The Only Way to Be Sure came to be because one of the primary ways in which I show care and concern is through tea.
I think everyone who creates things has a tendency to lean into their loves and masteries when trying to express love or care or concern or…
…because it is the language they know best. (Because art is a language, and the specializations thereof are dialects.)
A friend (newish at the time, though become cherished) was confronting a particularly nasty combination plate produced by some of the features of late-stage capitalism combined with chronic life combined with a handful of things that aren’t mine to share.
It worried me.
Navigating chronic illness and the permanent hustle it feels is required to even tread water these days – is something I am well familiar with and seeing someone I cared about struggling meant that I really wanted to provide some sort of assistance, solace, a useful tool – or even just simply to let them know they were being thought of.
The crux of the issue was caffeine, its delivery, and the perennial battle of need for food vs energy to deal with food vs low enough stress level to consume food.
I’ve referenced the iconic game of Fizzbin from the original series of Star Trek a number of times when describing the frustrating dance that is food and the incredible (and oft-times inconsistent) demands of more quirky physiologies.
Wrong franchise, right concept.
For my friend, intaking the coffee version of caffeine was not a thing that could be done on an empty stomach. Unfortunately, the days on which they were forced into the office for the power and control kind of reasons were not days on which food was particularly plausible. Neither was eschewing caffeine. Especially if they did not want to have to give up coffee entirely.
A conundrum.
In an example of one of the times when coincidences line up with glorious timing, I’d been doing a lot of work with plants that contained caffeine that were neither tea nor coffee around the same time this situation was exploding for my friend.
One of the frustrating (or fascinating) side effects of this work had been the discovery that I cannot drink full test cups of anything involving a sizable amount of guarana. Mate is less bad, but depending on how much of it I put in something, I may still be courting a headache.
Given the fact that I have practically lived off of coffee several times in my life I’m not entirely sure what that’s about, but it is on my list of things to dig into.
Either way, my curiosity about the why when I worked up the first Monster Slayer teas had led to researching the caffeine levels of various plants, and I was fairly certain I could work up an herbal tea that would contain a comparable amount of caffeine.
I was not wrong.
The Only Way to Be Sure is on the short list of teas where I only get to have small sample cups due to my own physiological eccentricities – and this is a thing that I regret because it is quite tasty.
As far as the efficacy of it, I know that it bridged the gap and allowed for my friend to keep coffee as a regular and deeply appreciated life-tool.
The name came from the fact that I was really getting a “nuke the site from orbit” vibe from the whole situation my friend was in and combining that with the tactical caffeine strike the tea was intended to be, the name seemed terrible but also practically perfect.
Now for the basics:
Organic Ingredients: Roasted Mate, Guarana
Batch Size: 4 ounces, approximately 113 grams, 35+ servings
Options: Loose Tea (5 serving sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag or Tin), Teabags (Single Teabag, 5 teabag sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag)
For the moment, this tea can only be found in the store on this website.
