IngenuiTEA Teapot

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The IngenuiTEA Teapot is an ingenious little 16oz teapot. Simply brew your tea for your preferred amount of time then rest the pot over your mug - the spring-loaded valve will empty the tea into your mug, but leave the leaves behind. Just rinse for next time!

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Murchie’s under new ownership

Related entries in Coffee news, Tea, Vancouver coffee

Vancouver coffee and tea chain Murchie’s is under new ownership by a Victoria family, under management of Belmont Management.

Murchie’s is a 113-year-old Vancouver landmark with five metro Vancouver stores and one Victoria store. The chain was facing bankruptcy.

The new managing director, Grant Kuebler, thinks marketing lies at the root of the issue - a good product that has gone unmarketed. Though the name may be well known, it is not top-of-mind in product purchase decisions.

What will this change bring? More locations, modernization (behind-the-scenes and up front), and broader marketing.

"So we see an opportunity there, and within a year our goal is to get a blueprint in place that will allow us to expand."

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Zarafina Tea Maker

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The Zarafina Tea Maker is a controlled -tea envornment. It will steep your tea to exacty the righ temperature - select loose or bag, strong medium or mild, and the type of tea, and it will steep then dispense up to 16oz of tea. Sleek looking.

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Penguin Teaboy

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Feeling lonely working at home? Well, toss a handy friend into your routine! This cute Penguin Teaboy will time your tea dunk, and remove your bag when your tea is steeped:

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Urban Tea Merchant turns 3

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The Urban Tea Merchant is celebrating 3 years in Vancouver. Here are the details of an event they are holding to celebrate:

Please join us on Sunday October 14th for free birthday cake and birthday tea.

We are very pleased to have Angela Cooper perform Fon Saaw Mai Akkaporn - a traditional Thai dance at both 1:00pm and 3:00pm. This would be a perfect time to reserve your Afternoon Tea or Tea Ritual.

Please call (604) 926-3392 for reservations.

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Teavanna Auto Tea

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Teavana Auto Tea is a32oz loose leaf tea system that claims to be the most "scientifically correct" way for automatic tea brewing. The tea is brewed then stored in the warming pot, and can be brewed from 2-12 minutes.

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Valentine’s for Coffee & Tea Lovers

Related entries in Accessories, Tea

I’ve stumbled across some great gifts for Coffee Lovers that are Valentine’s inspired - not just fun coffee gifts, but fun and lovable coffee gifts.

  1. Heart Shaped Mug (Hallmark)
  2. Heart Shaped Cup & Saucer Set (Target)
  3. Heart Coffee Scoop (Uncommon Goods)
  4. Heart Tea Strainer (Uncommon Goods)
  5. Heart Tea Infuser (Amazon)

Inspiration: slashfood ; Tags: , , , , , ,

Ceramic for Mix by Anna Gram

Related entries in Accessories, Tea

The Ceramic for Mix is a design concept to eliminate the need for a spoon in hot drinks like tea or coffee.

The ceramic ball will stir your tea and makes a beautiful ringing sound as it goes around the glass. No need to remove the ball, it is encased in the ring of the glass and will not come out when you tip the glass to sip.

"Function creates an new gestural and aesthetic appeal."

Via Josh Spear

Sorapot Teapot

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The Sorapot is a teapot designed by Joey Roth to be for white and green teas, which are very heat sensitive.

The stainless steel arch acts as a large heatsink that quickly dissipates the water’s heat as the tea steeps, preventing the bitterness that comes from oversteeping in too-hot water. The tea is poured at a comfortably warm drinking temperature after a few minutes of steeping.

The arch’s natural flexibility allows it to act as a clamp that creates a watertight seal at either end of the
central glass tube. This clamping action is controlled by the ball strung on the wire that runs under the tube.
When the ball is in the upper position it sits in a circular cut in the arch and holds the wire tight, clamping
the arch around the tube. When the ball moves down its distance to the front of the arch is decreased just
enough to release the tension on the wire, allowing the tube to be removed for cleaning.

Although this is a concept design piece, I hope it gets picked up as a product by a company such as Alessi that appreciates modern design.

Via cribcandy

Canadian Coffee & Tea Expo

Related entries in Coffee news, Tea

This weekend is the Canadian Coffee & Tea Expo in Vancouver. September 24-25 at the Vancouver Convention Centre, over 80 exhibitors will get together to display goods, classes will be held, cuppings, and the crown jewel - the Canadian National Barista Championship.

We will be attending on Monday, hopefully to witness the final round of the barista championship, which is being held between 1-4.

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TeaChef: tea recipe community

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Jenn sent us an email to let us know about TeaChef, which describes itself as "a community of people who are passionate about two things: cooking and tea". You register on the website and they send you samples of various teas for you to try and create recipes that use them. Then every month you submit recipes based on the featured tea and people vote for the best one.

I tried to request the tea sampler, but the form looks very US specific and I cannot find any information about international entries in the website. But you can still look at all the recipes and some of them look pretty interesting. Jenn’s recipe this month is for Smoky BLTea Crisps.

I’ve never actually tried any teas from Adagio Teas, the company behind TeaChef. If you have, please leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

Steeps Tea

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This past weekend we popped in to Steeps Tea for the first time. We’ve been meaning to go for a long time, since we’ve seen their tea around town and heard amazing things. Well, we weren’t let down. With a variety of 190 teas, we had a lot to choose from!

All the teas are loose leaf and of amazing quality. If you look at the fruity teas, for example, you don’t just have great smelling tea, you can actually see bits of dried fruit, or dried flowers as the case may be.

It was hard to choose a tea. In the end I tried a black tea with a kind of smoky flavour, and Ianiv had a green tea. I totally forget which ones, sorry! We did come home with a new tea, a Jasmine tea. Very fragrant and yummy.

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The teahouse is really eclectic. With modern furniture mixed in with antiques and a really nice atmosphere, it’s a great place to go and relax. I loved that you got to pick your own teacup. Very reminiscent of going to see my Oma.

The tea market

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Apparently, the tea market has been booming. Population growth aside, the numbers are going up at a startling rate. Does this have something to do with the new trends of coffee shops as a place to work, meet or hang out? Who knows.

Prepared for the Intergovernmental Group on Tea meeting in Bali (July 20-22, 2005):

1990 US tea market valued at 1.84 billion

2003 US tea market valued at $5.4 billion

Tea imports to the US went up 5.3% to 99,000 tons in 2004.

More…

Black Tea reduces cavities

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So, black tea could reduce cavities. The study focused on the use of black tea for mouth rinsings, but the same effect could be expected from simply drinking the tea. The recommended tea is a Ceylon or Orange Pekoe - loose leaf, of course.

A recent Chicago College of Dentistry study showed that people who rinsed their mouths with black tea multiple times a day had less plaque buildup than those who rinsed with water. “Polyphenols in tea suppress the bacterial enzyme that triggers plaque accumulation,” says Christine D. Wu, Ph.D., the lead study author. “Drinking tea a few times a day could have the same effect.”…

Medical research has shown that drinking black tea offers protection against heart disease and blood-vessel disease, some types of cancer, and also reduces bacterial infections. New studies show black tea contains compounds known as theaflavins and thearubigens, which offer health benefits originally attributed solely to green tea.

Consider this more traditional healthy Ceylon Tea as a relaxing daily treat that offers healthy qualities without the cavity-causing sweetener of the frozen blended drinks at coffee houses. Black tea is especially enjoyable with the available Muggatea tea mug sold by Tastes Of The World.

More…

Tea Bag Timing Device

Related entries in Tea

I may love my coffee, but I actually am a really huge fan of tea as well. Tend to drink my tea in the afternoon or sometimes an hour or so before bed to relax - yes, even a caffeinated tea relaxes me. Always has.

Anyway, I am pretty much a lazy steeper. Unless Ianiv is doing my tea (and he uses a timer) I just leave the darn teabag in there. Can’t be bothered to take it out.

Well, this product is made for people like me. Great for the perfect cup of tea! The Tea Bag Timer, for just over $50, can make a great brew of tea cause it does all the work for you. Plus, since you control the time, you can steep it to your perfect level, or that recommended for the tea vs. water amount you are using!

The tea bag timer steeps the tea bag (or included tea ball) into the cup for the time you specify. Just set the timer for between 2 and 20 minutes, depending on your preference. When the time is up, the stainless steel arm lifts the tea bag up and rings a bell letting you know your perfectly brewed cup of tea is ready.

The tea bag timer operates with a spring mechanism and therefore requires no batteries.

tea_bag_timer Available here

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