Sometimes You Have to Set the Tea on Fire - What Roasting Yaupon has Taught Us

One of the things we love about being a small family business is that we don't have to pretend we have all the answers.

Here at Rise Yaupon, we're building something that hasn't really been built before. The modern yaupon industry is still relatively small - and very new, and we're proud to be one of the pioneers helping bring this native American tea back into everyday life. But being a pioneer also means there isn't always a playbook sitting on the shelf telling you exactly what to do next.

Sometimes you have to figure it out.

And sometimes, apparently, you have to figure it out while your bucket of yaupon leaves is literally on fire.

That happened when we started developing our new roasted yaupon.

We Wanted to Roast Yaupon Differently

Up until now, our primary approach to processing yaupon has been natural air drying. That's what we're known for, and it produces the clean, smooth flavor profile that makes America's Classic such a favorite.

But roasted yaupon has a long history, including preparation methods used by Indigenous peoples. It's also something many of our fellow yaupon producers offer today.

We knew our customers were looking for something different, too.

Some people wanted a bolder, smokier cup. Others were looking for something that felt a little more like the black tea they were accustomed to drinking.

So we started thinking about how we could create a range of flavor profiles.

We wanted America's Classic to be our green-tea equivalent: smooth, light and clean.

Then we wanted a medium roast that would sit somewhere in the middle.

And finally, we wanted a darker roast with a bolder flavor that would appeal to someone looking for more of that traditional black-tea experience.

That became the idea behind America's Roasted and our new Bold American.

The strategy seemed pretty straightforward.

The execution? Not as easy.

Enter the Roaster

We had experience roasting yaupon under our previous brand, but that process was done by hand. And while you can certainly make good roasted yaupon that way, there was a lot of variability from batch to batch.  

If we were going to make roasted yaupon part of the Rise Yaupon lineup, we wanted consistency - something our customers can rely on.

That meant investing in the right equipment.

We purchased a commercial roaster with a large rotating barrel designed to distribute heat evenly across the leaves. It uses propane to maintain the temperature, and suddenly we had a whole new piece of equipment to understand.

Dad took on much of that work.

He had spent a tremendous amount of time researching the machinery, understanding how it worked, figuring out the safety features and getting the equipment up and running. His mechanical brain and natural curiosity were a huge asset.

He came into our first roasting experiment feeling pretty confident.

And then we set the tea on fire.

Our First Attempt Was a Complete Failure

We had assumed we would need a fairly high temperature to roast the leaves.

Our plan was actually pretty scientific—or at least we thought it was.

We were going to put the leaves into the roaster and pull samples at one minute, two minutes, three minutes and so on. Then we'd compare the results and start dialing in the right roasting time.

There was just one little problem.

The temperature was way too high.

The leaves started smoking almost immediately.

And getting the leaves into the machine in the first place was its own learning experience. The angle was awkward, and we were still figuring out how to efficiently load the equipment.

So our carefully planned experiment quickly changed from:

“How long should we roast the leaves?”

to:

“Let's make sure everything isn't on fire.”

We got the leaves out of the machine and put them into a bucket on the side of the driveway because they were still smoking.

About a minute later, I looked over.

The leaves were on fire.

And the plastic bucket was melting.

There were actual holes forming in the bucket.

So out came the hose.

 

At this point, you might expect frustration.

Maybe an argument.

Maybe someone asking who thought this was a good idea in the first place.

Instead, Dad was laughing.

His response was essentially, “Hey, we've mastered the dark roast.”

It was, without question, a complete and utter failure.

And somehow, it was also exactly the kind of failure we needed.  

And they type of experience that leaves a mark. Literally.

Failure Isn't the Opposite of Progress

This is one of the things we've learned about working together as a family.

When something doesn't go the way we expected, we don't spend a lot of time figuring out who was wrong.

We figure out what we learned.

The first roasting experiment told us something very important: the temperature we'd chosen was far too high.

Okay.

Now we know.

We could change the temperature. We could change the timing. We could experiment with how we load the machine. We could learn how the equipment responds and how the leaves respond to the heat.

There were levers we could pull.

And that's really how we've approached the entire process.

We don't know what we don't know.

So we experiment.

We make adjustments.

Then we try again.

The Advantage of Being Small

There's a tendency to think of being a small business as a disadvantage.

We certainly understand the challenges. We don't have unlimited resources or enormous teams of people dedicated to research and development.

But being small also gives us something incredibly valuable: the ability to learn quickly.

We don't have to protect a decision because we spent six months making it.  

We don't have to defer to senior executives to make the decision for us.

And we don't have to pretend something worked when it didn't.

If something doesn't work, we can say, “Well, that didn't work. What did we learn?”

Then we can change it.

That's especially important when you're creating something like yaupon tea, where there isn't a 100-year-old industry telling you exactly how everything should be done.

No Ego, Just Curiosity

I think our family dynamic plays a big role in this.

When something goes wrong, there's no benefit in pointing fingers or getting upset with one another. The leaves don't care whose idea it was. The roaster doesn't care who did the research.

The only question that matters is: what do we do differently next time?

Dad had done a tremendous amount of research before we ever turned on that machine. He thought we were going to come out of the gate with a successful first experiment.

Instead, we created a small driveway fire.

And he laughed.

That's not because he didn't care about getting it right. Quite the opposite. He cares deeply about getting it right.

But he also understands that the first attempt doesn't have to be perfect for it to be valuable.

That's a mindset we've carried into a lot of what we do at Rise Yaupon.

The goal isn't to be right.

The goal is to figure it out.

Learning What America's Roasted and Bold American Should Be

Our roasting process is still a learning experience.

We're learning how the equipment works, how to operate it efficiently, how different temperatures affect the leaves and how roasting time changes the final flavor.

Coming this fall: 

America's Roasted is our medium roast, designed to bring a little more depth and roast character to the cup.

And Bold American is our darkest roast yet, designed for people looking for that bigger, bolder flavor profile.

Building a Business Means Being Willing to Learn

One of the best parts of building Rise Yaupon is that we're constantly learning.

Sometimes that learning comes from a great idea that works exactly as planned.

Sometimes it comes from a batch of tea that isn't quite right.

And sometimes it comes from standing in the driveway with a garden hose while your dad laughs at a melting bucket full of burning yaupon.

We'll take all of it.

Because being a small business doesn't mean we have to know everything.

It means we have the freedom to ask questions, try something, figure out what didn't work, pull the right levers, and try again.

And if we can keep doing that—with curiosity, a little humility and a good sense of humor—we'll keep getting better.

That's how we're building Rise Yaupon.

One cup, one experiment and, hopefully, one fewer fires at a time.