Thoughts about Teforia's demise

As of today, Teforia no longer is in business or selling its products.* Teforia produced the highly celebrated tea making system ("Teforia Selective Infusion Profile System") that took the guesswork out of tea brewing, making it "easy," and produced a "perfect" cup of tea every time. According to World Tea News: 

"At World Tea Expo, Teforia was awarded 2016 Best Tea Industry Innovation Award and was named the 2017 Best (Electric) Tea Brewing Device. The innovative brewer, initially priced at more than $1,000, adjusted steep time, agitation, and temperature for premeasured [loose] tea in capsules sold online as Sips. These premium teas, from established growers such as Yamamotoyama in Japan, were delivered by subscription as fully recyclable and 90 percent compostable. The classic brewer could be programmed by smartphone to brew any tea."**

The Teforia Selective Infusion Profile System. Image from teforia.com  

The article in World Tea News cited four lessons to consider from this failure:

• Raising large VC rounds is no guarantee of future business success.
• Good product design is always a big driver for consumer adoption, but the underlying business fundamentals need to be sound for the venture to succeed.
• High-priced hardware appeals to early adopters and is critical in recouping development costs, but the number of early adopters, while influential, is always small. Pricing devices that people can afford, while balancing margins on the business side is essential to achieve scale.
• A closed ecosystem such as Teforia, Keurig and Nespresso can work to generate sustaining cash flow, but that’s assuming the consumables they are offering are unique and right-priced. Investors have pulled back from several similar beverage proposals.

What fascinates me is that they mention that the Teforia system is analogous to the Keurig and the Nespresso systems. Both of these systems make their coffee from premade, predosed containers to give you something simple, quick, with no thinking involved. In other words, coffee-on-the-go for people who don't have the time or perhaps even the desire to savor. There is nothing exquisite about these brews, but they serve their purpose.***

The price tag of Teforia was pretty stiff for the convenience of drinking tea as you might coffee: simple, quick, with no thinking involved—you can do as well with a tea sachet or a bottled tea, if you just want a cup of tea to go. 

The goals of the Teforia system, though, were to automate and make fool-proof the brewing of high-end teas, so the flavor would be perfect every time. Which it was.

Yet those of you who appreciate high-end teas will quickly say that the joys of sipping an exquisite tea lie in looking for and selecting the tea, in the aesthetics of pots, cups, and utensils, and especially in the ritual of the brewing process itself, not to mention in the surprise of tasting the results—no two brews are exactly alike, nor should they be.

So I believe that we should add to the four lessons laid out in World Tea News a fifth lesson, namely that preparing a cup of delicious tea is as much an art as a science, and requires a human hand and mind at every step of the way. Taking the human touch out of the process may yield a great flavor but not a great joy. 

* Here's a video of the Teforia system in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixqM77riEOo
** http://worldteanews.com/news/teforia-closes-down
*** I'm working on a coffee book to go with my "Three Basic Teas & How to Enjoy Them," so have been diving deep into understanding coffee. By virtue of coffee's chemistry, the Keurig and Nespresso systems simply cannot give you a delicious coffee that you could savor the way you would savor tea.

Pairing teas at TexSom

Friend of Pairteas Jason McDonald sent me several emails a while back about a tea-pairing tasting he, Jeni Dodd, and Kyle Stewart carried out at TexSom, the big Texas sommelier event.* I followed up with emails to both Jeni and Kyle to learn more about the teas and the experience.

Here's what Jason said about the ingredients for the pairings:

"We used an aged Gruyère and an aged white cheddar. We used a tea from my farm [The Great Mississippi Tea Company - http://www.greatmsteacompany.com] that is best categorized as a dark oolong or a lightly oxidized black tea. We also used a dark tea from Nepal that Jeni supplied."

Jason McDonald with the cheese!

The general consensus was that Jason's oolong paired better with the cheddar than with the Gruyère. as I noted to Jason:

"The cheddar has a number of compounds in common with oolongs...don't remember whether you were still there when we smelled indole at WTE [World Tea Expo]. It has an animalic smell that is characteristic of oolongs, and contributes to oolong's complexity. In addition, both cheddar and oolongs have a number of compounds that have an almond quality [including benzaldehyde], and dimethyl sulfide, which has a marine smell. All of these compounds activate the warm receptors. The result is that the tea and the cheese will enhance each other." 

I should add that the fattiness of the cheese would turn off the hot receptors (TRPV1), so the flavors of the compounds that activate the warm receptors would be enhanced. 

Meanwhile, Jeni Dodd gave me more detail about her Nepalese tea, which she had cold-brewed overnight. She wrote:

"As for the Nepalese tea I used.  It is a black oolong from the Ilam (more specifically Maipokhara) region in the Eastern part of Nepal.  There are two main tea growing regions Ilam and Dhankhuta.  The oxidation of this particular tea is about 55-65%."

This tea is called Wild Sunset tea. As Jeni noted, here's why:

"My friend, whom I consider one of the best tea makers in Nepal, discovered a tea garden that had been growing wild for almost 30 years.  This garden was at the epicenter of the 2015 7.8 devastating earthquake.
My friend decided to leave the successful tea garden he had been at in order to cultivate this garden in order to bring economic stability back to this devastated region.  I requested to him to keep some of the wild growth since you cannot replicate 30 years of wild growth easily.  This tea from the first harvest of the wild growth after 30 years.  It is processed as a dark tea and right now has about 1 year of age on it."

Here's how Jeni describes the tea:

"It is smooth and full-bodied.  I find hints of cherry, but a cooked cherry, a sweeter cherry.  But the sweetness is balanced by a maltiness.  There is little to no astringency and the finish lingers.  The finishing notes are a bit smoky, a bit tobaccoey.  When you inhale, you find the cooling sensation that has been informed by the Eucalpytus trees growing in the area.  But there isn't a minty flavor.  There is a brightness to the tea, I think it must be that cooling effect.  But it is so nicely balanced and grounded by the maltiness."

To me this description is rich in hints about the chemical composition of the tea! 

First about the cooling sensation that Jeni says comes from eucalyptus trees going nearby: the chemical that gives eucalyptus its aroma is 1,8-cineol, which does bind to both the cool (TRPM8) and the cold (TRPA1) receptors. That's why it gives eucalyptus that cooling sensation when inhaled. 1,8-cineol has an herbal quality, but not very much a minty one. This compound will give a brightness to the tea, but, as I noted in my most recent post, cool sensations don't last long and can be overtaken by sensations provided by activation of the warm and hot receptors. Activation of these receptors lasts in the mouth, hence the long smoky tobacco-ey finish.

As for the sweetness, that probably comes from benzaldehyde and methyl salicylate. Depending on context, benzaldehyde can seem almond-like or cherry-like. It's my impression that the flavor shifts more to cherry in the presence of compounds that activate the "warm" (TRPV3) and "hot" (TRPV1) receptors.

So what about maltiness? and the smoky tobacco-ey finish? I am going to ask Jeni about the wood or coal that was used for baking or roasting the tea and for how long. Depending on the method, you will get the formation of compounds such as 2-ethyl furan, which has a classic malty flavor. That's a compound in Indian teas that gives them a rich maltiness. It, and a host of smoky and tobacco-ey compounds, all activate "hot" receptors.

It turns out that the Nepalese tea went well with the aged Gruyère. Its lower fat content meant that it didn't interfere with the ability to taste the subtleties of the tea derived from activation of TRPV1. As Kyle said:

"Cold-brewing leaves behind the catechins (astringency) and accentuates the top notes (fruity, floral) of this amazing oolong.  Without the astringency, the cold brewed oolong did not pair as well with the high-fat cheeses. The British used milk to soften the astringency of English Breakfast tea." 

Furthermore, as Kyle noted:

"The black raisin and green apple notes of the tea blended beautifully with the earthy, nutty and bosc pear notes of the Gruyère."

One of the compounds that gives Gruyère its nutty flavor is 2,6-dimethyl pyrazine. This compound is known to be in black tea, and is formed when the tea leaves are heated up during processing. My guess is that—given the color of the tea and Jeni's mention of smokiness—this tea was sufficiently baked/roasted to create this compound along with the malt flavored compounds.

Jason has the last word for this post:

"The teas made the cheese more intense in both cases. It seemed that it was a good pairing side by side because one of the cheeses went flat and the other became bold with both teas. It was also interesting that they were opposite of each other. So, it was a happy coincidence."

* According to Kyle "TexSom (Texas Sommelier) is an annual wine education conference held at The Four Seasons Resort in Dallas.  The Cultured Cup, which also sells coffee, has been a sponsor of this conference since its inception 12 years ago." 

Oolongs and fall fruits

Sara Shacket and her friends have been doing a series on tea pairings that is absolutely fascinating! The latest is about pairing oolongs with fruit, which you can find here:

http://www.tea-happiness.com/2017/10/tea-pairing-101-oolong-and-fruit.html

That page has links to the tasting notes by Georgia (http://www.notesontea.com/2017/10/tea-pairing-101-oolong-tea.html) and Jee (https://www.ohhowcivilized.com), who shared in the experience, and had similar takes on the results. Be sure to read all three blogs about the pairings, because each reveals a different aspect of the experience.

The teas were a Taiwanese Bao Zhong, which is lightly oxidized (typically around 10%), a classic Chinese Tie Guan Yin, and an equally classic Xiao Hong Pao (Little Red Robe), which was the most oxidized of the three.

What oxidation does is to shift the tea's flavor profile from vegetal and "cool" to more chocolatey, sweet, and "warm."

The three fruits were pear, plum, and persimmon, chosen because they are all fall fruits. It so happens that these three fruits also fall on a spectrum from "cool" to "warm." 

Teas from left to right, Bao Zhong, Tie Guan Yin, and Xiao Hong Pao.
Image from  http://www.tea-happiness.com/2017/10/tea-pairing-101-oolong-and-fruit.html

Here are the overall results, compiled from the three bloggers: 

The pear went reasonably well with the Bao Zhong, as you would expect because both tend to activate the "cool" receptors, though the Bao Zhong, described as only somewhat vegetal, would be less effective with pear than, say, a green tea. 

The Tie Guan Yin was happiest with the persimmon. The persimmon was described as very sweet—it was one of the persimmon cultivars, Fuyu, that is not naturally astringent.* Sara  described the sweetness as "cloying." A major volatile flavor compound in persimmon is benzaldehyde, which has a characteristic sweet almond/cherry quality with nutty/woody nuances, and to my nose can indeed be very cloying. Bennzaldehyde activates the warm to hot receptors. Turns out that the more roasted an oolong is the less benzaldehyde it contains—so it is not surprising that Tie Guan Yin would go better with the persimmon than the more highly roasted Xiao Hong Pao.**

Plums went best with Xiao Hong Pao. Plum cultivars vary tremendously in their composition, but one constant is the presence of lactones such as gamma-decalactone and gamma-dodecalactone.*** These lactones have a waxy fruity quality and tend to activate the warm/hot receptors.**** Interestingly, plums also have several compounds such as linalool and hexanol that activate the cool receptors. Sara, though not the others, noted that the plums went well with the lightly oxidized Bao Zhong: in contrast with the pear, "The plum turned out to be a better choice. Its sweetness worked well with the floral and savory notes, but didn't overpower the palate. The tart plum skin transformed the tea flavor, creating an interesting depth." My guess is that the depth came from the back and forth across the cool to warm receptors that each activated.

Which brings me to what I thought was the most fascinating observation with these pairings, about the pear and the Xiao Hong Pao, as described by Sara: 

"We had a strange experience with the pear- it seemed to erase the flavor of the tea, but then a moment later the tea lingered on the palate. Jee decided that the pear was similar to a palate cleanser, which was an interesting thought!"

It was indeed an interesting thought! What palate cleansers, such as the cool sorbet of classical French banquets, do is to reset the balance of the trigeminal system. Here's how this works:

The response of trigeminal receptors at the "hotter" end of the spectrum is slow-on slow-off, while the response of those at the "cooler" end is quick-on quick-off. Think about eating a chili-laced food. At first you may not think it's too spicy, but then the heat sneaks up on you—that's the slow-on. You reach for some ice water, which quickly cools down the burn—that's the quick-on. But wait a few seconds and the cool receptors turn off and the heat returns! Signals from the "hot" receptors were just suppressed, but because they are slow-off, they were still active when the "cool" receptors had stopped sending signals to your brain. Remember that the sequence here is important.

This is exactly what was happening with the pear and the Xiao Hong Pao. This highly oxidized tea is full of chemicals that activate receptors at the hotter end of the trigeminal spectrum, while the pear activates receptors at the cooler end. Sip the tea, and the hotter end is activated. Bite into the pear, and the tea disappears. Wait a little, the pear flavor vanishes and the tea effect (which has been there all along) returns.

I've not mentioned here that all three bloggers found that honeycomb went well with all the teas, and managed to cover up what I would call the disagreements among the tea and fruit flavors. That will be a discussion for another blogpost.

And to find out more about the trigeminal system and what it means for tea and tea pairing, find my book "Three Basic Teas & How to Enjoy Them" at Amazon!

* Lyon, B. G., Senter, S.D. and Payne, J.A. (1992), Quality Characteristics of Oriental Persimmons (Diospyros kaki L. cv. Fuyu) Grown in the Southeastern United States. Journal of Food Science, 57: 693–695. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2621.1992.tb08074.x

** For the chemical profiles of panned and unpanned oolongs, go to: Sheibani E, Duncan SE, Kuhn DD, Dietrich AM, Newkirk JJ, O’Keefe SF. Changes in flavor volatile composition of oolong tea after panning during tea processing. Food Science & Nutrition. 2016;4(3):456-468. doi:10.1002/fsn3.307. You can find the article online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4867765/.

*** Y. H. Hui, Feng Chen, Leo M. L. Nollet. Handbook of Fruit and Vegetable Flavors. John Wiley and Sons, 2010. Also, go to http://www.flavours.asia/uploads/7/9/8/9/7989988/flavor_of_plums.pdf

**** Incidentally osmanthus, which goes so well with Tie Guan Yin, also has these lactones.

Beer again, but one on the warmer side...

Beer again, and this time my son-in-law paired his Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA* with a quinoa-and-bean-based veggie burger. Very good beer, very good burger, and very good pairing!

Here's why:

First about the veggie burger: overall the burger had a warm/hot flavor profile, suggesting that together its ingredients activated the warm and hot receptors TRPV3 and TRPV1. At the same time, there was a first impression of a vegetal quality, perhaps grassiness, that meant that the beer lost nothing of its complexity when tasted with the burger. 

Now about the beer:

1. The beer is a light amber rather than the pale yellow of the Lord Hobo beer I described in my previous post, and it's even slightly more brown than you would expect to find in the usual IPA's. This means that it has "brown" chemicals that activate the warm and hot receptors.

2. While it has "piney & citrus notes" according to the description on the Dogfish Head website, which would be a sign that cool/cold receptors were activated (think of walking through a pine woods on a hot day!), the citrus side comes across to me as orangey rather than lemony, again a trait associated with the warm receptor activation. One reason may  may be that the "brown" nature of the beer shifts the balance away from "lemon" towards "orange."

3. Hops were added continuously to this beer during the 60 minute boil, hence the beer's name. With this addition throughout the boil, you get much higher levels of linalool in the final beer than you would if you only added hops at the beginning of the boil.** Interestingly, if you add hops after the boil (a process called dry hopping), you would not get any more linalool and probably even less. Linalool, in context with the other compounds, also contributes to the "orange" perception. 

4. Geraniol in the hops is transformed into β-citronellol, first during the boil, and thereafter by yeast.*** β-citronellol, found in oranges, also activates the hot receptor.**** Different varieties of hops have different proportions of geraniol, so how much of this compound is present in a beer would be of interest, in that it shifts the temperature activity from the cool/cold contributed by CO2 and by eudesmol, (the latter is a water soluble compound in hops that activates TRPA1, the cold receptor), to the warmer, more orangey side.   

5. Concentrations of β-damascenone, which has a damask-rose aroma, increase over time when the hops are added at the beginning of the boil, so may be expected to increase even more when the hops are added continuously during the boil.** This compound also activates the warm/hot receptors.

6. All that hopping extracts large amounts of eudesmol, a compound that activates the cold receptor TRPA1, which together with CO2, gives the beer its pungency.*****  

All of this brings together the reason I used the word complexity to describe the experience of this beer with this burger. As you first sip the beer, the quick-onset cool/cold receptors respond, and the pungency caused by activation of the cold receptor TRPA1 zings in. Then activation of the warm/hot receptors dominates, and the beer's orangey quality comes into focus. Then a bite of the burger, and the cycle repeats itself, first a quick cool and grassy, then warm/hot. The sweet carbs and the salt in the burger, meanwhile, cut enough of the bitterness in the beer to allow the aromas to sing. 

Delicious complexity, indeed!

* https://www.dogfish.com/brewery/beer/60-minute-ipa -- if you visit the site, be sure to see CEO Sam Calagione's short video about the beer 

** Toru Kishimoto,*, Akira Wanikawa,Noboru Kagami, and, and Katsuyuki Kawatsura. Analysis of Hop-Derived Terpenoids in Beer and Evaluation of Their Behavior Using the Stir Bar−Sorptive Extraction Method with GC-MS. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2005 53 (12), 4701-4707. DOI: 10.1021/jf050072f.  
=> Note: the hop used in the experiments looking at compound concentrations over time was Hersbrucker, which by these authors' analysis had a high linalool to geraniol ratio.

*** Takoi K, Itoga Y, Koie K, Kosugi T, Shimase M, Katayama Y, et al. The contribution of geraniol metabolism to the citrus flavour of beer: Synergy of geraniol and β-citronellol under coexistence with excess linalool. Journal of the Institute of Brewing. 2010;116(3):251-60.

**** Ohkawara S, Tanaka-Kagawa T, Furukawa Y, Nishimura T, Jinno H (2010) Activation of the human transient receptor potential vanilloid subtype 1 by essential oils. Biol Pharm Bull 33:1434–1437.

***** Kazuaki Ohara, Takafumi Fukuda, Hiroyuki Okada, Sayoko Kitao, Yuko Ishida, Kyoko Kato, Chika Takahashi, Mikio Katayama, Kunitoshi Uchida, and Makoto Tominaga. Identification of Significant Amino Acids in Multiple Transmembrane Domains of Human Transient Receptor Potential Ankyrin 1 (TRPA1) for Activation by Eudesmol, an Oxygenized Sesquiterpene in Hop Essential Oil. J. Biol. Chem. 2015 290: 3161-. doi:10.1074/jbc.M114.600932.

My first sip of beer...

In honor of my talk about beer next month, I had my first sip of beer ever...and was pleasantly surprised! The stink of the stale beer of my youth, coupled with the fact that I can't tolerate alcohol, limited my desire to taste beer in the past, but for the sake of science, I decided to take a sip. 

It was a local beer from Lord Hobo, Woburn, Massachusetts, pale and cloudy, with very little head, a Session IPA, a style that was originally brewed in England in World War I for workers in armament factories. The requirement was (so I was told) that the brew should have less than 5% alcohol, to prevent drunkenness — this version clocked in at 4.5%.

This picture, from the Lord Hobo Brewing Company website, shows exactly what the beer looked like.

My son-in-law declared it "hoppy." What I sensed was a grapefruity bitterness, with a little tickle and sourness from the carbonation, and bitterness with a slight prickle lingering at the finish: a "clean" fresh impression overall. Nothing like anything I had tasted before, though on thinking about it, it was a bit like the Pompelmo (grapefruit) Fanta from Italy that my father loved (now discontinued, btw). 

For dinner, my son-in-law had a mildly spicy and salty, definitely umami meatloaf, with a rich barbecue sauce. He said that the beer mellowed out with this dish, so that it was less sharp, bitter, and flavorful, but still refreshing, and palate-cleansing. Later, well after he had finished the meal, when he drank the last sips of the beer, he said the original qualities of the beer returned.

Here's what I think is happening at the level of the taste buds, namely that the beer activated the cool/receptors (it was refreshing!) and my son-in-law's meatloaf activated the warm/hot receptors so the beer's qualities were muted. 

More about how this all works in another post. This beer thing really has me enthralled!

=>> Don't worry, am not forgetting tea — am also busy creating an extended course about pairing in general and pairing with tea in particular! Stay tuned!

And meanwhile, take a look at my book "Three Basic Teas & How to Enjoy Them" by Virginia Utermohlen Lovelace. You can find it on Amazon!

Port wine and tea

To continue my exploration of tea through library searches, came across a paper on the flavor chemicals in port wine... (don't ask how this paper came up when I searched for 

tea...one wonders about search algorithms sometimes!..not that I'm complaining: this paper on port wine was fascinating.*)

Although I don't drink alcohol for genetic/metabolic reasons (I can't detoxify alcohol's poisonous metabolite, actealdehyde) I have been fond of the flavor of certain alcoholic beverages, including port. Now I know why.

A glass of port, photo by Jon Sullivan that was a featured picture on Wikimedia Commons (Featured pictures) and was considered one of the finest images. 

A key step in the making of port is the addition of a wine-derived spirit called "aguardente" (burning water) obtained by distillation. This distillate increases the alcohol content of the port, but also contributes a number of volatile compounds to port's flavor.

Among these compounds are ones that make green tea so refreshing by activating the cool receptor TRPM8: 

- linalool, found in all teas, but dominating green tea, with its fresh flowery/citrus aroma;

- geraniol, found in geraniums (as its name implies) and in roses as well as all teas, which contributes a peach-like nuance; and  

- (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol, which contributes a grassy note to green tea, and in addition a slight pungency due to activation of TRPA1.

A couple of other flowery compounds in aguardente are more characteristic of oolongs and black teas, including: 

- beta-damascenone, the name of which derives from Damask roses, which has a more musty quality than many of the other rose-related scents in tea, probably from its ability to activate the warm (TRPV3) and hot (TRPV1) receptors; and

- benzaldehyde, which contributes a sweet, nutty, cherry/almond note to oolongs in particular (also an activator of TRPV3). 

So the next time you have a glass of port, look for the flavors of your favorite tea, and vice versa!

*()*()*()*()*()*()*()*

Just a reminder: if you would like a compilation of knowledge about tea flavors, their sources and their effects on nose, mouth, and brain, you can find it in my book: "Three Basic Teas & How to Enjoy Them," by Virginia Utermohlen Lovelace, available on Amazon.

* Rogerson, F.S.S. and De Freitas, V.A.P. (2002), Fortification Spirit, a Contributor to the Aroma Complexity of Port. Journal of Food Science, 67: 1564–1569. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2621.2002.tb10323.x

What's to love about garlic?

So many things! But one in particular is fascinating: garlic's ability to block the aversiveness of high levels of salt.

In my mother's pre-culinary days, she used to make a salad dressing with vinegar, a generous dose of salt, and very little oil because she felt that oil was fattening (those were the days when good olive oil was hard to come by, and we couldn't have afforded it anyway). I used to hate salads—the sourness of the vinegar made me shudder, and the bitterness of the greens was intolerable. 

Then somewhere when I was around 11 or 12 she discovered the trick of rubbing the salad bowl with garlic (she still hesitated actually including the garlic in the dressing itself). Suddenly salads were much more palatable for me.

Cross-section of garlic bulb, from Darnok at Morguefile.com

Garlic contains a compound, allyl isothiocyanate, that gives it the garlicky flavor, This compound (henceforth "AITC") also activates the cold/pain receptor, TRPA1, in the mouth, hence garlic's pungency. 

In experiments with mice, Oka and colleagues used AITC to dissect how high concentrations of salt (NaCl) become aversive.* 

It turns out that, while low concentrations of salt inhibit bitter-sensing taste bud cells, high concentrations of salt activate these cells and also activate sour-sensing cells. That's why high salt can bring out the bitterness of your salad greens and the sourness of the vinegar in your dressing. These activations can be inhibited by AITC!

High concentration salt also activates TRPV1, the hot/pain receptor.** When TRPA1 is activated, TRPV1 will usually be inhibited, and vice versa. 

So garlic in your salad dressing or sprinkled on a salty food will help hide the fact that you may have used too much salt...

* Oka, Y., Butnaru, M., von Buchholtz, L., Ryba, N. J. P., & Zuker, C. S. (2013). High salt recruits aversive taste pathways. Nature, 494(7438), 472+.

** Lyall V, Heck GL, Vinnikova AK, Ghosh S, Phan TH, Alam RI, Russell OF, Malik SA, Bigbee JW, & DeSimone JA. (2004). The mammalian amiloride-insensitive non-specific salt taste receptor is a vanilloid receptor-1 variant. J Physiol 558: 147+.