stands this site is kind of dead in the water but stay tuned this guy knows his stuff and once it gets up and running again.

Mate Factor

matefactor.ca is the biggest importer of yerba mate into Canada. the website is where you can order from and search their product selection. the top bar on the right has your account info and shopping cart storage, and the left column has the product selection a quick search and company info. on the right column you have your log-in section and the best seller section, and a section for articles that they publish. their product is organic and fair trade. they only sell their own product and don’t have that large of a selection and the site looks like its 5 years old if not more. but its nice to have a site that has Canadian prices right in front.