Custom

Chocolate tea experiment:
So I made a 12-16 oz mug of this and added a tsp. of Swiss Miss Diet Hot Chocolate mix. Please don’t judge me. Yes, this could be the perfect solution to milk chocolate tea….even if it is kind of cheating. The good news, it can’t be more than 15 calories! Yum!

Yum. I just need someone to make a decaf tea like the base in this blend! Or, maybe it is time to train myself to be able to drink regular black tea at night. Hmmm. I might be onto something there!

I found the Custom brand. Now I have a real space to put all of the crazy concoctions I like to drink. None of my blends are official at Adagio, so this is where all my blends will land.

Listening to my kids practice music and sipping a cup of this blend sweetened, and with milk. This one definitely falls into the favorites, but I still like the Chocolate Mint Black tea from The Tea Table slightly better.

This is a backlog from my workday. I was alone with the thermos today, and since we now have a small selection of four teas to choose from, I turned a bit experimental.

1 part raspberry oolong from A. C. Perchs + 1 part ChocoLoco from Luka The m. m.

I’ve raved about the wonderful raspberry oolong often enought that it ought not need that much further introduction. The ChocoLoco is a rather ancient beast that has lived in my boss’ cupboard for some time untouched (but well stored). It’s sweet and chocolate-y and quite nice, although not overwhelming, really.

The 50/50 combination of these two was a spur of the moment sort of idea, and I have to say that the aroma of it smelled absolutely heavenly. Three of the others, independently of each other, said it made the room smell like sweeties, although they weren’t in agreement on which sort of sweeties.

I was rather looking forward to tasting it, but alas, while it was indeed very nice, it was not really the pairing of berries and chocolate that I had envisaged. The chocolate more or less overpowered the berries, so although the raspberry oolong on its own does have a fairly strong berry flavour, they only came out here and there.

It was very nice, though. I think, if my boss is still ill tomorrow, I’ll tinker with the blend a little more. More berry, less chocolate.

I had a rough week, and boy – something sweet seemed like the most appealing thing in the world this morning. I realized I had this in my cupboard and never tried it! As I say in my description:

I had so many berry tea samples! I decided to combine them for the sake of simplicity. This includes Dammann Freres Paul et Virginie, Harney & Sons Paris, Kusmi St. Petersburg, and probably something I’m forgetting! :)

I am drinking it without milk, and with just a half teaspoon of sugar. WELL, if it isn’t the exact perfect thing for today. The delightful berry flavors, bit of sweetness, and good tea are lifting my mood and making me smile. Sometimes a little froof makes all the difference. :)

I was buying groceries last night and when walking by the Indian spices section decided to grab some cardamom. So, I threw this together this afternoon. These were pretty cheap grocery store spices so using more premium ingredients would, I imagine, be even better.

I simmered my spices (about 12 cardamom pods, several pieces of cinnamon bark, about 8 different-coloured peppercorns, and lots of cloves all crushed slightly with a mortar and pestle) in a cup or so of almond milk on the stove for maybe 20 minutes. I brewed one cup of strong organic Assam and mixed ’em together, letting simmer for a bit longer.

I took it to go in my Libre and it kept me warm on the streetcar. Very tasty! I’ll definitely have to play around with this, but it was fun to make and very satisfying.

Starting my day with this tea – it was handy and it tastes good.

Nice flavor, gentle spices without the extra ginger, just enough to nudge the taste buds awake.

OK… so I have been sipping on this for a couple of days now, because I can taste it with the taste buds out of whack. It is also quite nice because it’s warming and soothing on the throat.

Song? OK… well, since this is a custom blend… how about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZoWSnEUTdk&feature=related

I’ve finally made a cup of my Winter Holiday Cheer blend! As I put in my description, it’s a blend of bits and bobs of different holiday blends from Harney, Upton, plus the last of my Vanilla Assam and some Kusmi Prince Vladimir! Since all of the teas were good individually, I had a lot of confidence that the blend would be yummy. I even included a 2 oz tin of it in my Office Secret Santa gift (along with some hand knit fingertip towels and home made vanilla extract!) because I knew it would be super cozy for Winter Break.

…and it IS! It’s sort of like Constant Comment only way, way, way, way better. Spicy, clove-y, orange-y, and the hint of vanilla has my name all over it :) I had it with a little sugar and milk, the way I like my Constant Comment, and it’s warm and comforting and now I want to go listen to Leonard Cohen sing Suzanne (…and she feeds you tea and oranges, that come all the way from China).

(I’m feeling a bit better today! I can taste what things are supposed to taste like! Last night my husband was worried because he brought home chocolate covered pretzels and I had one and said “OH these are good! I never had peanut butter ones! and he was like uhhhh they are plain chocolate!!” but today things taste true and I’m sitting up a bit etc.)

I just force-fed Mama France a sip of this.

She asked for a cup sweetened and iced.

Time to start knitting scarves, peeps. I think hell just froze over.

After all my chai drinking yesterday, I decided to try my hand at making my own chai. Threw this together after I’d made another batch of Blend #2

I’m thinking it needs some work.

Ceylon base is almost overpowered by peppermint flavoring…yes, I wanted a Christmas-y chai, gosh darned it…and there’s way too much ginger. By a whole heaping lot (and I didn’t put that much in to start with). It definitely needs something…more.

It’s not too terribly bad, but you can definitely tell that it was my first attempt at homemade chai. Not sure I’ll keep working with it or not.

Tea blending experiment #2. Base tea is Lapsang Souchong.

Smell of dry leaves: exactly as it should
Smell of brewed cup: More LS, but you can still smell the other ingredients.

Taste: mild, but fairly spot on. And I’m thinking if it were much stronger, it wouldn’t be a good thing. Aftertaste is pretty darn good, too.

One of the ingredients is rather small, though, and tends to sift down to the bottom of the container. Not sure how big of a problem this would be in the long run (I just stirred it really well before I scooped out the tea), so it might be worth playing with to see if I could either get it to stick to the leaves or find it in larger bits.

I seriously did not expect this to turn out so well.

Inspired by the tea-making talents of people like Frank and LiberTEAS, I’ve attempted to blend my own crazy, insane tea. This one should probably have never been attempted, but I’m doing it anyway. And, nope, not telling what’s in it (yet). Let’s just say that you’d go o_O.

Trial #1: Well, I did manage to infuse the flavor I wanted into the tea leaves. Perhaps too much flavor. A smidge overpowering, and I have to try to taste the rest of the ingredients. So, back to the drawing board with this one I go! It’s promising enough to play with it further. I’ve still got a few cups of this batch left; will play with the steeping parameters and see what happens.

And, since it’s my own concoction, I shan’t rate it.

These two teas taste so much alike to me that I just had to blend them. It has that distinctive yunnan peppery finish and lots of caramel. It was smooth, no bitterness or astringency and the taste and aroma was just wonderful.

Heya. Not drinkin’ tea tonight, oh no. It’s my birthday and I’m a celebratin’ with da vino!

Happy birthday to moi…. happy birthday to moi….

Gosh, wish I wasn’t so old. But the alternative…. much much worse.

This is a blend that I sort of threw together into my teapot this evening… red rooibos together with my special recipe of masala spice. I wasn’t really in the mood for my caffeinated version of chai… I feel like I am in need of a good night’s sleep so I want to do whatever I can to help facilitate that.

This is good. Rooibos has never been my favorite, but, I like rooibos with masala spice, because it offers a pleasant offset to the traditional rooibos funky taste that I’m not particularly fond of.

This tea comforts me a great deal while I’m trying to recover from the nasal infection. The peppery ginger is very … well, peppery/gingery! It’s nice to taste something!

I can actually taste more of the other aspects of this tea today, perhaps I am getting more of my taste buds back. I can taste the cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. The Assam tea is there too. Nice!

Well, I think that my description pretty much says it all. I can taste the ginger most prominently. The rest of it pretty much lingers in the background because my taste buds are not up to par at the moment. Honey and ginger. And very soothing heat.

Not going to rate this because, well, I am not in any condition to really do so.

This morning (well, technically, it’s afternoon, but I slept in so it’s morning for me), I decided to brew up a special treat. This is the very last of this tea that I had from a small “tester” batch that I made. Assam and custard go well together, I think.

The sweet, creamy custard flavor brings out some of the Assam’s malty characteristics. Very nice, just slightly bitter (but not in a bad way), very pleasant way to start the day!

I created this blend a couple of months ago, I call it “dude” grey because it’s got a California feel to it (citrus-y flavors) but with a pleasant Earl Grey note.

I like inhaling this tea through my mouth just before I take a sip. The aroma wafts over my palate and yum! The black tea is smooth, not too robust, nice for afternoon or early evening. The Earl Grey is softer than in “straight up” earl grey teas (such as the one I enjoyed earlier this afternoon) as it is softened by the other citrus notes. I especially like the grapefruit in this blend.

Another cooked puerh – they’re definitely starting to grow on me, but I still have trouble distinguishing one from another. I’m starting to taste more interesting things – spice, molasses, minerals? – but not enough that I’d pick a puerh over a good black or oolong for sheer drinking pleasure. For education, well, that’s another matter ;)

I liked this tea so much I made some more up. I’ve been drinking it all morning. It tastes like a cross between Caravan and Russian Country. Its smooth and tasty and still has a bite to it.

I’m finishing up this blend. It taste as good today as it did yesterday. Nice smoky tea.