Adagio Custom Blends, Sean Kelly

I’m not going to make a recommendation on this one, as it’s my own blend and that would be cheating. I merely want to set out a bit more detail in the creation process than Adagio’s fields have room for. My whole Chrono Trigger fandom came about in early 2014 when I tried Amy Zen’s Firefly fandom and found nearly all blends to be overpowering and almost undifferentiable chocolate-chai variants. I wanted to try a set of my own, based on characters I knew and loved, and embracing the range of leaves and subtler accents available to create blends which were truly differentiated without heavy flavorants.

Lavos, Lavos, Lavos… this was another mystery box at the beginning. I wanted something strong, spicy, and scary. If I was going to do one chai, I could afford it to be Lavos. I didn’t want straight-up normal chai tea, though, so I began with a rooibos chai base. Unfortunately, this base was an arbitrary in-store Adagio blend I’d commissioned one odd evening weeks earlier when none of the regular staff were in the shop to replace my exhausted Harney’s rooibos chai, and I’d never documented the ingredients. So blend session #1 was simply consulting with the regulars on reverse-engineering my star ingredient. With that nailed, I went about the blend proper. Earlier discussions vis-a-vis Lucca had introduced me to a more appropriate pu ehr for that blend, one that was “not as fishy.” So of course, aiming for heavy and spicy and weird, pu ehr was a good candidate and the “fishy” variety all the more so. I don’t remember at what point it shifted to being the biggest ingredient by weight, but that just makes it less of a traditional chai overall. But just pu ehr, chai spice, and a bit of rooibos was still too traditional for my tastes. It was too easy to pick out the lead ingredients. So I rummaged. Near the top of my rummage bin, in part because I actually rather like it straight, was Adagio’s terrifyingly but not misrepresentingly named Artichoke Green. What the heck, let’s try it. And the rest is history. Adjectives did not quite do justice to the resulting flavor conflagration- grassy artichoke, musty Chinese cellar, piquant spices, and a fish possibly still sticking its head out somewhere. And yet, it was very drinkable, eliciting much the same surprise factor as I’d found with Lucca. I’m not sure I’d want to wake up to Lavos, but I’ve definitely put it in my all-afternoon and all-latenight pots many times now.

I’m not going to make a recommendation on this one, as it’s my own blend and that would be cheating. I merely want to set out a bit more detail in the creation process than Adagio’s fields have room for. My whole Chrono Trigger fandom came about in early 2014 when I tried Amy Zen’s Firefly fandom and found nearly all blends to be overpowering and almost undifferentiable chocolate-chai variants. I wanted to try a set of my own, based on characters I knew and loved, and embracing the range of leaves and subtler accents available to create blends which were truly differentiated without heavy flavorants.

I am reasonably proud of Magus. I wouldn’t have initially picked him as the herbal of the group, but I can’t argue with the flavor. The Adagio bulk formulation, even as prepared in store, is actually not quite as good as my per-cup experiments with a gentle tsp of Adagio Peppermint, 1 bag of Triple Leaf ginger, 1/2tsp lemon cloud and just a dash of chili. That may mean there’s some processing agent or binder in the Triple Leaf, or that I got the ratios slightly off, but I have discovered that using more tea per cup helps offset this. Magus was based initially on my discovery of exactly how strong Adagio’s peppermint is. If you haven’t tried it side-by-side with their spearmint, you should some time. It’s this quality of mint that has brought me around to liking mint tea, and I’d independently enjoyed straight ginger, so I combined the two experimentally one evening and loved it. But of course, I couldn’t be that direct and still call it a blend, so I poked around for other flavors. Hot and spicy were covered, so I played with tart/mellow, and used lemon cloud as much as anything else because it’s what I had on hand. The result was definitely a good flavor, but I couldn’t honestly say it was Magus-worthy. I debated for awhile whether to just go with it anyway, but decided to make one more go of finding an accent that would really put the blend over the top. Something perhaps not even associated with tea. I remembered back to a happy accident years ago with chili-spiked camp coffee inadvertently made without the coffee, and decided as insane as that was, it was worth a shot here. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the heat the chili added that made the blend, it was the other mustier earthier notes it brought to the party- an arcane ambiance that couldn’t quite be placed. Although I have burnt myself out a bit on Magus now, it is the emptiest bag of my initial blend set, and the most likely to be re-ordered in the near future.

I’m not going to make a recommendation on this one, as it’s my own blend and that would be cheating. I merely want to set out a bit more detail in the creation process than Adagio’s fields have room for. My whole Chrono Trigger fandom came about in early 2014 when I tried Amy Zen’s Firefly fandom and found nearly all blends to be overpowering and almost undifferentiable chocolate-chai variants. I wanted to try a set of my own, based on characters I knew and loved, and embracing the range of leaves and subtler accents available to create blends which were truly differentiated without heavy flavorants.

I fought with Ayla, and Ayla won. sigh To be fair, this only means my first pass was pretty much right on the mark. I had a notion for a strong black with fruit and sweet notes. English breakfast was the strongest traditional black base to come to mind. Coconut was near the top of my flavor notions as something sweet, fruity, and creamy to tie the package together, but it wasn’t available straight and the best substitute the staff could recommend was coconut pouchong. After smelling it loose, I had no objections. Chocolate was also on my short-list for flavor profile, so it went in. That just left the fruit selection. Hibiscus is not a fruit, despite what Adagio seems to think, so I didn’t want to go anywhere near their fruit herbals. What was in my mind was something nearer the berry spectrum than the citrus spectrum, so I tried strawberries as a first approximation. The staff brewed a trial cup. I smelled it and knew immediately I’d gotten it dead wrong. The coconut was overpowering. The rest of the flavors just vanished. I left the cup on the counter and immediately went for a new formulation with cherries. But I re-sampled the first cup after it had cooled a bit, because it was there. And it was spot on. The coconut had stepped back, the fruit and chocolate were present and balanced, and as a black tea, it was all-around decent. The cherry formulation timer went off, and I tried it. Sour. As. All. Get-out. I couldn’t even finish the cup, so I went back to the last of the strawberry. Which was now distortedly tart itself, with the strawberry powder that had slipped through the strainer mesh and kept brewing in the dregs. #fml. It took 3 more visits, experimenting with strawberry black tea to avoid the dregs problem (brewed up exceedingly bitter in the duration it took the other flavors to come out), dialing back the coconut to avoid the fumes (meaning it was completely gone after cooling), fiddling with other ratios (more amazing vanishing elements), and finally landed right back at my first formulation and the acceptance that the coconut falls off with time and the strawberry rises and that’s okay because the middle is perfect. So. Don’t mess with Ayla. Trust me. Just accept that this blend has a very particular time-dynamic and will go off in odd and wild directions if you don’t treat it right. And really, how much more appropriate could I get if I tried?

I’m not going to make a recommendation on this one, as it’s my own blend and that would be cheating. I merely want to set out a bit more detail in the creation process than Adagio’s fields have room for. My whole Chrono Trigger fandom came about in early 2014 when I tried Amy Zen’s Firefly fandom and found nearly all blends to be overpowering and almost undifferentiable chocolate-chai variants. I wanted to try a set of my own, based on characters I knew and loved, and embracing the range of leaves and subtler accents available to create blends which were truly differentiated without heavy flavorants.

Robo was very pointed in concept, but perhaps lacking in execution. Lapsang was a must- smoky, dusty robot abandoned in a warehouse for decades; what else would be the base? I can tolerate a straight lapsang, but there may be an argument for cutting it with another black for greater appeal. Not much can compete with lapsang alone, but Adagio’s ginger impressed me during my Magus formulation, and manages to cut through here too, albeit emerging somewhat exhausted for the effort.
Robo has come to strike me as a big, heavy, smokey brass teddy bear, so I wanted to drop in a hint of something sweeter and perhaps less expected. I settled on chocolate, but as I write this, I’m considering adding or substituting some good fresh vanilla. And peppercorns, but that’s neither here nor there. sigh I thought I had such a strong concept with Robo, but at the end of the day, he’s obviously the blend I’m least satisfied with overall. Not dissatisfied enough to forego a cup after a big meal or with the right sort of sweet dessert, mind you, I just may tinker on him a bit more. Which is somehow appropriate, I suppose.

I’m not going to make a recommendation on this one, as it’s my own blend and that would be cheating. I merely want to set out a bit more detail in the creation process than Adagio’s fields have room for. My whole Chrono Trigger fandom came about in early 2014 when I tried Amy Zen’s Firefly fandom and found nearly all blends to be overpowering and almost undifferentiable chocolate-chai variants. I wanted to try a set of my own, based on characters I knew and loved, and embracing the range of leaves and subtler accents available to create blends which were truly differentiated without heavy flavorants.

Frog and green earl grey are such an obvious pairing that I was completely unsurprised to find Adagio’s other Chrono fandom (hi, TheFontBandit!) was using it as well. Still, this one took a few iterations before I was satisfied. I wanted to divert the bergamot in a decidedly earthier/grassier/naturier/swampier direction because, well, Frog. Sencha was originally just a placeholder- a green that could stand up to other strong flavors, and which I happened to have the dregs of a tin of from my days of Harney allegiance. Poking around the local Adagio outlet, I experimented with kukicha (enough of a failure to stick in my mind, and the first true apology I owed the staff for being Guinea pigs) and maybe one other green, as well as my own stashes of e.g. jasmine green or dragon pearl. Nothing quite fit like sencha, however, particularly after I added Soba. Ah, yes. Soba. 2 ingredients does not make a very satisfying blend, so my various other green experiments were in part searching for other compatible elements. I only found soba at the bottom of a bag of boxes, dating back from shortly after my semester in Japan, as a gift from my parents who insist I introduced them to it. It had been opened perhaps once in an early attempt to mix my own genmaicha, and then left to sit. Sprinkled into the going Frog blend, it immediately tied everything together. Nutty, toasty, unusual… I made multiple attempts to capture the flavor with other Adagio-source ingredients, but nothing came remotely close. So. Frog remains my least complicated blend, but I don’t think I’d change it. Definitely a go-to for my various and sundry (but mostly programming…) all-day weekend side-projects.

I’m not going to make a recommendation on this one, as it’s my own blend and that would be cheating. I merely want to set out a bit more detail in the creation process than Adagio’s fields have room for. My whole Chrono Trigger fandom came about in early 2014 when I tried Amy Zen’s Firefly fandom and found nearly all blends to be overpowering and almost undifferentiable chocolate-chai variants. I wanted to try a set of my own, based on characters I knew and loved, and embracing the range of leaves and subtler accents available to create blends which were truly differentiated without heavy flavorants.

Lucca came together remarkably cleanly and has become my absolute favorite of the set, despite having ingredients I normally don’t love, and notwithstanding the fact that I had no idea where to even begin when I set out. How does one even define Lucca? I wanted something maybe “sciencey” and a bit obscure. I toyed with notions of a chai, but Lavos and Magus were already headed in that direction and the whole point of the Chrono fandom was to not be a chai pit. So. I. Got. Creative. Pu ehr was just obscure and dense enough to be a candidate base, even though I’d recently tried Adagio’s then-new pu ehr blends and decided it didn’t blend well with anything strong enough to stand up to it. I’d only ever tried pu ehr poe, but the helpful store staff (hi, Karla) pointed me at dante, which was a bit smoother and less… fishy. I wanted to cut the pu ehr with something of quality, and ali shan jumped to my memory as a good, distinctive oolong favorite. I only realized later how much of a crime I was committing using it in a blend, but experiments to swap it out late in development all ended with a distinctly less satisfying cup. Lucca needed some odd accents, so I went raiding the store’s blending spice tins for things that were not sweet (which would have clashed) and not spicy (might have fit with the fire thing, but again, ixnay on the aichay) but were still ingredients I’d tasted before and could envision. I came up with cardamom (an instant fit), licorice (which I usually hate, but somehow had a weirdly good feeling about) and lavender (which was a total craps shoot, but just the sort of complexifying unknown mask I like to throw in). I completely cooked the ratios on my first go, with the lavender dominating everything. Inverting the order yielded the current blend, which I have never been able to deviate from. This one joins me pretty much every other weekend of indie game coding, challenged only by Frog and Magus in my overall satisfaction.

Edit: for a sweetener, try 1/4-1/2tsp per cup Seva Berry / VG Commerce Pine-Elixir (http://www.seva-berry.com/products_en.php#eliksir). The pine notes are a strangely good compliment to the cardamom and lavender.

I’m not going to make a recommendation on this one, as it’s my own blend and that would be cheating. I merely want to set out a bit more detail in the creation process than Adagio’s fields have room for. My whole Chrono Trigger fandom came about in early 2014 when I tried Amy Zen’s Firefly fandom and found nearly all blends to be overpowering and almost undifferentiable chocolate-chai variants. I wanted to try a set of my own, based on characters I knew and loved, and embracing the range of leaves and subtler accents available to create blends which were truly differentiated without heavy flavorants.

Marle… I had a strong notion of the sensibility I wanted, but few hard notions for ingredients. Something very light, slightly fresh, fruity, and/or relaxing. Basically, the party healer. But what I didn’t want was anything perfumey or sickly-sweet. After a bit of agonizing, I finally decided to pair white tea with some berry flavor, blue would be appropriate. I went to the local Adagio outlet to browse for ingredients, and was offered a prefab blueberry white that was basically everything I was going for in the final Marle blend. Which was reassuring, but also meant I was going to need to be even more creative if I wanted to make a proper blend. More agonizing over details and raiding my stash, which by now included the tail end of a berry herbal mix I’d forgotten to refill, and a rooibos blend I’d picked up when Adagio was out of Key West. The berry mix (dominated, as is Adagio’s wont, by hibiscus) kicked up the fruit aspect nicely, and Lemon Cloud brought a slight vanilla mellowness which added some needed complexity. The blend might have done without the chamomile, and indeed I had to cut it WAY back so it wasn’t overpowering, but it was on my mind all throughout as a staple of relaxing herbals, and in small quantities, it does add some of that magic obscuring note that makes the blend a blend and not an obvious conglomeration of parts. While there is some tea in the base, I still file this one with my herbals and have not noticed any ill effects drinking it late at night.

I’m not going to make a recommendation on this one, as it’s my own blend and that would be cheating. I merely want to set out a bit more detail in the creation process than Adagio’s fields have room for. My whole Chrono Trigger fandom came about in early 2014 when I tried Amy Zen’s Firefly fandom and found nearly all blends to be overpowering and almost undifferentiable chocolate-chai variants. I wanted to try a set of my own, based on characters I knew and loved, and embracing the range of leaves and subtler accents available to create blends which were truly differentiated without heavy flavorants.

Crono was one of the first few I pinned down. He isn’t a very personality-strong character; more the reliable, vaguely-Japanese fits-in-anywhere balanced type. Jasmine and oolong were on my mind as bases, but those were almost too bland. Rummaging through my stash, I tripped over hojicha, a toasty Japanese green tea treatment that fit the bill perfectly and brought in a hint of Crono’s thunder magic. Fujian Rain, another favorite, played off similar flavors and mixed quite well (unfortunately, Adagio can’t seem to get it in stock anymore, despite high demand). I brought the jasmine back in as a supporting role to complicate the flavors enough that the base ingredients wouldn’t be patently obvious, but a trio of mild greens still left it lacking that extra pixie dust to really stand out. I experimented with a few other flavorants and visited Adagio’s local brick & mortar a few times to mix other blends and finally tripped over lemongrass as the perfect light final touch. Crono is probably the mildest blend in my set, but I’m still quite satisfied, and enjoy brewing up a pot now and again when I’m in the mood for something light.