Tag Archives: maplewood tea

Summer at the Tea Shop

July 4, 2024 Admin (kateri) Leave a comment

If you’ve been visiting us regularly you know we’ve added quite a few teas and new tea wares in the past year or so. Being able to open the shop floor up has improved cash flow and provided the funds to bring in more of what I hope you want to see and Share. Several new teas this year are a result of Customer Requests – Peaches and Cream, Buckingham Palace Garden Party, a Green tea Chai (custom blend), Earl Grey Crème (hitting the racks next week), to mention a few.

The celebration of our country’s birth seems a fitting time to announce that we NOW Have USA Grown Tea IN The Shop, and on the website, from Great Mississippi Tea Company. We are Very excited to finally be able to Share This with You.

Great Mississippi Tea Company (GMTC) planted their first tea bushes about the time we were opening in Maplewood and Kateri has been following their progress.

It takes at least 5 years to be able to harvest enough leaf to be commercially viable, and they have been adding tea bushes and learning and growing their farm, and garnering awards at tea competitions over all this time. The teas are sustainably grown without the use of pesticides or fungicides. GMTC is at the forefront of encouraging and helping to educate other farms and individuals who want to grow tea in the U.S.

I missed out on wholesale purchasing last year – because they have only what they can harvest and process in a given year. The 4 options of teas you can purchase from us right now is new 2024 harvest, made into a black, green, oolong, AND a yellow tea.

Good Yellow tea is hard to find outside of China – and truthfully, I have not yet tasted it and I am still learning about how it is made and what makes it different. The teas just arrived Wednesday. We will brew some up for sampling this Saturday, and are looking forward to learning more about it along with you!

I brought in only 1oz packages to start, as an introduction. Pricing is comparable to other of our farm direct, hand-crafted teas. Give us a week or so and we will be breaking down 1 or 2 packages into our usual Trial Size offerings for those of you on a budget, because Everyone should have an opportuni-tea to enjoy Good, Real tea.

Visit the Comings & Goings page for more New tea info

We’ve also come up with two more specialty matcha flavors – Chocolate Mint, or Ginger. We originated these as a latte, and they take a few minutes to prepare (like our Butter Beer, if you remember that one). For the freshest, tastiest experience we brew everything to order.

Thank you for Being Wonderful and Supportive of your Local Tea Shop. It means the World to Us.

Kateri + Lori and PJ

General, Tea Info, Value Shopping

Tiniest Tea Shop!

November 26, 2023 Admin (kateri) Leave a comment

This phrase just occurred to me when I was taking photos to update our Google listing. A kind shopper posted photos of our pre-Covid layout, back when you could really walk around in the shop.

I realized that is misleading to new folks and just uploaded some new inside shots yesterday.

Here they are too:

We may be St Louis’ Tiniest Tea Shop, but Kateri works hard to curate the Best selection of teas.

Somewhere between 100-125 teas available at any given time. We purchase in relatively small quantities to keep our stock the freshest available to us for you.

Offering luxury and hand-crafted teas in small sizes to make them affordable for everyone.

2024 Goal – to find more Farm-Direct teas, helping tea farmers and tea workers to live above the poverty level; and find you some spectacular teas along the way.

In case you did not already know:

you can bring your own cup to get $1 off To-Go drinks.
we will fill your containers at a lower per ounce price; or you can get teas in brown paper bags and fill your own containers at home [note: if you order online and get 8oz or more, select the cheapest available price and tell us in the notes to pack in paper bags].
Tea tins and jars are available for purchase as well

Come see our Tiniest Christmas Tree – taking up the bare minimum of extra space!
[Tree sculpture created by Tevlin, a local artist friend of Kateri’s daughter]

General

Too much black tea?

March 11, 2021 Admin (kateri)

If you are like me, black tea is your primary Go-To beverage. Even so, sometimes my stomach says “too much” – needing something less acidic, more alkaline.

All tea has various health benefits, that vary due to harvesting and processing – it is a plant, after all. Green tea, being dried more quickly after harvest, has been most researched and found to have many more benefits. I can feel the difference in my stomach and in my body when I drink more (properly brewed) green tea.

It can be a challenge to drink more when the palate is more used to black. Black tea is more widely consumed in this country. The trick for me, is to blend them.

For a 16oz mug of tea, use 1 teaspoon black of choice, and 1 teaspoon of green (or adjust the ratio to suit your taste). Try starting with a Darjeeling or Assam green, or our Decaf Green (lower your caffeine intake at the same time). Use the same boiling water as for black (not a rolling boil though) and steep it for no more than 3 minutes, maybe even a little less. If using any of our teas, you will definitely be able to get a 2nd steep out of your cup (maybe even a third).

It will still have enough of the black tea flavor to satisfy your palate, but will have less acidity. You may even be able to gradually shift it so that you are drinking more green in your cup than black. Note: If you do not like bitter tea, you usually cannot leave green tea to steep more than 3 or 4 minutes (even on 2nd or 3rd steeps). There are some green teas that are more forgiving. You will have to experiment to find them. [Our Baozhong Green, that is processed as an Oolong, and our new Mao Jian are both forgiving of forgetfulness]

Traveling Tea