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I'm a big big fan of tea made from the Yaupon Holly. If you're not familiar
with it, it's a caffeinated plant native to North America.
Yaupon tea, Geminipedia, courtesy of gemi.dev
However, I'm going to level with you all; every single online resource about
yaupon tea is more about *what* it is, rather than some of the finer aspects
of enjoying it.
Here, I'm going to cut straight to the chase and talk about some of my
opinions and observations after years of drinking it. Here there be
opinions on brand, cut size, roasting level and brewing technique.
With that said, let's get into it.
In the world of commercially-available yaupon tea, there are really two big
names in the market - Yaupon Brothers out of Florida, and Catspring Yaupon
out of Texas.
Yaupon Brothers has some really good things going for it. For one thing,
it's the only brand I know of that you can reliably get on the shelves in,
like, wholefoods. Possibly because they have a good amazon presence, and
Whole Foods is owned by The Big Bezos himself.
Yaupon Brothers, last I checked, primarily gets their leaves through
foraging in the woods near their base in Florida. It's been a while since
I checked on that though.
Yaupon Brothers tends to cut the yaupon leaves into small square shapes.
This square cut makes their leaves work well in tea bags, and may lead to a
fuller extraction when brewing in theory. I find that the leaf cut is a
little too small for my taste, however, as some tea balls have a mesh size
juuuust big enough to result in leaves in my mouth when drinking. I also
have had bad experiences with gritty leaf dust in my tea, though that was a
year or two ago. They may have improved their processes since then.
Yaupon Brothers processes their leaves in two ways - one is a dried green
tea, and the other is a dried and fire-roasted tea. Their fire-roasted
"warrior tea" has a mild smoky taste on the end, which can be pretty nice!
The fire roast is definitely something to try at least once. There is a
Chinese tea called Guang Guang Cha which I've heard has a similar taste,
though I've not been fortunate enough to try it yet.
Their green tea is also pretty good! It has a flavor similar in some ways
to matcha. Some users have reported it tasting like the smell of hollies at
Christmas. I didn't have live hollies at christmas, so I can't comment on
that. I am not huge on their green tea, finding the quality to be variable
between perfectly nice and a little musty but, again, their QA may have
improved since I last drank their tea.
Also of note is this brand's main specialty - mixing their yaupon in with
other ingredients to make flavored tea. You can find chai, mint, even a
peach tea! I would say they are the winner if you prefer your yaupon with
a little something extra added to it and don't want to make your own blends.
The base price for Yaupon Brothers tea, for one Eco Tube of their green tea,
containing 16 tea bags, is $11.99. Or you can get 12 tubes at once for
$129.99, which averages to about $10.83 per tube.
You can get 1/2 oz of loose leaf green yaupon tea for $5.99, and 1 lb of tea
for $49.99.
I'm a loose leaf girl, so that means I'm either out 6 bucks or 50.
Okay, let's talk about Catspring.
Catspring Yaupon also has really cool things going for it, though they have
taken a different direction from Yaupon Brothers.
Rather than foraging the leaves, they take note of which cattle farmers have
yaupon growing in their pastures, and they pay the farmers to not remove
the plant and for the rights to harvest the leaves off of it when it's time
to process a new batch of tea. As such, you will occasionally find bite
marks on the leaves from curious cows. Cute!
As far as I'm aware, you can't buy Catspring in brick and mortar stores.
I buy straight from their website, and they typically have fast shipping and
a handwritten "thanks y'all!" note on each receipt.
Catpsring Yaupon is based out of Texas, and they name each of their teas
after areas in Texas, and have a map of where they harvest from.
Catspring uses a larger leaf cut. Rather than a small square cut, you are
going to see longer strips of leaf, broken leaves and half leaves. They
do not have the same grit issue as Yaupon Brothers, but they do leave the
stems in, which I understand can be offputting for some people.
Catspring doesn't focus on flavored teas. They have one flavored tea called
Deck The Halls, which is a blend of yaupon and various wintery spices.
Their main sellers are their three roast levels. They have a green tea,
a medium roasted tea, and a dark roasted tea. They process their tea by
harvesting it from pastures, drying the leaves and then running them through
an oven to achieve the desired roast level.
Their green tea is very similar to Yaupon Brothers. It's green, it's bright
and it tastes like a cross between matcha, lemongrass and green tea. There
is again the mild mustiness you can taste, which I'm starting to believe is
just part of the dried leaf.
Their medium roast is, I believe, their best product. It has that green
taste, but with hints of toasted barley. Be aware that, while yaupon
does not have the same sources of tannins as tea leaves, the medium roast
can still have a bitter taste to it when oversteeped. I have come to like
the mild bitter of yaupon teas, but if that's not your bag you can always
add milk and the sweetener of your choice.
Their dark roast is similar in some ways to coffee. The toasted barley
flavor takes center stage here, with the herbacious flavors of the yaupon
coming on longer after the first sip. Their website describes it as an
option for people who aren't interested in coffee but want something darker
than tea.
To keep all things equal, these prices are for the green yaupon.
You can buy a box of 16 teabags of green yaupon from Catspring for $8.95
if you buy once, or $7.16 if you set up a subscription with them.
I am personally turned off from subscription food goods services, but if you
know you'll for sure get through it each month and you do not want loose tea
then that is an option.
The loose leaf comes in a 2 oz bag for $12.95 (one time) or $10.36 (sub)
or you can buy a 1 lb bulk bag for $35 (one time) or $28 (sub).
Of note is the fact that their bulk options are not immediately visible on
their store. You have to do a search for the term "bulk" and it will bring
you to a shop category not listed on the front page. I am not sure if this
is a mistake or an angle to get people to set up wholesale accounts with
the company.
For my purposes, where I prefer loose leaf tea, prefer a good bargain and
do not need fancy flavorings, I prefer Catspring. I like their roast levels
and their leaf cut size works well with my tea strainers and my teapot.
For sure check out both brands, though! Not everyone will have the same
tastes as me, and there is something to be said about a tea that can be
picked up at a brick and mortar store instead of having to wait for the mail
to come in from Texas.
There's a billion ways to brew tea, tbh. I plan on writing a whole post
about the various ways I've tried brewing tea and what I feel about them!
For now, though, I'm going to give a very brief overview of my experience
with some popular brewing methods.
212*F is the traditional wisdom when it comes to brewing yaupon. I need to
do more experimentation now that I live on sea level, but my first time
being able to brew at 212*F was a french press pot of medium roast yaupon.
I found it to be a little bit bitter. I find that yaupon tastes best when
you brew it closer to 207*F or 205*F. I have a precision kettle that can
dial in the temperature for me but, if you don't, you can bring your kettle
up to boiling, then wait a couple minutes before pouring it in. You want
the water to be hot but not actively bubbling and boiling.
The french press is a super popular method for teas lately. In fact, the
Catspring website recommends a french press for the medium roast yaupon!
I like a french press for the dark roast, personally, and with the chai that
Yaupon Brothers makes. The tea continues to brew in the press as you pour
yourself more mugs, so you can get a feeling for what steeping level you
prefer. It's a handy way to make a ton of tea at once if you're in meetings
and is a good way of really learning what you like.
My tip? The first time you try yaupon tea, do a french press. Do a very
short steeping time before you push the plunger down, and immediately pour
yourself a cup. Drink the cup, wait a few minutes, then try again. Keep
going and recording your opinions as it steeps for longer and longer until
you find your optimal steeping time. Then you know what you like when you
don't want to use the french press.
This is the only way I did it for a long time. I don't have a proper teapot
so instead I would use a large liquid cup measure, and a tea strainer over
my mug. Heat up your water, heating up more than you think you'll need.
Then pour a little hot water into the pot or cup measure, wait a second
and pour it out to prime the temps on your steeping vessel. Then you add
the tea into the pot or cup measure, pour in your hot water and wait a few
minutes. I find that this is perfectly pleasant. It's a great way to make
just one or two mugs, for social tea drinking or if you're just making
breakfast.
A turkish teapot is, in short, a kind of double decker teapot. There's a
tiny pot on top of a larger pot. You brew super strong tea in the small
teapot and then water down that concentrate in your cup with hot water from
the big teapot.
I like to make turkish tea from medium roasted yaupon. It's strong and deep
and gives you a caffeine buzz. This type of brewing will for sure introduce
some bitter elements, though, so be prepared to add a little lemon juice.
Whatever you do, I do not recommend drinking the straight concentrate, at
least on your first go. That's how you get punched in the face with the
full force of The Hot Leaf Water. Typically I do half of my cup with the
concentrate and half with the hot water from the bottom pot.
I find that turkish tea is a great way to have tea on hand and ready for
a long board game night, work session or other such task without also
continuing to steep the tea past its prime. Just be prepared to answer a
lot of questions about why your teapot is wearing another teapot as a hat!
Milk of any variety, dairy or nondairy, works great with yaupon. I find
that, the darker the roast on the yaupon, the better it works with milk.
Be aware that, on medium roast and above, adding milk does NOT give it the
same look as, say, the cup of tea you get at a breakfast place in London,
or the cup of tea you make yourself with a bag of twinings.
It has a kind of ghostly green look. It's honestly not super appetizing
looking at first, but you get used to it. Expectations are the enemy of
enjoyment.
I do not like green yaupon with milk. I prefer my green yaupon completely
plain.
For sweetener, sugar works well. If you can swing it, I find that honey is
really very good with the medium roasted yaupon, and in small amounts in
green yaupon. Dark yaupon and iced yaupon really benefits from lemon juice.
Did you know that lemons have more sugar in them than strawberries? Wow!
In my experience, lemon juice adds sweetness to the yaupon without being
cloyingly sweet. It's a trick I learned when I got really into turkish
tea, where the tradition is to use a lot of lemon juice instead of a lot
of sugar.
Yaupon tea is good. Go buy it if you want to buy it, or go pick it from
your yard and dry it yourself if you've got the gumption. Do not be scared
off by the scary sounding latin name of ilex vomitorious, as it does not
actually cause nausea. My hope is that more people can talk about yaupon
as a tea and treat it as such, and that there can be more discussion of it
on the internet beyond the basic "wow this exists!" info dump you find a
lot of places.
If you would like to shout at me about this, you can find me on Mastodon
at @dio9sys@haunted.computer and on the geminispace BBS at