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Before It Begins episodes
- Genmaicha Green - Black Tea Isn’t Green Tea Gone Wrong
Genmaicha is a cup that begins with colour—pale, yellow-green, clear enough to see the bottom. The grains catch the eye, toasted gold, a few burst open, but it’s the leaves beneath that do the work, darkening and deepening as they steep. Every true tea, green or black, starts from the same plant, but what happens after picking changes everything. Some things are kept green, caught at the moment, while others are left to darken and become something else entirely. Most are allowed to change. Both end up in someone’s hands, on a morning like this.
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Today's cup: Genmaicha — Camellia sinensis and brown rice.
1 tsp, 200mL, 75°C, two minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
5 min - Genmaicha Green - Water Can’t Make This Flavour
There are toasted grains of rice in this genmaicha, a few burst open and white, and the warmth they carry is something the water in your cup can’t make. Not at seventy-five degrees. Not in two minutes. It was made somewhere else, somewhere dry and far hotter, before the kettle went on. It’s the same reason a boiled sausage stays the colour of an apology. And it’s why the gentlest parts of an ordinary morning so often trace back to a room you were never in.
Today's cup: Genmaicha — Camellia sinensis and brown rice.
1 tsp, 200mL, 75°C, two minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
5 min - Genmaicha Green - The People’s Tea
The cup is Genmaicha, a blend where the colour is barely there, pale yellow with a hint of green, and the only things in the cup are narrow leaves and grains of toasted rice. The aroma is warm and nutty, the taste round and easy, and the story behind it is one of thrift—rice added to stretch the tea further, until the cheap part became the part people loved. What begins as a compromise can become the thing you seek out.
Today's cup: Genmaicha — Camellia sinensis and brown rice.
1 tsp, 200mL, 75°C, two minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
5 min - Relaxation Tea - Poor Man's Saffron
The cup is warm and clear, copper deepening to red, with small things suspended in the light—needles, petals, grains, and a single bright strip of gold. The aroma is layered: rose, honeyed rooibos, lavender, and something faintly green. The taste is gentle, sweet, and round, with one flower mostly lending its colour. Its name is a fragment of Roman timekeeping, a flower that turns up quietly, month after month, making things brighter without being called precious. There’s a kind of person like that, too.
Today's cup: Relaxation Tea — rooibos, rose petals, rose buds, lavender, calendula petals. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, four minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Relaxation Tea - The Armour Everyone Loves
The cup opens in copper and red, warm and clear, with gold at the edges where the light gets in. Most of what floats belongs to the same family of colour—rust red, pink, gold—until you notice the small, grey-purple grains that hold their shape, cool against the warmth. They look less like flowers, more like seeds, and they keep their scent close, hidden in a tough casing. Some things are made to keep others out, but sometimes what keeps the world at bay is what draws you in, if you come close enough.
Today's cup: Relaxation Tea — rooibos, rose petals, rose buds, lavender, calendula petals. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, four minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Relaxation Tea - Whoever Gets There First
Relaxation Tea opens as a warm copper red, clear enough to see the bottom of the cup. Before you even look, something arrives first: a scent rising with the steam, gentle and unmistakable, softening the air before the day has decided what it will be. There are petals here, some open, some still tight, and the window for catching them at their best is short. Most mornings pass unnoticed, but sometimes you find yourself in the stretch before anything has begun.
Today's cup: Relaxation Tea — rooibos, rose petals, rose buds, lavender, calendula petals. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, four minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Relaxation Tea - The Red Is The Bruise
The cup is red before anything else, a clear, coppery colour that deepens as you wait. Most of what you see comes from the fine, rust-coloured needles at the bottom, swept together with rose petals, lavender, and gold. The scent is honey and timber, flowers and dry grass, a memory of somewhere bright and dry. But the colour itself is not what the bush grew. It’s what happened after: the bruising, the air, the sun. The change is slow, and nothing is added. What does it mean to be known by what happened after you left the place you grew?
Today's cup: Relaxation Tea — rooibos, rose petals, rose buds, lavender, calendula petals. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, four minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Relaxation Tea - Everything the Flower Will Ever Be
Relaxation Tea is a cup that gathers both what has opened and what is still folded. In the water, rose petals drift alongside tight rose buds, rooibos needles and threads of calendula, each releasing colour and scent at its own pace. The bud is not a draft or a smaller version; it is the whole flower, waiting for time and water to show what is already inside. Some things are not missing, just not opened yet.
Today's cup: Relaxation Tea — rooibos, rose petals, rose buds, lavender, calendula petals. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, four minutes. It takes a second infusion.---
A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Lapsang Souchong - A Mountain That Became a Word
Lapsang Souchong is a cup that deepens in colour almost as soon as the water hits the leaves — amber, copper, then a dark red-brown. The leaves themselves are long and dark, with a faint sheen as if they spent time near a fire. Lift the cup and the first thing you find is smoke: pine fire, old wood, leather, and a dark sweetness underneath. This style of tea comes from the Wuyi mountains in Fujian, and in the eighteenth century, those mountains gave English a word — Bohea. It started as a name for somewhere rare, and ended up meaning something ordinary, by being wanted. What else becomes ordinary only because enough people decide to keep it?
Today's cup: Lapsang Souchong — Camellia sinensis, smoked over pinewood. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, three minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min - Lapsang Souchong: What the Rest of the World Asked for
The cup of Lapsang Souchong gathers colour fast—amber, copper, then a deep red-brown that almost blacks out the centre. The smoke rises before anything else, filling the breath with wood fire and resin, but underneath, if you wait, there’s a sweetness that’s easy to miss. In the Wuyi Mountains, some of the most prized leaves are barely smoked at all. The world remembers the smoke, but that’s only the first impression. What else is in the cup, waiting for someone to notice?
Today's cup: Lapsang Souchong — Camellia sinensis, smoked over pinewood. 1 tsp, 200mL, 100°C, three minutes. It takes a second infusion.
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A tea and a musing every weekday morning.
Before It Begins is made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. To join our tea ritual - click here.
6 min
About Before It Begins
From the publisher's feed
Five minutes with a cup of tea, every weekday morning. Pour the water, watch the colour arrive, and hear one true thing about what's in the cup — why lemon myrtle carries more lemon than a lemon does,…
why hibiscus isn't a flower, why no ginger plant has ever been found growing wild. Then one thought worth carrying into the day. A new blend each week, Monday to Friday. Made by Impala & Peacock Artisan Teas, blended by hand in Melbourne. Best taken with something steeping.