Iced Tea Double Feature

It's been a busy couple of months!  Cups of tea, let alone the time to write about them have been few and far between, but a few weeks ago, the wife and I did make a couple of excellent pitchers of iced white tea.  In each case, we filled a big pot partway with water (~2.5 quarts in a 5 quart pot), approximated the number of tea bags for a good strong brew (about 25, though it depends on the tea), and steeped for about 2 minutes (white tea is fragile and usually doesn't overbrew well, especially bag tea).  We scooped the tea bags out, sweetened lightly, and chilled.


Bentley's Ginger Peach White Tea

As a stand alone cup of hot tea, I don't think I'd have that much to say about this tea.  It's pleasant, but pretty unremarkable.  As a well brewed, slightly sweetened ice tea, however, it really shines.  The touch of sweetener, agave nectar in this case, really brings the peach to the forefront, while the tingle of the ginger and the brightness of the tea balance out the profile.  White tea can be finicky and bitter if brewed too long or too hot, or even if it's just not a high enough quality, but I find Bentley's to be decent quality tea, especially for a bag, and a bit more forgiving than some other brands.


Overall, a great cup of summertime iced tea, and pretty easy to make. B+


Tea Nation Raspberry White Tea

Tea Nation's Raspberry White was the second big batch we tried, and it was a bit more finicky than the Bentley's, but with some creativity, came out great.  After our initial steeping in the big pot, I fished out the 25 or so tea bags, and sweetened with some regular old sugar (couldn't find the agave nectar), and taste tested.  My initial impression was that we'd overdone some aspect, and it had come out a hair bitter.  Not wanting to waste a huge pot of fresh tea, my wife did some quick thinking, and grabbed a bag of frozen raspberries from the freezer (I love raspberries, so we're not often without them in some form) and chucked them in the still warm tea.  We let them sit for a few hours to thaw and let the flavors mingle, then chilled the whole thing.  The result was really excellent...more an ice tea based fruit drink than true iced tea, but semantics aside, it was great!  The tea provided a nice astringent backbone for the huge raspberry flavor, and the raspberries were of course, delicious.

I have to give the tea itself a C, as it was kind of finicky and unexciting, but the end result was far better than that, thanks to the wife's quick thinking.


I started writing this entry over a month ago!  Children certainly are free time vampires...it's good to be writing again, though, even if it's not as often as I'd like.  I hope to be posting a bit more often over the next few months, though I'll just have to take it as it comes.  I have a few good posts hanging out in the back of my mind, as well as another project in the background (running related), but all these things depend on the whims of a colicky infant.  Anyway, hopefully more to come in the near future.
 

Vanilla Almond Ceylon

The teabag is a modern invention, dating back to the turn of the 20th century.  The first commercial use of the teabag was in 1904, by tea merchant Thomas Sullivan.  The bag was hand sewn silk, and intended simply as a way of packaging small amounts of tea, but consumers began steeping the tea still in the package, and fell in love with the convenience.  Thus, the questionable modern advancement of the teabag was born.  At its inception, the teabag was simply a neat, handy way of steeping tea, but fairly quickly, tea companies realized the teabag made a great way to get rid of tea dust and fannings that were left over from sorting higher quality loose tea.  So, the modern teabag was born and, generations of people grew to believe the chalky, astringent texture of low quality tea was true of all tea.  Thousands of people learned to dislike tea, yet have never had a proper cup of the stuff.

I don't mean to come down too hard on teabags.  Loose tea vs. bag tea is really a question of quality vs. convenience.  Loose tea has a far cleaner texture and more developed flavors, but of course takes more time and effort to make.  Teabags typically brew up with a dirtier texture and less flavor due to the lower grade tea, but are so quick and easy  At home, I almost always go with loose tea, but at work I usually just settle for the quick option of teabags.  A nice compromise between both worlds is the tea sachet, or "pyramid" bag.  The larger volume inside the bag allows for true leaf tea, and gives the leaves a small amount of room to bloom, so to speak.  It's still not full leaf tea blooming inside an entire teapot, but it does make for a better cup of tea than an old fashioned bag.

So, then, today's review is a vanilla almond Ceylon from Tea Nation.  I've tried a vanilla flavored tea from Special Teas once before, and was underwhelmed.  The vanilla was from real Madagascar beans, and smelled absolutely amazing, but dominated the tea completely.  As much as I loved Special Teas for their great blended black teas, they didn't always do so well with flavored teas; it seemed they coulnd't find the right balance between tea and flavoring.  Tea Nation seems a pretty good company, and they got that balance spot on with this tea.  Hints of sweet vanilla and almond complement the tea, yet never overpower it.  The tea is Ceylon, with which I've had mixed results, but I really like this blend.  It's strong and flavorful without becoming overly astringent, and the sweetness from the vanilla and almond is perfect.  I'll add a splash of milk and sugar to most black teas, but this one doesn't need either; the sugar only gets in the way of the more subtle almond and vanilla notes, and milk just dilutes the flavor and weakens the rather delicate body.  For me, a tea that can stand solely on its own merits, not even needing milk or sweetener, is a quality cup of tea.  Score:  85 (B)