Global Tea Time

I was always curious about this tea. I liked its name because of a beloved children's book by the same title. In all truth, I vaguely remember the book, and was glad to find some descriptions of the plot online to refresh my memory. In my defense, it has been somewhere around 30 years since I have read that book. I was always trying to keep up with my older sister who seemed so much smarter, and such a better reader (and failing). This tea, however, has nothing to do with books or horses. It is a China black tea flavored with lichee fruit. Thanks to Aldi's foods from around the world, I have tried canned lichees. The canned version are little white balls with the center punched out to remove the pit. I honestly wonder if any of the grocery stores in the area where I grew up would even have canned lichee. Thankfully food trends and variety have progressed since I was a kid. When I opened the bag, I thought it smelled like vanilla. I have no objections to that. When I brewed t...

I will admit that the name is part of the reason I bought this tea. I figure that I need all the help I can get. I've contemplated this tea for years, but it never made it on my list to try until now. It is a beautiful blend of sencha tea along with sunflower, rose, and conrflower petals. The description of the tea posits that the secret to ancient happiness is developing a desire for what you already have. I'm not sure about that last part (although it sounds like it would be true), but the tea smells fantastic when you open the package. It has a bright, fruity scent. After brewing, it retains its bright, fruity scent (and flavor). It produces a light colored tea that is a fantastic late summer refresher.

As I recall, lotus green tea was a suggestion for Vietnam. Green tea leaves were carefully sprinkled into open lotus leaves before dusk, then left inside of the closed flower overnight. Actually I think it was a process of several days being spent inside of lotus flowers for the tea to become scented. I never wanted to commit to buying a whole bag of lotus tea because I'm not a huge fan of floral teas. Since I know one of my co-workers is wanting to get into tea, I offered to order her some bags of tea in my last order. She chose 5 teas to order (4 flavors I had not tried before), and she gave me some samples of those teas since she knew I was curious about trying them. One of the teas she ordered was lotus green tea. This tea looks like any other green tea. When I opened the bag, I noticed a slight floral scent, but I couldn't identify it. Strange given the fact I live near a huge pond filled with lilies. I also grew up in an area where we had big beds of water lilies near t...

Today we are reviewing another new tea. This tea is named for the blue mountains in southern India where this tea is grown. Unlike Darjeeling and Assam, tea grows year round here. I looked up some pictures of the Niligiri mountains. It brought up pictures of snow covered peaks, and verdant slopes. If you looked closely you could see the fine lines of crop rows and terracing on some of the hills. Mountains always amaze me, probably because I've always lived on the plains. I've flown over the Alps, and the Canadian Rockies, I've seen the peak of Denali emerge from behind an airplane wing. I've spent time on the ground in the Appilachians, Alaska, and the Rift Valley (with associated mountains and volcanoes) yet mountains still seem somewhat abstract to me. In all reality, few people who live around mountains actually go mountain climbing. They are either undeveloped areas that you just kind of look at, or highly developed areas that are paved over and barely noticeable. T...

I've been way too stressed out to deal with this blog lately, but I did get some new teas that I wanted to review. Today we have Tibetan Tiger, a blend of Assam, Darjeeling and oolong tea. Upon opening the bag, one is greeted by a fresh, earthy scent. While the leaves are a mix of colors, I brew them like a black tea - 5 minutes with freshly boiled water. The resulting brew is a clear, light colored black tea. The brew is an ingriguing blend of flavors. It has a light flavor with hints of floral from the Darjeeling tea. This really comes through with aeration of the tea. The addition of the Assam and oolong tea makes this stronger than Darjeeling tea. This is a good black tea for sipping on its own, but would not hold up well to the addition of dairy. I would not bother with adding citrus or anything else to this tea, it's perfect on its own.

The amount of tea you are supposed to use for brewing is usually measured by teaspoon (if they don't come pre-measured in tea bags). My loose leaf teas say to use one teaspoon of leaves for 6 oz of water. Since I normally brew in 18 oz incraments, I use a tablespoon of tea (3 teaspoons). The reality is that the shape and size of the tea leaves really change how much tea will fit in a tablespoon. In fact the shape of the tablespoon makes a difference how much tea will fit in it. The way to get around that is to buy a tea scale. Yes, I bought more tea parafanalia, but in the name of science, and good tea brewing, and... yeah, I have an obsession with good tea. I decided to try an experiment. I have an oblong tablespoon, and a round tablespoon. I decided to see what the difference was scooping a large, elongated tea leaf versus smaller, more compact leaves. There were several surprises. I started out with my snow dragon tea. This is a pan fired Chinese tea. The leaves are processed t...

Those who are not into tea may not realize that there are lengthy discussions about what type of water for tea brewing. Some nomadic tribes melt snow to make their tea because that is the most readily available source of water. Most sources recommend filtered tap water, which is what I drink on a daily basis anyway. Some people say that you should not brew tea with hard water because some of the flavor gets caught in the hard water mineral scum that ends up on your cup. Filtered tap water does not eliminate the hard water minerals, but it does get rid of the chlorine in the water. Since my local utility is upgrading the water system and digging new wells, chlorine is a major problem in our water some days. Spring water, artesian water, reverse osmosis water are all waters recommended for brewing (as long as the spring water doesn't have too many minerals in it). Distilled water contains no minerals, and is not recommended for tea brewing saying that it makes for a flat brew. Me be...