My Experience at the Mud House – Springfield, MO

Enjoy life sip by sip not gulp by gulp. – The Minister of Leaves

My girlfriend Kim & I went to Springfield, MO to catch a minor league baseball game (a pitcher-favorite of ours was making a rehab start, plus we wanted autographs and to see family) this previous weekend, only to end up on Sunday morning at The Mud House.

The Mud House seemed to me to be a small–but incredibly roomy–coffee/tea shop, serving pastries, muffins & the like. I of course let my eyes gaze the two giant bookshelves sporting their tea selection–anything from black to green to white & reds. Needless to say, I was pretty psyched.

With it being a Sunday, it narrowed my tea choices down to two–a breakfast variety, or my old faithful fallback, an Earl Grey. I analyzed the jars, checked out the leaves, and tried to avoid getting a cup full of crumb-leaves (leaves a bunch of gunk at the bottom of the cup, in my opinion), and settled for the jar nearly gooey with bergamot oil, the Earl Grey.

What struck my eye though, was that The Mud House sports two varieties of EG–a green, and a black. I had not experienced a green EG before Sunday (can anyone sense the foreshadowing?), so I elected for the black.

The behind-the-counter staff was more than accommodating, properly measuring out the leaves and boiling the water, before bringing me my cup & infuser. I of course set my stopwatch, and waited for 4 minutes to tick around. As the time passed, I waited for my sweet roll & played with their infuser, which happened to be a metal basket, cased in a plastic housing that conveniently straddled the cup, as to avoid my previous dilemmas with the tea leaves ending up at the bottom due to your clumsy host…

Once the steep was done, I quickly removed the infuser and pressed the leaves with my spoon as to get out the remainder of the water from the leaves, and lightly sweetened the beverage. I elected to use significantly less sugar this go around, simply because of my sweet roll, and me wanting to save some teeth for when I’m 70.

My roll arrived, I had the paper, and my tea beckoned for the first sip. I was freakishly surprised at how good the tea turned out, as most tea shops (in my area at least) use out-of-the-box teas, that cost 50 cents a bag to them, which means the consumer gets crappy leaves, and a weak cup. The flavor was light, but robustly awakening, which I attribute to it being (possibly) purely filtered water. I also noticed that in the infuser lay the leaves that gave the flavoring… The leaves opened up from being small & compact, to being wide, long & flavorful.

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the cup, enough for me to spend a bit (about $12) to get two 2 oz. bags of tea–one 2 oz. black Earl Grey, one 2 oz. green Earl Grey.

Black & Green Earl Grey - The Mud House - Springfield, MO

I have tasted the green, and I must say it is rather awesome. I will be doing a review of sorts at some point in the very near future. If interested, one can purchase any coffee (Kim bought coffee)/tea product from their website, here.