The "Accidental" Blend

  I had a can of Da Hong Pao oolong tea that the lid kept falling off of. I also had a large can of Silver Needle white tea with very little tea in it.
 
  So, after my Da Hong Pao kept repeatedly spilling (it somehow never all spilled), I without thinking much about the result, put the smaller tin with a lid that often fell off in the larger tin with a lid that I have never known to fall off. Well, probably needless to say, the next time I went to get some Silver Needle, I found instead some "Silver Da Hong Pao Needle" white oolong tea. In case you have never tried it, separating blended tea is very difficult. I tried to separate the two teas, and did not get very far before I gave up. So after thinking for about two seconds, it occured to me that I could just brew the "Silver Da Hong Pao Needle" white oolong tea, or for short The "Accidental" Blend.

  After brewing and trying The "Accidental" Blend, I decided I liked it much better than just Silver Needle or just Da Hong Pao. I would never have thought of mixing those teas together, but after mixing them together accidentally and trying them, I think this blend is now one of my favorites.

Note: Put together teas that you did not think would ever go together, and mix them together. You might accidentally come up with the best tea you ever tried. Or don't do that if you do not want to risk wasting tea. 

Highland tea blend and a Lego London Tea Room

This Highland tea blend is one The London Tea Room did exclusively for January. It actually is almost like a tea blend I blended almost a year ago, the only difference is that I used Keemun in my blend and they used a Kenyan tea in theirs.
I am really liking the challenge of writing a poem that accurately describes what I taste in a certain tea. This one is probably my favorite poem so far.

Highland Tea

A background of smoky

and mellow astringency 

neither overpowering

yet not very subtle

What is subtle, though,

is the slight hint of sweetness

and the taste that seems 

almost quite fruity

This tea is quite juicy

and almost is creamy

the right blend of flavors,

it seems the end of my cup

appears way too soon

I decided to write it as a three-verse poem this time.

I built a Lego London Tea Room a couple weeks ago and photographed it just today, I thought I would put the two best photographs on my post. 

How do you like it? I have not gotten out my Legos in about two years, but when I did get them out, this is what I built. This London Tea Room is (hopefully!) not going to be crashed. 

A tea class, and a new tea blend

My tea blend, I still have not named it!

I went to a tea blending class at The London Tea Room November 21st, I know it is a long time afterwards to be posting about it, well, it is not the fastest thing to download photographs onto the computer! 

I am not quite sure what to write about a tea class, I guess it would be either what I learned at it, or what I would be most likely to write about is anything that I learned about that is extremely different, or very interesting to me. Or I guess maybe I will write what others could learn from.

What the tea blending class mostly consisted of is: Tasting several of the London Tea Room's blends, learning about the basics of tea blending, and blending your own tea blend. So I will start with the tasting tea blends. 

We tried three different blends (I will include a link to their site so that you can see how they describe their teas, not just how I do! ) 

Duke and Duchess, a blend of...I think it was: Darjeeling, Silver Needle, and a Kenyan tea; Moroccan Mint (not one of their own blends), which is a blend of green tea and spearmint; and The Earl Claus , which is tea (I forget what variety), and many different spices. I liked them all, but I also have yet to taste a tea that I do not like, excluding "not good" and flavored teas, of course!

Tea Blending class at The London Tea Room

And then leaning about the basics of tea blending, I think that for tea blending, you would want to start with a base tea and add other teas or flavoring (herbs, flowers, spices, fruit, there are probably a few others as well) and add as many other other teas or flavorings as you would want. I think though that one thing that is essential to a well-balanced tea is taking into consideration the strength of the different flavors in your ingredients. You don't want one flavor drowning out all the rest (or maybe you do!), and you probably don't want all the flavors being very strong and competing with each other.  Another thing that I learned is important to take into consideration is the volume of the tea. Since you don't measure out your tea leaves by weight to brew them, you measure them out by volume, what I think is, you might want to blend your tea by volume, rather than weight.

Learning about blending tea

 Now, finally, about blending my own tea! I based my tea bend on Jade Cloud, a green tea, and then added: Iron Godess (oolong), and, Jasmine Green (a green tea with jasmine blossoms). If anyone reading this blog has a suggestion as to what to name it, I would like to hear it.

Blending tea

I uploaded a short video I took of the tea class above. The camera stopped taking the video without my realizing it, I was just trying to adjust the camera so it was not catching the light at such an angle so that it made purple-white lines. So if it stops suddenly, that is why.