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As a coffee drinker, you may have heard of coffee cupping, but have you ever heard of tea cupping?  Similar to coffee cupping, tea cupping is the process of tasting and evaluating the quality of loose leaf tea, determining the quality, taste, aroma, briskness, body and color.  The cupping process is an art and science to ensure that the finest and highest quality of tea is procured.  Before tasting the tea, an assessment of the tea leaves is performed, taking in not only the appearance of the leaves themselves, but also the scent they produce.  With the exception of green and oolong teas, the appearance and smell of the dried leaf is a determining factor in the quality.  The cupper is looking for a leaf that exhibits a uniform appearance and is well-involuted, firm and small.  The reasoning behind this is that an open leaf will steep quickly, whereas a closely curled leaf takes longer to saturate and thus offers a better second cup.  After this careful observation of the physical dried leaf, the tea is ready for the steeping process.    Pure water is required to ensure no contaminants, such as natural minerals in the water, affect the taste of the tea.  You should prepare 6 oz. to 8 oz. cups with 2 gm. of dried tea leaves.  After bringing your water to a boil, pour directly onto the tea leaves.  Be sure to avoid oversteeping in your tea cupping process!  The flavor from the tea leaves is released while steeping and if oversteeping has taken place, the release of acids can occur and elicit a bitter cup.  Steeping times vary from tea to tea.  Oolong teas take longer to fully release their flavor and can take up to 7-8 minutes.  Green and white teas may take only 3-4 minutes and do not require fully boiling the water.  The general rule of thumb is 5 minutes for black teas.  To stop the steeping process, pour off the tea from the tea leaves.  A perfect black tea will be rich and thick looking in the cup with bright shining characteristics immediately after pouring.  Oolong teas will display a cloudy effect as the tea cools.  If the black or oolong tea has not been fermented enough, the color will be distinctively bright and the leaf will have a green tint.  While there are different requirements for each type of tea, the basic indicators of the color and tint are as follows: dark green indicates inadequate withering and over-fermentation; green-yellow indicates a sharpness or unsavoriness; golden indicates quality; reddish indicates fullness and richness; dark indicates a low grade or common tea.  The final step in the tea cupping process is to taste the flavor.  Briskness, body and aroma are the three criteria you are searching for in tea cupping.  Regarding the briskness, decide whether the taste makes a strong impression in your mouth and evaluate how it makes your mouth and tongue feel.  The body refers to how the tea fills your mouth and how smooth it is going down.   The aroma should be a healthy, strong aroma.  The above suggestions for tea cupping are very broad guidelines and are only highlights of the very involved process.  No single method is considered the only way to cup teas.  The most significant aspect of tea cupping is consistency.  Whether you experiment with different quantities or different steeping times, you must be consistent throughout your process.  Remember, you are looking for quality, taste, aroma, briskness, body and color.  With these in mind, test your tea cupping skills!

Some of you out there may have heard the rumor that coffee is actually more helpful to your health than harmful.  And guess what, vast research shows that this may be more truth than rumor.  According to WebMD, coffee may actually help lower the risks of diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and colon cancer.  They even speculate that coffee can be used to treat headaches and lift your mood, as well as lower the risk of forming cavities.  Take Parkinson’s disease for example; the link between coffee and Parkinson’s disease is fascinating. Let’s first take a look at Parkinson’s disease and what it is.  Parkinson’s disease is a disorder that affects millions of people and can be found in all ethnic groups and in both men and women equally.  The disease occurs when neurons lose their ability to function normally in the substantia nigra part of the brain.  These neurons that degenerate contain dopamine, a neurotransmitter.  The degeneration subsequently causes dopamine levels to fall and the balance between dopamine and other neurotransmitters in the brain is thrown off.  The imbalance between the neurotransmitters affects the way muscles work and leads to movement problems, including trembling of the legs and arms, coordination, involuntary movements and speaking difficulties among many.  These symptoms tend to surface after about 80% of the dopamine-producing neurons have been damaged.  There is no known cause of Parkinson’s disease.  While there are treatments to help in controlling the symptoms of the disease, there is no known cure as of yet.  So how does coffee figure in?  In layman’s terms, it’s probably the caffeine of the coffee.  The natural antioxidants of the coffee are a bonus as well.  In more scientific terms, caffeine is part of the xanthine chemical group.  Adenosine is a naturally occurring xanthine in the brain that acts as a neurotransmitter in some synapses.  When adenosine receptors are blocked, the levels of dopamine increase.  Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors and in doing so, increases the amount of dopamine in the brain.  In a nutshell, caffeine affects dopamine levels.  In fact, consumption of caffeine from other sources such as green tea, chocolate and soda all affect Parkinson’s disease; however, out of these, coffee has been recognized by many experts as the number one source of antioxidants, outranking chocolate and tea.  Reviewing some of the studies that have been performed on the link between coffee and Parkinson’s disease, the overwhelming findings indicate that the incidence of the disease is much lower in people (specifically men) who drank coffee vs. those who did not.  While the study concludes that coffee overall impacts men and women in a positive way, there is some confusion over the role it plays in women and how hormone levels in women may affect this.  In one of the studies, it conclusively showed that men who drank the most coffee were the least likely to develop Parkinson’s disease and the men who did not drink any coffee were five times more likely to display symptoms of Parkinson’s disease than those who drank 28+ ounces of coffee each day.  In another study, those who drank 10+ cups of coffee per day had a 74% lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.  If you don’t drink ten cups of coffee each day, don’t fret!  Even those drinking only one cup per day gain some benefit.  While this story absolutely is not meant to take the place of any physician, one must admit that it gives you something to consider.  Coffee therapy, anyone?