Tea Experiments!
I took inspiration from someone on instagram who had made some shou with star anise, a flavour combination I’ve enjoyed in flavoured teas before, and I decided to do some cupping of shou with licorice mint, star anise and then just straight as a control. I used 2g per cupping set for each tea, and then for the star anise I just added a whole star anise in addition to the two grams, and for the licorice mint I added two lightly bruised leaves.
The straight tea is woody and earthy but has an underlying and coating sweetness that is actually comparable to black licorice. It’s delicious on its own, but I think it could be something really unique and interesting with either addition…
The licorice mint cup has a deeper and very strong licorice sweetness in the cup w/ a cooling lingering sweetness. It’s the most overly changed of the two cups with additions.
My favourite is the star anise cup; the woody elements of the shou are exaggerated in the body but the finish has more of the anise punching through.
All are good, though!! Black licorice and shou!? Definitely a flavour I can get behind!
Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/B7O9zszA3eg/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijRRdjp_6N0
Nice, I should try this, I tend to use star anise quite often in cooking. It also makes me think of trying a kind of spiced shou with cream or oat milk, akin to masala chai. Have you ever seen anyone do that?
I’ve definitely had shou based chai before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it with oat milk.