Monday, November 23, 2015

My first experience as a tea blender!

I found the absolute coolest tea product ever in the tea aisle at Publix the other night, this Chocolate Orange Black Tea Blending Kit from Celestial Seasonings.

My good, practical angel said, "You do NOT need to spend $9.99 on any more tea, especially right here at the holidays when you have hardly even started Christmas shopping yet." But my more fun-loving angel said, "Oh, heck. You know you're going to come back and get this if you don't go ahead and buy it now, so save yourself some time and put it in your cart." I loved that the package design allows you to see a hint of what's within!

When I opened the box, this is what it looked like inside.

The packages aren't ziplock bags (though that would have been nice, Celestial Seasonings!), but the adhesive labels on each one did allow me to reseal them.

Now you can, of course, blend this tea any way you like, but on my first attempt at tea blending, I decided to follow the directions precisely and blend 1 teaspoon of Assam with 1/4 teaspoon orange peel (dried orange peel smells heavenly, by the way) and 1/3 teaspoon each of cocoa nibs and rock sugar.

I was so pleased with the end result! After steeping the tea for just four minutes, I got a nicely brisk cup of tea with just a hint of orange and cocoa, and it was only slightly sweetened from that small amount of sugar. Later this week, I want to double up on the orange peel and, separately, double up on the cocoa nibs and see what the result tastes like. You can also find these kits for blending Gen Mai Cha and Hibiscus Sangria. I'm still a bit surprised to have found these at Publix, because these teas seem a little more upscale than something you usually find at the grocery store, but I'm sure having fun with my new tea blending kit!

6 comments:

  1. That does look like fun and it sounds delicious!

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  2. Looks good, I will have to check it out! I was surprised to see bulk tea in bins at Safeway this weekend.

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  3. That is the perfect gift for a tea lover - how neat!

    Yet another coincidence, because we have them all the time - last night I couldn't sleep, so I cleaned out my huge bin of tea, organized it all and blended a whole bunch. I blend tea all the time, but it had been a while and I had lots of little odds and ends that matched up well with some others, etc.

    Keep Calm and Blend On!

    Hugs.

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  4. Now that is something I would be tempted to buy. What fun! It sounds delicious!

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  5. I've not seen these but will look for them next week at Publix. Sounds like a fun thing to try.

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  6. Really interesting! Fun to have a blending tea party.

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