Steep It Loose — WHOLE LEAF TEA

For those of us who live in Boulder, having one of our tea houses host the Rocky Mountain Tea Festival seems pretty normal and self evident. For those of you who don’t, I’ll explain why we wouldn’t be surprised about having this event in our hometown. Boulder is known for its outdoorsy, health conscious, green…

I’m intrigued… as a huge fan of modern architecture and tea. And as an admittedly biased Japanophile, with a movie collection of anime (favorites being Cowboy Bebop, all the Hayao Miyazaki films with Princess Mononoke at the top, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, and classics like Grave of the Fireflies and Akira), lots of…

Growing up, I was the always the cool kid. Getting friends to come over to play wasn’t a difficult task considering I had all the toys in the world. I was too young to realize why? Looking back on my childhood I can honestly say that I was very fortunate but not because of my toy collection, it was because of the man who created those toys. He taught me how to give, how to create and left me with an entrepreneurial spirit that intensifies daily. Although I didn’t know it at the time, he gave me many gifts besides...

Rinsing or washing your tealeaves doesn’t have to be an exact science but I do think that it’s an important process that’s worth taking.The rinsing technique is most commonly used in gongfu tea preparation as a means to cleanse and purify the steeping vessel as well as the leaf before starting the actual infusion of…