Leaves versus beans

@Connect The DotsJanuary 27th, 07:34

Very nice article. Yunnan is blessed with wide variety of climates from sub tropical to northern plateau, with vegetation and wild animals to match. Also, some 30 out of 56 ethnic minorities live here, with rich cultural and traditions.

About Coffee, tea or me, don’t say the Chinese copied your idea. I have been drinking Coffee+Tea for years.

I used to love Pu’er tea until they bubbled its price to obscene sky high.

My way of drinking Pu’er is to bake the tea leafs dry (chips off from the tea cake or tea brick) for a few minutes (electric won’t do, best to use little clay pot furnace fired with wood charcoals) and tea it with hot water (about 90 deg C, never boiling water). Unlike many other types of Chinese tea, or even popular Cantonese “Ge Bo” (Pu’er with chrysanthemum) the quality of water is not that important because the heavy taste of Pu’er. The tea is served after the 3rd or 4th soaking.

But wait, don’t throw away the tea of first soaking from Pu’er, they go great with coffee, particularly of beans with lower caffeine content (say 1-2 %).

For those who are burned out with sour dough and nutty flavored Starbuck coffee, Pu’er gives Coffee+Tea a soul cleansing aroma and a new lease of red blush on the brew. With a cup like that in your hand, who cares if you made to the top dog or top dragon in your world.

PS: If you don’t have ready access, as a substitute "Olong" tea will do to your coffee+Tea, but here the quality of water is becoming more important for the coffee+tea making.

Million dollar idea that will beat Starbucks:

Hybrid hot beverage with twice the taste, twice the caffeine and half of the volume.

Coffee-Tea. Or Cofftea.

Coffee brewed with tea steeped water. Or put a tea bag in your Americano.

Double the price and half the calories. Stimulating and anti oxidants.
Complex flavors that need a Phd in enology to dissect.
The drink for distracted multitaskers.
No different than caffeinated energy drinks with alcohol.

More money for the farmers. It does not matter the cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mices.

"A family with a hectare of coffee can earn more than $10,000 a year, triple the amount for tea"

What a pity. I understand tea is better for you. Stress-relieving, anti-microbail, free-radical munching, anti-carcinogenic etc etc etc. Especially when you consider the fat and sugar that gets poured into coffee by the chains.

Pu'er tea was once a bubble, Coffee beans seems to be a more sustainable incomes, since they are in need worldwide.

And look into purchasing shares of tea companies. If the supply of tea goes down, the price will rise.

Our western merchants have always been bad influence in china since trade began.....Pu'er is why purer why corrupt it with starbucks...

Coffee is the next big thing in China. Time to look into Starbucks shares. Am also looking forward to a Yunnan capsule arriving at the local Nespresso Boutique.

Eventually all those heavy drinkers of Puer like the Tibetan, Mongolian etc. who depend on the tea for vitamin C in their butter milk will have to fork up.

Admittedly, planting coffee now appears to be able to enrich the incomes not just to those planters. Also, local authority is benefited from such a move. But maybe it will be a pity if indigenous planters give up to plant Pu'er Tea due to less incomes when contrasted with the earnings of coffee beans. Pu'er, as the place famous for its teas, needs to keep its origins to a large extent, whereas coffee planting industry merely plays its role of avocation of which the purpose is to colour natives' diversity of livelihood.