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| By Melanie Pinola The Coffee Lover's Guide to Tea
Why You Should Be Drinking Tea
On the flip side, a great many more studies have attributed health benefits to tea, from reducing cancer risk to preventing obesity, and very few have proven negative tea-drinking effects (you can see a comparison of these two drinks' health benefits in this infographic.)
Aside from the concentration of caffeine in a cup of coffee versus tea, there's a difference in the way the caffeine in tea affects you compared to the caffeine in coffee (much like caffeine's effects vary depending on genetics and other factors). One source, citing a coffee and tea industry publication, says that the other chemical compounds in coffee and tea—besides caffeine—can either enhance (in coffee's case) or mute (in tea's case) the effects of caffeine. The beneficial antioxidants, polyphenols, in tea may make the body absorb caffeine differently, over a longer period of time. So, while you might have to stop drinking coffee by noon to avoid sleep problems, you probably can go on drinking tea the rest of the day with no ill effects. You'll never get bored: Last but not least, tea is an exquisite and varied drink, ranging from the very subtle white teas to unique flavored teas to more astringent black teas. If you enjoy experimenting with different coffee varietals' tastes—pitting the acidic Guatemalan coffee beans against smoother and fuller-bodied Sumatra coffee—tea can provide you that wide world of exploration too... and then some. What Teas To Drink?Black teas in general may be better suited for coffee lovers because they have a stronger taste, but here are some more specific suggestions for teas that could suit your palate:
Tea made from yerba mate, while not technically tea because it's made from a plant other than Camellia sinensis, has a high caffeine concentration, perhaps even more than coffee, as well as potential antioxidant and anti-inflammatory health benefits. Photo by Andrew.
Earl Grey is a wildly popular and unique-tasting tea scented with the oil of bergamot. In general, Earl Grey teas are mild-flavored and have a delicate scent, yet are at the same time quite distinctive. Likewise, Lapsang Souchong is a love-it-or-hate-it sort of tea. It tastes like smoke (and is scented and flavored with smoke). The tarry taste of this "manly" and dark tea may be an option for you if you think tea is too weak-tasting compared to coffee. If you like nutty coffees like some Guatemalan coffees or nut-flavored coffees (e.g., hazelnut coffee), you might enjoy Genmaicha, a Japanese green tea that adds roasted brown rice to the infusion for a stronger flavor often described as "popcorn-like." Photo by Robin.
How to Make Great TeaThe basics of how to make a better cup of coffee also apply to tea: freshness, water quality, temperature, and timing. Freshness: Just as whole coffee beans that have been stored in a cool, dark place are best for making coffee, great tea should be stored as whole leaves (not grind into tea bags). The freshest, better quality teas are sold as whole leaf teas rather than crushed in tea bags. Tea can last quite a bit longer than coffee when stored properly—as much as two years if not exposed to air, light, odor, heat or moisture; roasted coffee, by comparison, is best used within one to two weeks. Water quality: Since both coffee and tea consist primarily (more than 90%) of water, the quality of the water used to make these drinks is paramount. Start with fresh, cold water (not previously boiled or flat water), preferably filtered or bottled. Temperature: Here's where coffee and tea differ. The Specialty Coffee Association of America recommends a water temperature of 195 to 205 degrees F for coffee—just before boiling. For tea, the temperature depends on your particular varietal—white, green, oolong, black, or herbal or rooibos teas. Black teas should be brewed just after boiling, while more delicate white and green teas should be brewed in temperatures below that of coffee (as low as 170 degrees F). In Pursuit of Tea has a basic brewing guide with temperatures for different teas, but you'll want to defer to your tea dealer for the recommended time for your specific teas. Timing: Depending on your method of brewing coffee, it takes about 3-6 minutes to brew. Steeping tea is pretty much the same—it depends on the type of tea you're brewing. Some oolong teas should be brewed 7 minutes and can even be re-steeped, while more delicate teas like white teas will be brewed in as few as 3 minutes. Check the brew time for your specific tea; again, this basic brewing guide will get you started, but don't be afraid to experiment. Tools of the Tea TradeYou can use a French press or perhaps even an AeroPress to brew tea, but part of the pleasure of tea is the whole tea-making ritual. Consider investing in a nice teapot that reflects your sensibilities—English porcelain, Japanese cast iron, modern glass, etc.—to upgrade your tea experience. Besides a pot to steep the tea in and some method of straining the tea leaves (usually built into the teapot), you really don't need much. A water kettle for boiling water, some means of timing the tea as it steeps (e.g., one of these top Windows timer applications), and the container are pretty much all you need. Additional resourcesThere are a great many more types of teas, so your best bet is to explore. Here are some additional resources for exploring the world of tea:
Have any other tea tips or resources? Share them with us in the comments. You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter. More Fun with Caffeinated Beverages
| June 16th, 2011 Top Stories
|
| By Adrian Chen Working at the Apple Store: Tales from the Inside
After the Wall Street Journal published an account of Apple's retail culture that was as sterile and cheery as Apple Stores themselves, we asked insiders to send us more colorful details about hawking Steve Jobs' pricey chunks of metal. And Apple Store employees had some tales to tell. Here's a selection. Apple employees are banned from saying "unfortunately" when delivering bad news to a customer, urged instead to replace it with the more positive "as it turns out." And management apparently takes the ban seriously: One former Apple employee tells us that his coworker was put under a 90-day probationary period because he said "unfortunately" too much at the Genius Bar. As it turns out, "unfortunately" is just one of a number of "stop words" that are not supposed to pass an Apple Store employee's lips. One Apple Store employee, who was fired in 2009 after two years, writes:
Also, problems aren't "problems"—they're "issues." The linguistic whitewashing extends to relations between management and employees. One former employee who worked at an Apple store in New York City last summer says:
But even when faced with vomit-soaked iPhones and cockroach-infected iMacs (both of which one Genius says he dealt with), Apple Geniuses must please the customer above all, or face the dreaded "detractor". The same employee writes:
Trash-talking problem customers in the break room is a cherished retail tradition. But if Apple Store employees complain to their coworkers, they might get ratted out. "Employees are given no outlet to vent about such a high stress job," writes a former employee who was just fired (for planking!):
Not everyone who emailed us had horror stories to share. Writes one current, happy Apple Store employee:
Based on what we heard, the Apple Store seems like a great place to work if you are capable of stowing your ill will, cynicism, frustration and impatience—i.e. humanity—into a little box at the start of each work day and fawn over a stream of idiotic customers without complaint. No wonder people like shopping at the Apple Store so much. [Photos via Getty] 
| June 16th, 2011 Top Stories |
Coffee 
Tea's health benefits: Although coffee has been linked to some health benefits such as 
Alertness without the caffeine crash: Tea can provide you with that alertness that coffee is known for—without the later caffeine slump or drop. Both drinks contain caffeine, but they vary in their amounts of caffeine (in general, coffee has more caffeine per cup than tea, but this can differ by tea varietal. In The Book of Coffee and Tea, Joel, David, and Karl Schapira say that the extraction of coffee is nearly complete in the brewing of coffee, whereas a five-minute infusion of tea extracts only three-quarters of the caffeine).
For bright teas to wake you up: Try some of the so-called "breakfast teas" like English Breakfast or Irish Breakfast. These are a blend of strong-tasting black teas, though there's no consensus between one tea provider or another on what a breakfast blend consists of. Many Irish Breakfast teas use Assam tea leaves (tea from the Assam district in India), which produces a tea that is "pungent, malty tasting, and full-bodied and looks unusually dark," according to James Norwood Pratt's Tea Lover's Treasury. The breakfast tea may make a nice alternative if you drink coffee for it's eye-opening qualities.
For distinctive flavors: No tea will replace the way coffee tastes, but if you want something more unusual and stronger than, say, the Lipton variety, consider Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, or Genmachai.
For balanced, healthy teas: Perhaps you don't want a tea that matches coffee in its strong flavor, but is just a good plain tea. If you like the tea you usually get at Chinese restaurants, try Oolong tea, a cross between lighter-flavored green and stronger black teas. Oolong has been called the "champagne of teas" and is characteristically a smooth, all-around refreshing tea. Photo by 
For enjoying the ritual of the brew: If you enjoy the coffee-making process—e.g., brewing in a French press and watching the coffee grinds bloom—consider flowering teas. Flowering teas are hand-picked and hand-sewn tea leaves that unfurl and look like a blooming flower when brewed. They emphasize the art of making tea and the enjoyment of tea beyond just taste. Photo by 
What Caffeine Actually Does to Your Brain
Dropping the Drip: How to Get Started Making Better Coffee
![Thrutu Eliminates the "Where Are You?" By Sharing Your Location, Photos and Sketches During Phone Calls](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t5apyg4EyrQ37fJ2ledgHNdLZoKv7ANxVhnKJWt_O8BvUJmvcW3rEPo3qtYDT72QLw8EN--o9UWvlx6i2_3YHiVnZ-GmMSyxuvq5lwI099jAm5U5LqtNN1YhZgIu7ZVnMBRxWJOm_0UVwH1rzC80GeTF2-Pg=s0-d "Thrutu Eliminates the "Where Are You?" By Sharing Your Location, Photos and Sketches During Phone Calls")
Almost every current or ex-employee who emailed us they were worried about blowback from a secrecy-obsessed Apple and wanted to remain anonymous. (Many mentioned still-active Non-Disclosure Agreements.) According to a number of employees, Apple employees a team to scour Apple-related message boards and websites for signs of any current or former employees gossiping. One referred, fearfully, to Apple's "team of lawyers and data miners"; another called them "forensic internetters." It's all very Church of Scientology.
