December 12, 2020

Tea Advent: Day 12

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It’s 8:45am on a Saturday and today’s tea is the Superior English Breakfast, so there is no time to lose. It turns out that yesterday’s tea things haven’t been washed up yet, and there’s no way a quick rinse will rid the pot of that overpowering aniseed flavour, so I’ve located the back-up teapot. This is a cute red fellow that I picked up in Oxfam, along with his handspun, handknitted cosy.

There are a lot of words on the box, but what it basically comes down to is, this is what tea is supposed to taste like. So golden tips of Assam blah blah blah, all I want at this time of day is something to wake me up and enhance my mood, hence also the mug.

Photo by Pete

This mug was acquired through a strange but compelling competitive raffle game one New Year at Mike & Susan’s. We miss New Year at Mike & Susan’s, it was always a blast. We provided prizes for this game, and I think we had Mike in mind for the mug, whose caption in full is A bad brew makes me grumpy, a sentiment to which I am sure we can all relate. All of us but Pete, who is never rendered grumpy by such trivia as poorly made tea, and anyway only drinks herbal/fruit teas these days so his opinion frankly, well, he can stick to beer. Naturally Pete won the mug.

Karen
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  • Oh, what's the tea like? Nice. Tastes like tea is supposed to taste. - Karen
December 11, 2020

Tea Advent Day 11

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I have very low expectations of the Spicy Chai Flavoured Black Tea. Pete and I have the day off today, and have been for a six mile hike that ended with posh sausage rolls and a trip to Aldi, where, amongst other things we didn’t need, we picked up their salted caramel crumble topped mince pies and a pair of tumblers that Pete really, really took a fancy to. This always happens when we go to Aldi. I had a small skimmed milk latte with my posh sausage roll, and cannot find the words to describe how much of a treat that was, because that’s how fun my life is now.

So the next hot drink of the day has a lot to live up to, and it’s another of the flavoured teas. I do like a chai, and I even have a tub of instant chai powder, which is probably illegal in tea snob circles. In appearance and smell, this seems suspiciously similar to the Farrers Spiced Christmas Tea that came in a Grasmere Gingerbread hamper from my mum last year. That’s the one with the whole cloves, and I haven’t made much of a dent in it. If you’re ever stuck for a gift for me, send me Grasmere Gingerbread, but don’t bother with the tea. Instead of whole cloves, this one has whole peppercorns, which piqued my interest somewhat. I know that authentic chai should be boiled up in the milk, but for the sake of consistency and also out of laziness, I’ve gone with the conventional teapot method. I did however give the milk a quick blast in the microwavé.

Both the aroma and flavour of the tea are utterly annihilated by aniseed, to the extent that there’s even a little aniseed burn on the tongue after drinking it. This, my friends, is aniseed tea. You would only drink it if absolutely all the other teas in your cupboard had been stolen by some bastard, who was such a bastard that they had actually left this one behind, the bastard.

The chai is polluting my newest mug, a birthday gift from Bernard which arrived yesterday. But wait, I hear you cry, that mug says “coffee” on it, you can’t drink tea out of it, it’s quite clearly a coffee mug! And I reply to you that you are completely missing the point, this was a birthday gift from my darling boy, who bought it for me because we have spent so much of the last few months playing Stardew Valley together, and in Stardew Valley my character did get a bit obsessed with being a coffee farmer, so his train of thought is, she’d like a Stardew Valley mug; obviously it would be a coffee one. Also I don’t know if you can tell, but if you compare today’s photo with previous days you will see, this mug is enormous. You can get a lot of tea in there. I’m looking forward to doing that when the tea is actually nice to drink.

Cocktails will be served out of inappropriate vessels at 5.

Karen
December 10, 2020

Tea Advent Day 10

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Today I’m at university where I’m studying a PG Cert in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education, sounds fun doesn’t it? My expectations of online learning are high, and my uni days this semester have never failed to disappoint me. I could write you an entire post on why and how this learning environment could be used so much more effectively, but all you need to know is that I signed on at 9:15 and I’m already writing a post about tea.

On the upside, this tea is wonderful. It’s called Jenny’s Blend as a tribute to a member of staff at Imperial Teas of Lincoln, and is Jenny’s personal combination of Keemun Hao Ya B and Assam. This reminds me that Keemun was once my tea of choice, when you could get it in Whittards; but I haven’t had it for years and don’t know where to get it from these days.

Brewed for 5 minutes and very definitely taken with milk, this is described as A blend of great fortitude and complex character to keep you going all day, which is precisely what one needs when one is obliged to tune in to other people talking about their research projects and the tutor making suggestions that are clearly derailing everyone’s plans, potentially until half past three with no information shared about what breaks we can anticipate, which is one of the things I would mention in the above-mentioned post that I’m not writing. The tea is satisfyingly dark and definitely hits the notes promised on the box, most particularly the malt and chocolate. I’m not sure I’m getting the rose, but I’m happy to know it is there, deep in the mix.

My mug today is the other one in my Aunty Kathy‘s Artwork collection. I could have gone for beetles or paint splatters, but I chose beach huts because it seemed like something you wouldn’t normally see on a mug. Aunty Kathy has Parkinson’s and moved into digital art after a lifetime of watercolour and other creativity, and these days I don’t think she can manage anything much at all, so I’m raising her mug full of Jenny’s Blend in tribute to her.

Karen
  • Comments: 4
  • No, no you can't, can you. - Karen
  • See, and now I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. :-) - Lyle
  • I massively appreciate your willingness to google things for me. - Karen
  • As just a couple of examples for getting Keemun tea... Loose Leaf Tea Co - https://theu... - Lyle
December 9, 2020

Tea Advent Day 9

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Today’s tea is the first of the green teas. I think of myself as a person who doesn’t like green tea, but when it comes with a title like Gunpowder Temple of Heaven Green Tea, my expectations are inevitably high. What I don’t like is that dry mouthfeel and often insipid flavour, so I can happily report that, while it does feature the dryness, this is all flavour, from before it even hits the mouth.

The “gunpowder” reference arises because of the way the leaves are dried in rotating drums, resulting in them somewhat resembling gunpowder, although I’d say it’s more like shot. It even pings as you drop it into the metal infuser.

As you lift the cup, you get a sweet smoky caramel aroma, which intensifies in the mouth. The box says it’s subtle, but it is not – this time in a good way. This is a pleasantly acceptable green tea, and I’d drink it again. My mug today is a souvenir of Brooklands, a motor museum and famous former racetrack where we’ve had a few nice days out. I like its retro styling, but I don’t usually use it because it’s a bit on the small side. I felt that would be appropriate for a green tea that I might not like.

Karen
  • Comments: 2
  • I think you know exactly how many mugs we have, you mug. - Karen
  • You must be nearly running out of mugs by now, surely? - Pete
December 8, 2020

Tea Advent: Day 8

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Some days I worry that I can’t distinguish all the subtle nuances, so how refreshing to taste a tea that has no subtle nuances, and just tastes like warm Coke.

I felt under a lot of pressure to get my teabreak in early today, such that I got into a tizz and managed to make a hash of things. I run a breastfeeding support group on zoom at 10am on Tuesdays (you’re very welcome, if you’re having any issues), and was marking exams until 9:55 at which point I thought I’d put the kettle on, then had to dash back and forth from the kitchen letting people into the room and apologising for nipping back to the kitchen to put milk in my cup and so on, and failing to deliver the cup I made for Pete, which he then put in the microwave 45 minutes later, hope it wasn’t awful, sorry, love you.

As a result I didn’t get a good photo of the tea in the pot, because I was flustered and poured it all out and started drinking it. Then it hit me full in the face, no really, the smell of this tea was distinctive, I believe we are using the word ‘robust,’ and it was robust all over the place. Today’s tea is Cola Flavoured Black Tea. Either have a coke, or have a cup of tea. Not both. Don’t try to do both. Let me show you how they describe this tea:

The cactus flowers were not visible to the naked eye. On the back of the box, there is talk of taking the finest high grown Sri Lankan teas and RUINING them by making them taste like cola.

Today I borrowed Bernard’s Urban Birder mug, a gift to him from his Uncle Pockless for his birthday. The good Doctor is apparently gifted at gifting mugs. It has a fetching design featuring a crow with chips in its beak. It went well with the cola-tea.

Karen
December 7, 2020

Tea Advent Day 7

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Finding time to do more than just thoughtlessly swill down my morning cuppa really casts a light on what I already knew, which is that December is a busy old time in my line of work. Today I am ably assisted by the glamorous Pete, who swished down the stairs mid-morning with the look of a man about to put the kettle on. I had already extracted my daily dose of tea from the advent calendar, so threw the box at him as he passed the dining table where I work, and a few minutes later there was a glorious steaming pot of Ceylon Ella Rock Black Tea sitting beside me, and nobody on the zoom call was any the wiser. He had even photographed the leaves:

Ceylon is a pungent tea with a flavour I can only describe as tea-like. I once spent a week in Sri Lanka, which was very hot and full of interesting statues and monkeys, and I happily drank an awful lot of tea. I did some other things I am less sentimentally nostalgic about, like getting married to a really awful man, so let’s focus on the tea and monkeys. Later I divorced the man, and then there was Pete, and Pete’s mum provided this particular cup of tea, so it all turned out well in the end.

Today’s mug commemorates my now-ceased-but-much-admired-in-small-circles podcast. I’m sad not to make it anymore, but it was a lot of work and I would have found it really hard to make it right now. I’m very proud of the 60 episodes we did produce, and people do still listen to it from time to time.

Karen
December 6, 2020

Tea Advent Day 6

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Today’s tea is a white tea, not as in tea with milk but as in a particular minimally processed tea drunk without milk. White tea suffers from health claims coming out of its silvery tips, including claims that it can fight cancer and defeat world hunger. Apparently this one is also used in the manufacture of face cream. It does not however taste like face cream, which on the whole is a good thing, as Pete will attest.

It is a pleasant drink even if you don’t believe the woo or indeed care much whether your morning revitaliser can also promote (or destroy, I can’t remember which) free radicals. I generally enjoy the company of free radicals, so perhaps this is the sort of tea I should drink more of. It would also save me buying milk, which would be good for the planet; so if I ever decide to cut back on another one of life’s pleasures for the sake of the children and the fishermen of Wokingham, this is the tea for me.

The leaf of Tea of Life Natural White Tea is pretty, presumably because nothing much has been done to it apart from a light steaming and being dried in the sun (a process I also enjoy myself). You make it by first adding a little cold water to the leaves, then hot; and it can steep a long time, with a floral hint just starting to develop after quite a few minutes.

Today’s mug is a lined glass cup which Pete gave me after I admired the ones they use to serve fresh peppermint tea in Pizza Express. We used to have two, but one of them met with an accident.

Karen
December 5, 2020

Tea Advent Day 5

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It’s 11:15 on a Saturday, a working Saturday at that, and I have a mandated teabreak: what better time to taste my advent tea? Today we have Darjeeling Mango Tree 2nd Flush Black Tea, and who doesn’t love a darjeeling? I love a darjeeling, I don’t know why we don’t have it in the house more. I suppose it’s paleness makes it feel less important as a tea, the macho tea of course being the darker the better. But pale and interesting can be strong and characterful too. Discerning customers, according to the box, can pick out flavours of elderflower, roses, cherry, tangerine, mandarin, tonka bean, freesia and medjool dates. I don’t even know what a tonka bean is, and I’ve never tasted a freesia, but find it delicate, smooth and refreshing to drink.

Today’s mug is the booby mug, given to me by the breastfeeding peer supporters I trained last year, one of whom is also in the tutorial group I’m running today. It seemed appropriate, and I know you the reader will enjoy it in all its booby glory.

Karen