Ice It, Baby!

It's finally summer, and while I'm not a huge fan of overly hot temperatures, I am a fan of iced tea. No sugar, please, and made with good quality loose leaves whenever possible. I haven't ordered iced tea in a restaurant for ages, simply because...well, that is *not* real iced tea.

Excuse me, my tea snob side is showing again...

I do like sun tea, but haven't made it in a long time simply due to the time it takes. My normal method for iced tea is to brew up a pot just as I normally would, with maybe half to one teaspoon more leaves than normal. I fill a tempered glass pitcher with ice, and then pour the hot tea over it, swirling it around so it cools rapidly. That's it. No fuss, no muss, and it's always fabulous.

This week I've been drinking Assam Melody from Adagio over ice, pictured above - and it makes a really great glass because it's naturally a little sweeter than, say, a Ceylon tea would be. It's very rich and full-flavored, and still very refreshing.

Another tea I've been drinking iced is Perfectly Passionate from Teas, Etc - a black tea from Sri Lanka mixed with marigold petals that somehow manages to have a very fruity, almost mango-like taste. It's excellent...and the flavor is enhanced when it's chilled, in my opinion.

And of course, if you don't want the caffeine, do try iced Rooibos. I haven't made any yet this year, but it's quite a treat - very naturally sweet, and if you use the fruity flavors, very much like a dessert cocktail of sorts. More on that later when I've made a few batches.


Are you icing your tea this summer? What are your favorite leaves/flavors to chill?

Tea Life: Tea with Food

An interesting thing has come to light during these first interviews I’ve gotten back. It seems that among my admittedly small sampling (4 so far), tea drinkers either don’t drink tea with their meals, or think very little about it. It’s interesting to me because I’m one of those who doesn’t normally drink tea with my meals, but when I do, I give much thought to what tea to serve with different types of food.

I tend to drink black tea throughout the day at work, for the caffeine & flavor. I always have a banana and a granola bar for breakfast (at my desk), so in the morning I tend to drink either flavored blacks that won’t “clash” with the banana, or malty blacks like Yunnan or Assam teas to pair with my granola bar. In the afternoon is when I indulge in more exotic flavored blacks or the occasional dark oolong. I tend not to drink anything with lunch, as I’m a “sipper”, and there’s just no time to “sip” when I need to eat and get back to work, but occasionally I’ll whip up a bowl of Matcha, especially in the winter. But it depends on what I’m eating, since the flavor of Matcha is so distinct.

I tend to drink water with dinner, though I’m sure my husband would appreciate iced tea more often. I only think about iced tea with certain foods though – hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks…otherwise I tend to forget it’s even an option. Normally it’s black iced tea as well, since that’s what hubby prefers, though I have several Japanese green teas I’d like to try iced, if I can remember to do it! I’m going to try an experiment this week, making tea (iced or hot, weather dependent) for dinner every night to pair with what we’re eating.

Late at night is when I tend to break out the green and white teas, along with herbal rooibos. Most of the time I sip them on their own, but occasionally I want a cookie or something alongside.

When I’m entertaining, since neither hubby or I drink coffee, we offer our guests tea instead. For a party I always have three options – a black or oolong, a green or white, and an herbal (rooibos, usually). I spend a lot of time deciding which teas to pair with the menu, so that the flavors will all compliment each other. Even when it’s just a dinner for family I still make sure the tea offerings pair with whatever I’m serving.

So what about you? Do you drink tea with your meals? Why or why not?

This Week in the Teasphere

Featured Articles
I’m trying to get back into the iced-tea mindset with the onset of warmer weather this week. Here are a few recipes for iced tea I found interesting. I’ll be trying the iced Japanese greens this weekend.

Making the Perfect Iced Tea
Iced Green Tea
Strawberry-Basil Iced Tea
Iced Peach Tea


Featured Blogs

My Steeped IdentiTea – Brittiny’s reviews are wonderful, comprehensive and accentuated with amazing photos. There’s a good variety on her blog – stop in and check it out when you have time.

Gongfu Girl – This blog has been around since I started really learning about tea, and it’s every bit as valuable today as it was then. It’s not just reviews – it’s slices of life and tea together. Definitely give them a read.

Twitterers to Follow

@thetearooms
@jasonwitt
@39steeps
@TeaBoat
@TheNecessiTeas
@TeasEtc_Newman

Happy Sipping!

Tenbu Sencha from T Ching

Scent in package: light for a green tea…a hint of sweet grass, but nothing notable
Brewed in: cup w/ice, Tokoname style pot w/metal infuser
Steeped: a couple hours w/ice, 3 min. in pot
Cup(s): glass drinking glass, china teacup

Yeah, I sort of “mixed media” last night brewing in a Japanese style teapot, then drinking in an English teacup. But hey, just think of it as “fusion tea brewing”, without the whole mess of fusion tea.

The first time I tried this was a style of cold brewing I’d read about in the “In Pursuit of Tea” newsletter. They said to try steeping it by simply letting ice melt over it. I think this would have worked fine had I not used too much tea, but I’m not positive. The resulting brew was very astringent and bitter, and very sweet at the same time. An odd contradiction of flavors in one glass. I was too impatient to wait for the ice to melt completely, so I added ice water to finish the brew, but even diluting it didn’t really help. I think if I decide to try it again, I’ll need to get some sort of scale to measure out the right grams or something – but it didn’t really make me want to repeat the experiment with this particular tea.
Last night, I brewed it hot for 3 minutes – a minute too long, I think. It was good, but unremarkable…grassy but too bitter for my taste (I should note that the bitterness in this tea is not the same as a bitter black tea…this is more drying than anything else). The viscosity was nice, not too thin, but not terribly thick, and the scent was wonderful, like dewy grass. It’s not that I didn’t like it – the taste was good, soothing and calming like any Japanese green, but I prefer the Gyokuro or Kukicha.

All in all, it was an “okay” tea. I’m not all that familiar with sencha, so it’s possible that I need to taste more of them before I can really taste more of the nuances and know if the bitterness is normal or not. So I’m reserving judgment on this tea for now, and may revisit it later, when I’ve developed a better “feel” for sencha in general.

Planning Tea Purchases

I get paid tomorrow. Sometimes it seems like my life hinges on paydays, but hey, gotta have something to look forward to! July will be an expensive month for various non-tea-related reasons, but I’m still making a shopping list for tea, and thought it might be interesting to post, in case anyone wants to compare notes (or see what will be up for review later in July).

So this is my post for today – my list of tea/teaware purchases I hope to make in July.

Adagio: New carafe for my triniTEA (you don’t realize how much you need something until it’s gone!) I’m just going to pay for them to send me a new carafe if possible – I hate shopping, and don’t feel like running around town to find one that fits.

Art of Tea: 2003 Fucha Vintage Dark Tea, if I can get some before they run out (the way they’ve been advertising it, I expect it will be quite popular when it goes on sale July 1st). It sounds and looks intriguing, something different. Depending on the cost, I may get some of the other TNT’s as well. I also need more Garden of Eden for icing, and Chocolate Monkey Rooibos. I need more filter bags too, might as well order them at the same time.

Teacuppa: 2005 CNNP Big Blue Mark Puerh cake

Dragonwater: whatever 3 samples I get with my monthly tea club purchase. For those who don't already know, Dragonwater has the only tea club I've found where you can pay by the month, and suspend your membership when you need to. If you like trying new teas every month, head over there and sign up! It's the only tea tasting club I'm in, simply because you have to pay for all the others in advance. Do check it out if you have a minute.

And that’s it for July. A few new things to try, and one to store…other than that, I need to keep drinking down the stash I already have. That includes plenty of teas to review, never fear. Lots of whites and greens yet to try. I may have to have a tea party soon, to clean out some of my extras.

Anyone else planning any tea purchases in the near future?

Garden of Eden on Ice

Scent in package: Citrus, vanilla, and floral…very fresh and yummy!
Brewed in: triniTea maker from Adagio
Steeped: 5 minutes @ boiling x 2
Container: Decanted into pitcher of ice, then tall iced tea glass

I tried this hot last winter (see review under Art of Tea topic), and liked it well enough, though I over-steeped it twice and noted that it wasn’t anything terribly spectacular. I planned to try it as iced tea this weekend, and did just that yesterday. I have to say the results were, indeed, “spectacular”!

At home, I do tend to use the triniTea maker for flavored teas, and it’s incredibly handy for iced tea, since that’s really the only time I re-steep black tea leaves. It takes about 1 ¾ triniTea pots to fill my tea pitcher, and I don’t have to bother with paying much attention to it while the tea brews…I just listen for those three magic “beeps”, pour the pot over ice into the pitcher, and voila! Fresh iced tea.

Garden of Eden is Art of Tea’s iced tea blend, and it’s comprised of Nilgiri black tea (which I tend to like anyways), along with tropical flowers like mallow and safflower (they sent me a book with a description of each tea with my last order – very helpful!!). The blend is beautiful and colorful, and the brew is a lovely dark golden brown.

When I took my first sip, I was blown away. Icing this tea really does bring the flavors right to the forefront, with the Nilgiri tea a wonderful backdrop for them all. It’s naturally sweet – even without sugar it reminds me of a lightly sweetened tea, and when I had my hubby try it, he thought it tasted like peach. We both agreed that it’s just as good as the Cranberry Blood Orange we normally drink, so I definitely plan to keep Garden of Eden on hand to switch off with that. It brewed up very nicely in the tea maker, and truthfully, I probably won’t drink this tea hot ever again, simply because it is so delicious on ice, and the coolness really brings out all the tropical fruity flavors.

If you’re looking for a great iced tea this summer, I highly recommend this blend from Art of Tea. It’s $10.00 for a quarter-pound ($7.00 for 2 oz.), which should last a while, and I’m planning on ordering a larger bag as soon as I’m out of my 2oz. size. It’s wonderful…order some, and taste for yourself!