Cup of Brown Joy

Today's taste test tea is Rose Petal Tea.  This tea was gifted to me by my brother, David, and sourced from  Mecca Coffee Company , of Tulsa Oklahoma. Drinking rose petals in tea may have originated in China. Rose tea is an important part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), where it is used to regulate qi, or life energy. TCM considers rose tea a potential remedy for Stomach and digestive problems Fatigue and improving sleep Irritability and mood swings Menstrual cramps and menopausal symptoms There are few western studies of the benefits of rose petal tea.  Rose petals are high in Vitamin C. I made 4 cups using the Assam tea press and the black tea setting or boiling, on the smart kettle.  I did a 4 minute brew time.  Other than the 2nd iced tea serving, each serving had 1 teaspoon of white sugar in the cup. This tea has a strong scent of rose while brewing.  It's quite strong, almost overpowering.  1st sip:  Nice flavor of rose. 1st full mout...

Today's taste test tea is Passion Fruit. This tea was gifted to me by my brother, David, and sourced from  Mecca Coffee Company , of Tulsa Oklahoma.  This is a black tea with passion fruit flavors added and it does not seem to be the same as  Starbucks' passion tea, which, among other things is made with lemonade.  Recipes for Passion Fruit tea tend to start with tea leaves and raw passion fruits.  I found recipes for it using both green and black tea, normally tea bags. Most of the references to passion fruit tea assume you are starting with raw passion fruits, which isn't the case here.  The say you don't need sugar, which would make sense in a tea with raw fruit juice added to it.   I made 4 cups using the Assam tea press and the black tea setting or boiling, on the smart kettle.  I did a 3 minute brew time.  I added 1 teaspoon of white sugar to the most of the cups.  1st cup was drunk black, 2nd cup with milk, 3rd hot with out s...

 Today's taste test "tea" is Hibiscus.   This herbal infusion was gifted to me by my brother, David, and sourced from Mecca Coffee Company , of Tulsa Oklahoma.    As it contains no actual tea I'm not calling it "tea" for this review. Hibiscus originated in Africa and is still popular as a hot drink there, it is also popular in Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America and the Caribbean.  It's the primary flavoring agent in "Jamaica" drinks.  Hibiscus has been found studies to lower blood pressure.  Studies to see it effects on cholesterol were mixed and seem to have the same effect as black tea.  Very high doses of hibiscus extract could potentially cause liver damage. The same review reported that hibiscus extract was shown to interact with hydrochlorothiazide (a diuretic) in animals and with acetaminophen in humans.  According to other sources, hibiscus consumption is not safe for people who take chloroquine, the malaria...

Today's gift tea from my brother David, bought at  Mecca Coffee Company , is a little out of my normal black tea comfort zone.  It's green tea with citrus and ginkgo biloba.  Ginkgo biloba is a herb used in Chinese medicine with some studies done by western medicine .  The primary things it's taken for in the west is memory and mental speed.  The studies done have been with caplets, not as tea just for what it's worth. I made 4 cups using the Assam tea press and the green tea setting, 175 degrees Fahrenheit, on the smart kettle.  I did a 3 minute brew time.  Being a green tea I'm not going to be using milk with it.  Just as a note, it seems to have some particle smaller than the holes in the infuser basket on the tea press.  This led to a number of particles floating in the tea.  As green tea normally isn't that small I assume that those are either from the citrus or ginkgo. It has a fairly strong citrus smell while being brewed with a ...

James May, one of the Top Gear/Grand Tour presenters has a discussion about tea vs coffee with his intern.  She's coffee and James is tea. Black tea, some milk and sugar.  Not even green tea or peppermint tea, just good old British tea.

 I'm currently a bit low on sugar, so I'm drinking my black tea with just milk.  Made me think of how I like tea, assuming "normal" black Indian tea.  In order of preference:  Tea, 1/4 cup whole milk, 1 teaspoon white sugar. Tea, 1/4 cup whole milk Tea, 1 teaspoon white sugar Tea alone Other teas: Green teas tend towards straight tea, maybe with 1/2 teaspoon sugar.  Genmaicha straight as the toasted rice adds enough sweetness as to make sugar not needed.   Lapsang souchong with just milk. I don't drink enough oolong to have a set preference.   Fruit/flowered teas normal are drunk with just sugar as most don't really get along with milk however some do and are quite nice that way.  Herbal are on a case by case basis, but normally with sugar.   Ice tea sweet, in that overly sugared southern style, then unsweetened.  I don't add sugar to it at the table, as that doesn't work. Coffee: Coffee, ~1/4 cup whole milk or ~1 tablespo...

Today’s Mecca Coffee Company taste test tea is Lavender Earl Grey.  This tea was provided as a gift by my brother, David.  Lavender seems to be a common addition to Earl Grey tea, based on a Google search for it. I made 4 cups, using the Assam tea press.  4 minute brew time.  1 teaspoon of white sugar put in the cup.  1st cup drunk black, 2nd cup drunk with ¼ cup whole milk.  The tea has a rather pronounced lavender  smell while being brewed and when the cup is sniffed.  1st sip:  It’s Earl Grey with some floral notes. 1st full mouthful: The lavender taste is quite noticeable and has a slight after taste, which is not unpleasant.  The bergamot and the lavender mix in a nice manner.  Neither overpowers the other.  I emptied my 1st mug far sooner than I would have expected.  The tea has a nice astringency.  2nd cup, with milk:  As to be expected when adding milk to tea, it mellowed the tea.  The lavender flav...

For making tea I normally use a Bodum Assam tea press  which also seems to be out of stock at the moment. (It is in stock at Amazon , however they want twice the list price for it.) This lets me make 4 cups of loose leaf tea at a time, with minimal fuss and bother.  I put the tea in the basket, pour water into it, wait 3-5 minutes depending on the tea, then push the plunger down.  I then pour the tea and enjoy.  Cleanup is simple once the basket has cooled (and normally after I've drunk all the tea) I pull it out of the pot, dump it into the trash, then rinse out the remaining leaves, plus rinse off the plunger and rinse out the tea pot itself. If I'm making only one cup of loose leaf tea I use an " IngenuiTEA " tea "pot".  It's more of a mug that drains through a filter in the base of the thing.  Cleaning it is about the same as for the tea press, but you have to do it for each cup made.  Less than optimal.  Tea bag tea just goes in one of the...

 Even a fundamentally not delicate tea like Barooti Assam with milk is nuanced and subtle when compared to a CTC tea.  I need to find a non-CTC tea from Kenya to make a valid comparison.  The CTC process destroys that  phytins  in the tea, changing the taste, color and aroma.  It seems, and Wikipedia backs this up, that CTC teas are made to be "generic" in flavor.   Barooti Assam tea is a broken leaf tea, which results in a stronger flavor due to the surface area being increased.  However it is a "leaf" tea, which means that, in the main, the traditional method of making black tea was followed, which results in some nice malty notes and a slight floral undertone.  Granted the floral undertone is nowhere near as strong as it would be from a Darjeeling tea. I'll be posting a flavored tea review tomorrow.

 This is what the Kericho Gold tea looked like after 4 minutes brew time.  The tiny size of the "leaves" shows here quite plainly.

 Today’s tea is Kericho Gold , a Kenyan tea.  As it is a loose leaf tea I made 4 cups in the Assam tea press.  1 teaspoon of white sugar in each cup.  3 minute brew time.  First cup black, second and later cups with a quarter cup whole milk.  I got this tea via Amazon .  It came in a cardboard box holding 2 foil pouches.  I transferred one pouch to air tight containers, leaving the second un-opened. Note:  This tea is CTC tea , a process normally used for making teabag tea, which means it’s going to be strong.  It also means it doesn’t have any subtlety about it.  Wikipedia says that CTC tea has mild bitterness, but I didn't find that in this tea. First sip:  It’s a strong black tea that is fairly bitter. First full mouthful:  It’s a bitter black tea.  It’s not so bitter as to be undrinkable, but it’s right on the edge of that.  The astringency of the tea is not pronounced. To be honest it taste a lot like generi...

 A note about tea sources.   Many of the teas I'll be reviewing come from  Mecca Coffee Company  of Tulsa Oklahoma.  Others are sources via the internet, mainly via Amazon .  I've gotten two teas from an Irish Facebook friend. Once I've gotten through my backlog of tea I suspect I'll be getting teas from the Dillon's here in Small Town Kansas.  Other teas are sourced through  Down to Earth  a local "organic" store.   Due to it being Small Town Kansas there is only a limited number of "ethnic" grocery stores in town but I will be checking them out for tea. Of course there is a Starbucks in town and there are a few walk in coffee houses that I suspect have tea, but they would be reviewed after the pandemic is over or I get vaccinated, which I suspect will be about the same time, given my age and lack of contact with the public.

This is a blog about tea. Mainly how I feel about various kind of tea and other aspects of the tea drinking life.  I’ve always been a fan of tea, both hot and iced.  I tend towards black Indian teas but have some green or oolong teas I like.  In the last 6 months or so I’ve taken to drinking a lot of tea.  Like 6-10 cups a day.  I’ve posted about this on Facebook and have had several people send me teas to try out.  In the main this blog will be about reviews of these teas. Where did I get the name of the blog? It’s stolen from the Professor Elemental song of the same name.