Twinings- Tie Guan Yin Oolong

I was really lucky to win a 6 month tea tasters membership in February, I love getting my monthly tea from Twinings, although sometimes I struggle to review them in good time. Here is a good example- Tie Guan Yin is May's tea.

Tie Guan Yin is an oolong tea. Neither green nor black, the leaves are left out for just long enough to lightly oxidise- you can actually see that the leaves have a brown tint around the edges where oxidation has occurred. The leaves have been rolled, according to my tasting notes, up to 100 times. This is a real artisan tea. Translated literally oolong means "black dragon" and as you look at the tiny pellets of tea you can imagine a dragon curled up with it's tail sticking out. As you add the tea to the infuser, you can hear a chink as they hit the glass.
I used water at about 90', and infused for 2-3 minutes. As the leaves are infused, they begin to unfurl, rising into the water like tiny flying dragons. I couldn't resist taking a picture of the tea infusing- I had nothing to do with the positioning of the leaves here! The leaves unfurl to become surprisingly large. The leaves can be used with several infusions.

I do think it is quite difficult to describe the taste of an oolong. It's similar to both green and black teas, but different. Less grassy than a green, it is almost floral in taste, a bit nutty and buttery too.  I am struggling to get acquainted with green tea, but like with white tea, I have enjoyed sampling this tea. It's another tea for a day when you want something special and different. Of course, being a Twining's tea, the quality is superb.

Tea and Cake Planet

Despite the fact I charged the batteries especially, I forgot to bring my camera, so apologies for lack of photos.

Today I went to Tea and Cake planet at the Boiler House in Newcastle. I paid £15:50, which included entry into the one of event, and a *TeaShed afternoon tea.

The venue itself wasn't very large, and I don't know if I would have thought it worth the general admission fee if it wasn't for the fact I was going for afternoon tea. There were some tea vendors and a couple of food stalls as well as live music and some lindy hop dancers.

I attended a talk on "The Science of Tea". As someone with a Biochemistry degree, I found it rather light on the science front, but I was probably a little unusual on that. I did get to taste several teas including teabag black, loose leaf black, green, lapsong suchong, darjeeling and assam, however to my taste all of the teas had been "masted" (what I would call "mashed"- it just means infused) for too long and were not at their best. I did taste teas a little later with Tea Owl and her infusion times were much more to my liking.

My afternoon tea was provided by the *TeaShed, and started with what they described as an "amazing popaball cocktail" which was squash with weird jelly balls. There was unlimited tea available, I had 5 cups in all- one Rosie *Lee (a yummy darjeeling), one Baby it's Cold Outside *Tea (Chai, which I have never had before and didn't really enjoy), one All day breakfast *Tea, and two Mr Grey's *Tea (which I have already reviewed). There was masses of food too, I had a beef burger, a fishcake, crackers and brie, coleslaw, salad, a chocolate macaroon, a mini meringue, a mini profiterole, a piece of lemon cake and a large raisin and cherry scone with jam and cream. Needless to say I was full and won't be needing much dinner tonight. I was given two free twenty packs (Rosie *Lee and Northern *Brew) which market at £3.50 each, so overall very good value there.

From the stalls, I made two purchases, firstly flowering tea from Tea Sutra (they look so pretty) and secondly rhubarb and cream oolong from Quilliam brothers. Eventually I will have space in my cupboard so I can open them and review them. 

I enjoyed my afternoon of tea, and look forward to next year, hopefully they will get more tea merchants on board to give a wider selection of stalls. It was nice to treat myself to an afternoon tea, I'll have to do it again sometime!

Excited for Tea and Cake planet

I have just booked my ticket for Tea and Cake Planet in Newcastle tomorrow. I am going to have the *Teashed afternoon tea- I think I will take a teddy for company as I am going by myself. I am really excited for tomorrow and have set my camera batteries to charge!

Char Wallah tea- Blood Orange Tea

Char Wallah is a company I found whilst doing some google research into tea companies. They had some end of range bargains on their website, at £2:50 for 100g and free postage I really couldn't not order some.

The tea I chose is blood orange black tea. It isn't in the range anymore, so I'm afraid you can't try any.

The tea arrived nice and quickly, the transparent plastic bag was placed inside a large envelope, which doesn't seem to have done the tea any harm- it doesn't appear to have been crushed by the experience. In fact, you can see the chunks of orange are a good size. It's nice not to have to rearrange delivery or traipse to the post office.

On opening, I smelt the orange straight away, think Terry's Chocolate Orange and you are on the right track. One thing to bear in mind with citrus teas is that they don't tend to be sharp or sour, so it is not quite the same as having the fruit! Taste wise, I would describe this as a mellow Lady Grey, as Lady Grey also contains orange,but with the addition of bergamot. This is a good thing, in my opinion, as I had just run out of Lady Grey. The blood orange tea is light, refreshing and summary, and fills the gap left by Lady Grey very nicely.

Axxent: Cupcake Tea- Sweet Honey

On today's shopping trip, I saw an interesting tea selection on sale at TKMaxx. Called Cupcake tea, it had 4 small boxes of flavoured teas, each containing 10 envelopes.

I am trying Sweet Honey first- this is a blend of black tea, banana and honey. On opening the envelope, I could smell all three flavours, which was a good sign. I added boiling water, and left the tea bag in for 2 minutes.

While I was waiting for my drink to cool, I did a bit of research. The brand seems to be owned by a Dutch company called Axxent, but unfortunately their website isn't particularly informative.

As you may have realized, I prefer my tea with milk. It's just a matter of personal taste.

The tea itself has a honey-sweetness to it, the smell of honey is strong  but the taste is not too sweet. The banana is less easy to detect but is there in the aftertaste. I think this blend would have benefited from a little more banana. I like the concept and the taste is nice, it makes me think of childhood puddings!

Of course, with this being a TKMaxx find I am not going to say that I would buy it again, as TKMaxx have an ever changing selection and I doubt that I will see it in stock again.

Twinings- Salted Caramel Indulgence Green Tea

I have just realised that it has now been just over a week since my last tea review, so I think that it is about time I do another. The tea I have decided to review is Twining's Salted Caramel Indulgence Green Tea.

Image from the Twinings website

There are three teas in the Indulgence Green Tea range-  gingerbread, caramelized apple, and salted caramel. Salted caramel is my favourite of the three.
If you are not sure about green tea, this is a good tea to try as it lacks the "grassy" taste normally associated with green tea. As with all green teas, it's best to leave the kettle a few minutes after boiling in order to prevent the water from scalding the leaves.

The first time I brewed salted caramel, I had a real wow moment as the smell is divine! It reminds me of butterscotch angel delight- a childhood favourite. The taste is just the same- yummy!

I have had salted caramel green tea at work a number of times now, and every time I have had it my colleagues have commented on the smell- my boss reckons it smells like buttered toast!

*TeaShed- Mr. Grey's *Tea

As I have said in a previous post, the *TeaShed is a young, Newcastle based brand, with some cool packaging.

Earl Grey is one of my favourite blends, so I have been looking forward to trying the *TeaShed version- Mr Grey's *Tea. The Earl Gry was a local chap, and one of the best known Newcastle landmarks is a monument to Earl Grey, so it is a very apt blend. As well as their 20 packs of pyramids, they also sell teabag and biscuit combo packs. For £1, you get two biscuits and two teabags. They do a couple of different teas in these packs. I think they would make great stocking fillers or maybe even as wedding favours. Anyway, back to the tea tasting.

This is a classic Earl Grey blend with a black tea base and bergamot orange flavouring.  The base tea is very smooth  and this makes for an easy drinking blend.  There is no bitterness or astringency. The bergamot flavour is not to overpowering. The taste isn't as strong as the Twining's equivalent, but Earl Grey is sometimes a bit of a niche tea and I think it would be a good introductory blend. It's got a nice flavour of it's own, mildly citrusy and very calming!

The biscuit, by the way, was also very yummy, a oaty coconut biscuit that just hit the spot.

Clearspring- Organic Japanese Genmaicha

Last Christmas I got my Dad a teapig's selection pack, and one of the teas he raved about was the popcorn tea. So when I was in Waitrose and saw this brand, I decided to try it.

I had not heard of Clearspring tea before, but the back of the pack tells me that the tea was grown and packaged in Japan at the Nagata Tea Gardens, Kyoto.

Genmaicha is japanese green tea with toasted rice. The tea was about £1 cheaper than teapigs, and when I opened up the packet, I discovered standard teabags, rather than the pyramid style tea pigs do. I could smell the popcorn aroma, but also the grassy smell of green tea

I boiled the kettle and waited the requisite minute in order to prevent scalding the tea. Upon addition of water to the mug, a green colour developed straight away. After a minute and a half, the green colour was quite vivid, and their was a strong popcorn smell.

On first tasting I detected the nutty popcorn flavour, but the grassy green tea flavour was a little overpowering for me. However I let it cool and as it cooled the grass flavour faded and  the popcorn flavour began to come through stronger.

I don't think this is going to become a favourite, I think I'd rather have a cup of earl grey and a bag of popcorn! But, variety is the spice of life so I will keep hold of the rest of the box. I also need to continue to develop my green tea taste buds a little more as I did enjoy the popcorn flavour to the tea.

The *TeaShed- Guana Bana *Tea

Having read Laura from LoveteaLoveblogging's post on *TeaShed Mr Grey's Tea a few months ago, I had a browse of their website and decided to put an order in. They are a young, Newcastle based company and as I am living in Northumbria I thought that this would be a good way to support a local company- plus they have a great range of reasonably priced tea pyramids in cute packaging. Each set comes in a disposable hot drink cup, I haven't seen any other company doing this and I think it's an original idea.

I ordered 4 teas- Mr Grey's tea, Out of milk tea (white tea- I am going to give this to my Dad for fathers day), caramel loose leaf black, and Guana Bana. The parcel arrived very quickly, and also contained some free envelopes of "emergency tea"- these are definitely going to be used to cheer people up.

Guana Bana is the first tea I have tried. The intriguing name is the reason I decided to order it, it is very unusual! Guana Bana is a blended tea- black and green teas with jasmine, marigold, saf flower and soursop. Cue wikipedia search. Soursop is also known as Guana Bana and custard apple. It is a weird looking green spiky  fruit with a white pulpy inside.

This is an interesting drink, it is definitely tea, it's creamy (no milk in this- I can't even imagine putting it in), fruity, floral and citrusy. It's a bit of a sweet and sour experience. It's not an everyday sort of drink, buit it does make a refreshing change.

I can't find Guana Bana on The *TeaShed website anymore, which I suspect means that no-one else will be able to try it. It's a shame, because this is a really unique and original flavour.