The Monthly Brew – August 2023 (Recap)

This entry is part 7 of 8 in the series The Monthly Brew

August was rough. One of the reasons for that was the interminability of this particular summer, especially given the impossible and (for the most part) terrible weather that has been occurring in so many places. So far, we’ve gotten off light, here in Albuquerque. One of the others was finding Continue Reading →

Monster Slayer: DMG (Guarana, Eleuthro, Alfalfa)

The Monster Slayer line was born out of the mergence of a handful of things. The first was my tendency to respond to a certain subset of thoughts and needs and problems with “I could make a tea for that.” The second was that a friend had a caffeine problem. Continue Reading →

Fire in the Sky (Organic Smoky Elderberry Herbal Chai)

I love the tea of the month club. This is a thing that is likely painfully clear if you’ve been with me on this tea journey for any length of time. I love curating the selections, I love all the ideas that have been inspired by the surveys, I love Continue Reading →

Face the Day (Green Grey Ginger Jasmine) (8-390)

My notes for where this tea came from are irritatingly sparse. I know it happened in late 2020 – which, admittedly, makes it at least a little understandable that the details may have gotten lost in the ether. I have the name of a tea person. A suggested name for Continue Reading →

The Monthly Brew (May Recap)

This entry is part 4 of 8 in the series The Monthly Brew

As it turns out, my worries back in March that I had set too ambitious a goal for the Soft Reopen were true. This does not change the fact that May ended up feeling rather glorious. Short version of May: I reopened the shop, there were some proper tea reintroductions, Continue Reading →

(Named) Journal 10, Page 480, Teas in Progress

This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Tea Naming

This tea was created because when I am stressed I fall back on the comfortable things as far as taste and texture and sound and… not an uncommon thing, but there are certain pitches the whirring in my brain manages when I start to get overwhelmed that are akin to Continue Reading →

Picard’s Foglifter (Organic Earl Grey Chai)

At some point in May of 2019, a realization struck. I had many chais, but despite the intersection of a love of chai and a fondness for Earl Grey, I hadn’t combined the two. I dug through the tea journals. I went through the piles of tea ideas that hadn’t Continue Reading →

Gift of the Gloaming (Organic Roasted Kukicha, Lapasang Souchong, Lavender)

Gift of the Gloaming’s story began, as many of the tales of my teas do, with a combination of desire and need. I wanted a comforting tea taste, in this case one specifically involving smoke – but I also very desperately needed to relax. As Into the Dark Woods combined Continue Reading →

May 2023 – Standard Tea of the Month Club Choice

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series TotMC (Standard) Chosen Teas

  May’s theme was chosen the moment I decided the Soft Reopen was going to happen on the 6th. May was about reclamation. May was about rediscovery. May was also about being completely overwhelmed by some of my more ambitious choices and high expectations for myself. These things combined, even Continue Reading →