Newbie (very) question

I did send you a private e-mail did you get it?

Alex.

"NoWayJosé!" rose quietly and spake the following:

That would, in fact, depend upon the individual.

I have friends who cannot consume ANY concentrated caffeine during the day

- even in chocolate - and get a good night's sleep. And it doesn't matter when in the day they consume it. If your system gets "out of whack" by caffeine, it's not necessarily going to be "in whack" by the time you want to sleep.

Alex Chaihorsky rose quietly and spake the following:

The owner of my LTS recommends a first "mini-steep" with just enough water to cover the leaves. This is then poured off after 30 seconds and a regular steep is done.

My experience is that this effectively removes the bulk of the water-soluble caffeine while leaving enough of the "residuals" so as not ot affect flavor.

fLameDogg rose quietly and spake the following:

I was going to suggest rooibos, but wanted to read through the whole thread first. SO let me second this recommendation.

An added advantage ot rooibos is that it also takes "adulteration" very nicely. My LTS sells several different flavored versions of rooibos that are absolutely delicious. In fact, the wife and I are in the habit of drinking only rooibos after 5:00PM (caffeine avoidance).

And we're currently out, so I'd darned well better get to the shop today. :)

Yo :-). I can't drink coffee or caffeinated sodas at all. I can drink tea up until noon, then I switch to rooibos. On that thread, I purchase my favorite rooibos chai at

One of my children was so sensitive to caffeine I couldn't eat a single piece of chocolate during the first 9 months I was nursing her. That is the single greatest sacrifice I have made as a parent :-). Interestingly, as a teenager she now drinks at least two cups of strong perked (drip is too weak for her) coffee a day.

Karen R.

The numbers are off the top of my head. There are plenty of references for caffeine levels in tea because the chemical analysis is understood. The physiology of caffeine absorption from tea is different than coffee. We do have a biochemist in the group so maybe he has more scientific sources. I'm of the British persuasion where the first cup is always the best. The British tea culture is very underestimated. If you toss the first cup for the caffeine you also loose taste. There was an earlier post of leaching times versus water temperature. I make sun tea at ambient summer temperature which taste different than brewing refrigerator tea. The sun tea leaves still look fresh after a 1/2 day soak. So I think washing doesn't remove any essential tea properties including caffeine. I've drank tea with hot tap water and no matter what you need the kettle and boiling water. I'd say the minimum temperature for brewing tea 150F but I split the difference and always boil no matter what. If need be you can moderate the temperatures after the kettle. I always read every post in the group and so welcome. I'm interested in posts about tea as seen in other cultures.

Jim

I'd say your measurements maybe on brisk side. I probably use 5g in my 24 oz pot. I've never weighed what goes in my pot. I use the test of time. What taste good too you is all that matters. I'm in a bulk herbal store the other day and the minimum purchase 1/2 oz. I noticed the oz scale was graduated by the tenth. So I switched to the gram scale for a more precise measurement. I noticed the checkout weight was oz so I made sure to be a gram under the next graduated tenth. Who says metrics don't pay. I'm more sensitive to oz and gram since I started buying from my local tea shoppe. An oz here or some grams there don't matter when you buy commercial teas. But it sure does when that is the basic unit of cost for estate teas. So for really expensive teas pay by the gram and not oz.

Jim

snipped because nothing bores me more than me

Hello there Alex. We seem to have something in common besides liking tea. I grew up in Houston where my father and cousin were bigshots in the oil exploration business. I was educated in geology at UT (oil, not gold). Also, though this is a stretch, I'm of Russian extraction. But I'm assuming that "Chaihorsky" is Russian. And that it isn't a pseudonym, which, if it were, would be an appropriate one for this newsgroup.

Yes, I would like to know of a teahouse in Houston because I still visit there, but I doubt I will find one. It's very un-Texan. Where would you put the mechanical bull?. But I agree with your love-hate relation with the Texas mindset. On one hand there's the sight of gangs of drunks wandering around College Station saying they were going to "kick Oklahoma's ass" [in football]; on the other there's the mentality that when something needs doing, for you or someone else, you get off your butt at dawn and go out and work until it's done. Getting seriously off topic here, I once was chased down by a good-old-boy in a pickup truck at gunpoint (actually, he was driving and his wife was holding the gun) who considered me to be trespassing on his ranch. I was, I suppose: I was attempting to knock on the door to get permission to take a water sample for a geologic survey but his half-dozen snarling dogs threatened to rip various extremities off me when I drove up. I valued those extremities, so I drove off. So there he was forcing my Pinto off the road with his pickup, wife and gun. When he found out what I was up to he: a), showed me to his well; b), invited me in for lunch; and c), was under my car fixing a sagging muffler when I returned with my sample.

His wife turned out to be a (well-armed) local science teacher. He was a multi-millionaire scion of a family which helped to found Houston.

Now would a Vanderbilt fix your muffler?

Best,

Rick.

In article you wrote

Exactly! BTW my last name is a very funny one - its Azeri in it roots (Chaihor-Khan) and means the "Tea-adoring Khan", no less. My fathers ancestors were Russian aristocrats of Moslem descent and my grand-granddad was quite a liberal, so Tzar Niklas The First sent him to exile to Poland together with his liberal aristocratic friends Khans of Shemakha and Baku. They got very westernized there and came back with Polish-Russian endings attached to their names. I was born in Russia two weeks after Stalin's death and came to this country in 1987 when i was

1. So if you need any help shouting Russian obscenities at Yewston billioners next time - gimme a buzz. I am also thinking of going there to get some funding for my biotech company to take my stuff through FDA, and the Bay Area VCs make me throw up. I'd rather lose with a Texan than win with one of these whimps. I prefer to be shot by a drunken friend than to be bored to death by these accountants. What can be better than to be shot by a woman science teacher defending her property rights?

Do not bother trying to find teahouse in Yewston. But try some good Russian restorants there, especially with Caucasis cuisine (Georgian or Azeri, Armenians are coffee drinkers) and tell them you want good, loose Indian tea, you just may get a very good one. Russians are absolutely crazy about good tea and Russian web sites are among the best on well-collected tea information. Moscow tea clubs are beyond anything my tea-loving friends from Europe ever seen anywhere except Paris. I cannot testify - I have not been in Russia for almost 18 years But hey, if you are in Reno - just let me know :)

Cheers,

Alex. .

And who wouldn't agree with you on this one?!?!

Alex.

BTW, it paid in our family to be tea-lovers ("Chaihor"). My Dad who was one of the "fathers" of Russian atomic bomb at the time when almost nothing was known about the physiological effects of radiation had it so bad that he had real burns time to time from radioactivity and he has fine crescents of clouds on the lower part of his eyes due to alpha irradiation. Despite that and his age (85) he takes almost no medications and runs a mile every day. All his life he was drinking 12 cups of strong Ceylon or Indian tea brewed "Azeri style" - boiling water added to tea and the tea is heated slowly just to the point of boiling (never boiling). All my attempts to introduce him to green teas or oolongs were futile. In his family people lived to be 110 - 115 years old. Caffeine? - Go figure...

Alex.

It might be the music, not the tea. I really like Azeri music a lot, having been in North west Iran and having listened to the music on the radio. Beyond the little glasses and sugar held between the teeth, would you describe the Azeri style.

Michael

Alex Chaihorskykq%%c.17662$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com9/9/04

Well, I lived all my life before I left the country in what is now St. Petersburg, but visited Baku several times and was in army there for 2 years. The traditional drink in Caucasus is as follows - Georgians - wine, wine, wine, Azeris - tea, tea, tea, Armenians - coffee, coffee, coffee. Local Russians - all of the above. Funny thing - Turks, who are linguistically and genetically almost indistinguishable from Azeris are not tea-drinkers, but rather coffee ones. Azeris drink strong black tea closer to Assam than Darjeeling. They drink it from small glasses with "waists" - armuddi, made of glass or crystal. The absolute best brewing method is usually a secret of a chaihana - a tea house where people literally spend their lives (more men, but some women come there too, however it was never popular). Some chaihanas use house blends, some sieve out broken teas. Most Aseris would agree that whatever you do, you just can't have as good cup of tea at home as in chaihanas. Lemon can be used with tea and sugar - they bite small amounts of sugar and wash it down with tea, never putting sugar into tea. Some small sweet baked treats may also be served. My favorite is Azeri baklava which is very different from what you an can buy in the States. It is a multilayer (up to

Alex.

Which brand do you use if you do not mind me asking?

Alex.

Here's where I get stoned to death by the hardcore tea folks here, lol! Celestial Seasonings has always been good for me.

I think someplace in the group Charter there is a clause "Mentioning of the CS, let alone buying from them makes the offender an "enemy combatant" and exclude her ( we cannot even imagine it to be "him" ) from the subjects of the US Constitution, as was intended, indeed, by the Framers.

:)

Alex.

I also go in for their Madagascar Vanilla Red. :p

It took me awhile although I never used caps.

Jim

LOL! I got it right off. Over in the rec.crafts.beads newsgroup, we use LBS very often, so my brain just put the topic from this playground in the B's place:)