Various Artists

We did our family-tradition run to Branson for Christmas lights, musicals and my annual Christmas Cry (Little Altar Boy gets me every time)…and my souvenir from the trip is a good old-fashioned nose-drippig, sneeze-induzig, throat-scratching cold that has kept me at about 30% power all weekend. (Aw, shucks. Didn’t get to finish raking the back yard.)

So, at this point, flavor, delicacy, and nuances would be wasted on me. Full throttle, strong-as-you-can get ’em tea is needed at a time like this. The weekend menu has included, in order of strength:

Bigelow American Breakfast (heavily caffeinated, but not a biting flavor)
Bulk peppermint leaf, steeped a good ten minutes
Good Earth Sweet and Spicy (tastes just like cinnamon red hots)

..and this morning, Twinings Irish Breakfast spiked with a spoonful of Bulk Assam. If that doesn’t clear things out, I’ll just have to try Drano. I have a roomful of 10-year-olds to talk over this morning!

Some travel ahead, so for an additional immunity booster, I made a long, strong steep of some dried elderberries. Steeped elderberries remind me of raisins, so I threw in a cinnamon stick. Yep, cinnamon raisin tea! I think that’s going to be a winter winner.

After cleaning up a pound of rather roughly shelled pecans, I ended up with a quarter cup or so of pecan schmutz…not shells, just bits that broke off. Smelled nutty lusciously, and I couldn’t bear to throw them away.

So I didn’t. Tossed a pinch into a cup of plain bulk Ceylon this morning for a sweet, smooth autumn treat. I think I could’ve given it another minute to strengthen up the pecan profile; maybe a little dairy to bring it out, but it was tasty all the same. And I’ve got more nut schmutz to experiment with.

But since schmutz tea doesn’t sound very elegant, what do you think about Cracked Pecan Ceylon?

My favorite local bulk tea venue has a keemun I really like (they stock a lot of Frontier Organic Co-op teas, but I don’t think this is one of them). A while back, at the same spot, we picked up an ounce of maple syrup powder to see what it could do.

After adding (b) to (a), I discovered that what it can do is make a really pleasant sweetener, although I’m going to have to work with proportions to find the “sweet spot,” if you will. Takes about a teaspoon to make the maple kick in, which makes for a slightly sweeter cup than I general go for.

With that said, keemun-maple is an absolutely fitting autumn blend and I will keep tweaking!

Our weather has finally moderated to the point that an evening cuppa is swell instead of sweltering. A tea buddy fixed me up with a little bag of bulk green tea with jasmine, brand unknown, after I made her spit-on-her-palm swear that it didn’t taste like floor cleaner or air freshener. Jasmine and I don’t always see eye to eye.

Got the water going then left it to cool entirely too long, so I ended up steeping in a cup of “tepid” for about two minutes. And in a Bob Ross happy accident, I ended up with a mild, sweet, nearly sugary broth that has upped my opinion of jasmine by couple of notches. Believe I’ll try it again.

A friend of mine experimented with flavoring her own black tea with raspberry—with very nice results. No nasty hibiscus to gum up the mix, just a good Assam with fruit. A nice, well-rounded balance. I cold steeped some in the fridge overnight with a sprig of chocolate mint from my own back porch. Chocolate raspberry mint goodness—no, scratch that—superbness.

Of course, the fact that our air conditioner has been broken for two days and I had come in from mowing the ditchy part of our yard sweating battery acid made it three times as tasty. Fall can’t get here soon enough for me! :)

Late night (neighbors + firecrackers) and early morning (nasty thunderstorm) left me feeling this morning like my nerves had been shredded on a cheese grater. So I went halvesies: a decent bulk China black tea with an equal amount of chamomile. Was going for a little wake-up/calm-down alchemy. Not sure if the physical effect was exactly as expected, but it was pretty tasty. (Inspired by someone’s review of a professional blend of the same type, easy to replicate in your own kitchen.)

I’m not going to enter a new listing for this one as it isn’t on the Savoy Tea Co. website, which is too bad, because I’d like you to try some of their Irish Cream.

At least that’s the label on the lovely little sample I picked up about a month ago. (Wondering if it was a seasonal renaming or relabeling.) Rather than something stereotypically minty, this has black tea and safflower with strawberries and cream flavor. Love me my strawberry teas, and this is a good one. Nothing chemical about it, nice tea-to-flavor balance. Hoping I can find it next run to Arkansas.

Equal parts yerba mate leaf and dragonwell at a slightly lower steep temp make a wonderful warmer-weather wakey-upper. I guzzled mine this morning like I’d been dehydrating in the desert for a week. When the weather gets unpleasantly hot, I intend to try this cold with a little mint to see if it has the same eyes-open effect.

Bone-chilling wet weather prompted me to go rogue and make a cup of a Christmas gift—Trader Joe’s mint cocoa. Prepped it with water (package calls for either water or milk) and it was thick, bittersweet chocolate with strong mint. Like a less sweet Andes’ mint. Very tasty and a pleasant change.

Remember Sheldon’s itchy brain? I am hopelessly scratching at a dozen unresolved tasks and issues, NONE of which I can do a confounded thing about this evening.

In hopes of soothing said itch, I made a strong cup of tulsi. just bulk bin stuff, but it is warm and lemony and soothing to the body. Hoping for a similar effect on the mind soon.

Green tea doesn’t get enough love at my house: especially when I’m given the opportunity (Liquid Proust, I think this came from your stash) to try something new and fine. This is a tai ping hou kui of unknown provenance, but oh, how refined and smooth it is! Big ol’ wide, flat leaves that were generous and accepting of my sloppy, Midwest-farmer-messy-kitchen-western-style—steep. Was the color of good, light olive oil and satiny on the tongue. Tastes like sweet hay mown from a field that has honeysuckle growing in the fencerow. Thanks for the intro to this variety!

Hot, hot, hot today. Last night, I dumped three heaping teaspoons from the Junkyard Tea Jar into a quart of water and let it fridge (fridge can be a verb, yes) overnight. Bitter dark chocolate today. Adjustments to quantity and steep time (I’m thinking less may be more as the jar now stands) will change the mix. Love the sunshine, but I’m ready for real tea weather again.

Can’t find this with a search or on the Shang Tea website at the moment, so I’ll just make a note here that the Shang Holiday Red Tea Nicole sent a while back is excellent. After more than a week of slugging down whatever, as long as it was icy, the morning was cool enough to enjoy a slow and decent cuppa.

About four minutes yielded a dry and cocoa-y flavor that just made me go ah-h-h-h-h-h-h.

The problem with random tea alchemy is the likelihood that you will never be able to hit on that particular combo/proportion again. In this case, had two quart jars of cold-brew in the fridge: one of my favorite Good Young strawberry black tea, and one Yorkshire Gold in which we’d dumped half a “squoze” lemon after juicing it the other evening. Two-thirds strawberry, roughly, to one-third lemon. Fruity Saturday afternoon goodness that I may or may not be able to replicate exactly.

I miss a blend called Wake-Up Call that I couldn’t find on my last run to Savoy tea in Arkansas—-it was a light, pleasant green tea/ginseng/mate blend with a great morning wake-up punch.

So, this morning, rogue inspiration hit and I did two parts of an anonymous early 2014 white tea a friend brought back form a China trip + one part mate leaves. Close! Wasn’t in the blend I was hoping to replicate, but I’m thinking a little mint from the back step wouldn’t be amiss next time.

First tea of the season from the Junkyard Tea Jar after squirreling away a pint’s worth of unflavored scraps. It was tasty both hot and chilled—lots of Keemun flavor today; who knows what we’ll get when I shake the jar tomorrow? As Sheldon Cooper says “What’s life without whimsy?”

A friend recently had an Irish houseguest who brought her some tea from home. She tried and deemed it too strong, so I’m the beneficiary of what I think may be Lyons brand tea. Experts familiar with the brand: does it come in natural parchment-style pyramid bags?

At any rate, it’s good strong breakfast tea, smooth rather than sharp, pleasant with milk.

In need of some disposition sweetening. (Ask my family; they will vigorously agree.)So I broke out some St. John’s wort. The nice part about St. John’s is that it doesn’t taste like much of anything. It’s a good blender. So hiding it in some thick sweet Tropical Nut Paradise (Teavana rooibos blend), you’d never know it was there.

Raspberry leaf for medicinal purposes tastes like the green leaf, not the red berry. As such, it’s not particularly tasty steeped on its own. Mint makes a nice complement, but sometimes it’s nice to have an herbal option with a little more punch. So I dumped in about a teaspoon of good ol’ Pappy’s sassafras concentrate. The chemistry is a little funny; makes the combo a little oily looking, but it’s quite tasty. Like spring in the Ozarks.

Ever find a basket of leaves on your kitchen counter that still look viable but you’re not quite sure what they were, and you’re too lazy to clean out the basket, so you just throw in a small wad of fresh generic Assam on top of it and steep it an indeterminate amount of time while you clean up after the cat, and you discover it’s really tasty?

Don’t say no, you don’t; you have. (Well, maybe not; perhaps you don’t have a cat :)
Happy Friday, all.

This afternoon’s herbal brew—equal parts elderberry and St. John’s Wort, steeped long and glooped with a bit of vanilla flavoring syrup. It’s sweet and raisiny-date, like dark raisin bread or fruitcake. Nice change from minty-lemony tisanes.

Desperate times—in this case, just enough snow to add a little fluff to tree branches and lawn, but to make it so damp and chilly my bones are cold—call for desperate measures. In this case (shh, don’t tell!) cocoa. Husband makes a reasonable Starbucks signature cocoa clone by mixing two grocery store packets of different flavors in one mug. Dark chocolate and milk chocolate with a Christmas Marshmallow Peep floating on top. Sweet enough to trigger a sugar coma, but a tasty change of pace.