My own tea blends

My niece sent us on a tea blending workshop: tea cocktails, learning about tea, blending tea. This was at our local tea store, which was apparently their first store, and drew a couple of serious tea fanatics. They had very nice tea-themed tattoos.

At the end of the 2.5 hours of tea, tea, tea we mixed our own blends. And today, I got to open my first one after letting it mingle in the bag for a few days.

Blend 1: Rooibos, chilli, lemon grass and star anise.  It wasn’t terrible! It didn’t really taste of much, but it felt like it nuked anything that might be living in the back of my throat.

The mixing was from a set of about 14 ingredients. It was something like four teaspoons of the base ingredients then four whatever takes your fancy. 

Blend 2: Hibiscus, rose and lemon thyme — had a disconnect between the smell (thyme)  and the taste (very weak fruit squash).

Blend 3: Mate, lemon thyme, goji and chilli was better, but it turns out I don’t really like thyme in a tea, so that’s a bit of a problem.

The main thing I learned was that I like cold brew tea, and will experiment more with that.