Coffee or Tea? Honestly, We Love Both.

And yeah, we know that's a weird thing for a coffee company to say.

We're going to be upfront about something.

We started as a coffee company. We still are a coffee company. But a while back we started carrying tea — real, high-end tea — and we haven't looked back. Not because it was a smart business move (though it was), but because we kept drinking tea ourselves and thinking: why isn't more of this out there?

So here we are. Writing a blog post about both. Bear with us. Two drinks, two ridiculous origin stories

Coffee supposedly got its start because a goat herder in Ethiopia noticed his goats acting strange after eating berries off a particular bush. Energetic, restless, couldn't sleep. He tried the berries. One thing led to another. By the 1500s, coffeehouses were packed across the Middle East and people were staying up too late arguing about politics. Some things don't change.

Tea goes back even further — legend puts it around 2700 BCE, when a Chinese emperor found some leaves had blown into his pot of boiling water. He tasted it. Liked it. The rest is, quite literally, thousands of years of history.

The point is, both of these drinks have been around forever because people genuinely love them. There's something to that.

The caffeine conversation (because someone always asks)

Coffee hits harder. A normal cup of drip coffee has somewhere around 95mg of caffeine. Black tea runs maybe 40-70mg. Green tea is gentler than that.

But here's the thing nobody talks about enough: tea has L-theanine in it, which is an amino acid that kind of takes the edge off caffeine. So the energy you get from tea tends to feel smoother — less of a spike, less of a crash. Some people swear by it for focus. Others just want to feel like a functioning adult before 8am, in which case, coffee. We get it.

Neither one is better for you in any dramatic way. Both have antioxidants. Both have their moments. Your body will tell you which one it wants if you pay attention.

It's never really been about the drink

What we love about both coffee and tea — and honestly, why we decided to carry both — is that they're excuses to slow down.

The Japanese tea ceremony is one of the most intentional things a person can do with 45 minutes. Every movement, every pour, every guest, the bowl you choose — all of it matters. It's not about tea. It's about presence.

The Italian espresso bar is the opposite energy but somehow the same idea. You walk in, you stand at the counter, you drink a perfect shot in 90 seconds, you talk to whoever's next to you, you leave. Fast and deliberate. Intentional in its own loud, efficient way.

We think about this stuff when we source and roast. A cup of coffee shouldn't just be fuel. It should be a moment. Same goes for tea.

Okay, coffee's case (our home turf)

Specialty coffee is weird in the best way. The flavor in your cup is shaped by things that happened before you ever opened the bag — what country the farm is in, how high up it sits, what variety of plant it is, whether the fruit was washed off or left on the bean to dry, how long it spent in the roaster, how coarse you ground it that morning.

Change one thing and you change everything.

An Ethiopian natural process can taste like blueberries and rose water. A clean washed Guatemalan can hit like brown sugar and lime. A Brazilian natural is sometimes so chocolatey it feels like dessert. All coffee. All different. All just depending on where it came from and how someone chose to handle it.

That's what we're chasing at Tracer. Coffees that have something to say. We try to stay out of their way.

Our teas (and we're genuinely proud of these)

We didn't add tea to have something to fill a shelf. We added tea we'd actually drink ourselves — which, as it turns out, is the only reasonable bar.

Green Tea This is the one for people who want to feel like they have their life together. Clean, a little grassy, more nuanced than you'd expect. Steep it at around 175°F — not boiling, not lukewarm. Give it 2-3 minutes. It's the kind of cup that's hard to explain but easy to come back to.

Black Tea Big, malty, dependable. A good black tea has more depth than most people give it credit for. There's a slight astringency that actually wakes you up — not in a caffeine-hammer way, more like a light slap of clarity. Drink it straight. Add milk if you want. It handles both.

Chai This one hits differently in the fall and winter but honestly it's good any time. We're talking cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, clove — all of it over a black tea base. Brew it strong and froth some milk, or simmer it on the stove the old-fashioned way. Either direction, your kitchen is going to smell incredible.

Black Tea with Dried Mango This is the one people raise an eyebrow at and then immediately order again. Real dried mango chunks. Actual black tea. Together. It sounds like it shouldn't work and then it absolutely does — there's this tropical warmth that's sweet without being cloying, and it makes an unbelievable iced tea in the summer. Cold brew it overnight and thank us later.

The honest answer to "coffee or tea?"

Both. At different times. For different reasons.

Morning coffee because that's sacred. Chai on a slow weekend morning when you want something warming and unhurried. Green tea in the afternoon when your brain needs to focus but your body's done with caffeine. Mango black tea over ice on a warm afternoon when you just want something that feels like a small treat.

There's no loyalty oath required here. Drink what the moment calls for.

So what are we, exactly?

We're a coffee company that takes tea seriously. We're people who genuinely care about what ends up in your cup, whether it started as a bean or a leaf. We're probably a little obsessive about it. We've made peace with that.

Come drink something good.