My Advice for Would-Be Tea-Sips

By Krista Thom
Contributing Writer

Back when I was going to school at Texas A&M University, we had a special name for our rivals over at TU (known as the University of Texas in the rest of the world). We called them tea-sips, which, I suppose, was meant to imply that they were effeminate and overly dainty.

I was fine with using this term until I studied abroad in England. Due to a lack of proper coffee, I was forced to start drinking tea, and I soon realized that, hey, the stuff’s not bad. When I went back to Texas, I had to admit that I myself had become a tea-sip.

But although I learned to drink tea, I never learned to take it seriously. I would take a tea bag, dunk it in hot water for a few minutes, and drink it when it got cool enough. I didn’t know the difference between black and green tea, or between Earl Grey and English breakfast. And I certainly didn’t mess with any of that loose-leaf stuff.

Then, not too long ago, I took a class on tea from Fargo’s self-styled Tea Lady, Vicky Jo Bogart. Vicky treats her tea like some people treat fine wine. She knew things like how to store tea, and how to know if your tea is fresh.

She gave us a lot of other advice, like how long to steep your tea, and what temperature the water should be. I took her advice when I got home, and sure enough, my cup of tea tasted much better.

After the class, I decided to pass on my knowledge (and to get answers to some new questions that popped into my head). So I contacted Vicky, and got her advice on how to make a perfect cup of tea.

One of the misconceptions she cleared up was the type of drinks that could properly be called tea. Before I took her class, I thought that tea was a generic name for any drink made by pouring hot water over some kind of plant material.

But all real tea is made from a single plant, the bush known as camilia sinensis. Depending on how fully the leaves are oxidized, you can end up with black, oolong, green, yellow, or white tea.

As a general rule of thumb, fully oxidized teas need hotter water, and should be steeped longer.

To prepare black tea, which is fully oxidized, you should use boiling water, and let the tea steep for 3-5 minutes (letting it steep longer will turn your tea bitter).

To prepare green tea, start with water between 160-185⁰F (tip: boil the water first, and then let it cool to the proper temperature), and let the tea steep 2-3 minutes.

For yellow and white teas (the most delicate varieties), use water between 140-160⁰F, and steep for 1.5-2.5 minutes.

In addition to “real” tea, there are also all kinds of herbal infusions and tisanes. These are basically the drinks that I would have called tea before I knew what tea was. Although there’s a lot of variety in this category, this kind of drink should generally be prepared using boiling water, and should steep for 4-10 minutes.

If you’re a casual tea drinker, like I was, you’re probably used to using tea bags. While this is a fine place to start, you need to use caution when picking out your tea. Tea bags are often not as fresh as loose-leaf tea (as a general rule of thumb, tea loses its freshness in six months to a year), and are sometimes of a lower quality.

Tea bags also require slightly different preparation. Because the tea is more finely ground, it doesn’t need to be steeped as long. In general, tea bags should be left in water for no longer than two minutes.

As an easy alternative to tea bags, you can look for something called a tea sachet. Sachets look similar to tea bags, but are shaped like pyramids, and are made of mesh rather than paper. They contain loose leaf tea, and are usually of a slightly higher quality.

If you want to go out on a limb and use real loose leaf tea, you’ll need to get some kind of an infuser. The main thing to remember when picking out an infuser is that tea leaves need plenty of room to expand.

This means that the infusers that come on a chain, or that look like spoons (which were, sadly, the only kinds I knew of) are not the way to go. The best way to make tea is to use a teapot that’s fitted with its own infuser. If you’re in a hurry, or just want one cup, you can use a T-Sac, which is a disposable infuser that’s basically a bigger version of a tea bag.

I asked Vicky what advice she had for beginners – the people who liked drinking tea, but didn’t want to put a lot of time and effort into it right off the bat. She suggested trying out different kinds of tea at a coffee shop, and figuring out what you liked before spending a lot of money on specialty teas and teapots.

An excellent place to start your exploration of tea is Nichole’s Fine Pastry, located on South 8th St in Downtown Fargo. There many kinds of tea on the menu, and they have one of the best assortments of loose-leaf teas in the area. They also sell specialty teapots, timers, infusers, and T-Sacs.

If you’re interested in hearing more about tea straight from the horse’s mouth, you can join Vicky at her class at the West Fargo Library this Thursday at 7 pm. She also hosts public and private tea events, and can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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If You Go

What: Tea 101
Where: West Fargo Library
When: Thurs Nov 18, 7pm
Info: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)