Eureka! Pure Tea & Flavored Tea Steeped Together as One!

I’ve long wondered about flavored teas. Yes, I myself took to them in my early days as taste was vastly more important to me than it is today. However, shortly into my tea exploration and studies I changed my mind. Simply by tasting different Taiwanese wulongs I discovered there was a vast range of taste and aftertaste just from that rather small island alone.

Pure Tea

There are many reasons one tea tastes different from another. It’s too deep a subject to add to this post. I will say the processing of the leaves is a very important factor. Learning the teas and why the tea is that tea requires learning the process that goes into making the tea. Which brings me back to flavored teas.

Why Add to Tea?

Why flavor a tea with other additives if there are so many flavors? If you want to alter the taste or dare I say, make it taste better, then you don’t like tea, you like that flavor. Or maybe the tea is of low quality and one should waste not… so adding flavors makes it drinkable.  Whatever the reason, I would not call flavored tea “real” tea. OK, I may have offended many people reading this. But please read on.

Why Would I Flavor Teas?

Many people like flavored teas, probably more so than those who don’t. So, what? Who cares? I do. Yes, me. Because I like to serve tea for friends and family and especially on “Thanksgiving Day” or “National Day of Mourning”¹. Now, some people don’t eat meat or certain meat for one reason or another. So, do you make Turkey or Tofurkey, or slave over both? If you are a kind person, you slave over both. BUT, what if there was a way to make one that pleases everyone?! I found how to do that… with tea not turkey (sorry vegetarians, vegans and others).

Eureka! Eureka!

Like the famous Syracusan, I was taking a bath and ALSO made a discovery². I may not have been the first to have this “Eureka Moment,” but Me Myself and I claim it!!

Two or More Teas from One

Go ahead and make that tea of yours. That nice pure tea you want to share. BUT… have some orange peels at hand, maybe some lemon rind and perhaps ginger, or mint. I wouldn’t doubt cinnamon or jasmine would be appreciated either. And, with each flavor, bring a strainer.

Spot-Flavoring

Ask if they would like to taste the tea, perhaps insist they take a small sip to see if they prefer it pure. If not, pull a John Henry Anderson³ and from your hat, reveal your flavors and suggest a few.

How to Spot-Flavor

Simply add the required amount of flavor to a strainer, one per strainer might be best, and pour your tea over the flavor and through the strainer into their cup.  And Bob’s Your Uncle, Flavored Tea! Not only flavored tea, but one catered to the taste preference of your guest!

Experimentation

I will talk about my experiments on spot flavoring in an upcoming post.  But it is essential you do this yourself as you want to know how much to use for which tea.

References:

 

1. An alternative name for the controversial name “Thanksgiving Day” due to the Genocide of the Native Americans carried out by the European colonialist and the USA Government. — United American Indians of New England
2. A reference to Archimedes, born and fell in the city Syracuse. He is credited as coining the word, “Eureka” when he discovered the law of hydro-statics while apparently stepping into his bath. ­— BBC History
3. A Scottish Magician known as “The Great Wizard of the North,” who is mis-credited with The Hat-Trick, from which he revealed a rabbit or flowers. The first record of The Hat-Trick was by the Parisian magician, Louis Comte, “The King’s Conjurer” who performed this trick the year Anderson was born, 1814 ­­–QI (Quite Interesting) — BBC2 Quiz Show & Wikipedia: 1 & 2