People who are new to specialty tea often worry that they might ruin their loose leaf teas by brewing them wrong. It’s a valid concern, because tea can taste and feel dramatically different depending on how it is brewed. If you’re a new tea drinker, you should keep in mind the three brewing parameters and be aware of how they will affect your tea: leaf/water ratio, temperature, and time.

You might have heard the common health claim that drinking tea is good for your skin. Although it’s likely there is some truth to that claim — maybe even a lot of truth — it’s a little misleading because it’s so oversimplified. To really understand how tea might support skin health, we need to take a more detailed look at the scientific research that has been done so far.

Most of the northern hemisphere is still in the peak heat of summer. In some places — like subtropical Florida, where I live — we still have at least a few more months of sticky, sweltering weather before the air starts to cool off. Cold brew tea gets me through times like these.

Should you drink tea packaged in tea bags, or loose leaf tea? The answer is multi-faceted and it depends on your personal preferences and priorities. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but you need to ask yourself what you expect out of your brew: quality or convenience, and at what price.

The world of tea can be a maze of terminology and confusion for many. In our search for classification and order, we run the risk of putting off would-be devotees who are afraid of perpetrating some sort of etiquette error. I worry that, as fine and rare tea spills into the mainstream, an emperor’s new clothes mystique is developing around the product that could ultimately act to dissuade the young enthusiasts the industry needs. So, here follows a terminology-free introduction to the world of tea — may it educate and inspire a search for great tea.

Shunan Teng, the founder of Tea Drunk in NYC, shared her tea story with us in issue 01 of eighty degrees magazine. We met with her again in Las Vegas at World Tea Expo 2019 where she was a speaker.

Suzette Hammond is the founder of an education-based small business Being Tea, American Tea Ambassador to Vietnam, and a practitioner of various activities supporting mental health, including yoga and tea meditation. We bumped into each other for the first time in Las Vegas in 2019 and I simply had to ask a few questions.

I’d heard a lot about Sharyn Johnston, the founder of Australian Tea Masters, even though we had never met until our first encounter at World Tea Expo in Las Vegas in 2019. Being very curious about her journey, we had a chat.

One of the most common questions I receive is “who is behind the magazine?”. It seems that a lot of people think there is a large team or even a corporation that creates eighty degrees… Not quite.

Jürgen and Stephan of Tea Addicts talk to us about their tea journey.

Last month, World Tea Expo opened its doors in Las Vegas once again and this time eighty degrees proudly and excitedly took part too! This being our first tea expo, our expectations were high, but we could not have imagined how euphoric the reality would be!

Publishing a tea magazine comes with many challenges, but also amazing opportunities. One such opportunity came about last month when our friend, tea expert Jing Hong, came to Portugal. You know her from the first issue of eighty degrees magazine where she was featured in a photo essay from Yangshuo.