How hot should your water be before you add a tea sachet?

Boil, plunk, and enjoy.

As in, boil your water, plunk in the tea sachet, and drink your tea. Aren’t those the basic rules for making tea?

Actually, no. At two leaves and a bud, we think if you’re going to enjoy a premium cuppa’ our whole leaf tea, you might want to learn a bit more about how to prepare one so you get the most out of every leaf.

So consider, for a minute, that the temperature of the water you’re preparing for tea is just as important as the time you allot for steeping the tea. After all, you want to brew up the best tea you can, don’t you?

But not to worry — we’re not about to intimidate you with how you should buy a fancy-schmancy thermometer to painstakingly take the temperature of each kettle you’re about to pour. Certainly, you can if you want to, but we think it doesn’t have to be that difficult. With a little practice (and as a tea lover, you’ve probably already discovered this), it’s easy to tell when the water has reached the right temperature for your chosen variety of tea.

Tea can be delicate stuff; that’s why this matters. White and green teas are made with leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, but they don’t go through the full fermentation that black tea does. As a result, they have the more gentle, light flavors that you white and green tea drinkers enjoy.

So when you’ve got light flavors, you only want to boil the water lightly before pouring it into a mug, and adding a sachet of white or green tea. Temperature-wise, this means water that’s not quite boiling, at 170 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit. Any hotter than that, and you might cook the leaves and ruin that perfect flavor.

Black tea can handle a full boil — that’s 208 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit — so feel free to let the kettle whistle for a while, and then add your sachet of Assam, Mountain High Chai or Earl Grey.

As for Oolong tea, which we sell in loose form, what makes this tea unique is that it’s prepared with a wide range of oxidation, turning it into a cuppa’ tea that’s either more like black tea or more like green tea. For that reason, we recommend a medium boil of 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit.

Of course, when it comes to steeping, sometimes your own tastebuds know best. If you need more direction, we’re happy to provide you with our preferred steep times on each sachet packet, to give you a suggestion.

So, heat your water, steep and enjoy! Do any of you have suggestions on getting your water to the perfect temperature before enjoying a mug of tea?

If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure ... well, these sachets still don't weigh very much. But it turns out, they're darn useful.

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail. It seems (at the risk of over-sharing) he had developed a stye in his eye, and it hurt. So he went online to hunt for home remedies, and several websites recommended placing a wet teabag (it had to be black tea, not herbal) on the eye. He tried it and the next day his eye was 90 percent better. Would it have gotten better by the next day anyway, he asked? Probably. But he didn’t care — he was just happy it got better.

I got curious. There have to be some other home remedies that involve tea, right?

I shouldn’t have asked. This steps into the not-for-the-squeamish realm.

Did you see “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” where the main character’s dad is convinced that a squirt of Windex will cure anything? With that in mind, I submit to you an abbreviated list of things the Internet says you can fix with tea (and we all know that everything you read on the Internet is true. Including this blog.).

[One last note: Although most sites talk about tea bags, I'm phrasing this as tea sachets, because as you know, our sachets are much higher quality than that chopped up stuff you'll find in a tea bag.]

• Puffy eyes and dark under-eye circles? Put a wet green or black tea sachet on ‘em. Poof! No more puffiness.
• Cold sores? Soak a tea sachet, squeeze it out, put it on the cold sore for up to 30 minutes. Bam. No more cold sore.
• Did you just have a tooth extracted? Stop the bleeding by chomping down on a wet green or black tea sachet. Shazam. No more bleeding.
• Razor burn? Reduce the ouch with a wet tea sachet.
• Stinky feet? Stick ‘em in water with plenty of tea sachets. The strong brew zaps odor.
• Brushed up against poison ivy? Dab the rash with a wet tea sachet to relieve the pain.

I admit, I’m a skeptic. I’m also a lazy blogger who is not going to brush up against poison ivy, seek out a cold sore or have a tooth extracted in order to test these theories.

But I did ask some people I trust about their tea sachet uses, and it turns out the father-in-law of our customer service manager, Jen Okeson, is a dentist who tells his patients that if they loose a tooth, stick a tea sachet on it to stop the bleeding and come in for an appointment. A quick Google and I learn that the tannic acid in tea can help with blood clotting. Jen also says when her dog cuts his paw, she uses a tea sachet to stop the bleeding.

And then our owner and founder, Richard Rosenfeld, tells me he sometimes keeps tea in his fridge to absorb odors, just like baking soda. (After all, Earl Grey tea came into being when some black tea being shipped with some oranges absorbed the citrus odor.)

Here’s what I’ve used tea for: making paper look old. When your kids need to create a pirate’s buried treasure map for school, soak the paper in some black tea for a weathered look. And don’t forget to singe some of the edges with your electric stove top. We all know how those pirates accidentally set documents on fire all the time.  Yarg!

Does anybody else out there have some good uses for tea we should know about? Post ‘em here!

Presenting ... Our three new medicinal teas!

Have you heard? We’ve got three new medicinal teas here at two leaves and a bud. Do you know what they’re called?

Hold that thought. It’s not easy to name new tea. At two leaves, we had pet names for our three new teas long before we had official names — we walked around the office calling them “Sleepy,” “Wake up” and “Belly.” Obviously, we knew what we were talking about, but we needed something more official for our customers — something that got across their benefits to the tea drinker, and made them uniquely ours.

And let me tell you, some weird things happen when you start brainstorming. All three should have similar names, so they can be grouped together … so, uh, what about song titles? “Sleepy” becomes “I wanna be sedated,” “Wake up” becomes “Wake me up” (as in, “before you go-go”) and “Belly” becomes “Tea for tummies” (instead of “Tea for two”).

I actually wrote these down. Face it — my worst ideas often make the best blog posts.

Or how about “A cup of perk up,” “A cup of calm down” and “A cup of relief”? Can someone pour me a cup of inspiration?

After multiple visits to thesaurus.com, you do things like look at how other companies name their medicinal teas. We needed more ideas, and we wanted to see what’s popular. At this point, owner and founder Richard Rosenfeld became all too familiar with the tea names that amused me the most, because I told him every day. These include “Smooth Move” (if you hadn’t guessed, that’s laxative tea), “Mother’s Milk” (for lactation; men need not apply), “Get Lost” (that’s weight loss tea, even if it sounds like it might give you bad breath and fend of your enemies) and “Calming Moon” (not for werewolves).

Once we really buckled down (read: Richard set a deadline and we all panicked), we started thinking about what we’ve promised you, our faithful tea drinkers, over the years. It’s on our T-shirts, it’s on the boxes: “A better cuppa’ tea.” And speaking of better, what we want from these teas is to help you live a better life, sun-up to sun-down. So, how about the “Better Being Teas”? We were on to something.

So, we’re delighted to introduce “Better Morning Blend,” “Better Belly Blend” and “Better Rest Blend.” We don’t think there’s much guesswork about what these teas might do to help you have a better day, live a better life, or drink a medicinal tea because it tastes, well, better.

That's Kelly, buried behind all those boxes of new tea we received earlier this week.

And at the end of the day, who doesn’t want to be better?

“Mo’ betta!” is something Richard is fond of saying. I don’t know why; it’s just one of his things, like toe socks and baking pie.

We hope you check out our three “Better Being Teas.” They are caffeine-free herbal teas that taste great and individually help you get out of bed in the morning, soothe your stomach after any meal, or settle in for the night. We’ll be blogging more about them in the future, and we certainly want to hear what you think.

And don’t even get me started on what it’s like to sit down with Lindsay, our brilliant graphics girl, and look at page after page of Pantone colors to decide what shades these three boxes of tea should be. That’s a whole other story.