STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 21 UAE Kombucha Fans Kombucha has become very much a home brew semi-cult in the United Arab Emirates. Enthusiasts call the starter kit for turning sweet tea into this tangy and fizzy beverage a "scoby": "Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast." It's a kind of rubber raft floating on top of the fermenting kombucha. It can be started from scratch but that entails complex home chemistry and great care in avoiding bacterial contamination, mold and some very strange and malodorous bio-blunders. In the UAE, a home scoby is essential because of the legal grey area into which kombucha has drifted. It is officially not sold there because as a fermented drink, it is viewed as alco- holic. It is unclear which government agency has the authority either to decide if it is so and then to permit its import, production and sale. There is a very active discussion of kombucha in online sites used by expats in Dubai. They are predominantly the same question: where can I buy kombu- cha and equally predominant the response: make it yourself. It is now commonplace in U.S. craft beer pubs to see lined up together an ale pump, nitro coffee pump – and a kombu- cha pump. Is kombucha tea or alcohol? It's definitely tea but… But as with any fermented drink, it is likely to contain very small traces of alcohol from the probiotic enzymes it produces. Whether viewed as alcoholic, or non-alcoholic, it's certainly creating strong demand across the globe. UK Yorkshire's Tea-Biscuit Brew Yorkshire Tea's Biscuit Brew is a new slant on an old tradition. It combines the British Builder tea – heavy basic black and now smoothed and enhanced as English Breakfast -- with a chocolate or milk digestive biscuit perched on the saucer. Dunking the biscuit in the tea may not match the Japanese tea ceremo- ny but was pervasive in offices, cafes and at home and a treasured cultural emblem. Biscuit Brew infuses an Assam, Sri Lanka and Kenya blend with all the flavor of a dunking biscuit. This adds a malty sweetness. The many initial reviewers almost all express a wariness among the testers and then a somewhat relieved approval of the tea. Many commentators highlight an attractive feature of the tea: ending the problem of the soggy dunk and broken bikkie that leaves dumps at the bottom of the cup. The national Daily Mirror tabloid captures the general reactions, including the headline comment that it's not an April Fool joke: "We tried a mug or two, the flavor is subtle but definitely there." (April 1, 2018) The tea is one more indicator of the search among consumer brands for new products to stem the ever-declining erosion of the core UK black tea market. Yorkshire is positioning it as a specialty breakfast tea. Around a third of British tea drinkers routinely add a biscuit. Yorkshire stresses the health and convenience feature. The flavoring is "natural" and gluten-free and the tea Rain Forest Alliance-certified. It highlights the convenience of the tea: "Biscuits are so often linked to tea we thought why not just make life easier and put the flavors together..." One comment is more far-reaching and indicates the primary driving force of flavor innovation by sellers and readiness to break with tradition of buyers: "Consumers are increasingly expanding their drinks repertoire." The Chitra Collection One of the joys of tea has been the astonishing variety, range and artistry of the cups and pots it's served in. Whether clay, porcelain or silver, China Xiying, French Sevres, German Meissen, or the hundreds of British or Japanese, the long history of teaware art, craft, and design. The Chitra Collection is surely the finest and most comprehensive display of the best of the best. The collection was built by the co-founder of Newby Teas, Nirmal Seth, starting in 2011. It is named for his wife, whose death was the driver for his searching out teaware. The collection now numbers 1,700 pieces with an estimated value of $200 million. It was publicly displayed in London in 2016 where work is underway to house it in a museum, and it includes the "Egoist" teapot, worth over $2 million, with 1,500 encrusted diamonds, designed by its founder. The collection spans 13 centuries, staring from the Song Dynasty in the 10th century BCE. The Newby tea company has a tea factory in Kolkata and mainly sells to five-star hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants. Its main market is Russia. Copyright restrictions mean that no images from the Collection can be shown here. This link accesses a wonderful display and description of all the pieces www.chitracollection.com. Seth is s very disdainful of how "the history and culture of tea has been forgotten completely. Tea has a glorious history but not many know about it… The first thing to do is to revive the tea culture and the best way to do that was to preserve the character of tea." That last phrase – "the character of tea" elegantly captures what make fine teaware so integral to the past history and present experience of tea. US Finlay's New U.S. Lab Finlay Extracts and ingredient's an- nouncement of a new $17 million R&D lab highlights several rapidly accelerating trends in the convergence of tea and flavored coffee. Finlay emphasizes its moves to vertical integration and its strengths from "bush to cup." The stated focus of the lab is to develop the next wave of food and drink extracts and ingredients. "Beverages that consumers haven't yet imagined." Finlay to build at NAS Quonset Point Biscuit brew tea

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