Random Steepings

Getting down to the last of this lovely tin of tea, and my how it’s grown on me! I thought I’d come up with a real dud. But this also reminds me that it’s been a while since a T2 Tea Society in-store event… hmm.

Anyway… #memtea. This guy. Had some cold brewed at work today. I love the colour it comes out! Such a lovely blush pinky/red, somewhere in the middle there. I think I’ll brew up the last of it in a big jug and spend my three day weekend drinking it.

Yes, good plan.

A very chocolatey, rosy cold brew today for lunch!

Tea #1 served in the pot at my girls’ CAH game day yesterday went down a treat. I can’t believe I’ve only got a little bit of this left—I surprised myself!

Oh cool! As a cold brew left overnight this is delicious and fresh, with no need for sugar. GLORY TO COLD BREWS!

Tonight’s bedtime tea while watching the first half of Rectify S1.

I’ve been in bed since 7pm. It’s cold (nice lead in to winter today, last day of autumn didn’t get above 10°C) and I sat for +3hrs for a tattoo today so I’m quite weary and my arm is on fire.

Tea and mint slices in bed for dinner.

Decided to have some of this as my bedtime tea tonight (despite trying to avoid black teas for bedtime caffeine reasons) and sorted it out with a bit of sugar and cream.

Cream in tea is ridiculous and wonderful.

This felt like a big pile of cream and roses and I felt preposterous and delighted.

So, this is the custom blend I came up with at the T2 Tea Society event earlier this week. It’s got:
50% T2 Chocolate
25% T2 Riotous Rose
25% T2 Just Rose

I was pretty anxious about making a blend from limited pre-mixed blends and I have to say I continued to be anxious after trying the blend because it just… wasn’t right. I shied away from it for a couple of days, fretting about the ratios and how the heck I was gonna fix it.

I brought some in to work today to see what I could do. I started by adding around 3/4 tsp of raw sugar…

Fixed.

YAY

I don’t really get the chocolate from the black tea, but I’ve got some Cocoa Loco at home I COULD add to see if I could up that. In the end it doesn’t really matter, the rose is pretty prominent (especially after eating some Fry’s turkish delight) and I’m happy and RELIEVED.

I put these two together because the Shou Mei seemed so plain and sharp on its own and the Sweet Almond Green, while a wonderful idea, has some chemically thing going on that lingers in the aftertaste. I hoped they might neutralize each other, and to an extent they do. The flavors don’t merge as much as I expected, and if I’d bought this in a store I’d wonder why the blendmaster had put such a rough base with a sweet flavoring. But for my first blending experiment, it’s not bad.

I had just a little of Mountain Organic Indonesian Oolong and Maharaja Chai/Samurai Chai Tea Blend so I decided to throw them together. I have a Breville which makes a minimum of 2 cups at a time. Yowzer! This is absolutely awesome. The oolong adds depth and bring out the chai spices. I can’t believe I won’t be able to have more unless I order both teas. It also seems to have lots of caffeine. Since I drank my two cups (about an hour ago) I have dusted the house, vacuumed, washed the kitchen floor and cleaned the bathrooms. I wonder what I’ll get done after the resteep? Maybe reorganize the whole kitchen, paint the living room or clean all the closets. Best motivating tea ever (at least for me)!

My best friend needs to relax and she wants a caffeine free tisane to drink at night. She has been mixing grocery store chamomile and peppermint together, and I decided to try to make her a special loose leaf blend for her birthday.

I bought German chamomile from the bulk bins at our local health food store, as well as some lavender blossoms. I already had some Upton spearmint at home.

For this first pot I used two teaspoons of chamomile, one scant teaspoon of lavender flowers, and a half teaspoon of spearmint. Overall it isn’t bad but I have been drinking Forest Tea from Mountain Rose herbs lately and it is much more flavorful. I think I have only had Egyptian chamomile up to now. Maybe it is stronger. This was for a 20 ounce pot. It is pretty good, especially after a nice long steep. I did not sweeten, though my friend may want to add honey.

I think next time I will try three tsps. chamomile, keep the lavender the same, and add a full teaspoon of spearmint. If any more experienced blenders have some pointers for me, please share!

1/31/14 I took the rest of this and did a cold brew with it over night. Made a nice iced tea. There must have been some hibiscus in it – the iced tea has a pink tint, and a touch of that hibiscus taste. Thus passes the current tin of Random Green tea. And dH took the green tin and filled it with his favorite (Upton’s Turkish blend) and carried it off to work with him, so I don’t know how/if Random Green tea will occur again.

1/30/14 Evening cup. 3g/6oz/212F/as long as it takes to walk to the living room. Currently Random Green Tea has a lot of little popcorn-rice pieces in it from genmaicha, and what looks like three different kinds of green tea leaves. I like it. Mostly Japanese teas I’m guessing – very umami seaweedy.

These are my tea toys! Filter bags in a bunch of sizes, an awesome little analog thermometer that fits right into the hole on the spout of my kettle, measuring spoon, strainer. The scale has a cupcake wrapper on it because it’s measure pan is too small for tea, so I tare out the cupcake wrapper (they weigh 0.333- 0.423g btw) and scoop the tea into it. Cupcake tea! Of course my timer, and the green silicone thing is a a Primula Tea Bag Buddy – fits right on top of a mug and holds onto your string and then lets you squeeze the teabag without burning your fingers. And my pop-up teacup notepad, for taking tasting notes! It’s from Up With Paper.

2/3/14 A tasting of the pu-erhs in my house. I’ve been drinking some very nice pu-erhs at tea club on Wednesdays, and decided that today I’d compare the pu-erhs in my cupboard. I’m still very in-experienced with this style of tea, and thought it would fun to practice using my gaiwan and brewing gongfu style. The standard was straight forward – 3g of tea in my 100ml gaiwan, washed, and then steeped twice. Water at or just off the boil from my hot pot.

In order of tasting I had,

Adagio’s Pu-erh Poe. http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/221527#comments This tea made me sad that I had to steep and taste a second cup of it.

Teavana’s Yunnan Golden Pu-erh, a blend of pu-erh and Yunnan black. http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/221531#comments I found this heavily weighted to the Yunnan.

and

Adagio’s Pu-erh Dante http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/221535#comments

Dante showed well in the tasting, though it may have an unfair advantage due to being a bit aged.

1/27/14. A tasting of all the Earl Grey’s I have in the cupboard. This was a fun tasting, and very easy to design a standard for. I checked the website for each tea, and they all said pretty much the same thing – 1 teabag or 1 tsp per cup (which none defined), boiling water, steep 3-5 minutes. I chose to use a 6oz pour, and a three steep time, since I was concerned about evoking bitterness from the teabags. All the teas were steeped in a glass 1 cup measure, which let me get a good look at the color of the tea before I poured it into my mug. 2 sugar cubes, equally 1 tsp of sugar, were put in the bottom of the mug before each pour. By not stirring the tea, this allows me to taste first the tea unsweetened, and then progressively sweeter as the sugar dissolves in the bottom of the cup. After each pour, I allowed the tea to cool for three minutes, so I wouldn’t burn my tongue.

The teas I tasted were, in order of tasting:

Bigelow’s decaf Earl Grey http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/219340#comments

Earl Greyer, from Republic of Tea. My favorite of the tasting. http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/219343#comments

Earl Grey CO2 decaf, from the English Tea Store. http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/219344#comments

and Adagio’s Earl Grey Moonlight, a cream earl grey which was my least favorite of the tasting.http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/219346#comments

All in all, a very pleasant way to spend an hour in the evening. It was neat to realize that I process bergamot as a ‘cookie dough’ kind of scent and flavour.

This is my collection of English and Chinese tea wares. The two large white china pots are my basic brew set – I brew in the middle pot and pour off the tea into the second pot to serve. 24oz brews, 12g of tea per brew.

In front are my new toys – the gaiwan which just arrived today, and two yixing style pots I picked up in the past month. The one is for pu-erhs, and the water chestnut is for oolongs.

1/19/14 First morning tea for stuffy nose. 3 tsp tea, 1/4 cup milk, 1 tbs sugar, 1 quarter of fresh ginger, 8 oz boiling water. Sugar, milk and ginger in the mug first, boiling water poured over, steeped until I get around to drinking it, but never fewer then five minutes.

Caveats – my single cup is never as good as when Uncle Lakhi makes the big pot of it on the stove whenever we get together.