Author: Michael J. Coffey

As those who get my newsletter now know, I’ve taken the jump into the certification business. However, since I have written a post on the blog about my mixed feelings about certification, I think it’s important to have a little conversation about why I’m doing it and how my certification is different from other programs out there.

First, the “why” of the certification program. From the very beginning of Tea Geek, my intention has been educational. I do sell a little tea and teaware, but the primary focus of my activities have been about tea information—sorting the good from the bad, busting myths, offering classes, doing informal (so far) research, and so on. I’ve always had a vision of something similar to what they have in many tea-producing countries—a technical college style school that focuses on all aspects of tea.

The certification program is one of several things being worked on to bring the world closer to this vision. Many people (Americans especially) expect to get some kind of reward or memento for learning—a diploma, a certificate, grades, plaques, etc. Offering certification meets that expectation in the educational marketplace. From a business perspective, it’s a pretty good business model: once the program is developed and ready, costs are very low so profit margins can be quite good. And, from the perspective of being a change-agent in the tea industry (see the “what’s different” part below), it provides a way to do things a little differently in order to shift around some incentives.

So what’s different about this certification? Well, first off, you pretty much can’t fail. This is because the certification doesn’t take the form of a grade or a pass/fail test like most programs. Instead, in the spirit of schools such as Fairhaven College, Evergreen State College, and the Puget Sound Community School (where I taught my first tea class), a certification consists of a narrative evaluation of the individual’s tea knowledge and skills.   Therefore, no matter what your level of knowledge or skill, you will be able to sit down for an interview or test (or whatever format is appropriate for the topic) and demonstrate your competency.  You will earn a description of what you’re good at, and can even get some suggestions of what you might learn next—if that’s something you’re interested in.

Tea Geek will, of course, be providing classes to prepare those who want to maximize their evaluation time, but these classes are absolutely not prerequisites for having a tea knowledge/skill evaluation.  Currently, there is a prep class series being offered in person, and soon a virtual version will be ready for those outside the western Washington State area.  Upcoming trainings and classes are posted on a public page at the Tea Geek Wiki.

There are a few more things to be done for an official launch, but those who are interested should send an email message to teageek [at] teageek.net to be sure you get notification when the program goes live.

Questions?  Comments?  Send an email or leave a comment below!

For years and years, I’ve been hearing stories of how important the brewing vessel is in producing an excellent brew. Lots of different reasons have been given for why a particular method or material is the “best”. Unfortunately, very few of the claims are consistent. As an example, cast-iron tetsubins have been touted as being the best for brewing tea because the metal keeps the tea hotter longer. They’ve also been reviled for not keeping the tea hot enough because metal radiates heat too quickly. Some say they’re good for you because the iron they are made of conditions the water and acts as an iron supplement. Others say that the metal makes the tea taste metallic (even in ones where the water and tea never touch the metal because they’ve been enameled on the inside).

So how important is the container on the flavor of the tea? That depends. It depends on whether you think quality of the brewed tea is an objective thing, or if it’s subjective. Essentially, you’re delusional. Yes, I’m talking about you…the one reading this. I’m delusional, too, of course. Think about it. The standard human comes with two separate eyes and two separate optic nerves. How come you don’t see two images of everything? Because your brain takes actual objective information about the world and interprets it. And the human brain does lots of automatic interpretation—which sometimes isn’t accurate. If it was, there’d be no such thing as an optical illusion.

But what does that have to do with flavor? Plenty. I’d talk about it myself, but an article I read a couple of days ago does it far better than I ever could. It has to do with an analysis of the claim that different wine glasses make a difference in tasting wine. I encourage you to read it, keeping in mind any opinions you have about the suitability of a particular type of brewing vessel—tetsubin, Yixing clay, porcelain gaiwan, glass or silver teapot, etc.

Shattered Myths
by Daniel Zwerdling
published August 2004, www.gourmet.com
(Link opens in new window)

I’d love to hear your thoughts, so once you’re done reading the article, please come back and comment.

I recently read an article in Scientific American Mind (June/July 2007 issue), which had a great article on getting good advice. Although the article was talking primarily about medical advice, the following paragraph struck me as relevant to anyone who is interested in learning about the tea they drink:

We cannot avoid relying on expert opinion. We simply do not have the factual knowledge required to answer all of our questions. Certain fields are so technical, moreover, that only a true expert’s opinion will do…. But our very need for such advice is also why claims of expertise so easily lend themselves to abuse, much to the detriment of the person looking for help. Professionals in the advertising industry are well aware of the persuasive powers of such appeals to authority. Consequently, they spend billions of dollars on advertising and employ ostensibly trustworthy—or not so trustworthy—experts who try to lure us into buying products or services. It’s one thing to be on our guard when watching commercials, however, and quite another to evaluate the credibility of Web sites, self-help books and the like.

The tea industry is not immune to this. Everyone assumes that their local tea shop worker can teach them something about tea. And often this is the case…but not always. When my career path officially switched from “education” to “tea industry” (though I’d already been teaching about tea under the former category), I had pretty much tapped out the tea information of all the places I bought tea from. When it came time for training at my first tea-shop job, they pretty much skipped over everything having to do with the product itself because I’d been feeding them information about tea for some time.

How do you evaluate whether someone’s really an expert, then? Here, modified from its original form to apply better to the tea industry rather than medical field, is a quick and dirty list:

Impartiality: The tea authority should not be biased. If what they’re telling you about would benefit them, it should lead you to question more deeply what they say. For example, a tea shop that tells you how to evaluate a tea that happens to be one of their best-sellers may be giving you biased information leading you to think theirs is the best, rather than a true judge of the quality of that kind of tea.

Degree/Certification: There are two things to look at here. First, is the credential that someone claims relevant? For example, I have a Level-3 certification in black tea from the Specialty Tea Institute. You might well question whether my advice about green tea is good, since I don’t currently have a Level-3 certification in that type. The other thing to look at is the reputation and requirements of the certifying body is. There are lots of fake degrees, diploma mills, and certifications that set their bar very low. Just because someone says they’re certified, doesn’t mean the certificate represents mastery, or that it’s relevant to what they’re telling you about tea.

Experience: A real expert should have extensive experience in whatever area they’re talking about. If you’ve been reading my blog or taking my classes, you’ll have an idea of how many areas it’s possible to have experience in, relative to tea. Just because someone has been selling tea for a long time doesn’t necessarily mean they have experience in how it’s processed, or agriculture, or biochemistry, or history. I know of a tea company that changed ownership—the old owner had extensive experience in the sensory evaluation of teas, whereas the new owner has more extensive experience in business and marketing. I’ve heard from several of their customers that this change in experience can be detected in both the products they carry and the health of the business.

Affiliations: What affiliations does this particular expert have? What reputation does he or she have with those organizations? Ask what memberships they have, and inquire of those organizations if the expert is a member in good standing. If an expert is not a member of an organization you expect they would, ask why. As a non-tea example, at least one of the Seattle neighborhood chambers of commerce is not itself a member of the national chamber of commerce. At first that seems strange, but upon questioning, they will be happy to tell you that they don’t agree with the profits-above-environment sentiment and policies of the national chamber and have chosen not to be national members for that reason. This bit of information helps suggest what biases both the local and national organization might have.

Publications: While there is very little scholarly publication about tea in the U.S. outside of the medical community, publication is still an area where you can evaluate an expert. Although even books these days can be published without the watchful eye of an informed topic-specific editor, important information can be gleaned from anything published—from books, to newspaper or magazine articles, to blog posts. Does the piece include references? Are opinions backed up with evidence, or labeled as opinions, or stated as plain facts? Have you seen conflicting information elsewhere, and if so, which source meets more of these expert-reliability tests? In the case of publications where comments can be appended (many online articles, blogs, etc.), have industry leaders questioned or supported the information? The more “peer reviewed” the expert’s publications have, the better (assuming the peer-reviews aren’t pointing out errors or questionable sources and so forth).

And, as also provided in the Scientific American Mind article, a great place to learn more about the fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam, or the “appeal to misleading authority”: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html

Now, go forth and question those who tell you things about tea! (And yes, that includes me.)

As you may know, people who have become members of Tea Geek are sent a free sample of tea every quarter, and sometimes I get teas in that are available only to members because they’re only available in very small amounts.  This quarter, both happened:  a members-only tea is what was sent out as free samples.  Coincidentally, one of our members—Eric Glass—got the same kind of tea (same cultivar, same region, different farm and perhaps different season) when he took a recent tea tour of China.  Eric was good enough to taste both versions and write up the experience.

General notes on the tea: Huang Zhi Xiang (黄枝香), or “Yellow Branch Fragrance” is a Dan Cong wulong from the Phoenix Mountain area, near Chaozhou, Guangdong province, China.  The cultivar, also called Huang Zhi Xiang, is a descendant of the more widely distributed Shui Xian (“water sprite” or “narcissus”) cultivar.

Here, slightly edited, is his comparison of his Huang Zhi Xiang (“EG”) and Tea Geek’s Huang Zhi Xiang (“TG”):

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The Hung Zhi Xiang I bought came from Mr. Zhang’s family farm located on Wu Dong Shan, not far from the more famous Feng Huan Shan (Phoenix Mountain.)

The first thing I noticed was how loose TeaGeek’s (TG) tea was twisted compared to mine (EG).  The TG’s dry leaves were also a darker green and each EG leaf had a more uneven color. TG was unfortunately more brittle, which I found a bit odd since I have been not storing EG well by keeping it in the plastic Ziploc bag I had originally bought it in when I was in China.

The fragrance of EG dry leaves was much more fresh, more green and never had a roasted scent like TG had.  When wet, the same basic smells were there but TG had a hint of peach.  In later steepings, EG developed this as well, and got stronger with each steep, even more so than TG (I only did a total of 3 infusions.)

Comparing the first cup, after a rinse, TG was much smoother than EG but it didn’t have as much flavor.   Its mild sourness and citrus flavor I tasted in both teas seemed to be more apparent in EG from the beginning, however TG seemed to always be at a pleasant level. For some reason I found TG to be slightly sweet, something that was never apparent in EG or any other subsequent brew.

In mouthfeel, EG from the beginning always had a slight stickiness to it; I like to use the word “gummy.”  EG’s gumminess only got worse but it seemed that TG’s first infusion was the only cup that was smooth.  Compared to EG, TG increased its gummy character at a higher rate than EG and at the 3rd infusion it was worse than EG.  Not to say that it’s overwhelming, far from it, but it was noticeable to me.

The liquor of both TG and EG were of the same basic color. I won’t go into RBG levels; I’m sure TeaGeek would, at least he should for that matter.  Both were a bit yellow, I first thought of olive oil but these teas weren’t as green.  Both were very clear but TG was darker yet duller where as EG always turned out more green and very bright.

I always like to study the leaves when I’m finished.  This had some odd results.  Even though the liquid of EG was greener, the wet, brewed leaves were much more yellow and TG was much more green and a lot darker.  TG also had unfolded in the cup more, probably due to the fact that they weren’t twisted as much as EG.  The amount of bruising from leaf to leaf was very consistent in TG, where as some EG leaves had more than others.  Also, most EG leaf had spots of bruising within the leaf, not just around the edges like TG.  The shape of EG’s fully untwisted leaves had the same width but were much longer and there was more difference in leaf sizes in EG as well, from about 3cm to 6cm.  TG had leaves that were more equal, from about 3cm to 4.5cm.  But those were just the size of the leaves I brewed; smaller and larger leaves could very well exist.

All in all I didn’t have a favorite between the two; TG was roastier with more fragrance and EG was more “fresh tasting.”  These are both the same tea, believe me.  But I was amazed at how many subtle differences there were between the two.

Photo credits: Eric Glass.

The final proof came in the mail yesterday:  I am now certified by the Specialty Tea Institute.   I understand that I’m the first person ever to successfully challenge levels 1 and 2, and I’ve got the black tea portion of level 3 under my belt.

And I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, it’s nice to have a piece of paper on the wall (albeit, with my name misspelled) certifying that I’ve completed their training.  (And, to be honest, it’s not really on my wall.)  At the same time, I felt it a much higher honor to have been asked by a few of my fellow students after one of the level 3 classes if they could pick my brain because, as one of them put it, “from the kinds of questions you’re asking, it seems like you know what you’re talking about.”

Also, the full STI certification program takes something like 12 days to complete all of their classes (until they add a level 4).  Once you’ve gone through those two weeks’ worth of training, you earn America’s most well-known and respected tea certification program, with a wall’s worth of certificates.   (There are other programs out there that promise awarding “tea master” status.  Still others may take a bit longer but aren’t as widely recognized as STI’s program.)

But in at least China, Japan, and Taiwan, a basic training in tea is a college education.  Two years of full time studying about tea, plus the typical general requirements, to get a Bachelor’s.  And that’s not the advanced stuff.   To get any kind of educational recognition, they need to learn how to grow tea and process it in a variety of ways.  They need to be able to evaluate a tea by taste and then take the leaves back to the factory to fix flaws.  They need to be able to identify cultivars by sight and by taste.  They need to know how much of which kinds of fertilizer to use and how that will affect the flavor in the cup.

Here in America, though, you can get “certified” for being able to tell the difference between a black and a green tea.  We get a certificate for making it through a couple of days of class, let alone a couple of years.  Heck, Americans can’t even take a couple of years of tea classes if we wanted.

Unfortunately, there are lots of factors in favor of the status quo.  A few people are willing to pay big money to get a certificate, so tea certification (especially if it’s easy, convenient, short, and expensive) is a financially viable business.  People in the tea business can use it as a marketing tool–even though the certificate doesn’t prove skill or experience, just the ability to take a test well about recently-reviewed information.

But is that really what expertise is about?  Is that really what we want to encourage in the world of tea?

Personally, I would prefer that the tea community collaborate with each other, and recommend each other.  Let those who get recommended often by the peers that know them well be called the “experts”.  Let the “tea masters” be those who have devoted decades to a particular topic within the field of tea, with the understanding that the only thing they’re a “master” in is that particular topic.

Of course, I’m not the king of human behavior, nor of economics, so I can’t make this so.  And I’d be a little stupid not to use my certification to get me more business if I can.  But I hope that you, dear reader, will recognize what’s possible and look beyond titles, specific classes, awards, programs, and so forth.

I hope you ask the tea people you meet what their specialties are, who they learned the most from, and what they’re currently doing to deepen their understanding in their chosen area.   People who are truly serious about tea should be able to easily answer those questions without blinking an eye.

It’s official: planning has started for a trip to China with the idea of seeing the World Expo in Shanghai and then heading off into the country for tea experiences. As the linguist (at least between my partner and I—he’s the cartographer and navigator), I started doing my part by redoubling my Chinese-learning efforts and by learning a little about Shanghainese.

Shanghainese is the most widespread of the Wu family of languages (or dialects, depending on how you define them). However, it was not always so. It used to be that the Suzhou dialect was the most widespread and most prestigious of the Wu dialects. However, because the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) forced the opening on Shanghai as one of the “treaty ports,” it became a center of trade with the West. As such, the local dialect became more advantageous to speak if you were involved in commerce, trade, finance, shipping, etc.

And, of course, the Treaty of Nanking was what ended the Opium Wars…that started because of the foreign policy and commerce decisions between China and England, specifically regarding the trade of tea.

Or, in the order it actually happened: China sells tea to England. England’s treasury starts geting sucked dry by the trade so they get the Chinese hooked on British opium grown near Darjeeling (did I mention that this has to do with tea?). The Chinese government doesn’t like the drug pushers and tries to stop them. The English don’t like the Chinese firing on their ships and go to war. Two wars later, they sign a treaty forcing open Shanghai’s port (among other Chinese concessions). In order to trade in Shanghai and get wealthy, folks in the areas of Zhejiang, Fujian, and other nearby locales start learning speaking Shanghainese in order to do better business directly or indirectly with the foreign traders at the port. Shanghainese gains prestige and more speakers, toppling Suzhou’s dialect for the king of the Wu dialects.

Tea, the linguistic kingmaker.

I recently picked up an accordion-bound copy of Zhang Zeduan’s famous Song dynasty painting of a scene during the Qingming festival. The painting is so famous that a New York Times article described it this way:  “Like the Mona Lisa, ‘Qingming Festival’ is to some extent famous for being famous.”  It has been copied, reinterpreted, and converted into different media.  (In fact, my earliest memory of it is recognizing the famous bridge as the same as the semi-3D wooden model hanging from the wall of a Chinese restaurant I used to go to.)  The reproduction that I bought has some variations from the original, but from what I can tell those differences are only on the ends and in an additional top margin area.  However, it’s possible that I’ve got a reproduction of a fairly, though not completely, faithful copy.  As of this writing, the Wikipedia article on the painting is pretty interesting, including information about the city supposedly represented, various translations of the title into English, and so forth.

I bought it mainly because the Qingming festival is so important, at least traditionally, to the tea industry in China.  This festival, occurring in the first week of April, represents something like the start of the “regular” spring season. Teas harvested before the Qingming festival (called “mingqian” teas) are considered to be exceptional.  These teas are the ones that are expected to have the most concentrated flavor compounds because the tea plants have been building up their nutrient reserves over the winter.  Teas made after Qingming traditionally decreased in value as the date of harvest got further and further from the festival, for much the same reason.  Later-picked spring teas would be second, third, fourth pickings from the same bushes and would, therefore, be ever so slightly less full of the stuff needed for a truly amazing cup of tea.

This traditional picture of Chinese tea is changing, however, probably due to global climate change.  Increasingly, more and more tea can be produced before Qingming because the growing season is lengthening.  Thus, second or even third pluckings from a given bush are becoming possible before the festival, meaning that “mingqian” no longer virtually guarantees a first-pluck-of-the-year status to the teas.  This doesn’t stop mingqian teas from being sought after, but it does suggest that the mingqian tea you may get today is not nearly as good as all the traditional stories might lead you to suppose.

My personal take-away, though, is that it’s another reason to do your part reducing climate change, like driving less, using sustainably produced products, eating smaller amounts of non-poultry meats, using energy efficient lighting and appliances, and so forth.

Also, Tea Geek Business Members can check out my reproduction of this famous painting through the Tea Geek Library Service.

Last year at the Northwest Tea Festival, we got feedback that some of the attendees would like more advanced classes.  This year, I have the honor of being the exclusive presenter of advanced classes.  I’m hoping that they fill quickly and show the world that American tea drinkers are serious about tea and interested in more than introductory-style tea education.

The classes will be offered in two pairs of topics.  Each topic has a beginner level (free) for those who are newer to the topic and as orientation for the advanced class.  The advanced level (with registration fee) will take the topic further, looking at the real story behind the often oversimplified claims used to sell tea.

The first pair of classes will be called The Teamaker’s Art and both will shed light upon how the leaves you take home from your local tea shop are grown and processed.  My goal is to have you leave not only knowing what goes on at major points in tea processing, but also have a deeper understanding of the complex skills and artistry required to make a truly good tea.  Teamaker’s Art 1 (Saturday, Oct 3rd) will look at the various choices made by a teamaker from soil to finished tea.  Teamaker’s Art 2 (Sunday, Oct 4th) will dig even deeper into the subject and explore how selected processing steps and the choices made by the teamaker affect the internal chemistry of the leaf and, consequently, the experience of the tea drinker who brews it.

The other pair is Tea and Caffeine, although both classes will touch a bit on plants other than Camellia sinensis and a few molecules besides just caffeine.  Here my goal is to shed some light on the complexity of caffeine, especially when the source is the tea plant.  Tea and Caffeine 1 will mainly look at what caffeine is, what it isn’t, and dispel several of the most pernicious tea myths in circulation.  Jump then to Tea and Caffeine 2 to learn how caffeine works its magic in the brain, how it combines with other compounds in tea to cause sometimes unexpected effects, as well as look at some recent research into the health risks and benefits of caffeine.

Anyone can take either (or both) levels.  If you jump into the advanced one without taking the first one, it will be more challenging, but don’t let that keep you away!

Seating at the free level-1 classes is first come first served, so get there early!  To register and reserve your seat in advance for the level-2 classes, you can either call the Perennial Tea Room at 888-448-4054 or click below to pay online:

• Teamaker’s Art 2
• Tea and Caffeine 2

Hope to see you there!

Hey, everyone…I’ve been a little uncommunicative recently and wanted to let folks know what’s up:

First, I’ve upped the security in the Tea Geek Store and installed regular credit card processing, so now you can sign up for classes and buy the tea for your daily cup (or special-occasion cup) quickly and with more confidence.

Perhaps more importantly, I’ve added another membership level that you can join:  Business Members.  Designed with the training and reference needs of people in the tea industry in mind, it ties my original purpose in founding Tea Geek to the results of all my study over 15 years learning about tea and launches the Tea Library Service.

After studying tea for many years and working in several tea businesses, I realized that there was just too much misinformation circulating about tea. And the tea industry in the US (a) didn’t care, (b) didn’t know what they didn’t know, and/or (c) were being somewhat careless with “facts” in order to move more product. So I founded Tea Geek with the intention of providing accurate, well-cited information about tea, primarily through tea education classes.

As of this posting, Individual Members get:

• A membership card
• Your own discount code for 15% off everything offered by Tea Geek–classes, tea, teaware…everything!
• Exclusive, unique, MEMBERS ONLY tea selections
• Quarterly tea samples
• Access to the ever-expanding Tea Geek Wiki for your tea reference needs
• And a FREE online class! Tea 101: Everything You Need to Know

More information on the Individual Membership

Now, Business Members get:

• A membership card
• Your own unique discount code for 20% off everything offered by Tea Geek–classes, tea, teaware, research…everything!
• Your employees can become Individual Members for only $25 each (a $35 value per person). Great for an inexpensive employee benefit or training program.
• Exclusive, unique, MEMBERS ONLY tea selections
• Quarterly tea samples; try something new!
• Quarterly tea report on various aspects of tea. Topics may include trends in the tea industry, tea history, processing, geography, chemistry, health studies, and more!
• Access to the ever-expanding Tea Geek Wiki for your tea reference needs
• Access to Tea Geek’s Tea Library. Select tea-related resources and have them shipped to you to review or use as reference!
• And a FREE online class! Tea 101: Everything You Need to Know will get your new hires up to speed quickly on the absolute essentials to get started in the tea industry.

More information on the Business Membership

In addition, we’re scheming up new benefits for our members and have several knowledgeable tea people designing new online courses (some will be free to members, and the rest will be 15% or 20% off the non-member price).

With the creation of classes, research for the Tea Geek Wiki, putting together the Tea Library Service, updating the website security, and adding credit card processing, it’s been a busy couple of weeks.  Remember that the money from your memberships will be used primarily for expanding the Tea Library and, soon, original scientific research into tea.

Hope you enjoy it all!

For those of you who have determined the precise temperature at which your favorite tea gives off your favorite aromas and flavors, but want to get to the perfect temperature more quickly than allowing the water to cool off the boil naturally, I’ve got a refresher course for you from high school chemistry.  Now, don’t run–it’s pretty easy.  Well, it’s easy mainly because we’re talking about adding water to water (so there’s no worrying about different thermal properties of two different liquids).  We’ll also ignore for the moment the effects of surface area on cooling and the heat transfer coefficients of different materials you might hold your water in.

See?  We’re ignoring all the confusing stuff and making it simple.

Let’s say you’ve got some amount of boiling water (212F) and another amount of room-temperature water (68F) and you’re going to add the cold water to the hot water to make this perfect tea-brewing temperature.  Now, 194 isn’t much below 212, so we probably don’t need to add too much of the colder water.  We can use an equation to figure out the resulting temperature based on the amounts of each of the two waters we combine.

Here’s the equation.  Don’t be scared.

Tx= Vc*Tc + Vh*Th

Where T=temperature, and V=volume of water, expressed as a decimal percentage of the combined total.  The “x” refers to the combined water, and “c” is “cold” while “h” is “hot.”

For the moment, let’s pretend we’ve got a teapot or cup or gaiwan or whatever that holds 8 fluid ounces.  And to make the math easy, we’re going to measure in 1-ounce increments.  Since we only need a little cool water, let’s do 1 ounce cold, and 7 ounces hot.  What temperature would that make?

Let’s plug in our numbers, remembering that “V” is the percentage of the total.  One ounce is 12.5% of 8 ounces, and 7 is 87.5%.  Converted into decimals, that’s .125 of cold, and .875 of hot:

Tx = .125*68F + .875*212F

So doing the multiplication first:  Tx = 8.5F + 185.5F

Or Tx = 194F

Ta da!  If you were to add 1 fluid ounce of room temperature (68F) water to 7 fluid ounces of boiling water (212F), they’d mix to make a lovely 194F.  By the way, for those that are more scientifically minded or live outside of the US, all this works in Celsius as well.  Tx = .125*20C + .875*100C = 2.5C + 87.5C = 90C.  And 90C=194F

Once you’ve used this equation to figure the right proportions, you can make the right temperature all the time without resorting to the use of lots of thermometers or devices that heat water and shut off at preset temperatures or whatever.  If 194F is your ideal, you just need to remember that if your cold water is really at 68F, it’s a precise ratio of 1 part cold, 7 parts boiling.

Clearly, you can also adjust based on whatever the situation is.  If you keep bottled water in the fridge and the fridge stays at a more constant temperature than “room temp” you can use that number for your cold and find your new perfect ratio.

If you want to get more complicated, recognize that different materials absorb heat at different rates.  However, the closer the water vessel used to combine your two temperatures is to the final temperature, the less the effect will be.  So your calculations will be more accurate by pre-warming your vessels.  Or if you’re geeky about temperatures even beyond what I’ve given you here, you can research the thermal properties of whatever material your teaware is made of.

Of course, I usually use boiling water for everything, and drastically lower brewing time if it’s a “low temperature” tea.  But that’s just my personal method.  Do tea the way it tastes best to you, and experiment with other ways to see if you can improve on what you already like.

Enjoy!