The name of this company drives me insane. I keep thinking I should say it 3 times and then get up and start dancing. And for all of those completely logical reasons, I have never bothered to sit down and try Numi tea before.

However, after pilfering through the Numi tea stocks at a friend’s corporate office, I have to say, I will never discount a brand based on its packaging of impressionist African wildlife ever again!

Numi Red Mellow (Rooibos) – The first one I tried, and got me back for more. Rooibos at it’s best; ever so slightly sweet.

Numi Sweet African Red (Green Rooibos) – So this was kind of weird. Very -very- light brew, basically flavorless. Reminded me a bit of white tea in a way? Probably would not try again.

Numi Bushman’s Brew (Honeybush) – Interesting! Never had this before. Relatively light, the flavour of the honeybush is released rather slowly in the brewing process. Its a tad sweeter than the rooibos, but otherwise tastes fairly similar (a taste, that I apologetically cannot find words to describe). Will definitely have to try more of this intriguing tea in the future.

Numi Monkey King (Jasmine Green Tea) – An extremely fragrant green tea. The jasmine comes out strong, straight from the tea bag, and stays there throughout the drink. The green tea, though, I think, brews a bit heavy. My mom liked it quite a bit, but I thought it was pretty unbalanced.

Chinese Breakfast?Yunnan Black Tea) - I doubt the authenticity of this… but I could be completely wrong and perhaps somewhere in China people actually do drink black tea for breakfast. Regardless, it tasted OK. Actually kind of like a heavier green tea that happens to be brown colored once brewed?

Simply Mint (Moroccan Mint) – its peppermint, not spearmint, and that makes it wrong in my book. but otherwise, its a fairly innocuous combination of mint and green with the right amount of mint (just enough to get a whiff) and a good heaping of gunpowder green tea. Sometimes I think the amount of gunpowder that people use in these pseudo-Moroccan mixes are too much, or at least, the type of gunpowder is too heavy, and this blend was no exception. Add one more to my list of Fail for American Moroccan tea.

All in all, I would say that Numi teas, based on the 6 I tried all yesterday (jeez i tried a lot of them), that they’re particularly strong on the African herbal teas/tisanes/teasanes (whatever makes your marketing director happy), and not tragic on everything else. I will definitely have to pick up more of their rooibos and honeybush teas in the future, though!

The lady didn’t like the blackberry stuff, but I do. Perhaps my palette is damaged, perhaps we simply have differing opinions on how blackberries are supposed to taste (and let’s face it — on my budget there aren’t many fresh berries in my life).

It is a tad bitter, though at this point it seems that most of the things I drink are — perhaps that’s my problem? I’ve definitely had better fruit teas (all courtesy of Dandan; god only knows where she gets all of them). But, to me at least, it does a pretty serviceable job of tasting like blackberries and giving me something noncaffeinated to drink at night. I’m even somewhat convinced that if I had steeped it for less time it would be less bitter, but that might not be true.

Oh but don’t spill it anywhere, because it’s actually the purplest thing in the world. I may have to boil the pair of pants I was wearing to get the stain out.

So I guess what I’m saying is: you should try it if you want something adequate and aren’t physically inept.

Just call me Mr. Positive.

Due to a long-ago bad experience with Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, I’ve avoided the stuff for a long time. At the least, I wouldn’t pay money for it.

Recently, I’ve been at two different events where I didn’t have to pay money for it, so I threw caution to the wind and decided to give it a fair shake.

First, I was at an event where there was a big old box (yes, box) of their hot coffee. Not that it was all that hot, but there was also a microwave — we scientists are clever. Taken black, it’s… drinkable. In fact, it would even be good if it tasted less acidic. It’s got a mild nutty flavor, pretty inoffensive, but it left a sort of bitter taste in my mouth, and the farther down the the cup I got the more I could swear I felt my teeth dissolving. Probably that was psychosomatic though. Anyway, it’s a lot better than, say, the coffee you’d get at the 7-11.

Then there was Free Iced Coffee Day. Boston being Boston, it was chilly and rainy. What else would you expect on May 15? Thankfully, the line was short. Now, apparently people in this part of the world (at least the ones who patronize Dunkin’ Donuts) take their coffee with cream and sugar, because if you don’t specify that’s what you get. I found this out the hard way, but then, this is one of my few opportunities to explore Bostonian culture (how many times have I said that?). Anyway, the iced coffee tastes like sweet milk. With ice in it. It was colored like it had some coffee in it but I sure couldn’t taste it. I’m not much of an iced coffee person (I prefer iced tea), so that’s probably not the biggest loss. Does anybody drink iced coffee when it’s not free iced coffee day? I have no idea. But I’ll be generous and assume that they don’t.

It would be easy to say that I don’t know what all the fuss is about, but then again, I’m pretty sure Dunkin’ Donuts’s stranglehold on New England predates Starbucks and all the other quasi-upscale coffee shops (yes, black coffee from Starbucks is better than Dunkin’ Donuts, and if there are options in downtown Boston other than Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, I’ve not heard of them). And besides, Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is a slightly cheaper, I think, and if all you want is something to wake you up and keep you from freezing to death, then that’s a valid selling point.

So while I don’t think there will be much Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in my future, I’m still happy to report that at least in once specific instance it’s at least somewhat better than the swill they serve at fast food restaurants (true story: I once ordered coffee at a Burger King. I added one mini-carton of non-dairy creamer. It turned white), and that the locals aren’t all totally crazy.

I mean, except for the driving, the accent, and the baseball.

Last Wednesday, sitting around a conference room table, going over a friend’s qualifiers presentation:

J: “Hey. Want to get beer tonight?”
Me: “Ok.”

And simple as that, 6pm, we’re strolling out of the UES to the painful transnat corpdom that is Midtown, heading towards the Ginger Man, a Manhattan beer powerhouse with 66 beers on tap and 120+ bottles,
and one of 12 listed bars in NY with Dogfish 60 on tap.

It’s a Wednesday, Midtown’s a wasteland, and it was 6pm. We didn’t expect there to be much of a crowd, but by the time we got there, it was completely packed! This is a huge bar with plenty of seating area, but alas, all seats (and standing room) was taken up by suits loosening their ties. After standing around awkwardly for a bit, waiting for the last member of our party to arrive, we finally procured a table, got our beers, got halfway through the first round, and then realized… the bar was practically empty. Somewhere in that one hour differential, the B&T crowd had finished pounding in that one last drink before catching the PATH back home.

This bar’s location was really a shame, considering the wonderful bounty of beer they had available.

I tried (ever my own or someone else’s glass… no I didn’t drink 4 beers there):

Stoudt’s Blonde Double MaiBock
y’know, i just wasn’t feeling this beer at all. i really wanted to, since double bocks sound like candy on a stick, but while this had alot of different flavours going for it, they didn’t… mix together at all. just ended up being a bit weird and incongruous

Franziskaner Hefe Weisse
typical hefeweizen with a bit more spice/kick than usual. pretty decent, but not too special for a hefe

Victory Storm King Stout
yummy, good stout.
didn’t stand out from other stouts, but had the same texture & nice malty taste of caramel & choco (not sweet). delicioso!

Dogfish Head 60 Minute
Wow. So unlike the Dogfish Head 120 minute, this actually still tastes recognizably like an IPA. However, its also the best IPA i’ve ever had. just the right balance of hops, acidity, flavour… i wouldn’t, however, compare this to the 120, just b/c the 120 really belongs in a dessert beer category, instead of the normal IPA.

One of the best things, however, about 36th st though, is its proximity to K-town. We jetted over there, grabbed some korean bbq & Hite korean beer (which is pretty amazingly mediocre, but hey, every country has their own macrolager), and it was an excellent night.

I’d definitely head over to the ginger man again sometime, just not between 5 to 7:30pm on a workday.

The Ginger Man
11 E. 36th St., New York, NY 10016
nr. Fifth Ave.
212-532-3740

One of the best things about living in Cambridge is the Cambridge Brewing Company. It’s a nice, spacious location, with a lot more restaurant space than bar space (the food’s pretty decent though I’m not too impressed by the pizza), not too crowded on the weekends. And, of course, they make their own beer; the sides of the rooms are lined with enormous vats of beer, and you won’t be ordering a Corona here.

The biggest downside is that it’s at Kendall Square, so if it’s too full you’ve got a bit of a hike to get anywhere else. Also, they close at 1 for some reason, probably related to the fact that it caters more to adults who appreciate artistry, and less to grad students who want to get thrashed. I wear both hats, as the situation warrants.

This is an ale-only establishment; they’ve got I think four house beers that are always on tap (a golden Kölsch, an amber, a pale, and a porter), plus another five to ten seasonal beers that they rotate through as they become ready.

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Wine tastings rock so hard. For a really low buy-in, you can try a diverse assortment of wines, talk to people who actually know things about wine to pick up terminology (useful if you’re interested in calling wines something beyond “dry” and “sweet”), and get pleasantly drunk. Usually at like five in the afternoon. Oh, and usually there are hors d’oeuvres.

So when one of Dandan’s friends proposed doing exactly that at Cercle Rouge in Tribeca, we jumped. Like most wine tastings, this one had a (innocuous) gimmick: all the wines were organic and French (I seem to recall being told that there would be Italian wines too, but I don’t recall seeing any).

There were around 80 wines, with a pretty good distribution of regions whose names I really ought to recognize. I took notes (I always take notes at wine tastings so that I don’t look so much like a jackass who’s just there to get toasted), but they’re somewhere either in Dandan’s apartment or in the trash.

In summary: there was a lot of good wine, but I noticed a few trends: there were a lot more blends then I would have expected, there were several rosés that people were taking seriously and totally not just drinking because they were 19 (in fact, the sparkling FRV 100 Gamay was possibly the best wine we had), and, most telling of the difference between the French and the American palates, I found that a lot of the wines lacked any “punch.” There wasn’t a single wine I tried that offended me, but out of the few dozen I tasted there were only a few that were particularly distinct. Do I expect wine to taste too much like citric acid and Kool-Aid? Was I in the wrong mindset? Was I drunk? On all three counts, the answer might be “yes.”

Whatever the case, the vintners were enthusiastic and informative, the hors d’oeuvres were worth the $5 by themselves (steak tartare… mmm). After most of our modest party had hit their limit, the authors of this column squeezed in a bonus round or two, and then we all wandered down the street to the affiliated wine shop where we bought a few bottles of the better stuff. We hoofed it, mildy intoxicated at six in the evening, over to Chinatown where we devoured a platter of Vietnamese food and then rather a lot of espresso. I seem to recall that most of the wine we bought was consumed over Pictionary later that evening.

If that’s not a fine day, then I don’t know what is.

For kind of a while now, I’ve been on a dark coffee kick. From a strictly political standpoint, that’s dangerous; some would claim it’s a slippery slope from there to being another Starbucks drone. I disagree; I think that 20% of the problem with Starbucks is soporific music, and the other 80% is the fact that most of their beverages no longer classify as coffee. They certainly do roast their beans a bit dark, and that may not be to everybody’s liking, but that’s a standard coffee-house aesthetic decision, and not a sign of the apocalypse.

So, after working my way through a pound or so of some Viennese Roast that I bought out of the bin at the local co-op, I found myself at Trader Joe’s in desperate need of coffee.

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I recently had the distinct pleasure of dining at one Mr. Bartley’s in Harvard Square. Most of the things on their menu are solid, and therefore aren’t of much interest to liquephiles like you and me, but I did encounter the darndest concoction: the frappe.

A “frappe” is pronounced “frap” (we require none of that high-falutin’ French here), and it is made of milk, ice cream, some flavoring that I assume comes in syrup form (said a Southern-bred friend: “It tastes like that powered strawberry milk I drank as a kid!” and indeed it did), and a blender.

In other words, it’s a milkshake.

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Last night I got my hands on a glass of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA at a fine local establishment. Let me summarize: it’s 20% alcohol, 30% hops, and 50% awesome.

Now, the internets claim that this stuff tastes wildly different out of a bottle and a tap; I’m skeptical, but I’ll mention that I got it on tap. I paid $10 for a 10 oz glass, which seems pretty extreme (and, well, it is), but the good news is that it’s so much more alcoholic than regular beer that it’s actually a relatively good deal. Not that I recommend this stuff to anyone who just wants to get smashed - this stuff is seriously dangerous, and it would be a waste of some fine craftsmanship.

I try not to spend too much time talking about things like the “bouquet”, so I’ll simply instruct you to smell this beer. I think the word “apricot” would be appropriate, at least if “apricot” is ever an appropriate choice of words.

“But,” you ask, “what kind of IPA smells like fruit?” It’s a fair question and brings me to sort of the major point about this whole ruckus: this stuff transcends regular beer categorization. I mean, it may have been made like an IPA, but calling this an IPA is like calling Porto a fortified wine — there’s important information that’s not getting conveyed. There is a hell of a lot of hops in this, I guess, but I wouldn’t call its flavor bitter in the traditional sense. It’s… I dunno. Sweet, strong (that 20% business is no joke), rather less head than you’d find in a Belgian ale (though since I didn’t pour it, I don’t know if that’s by the brewer’s design or the bartender’s.

In fact, I think the analogy to port wine might be a good one: Dogfish 120 may be the first beer I’ve ever encountered that I would ever consider calling a “dessert beer.” This stuff isn’t cheap, but I would definitely put it in the category of things you have to do at least once in your life. You may or may not like it, but I guarantee that it will change the way you think about beer.

Our last day in Toronto; we had probably walked several miles (sorry, wrong country, kilometers ;)) that day, with staring from our (absolutely awesome) bed and breakfast in Cabbagetown, walking to the University of Toronto, and the crystal monsters of Royal Ontario Museum, to the piers, and all around Toronto islands. Needless to say, we were pooped. But that wasn’t going to prevent us from going out! We ended up going to a Cabbagetown neighbourhood bar by the name of Ben Wick’s pub. Little did we know… we would be the only people in the entire bar. Granted, it was a Monday evening. Granted, it was Easter. Granted, it was 10pm. But… huh? I’m almost convinced it’s a mafia front. Because simple arithmetic surmises that a business with no customers would no longer stay a business…

I forgot who — someone thought we should order something local. After the (slightly strange) waiter rattled off the list, and the only local wine available was of the Niagara varietal that everyone with taste apparently disliked, we went with a South African sauvignon blanc that ended up being inoffensive and unremarkable. After dispatching that and a batch of nacho chips, we went for a red for the second bottle. The (fast-talking) waiter heavily recommended an Australian shiraz (after dropping his voice to talk trash about the other offerings) — and after we acquiesced, he brought over a bottle of Jindalee Estates 2007 Shiraz.

“If you don’t like it, I’ll drink it,” he said matter-of-factly, as he poured us the shiraz.

Wow.

It was good.

It was real good.

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