Did you miss me? I’d like to say I planned a brief hiatus, but truthfully, life got a little busy and I forgot I’m a tea blogger now.
What does a tea blogger write about? Let’s see, this week we could talk about creating blends? I’ll take that as a yes.
We just discovered our newest blend, FullFill-Mint. I say discovered because we know what each component tastes like on their own (apples, peppermint, green rooibos) but we never knew what they would end up like together and I’ve never heard of another blend like it.
We started with a desire to have mint tea. Our uncaffeinated varieties are wonderful, however, we had many customers approaching us asking for something minty. We learned that the world is full of mint lovers and we were happy to oblige, if we could make it something special.
When you think of taking a big sip of mint, what parts of your mouth are experiencing the brew? Your breath will activate the menthol from the leaves as you breath in and out. The vegetal part of the flavor tends to make its way around the edge of your tongue. Knowing this, we picked green rooibos due to its similar ability to produce a coolness on your mouth, but to also add complexity to the vegetal notes of the mint leaves. Our local apples carry tart and acrid flavors which shine smack dab in the center of the tongue and their sweetness coats your whole mouth. From there we try different sweeteners to see if we can enhance flavor or change it entirely. I used some organic brown sugar and the tea tasted nearly identical to a mint julep.
I’m leaving out the part where we put a cucumber slice instead of apples. We had high hopes, a similar coolness from the vegetable that pairs so nicely with unexpected things. In this case, we made something too close to soup. Something in the seeds and the rind of the cucumber caused us to register more savory notes which changed the mint profile to something more akin to Pho or lamb with mint jelly. These are both wonderful flavors, however, not what we are looking for from our blends.
If you are looking to make your own blends, I strongly urge you to study flavors and how you experience them. When you bite into a ripe peach what are you feeling? Probably a little sticky and very pleased.
That’s it for now, but always stay bumpy my friends.