We’re in the throes of the end of semester and finals season here, which means that there will be a lack of content until closer to Christmas. We’ll be back soon, with new blend information, and continuing our sourcing adventures. For now though, from all of us, to all of you, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving (if you’re in the States) or a happy middle of November (if you’re not).

-A

We had the delightful chance to try the tea that our friend gifted us. The “Blue People” which is neither blue nor made of people, is a delightful ginseng oolong blend. Earthy with sweet notes and just the right balance between green and black tea. The instructions say to steep for only 20 seconds, but a heads up from our gifter gave us the ok to steep it for 3 minutes for maximum flavor. So good. We’ll try to flash steep it at some point in a big teapot so that we can have the experience of drinking this and the evolving flavor over time.

It’s a busy time for us at the College, so I’m not sure what we’ll get done over the next few weeks. We are looking forward to the two breaks on the horizon - Thanksgiving and the winter breaks. We’ll get really moving then! I’m trying to source some fresh bergamot in order to dry the rind for our Earl Grey blend because we are still not totally happy with the blend. Til next time!

-A

Friends are great guinea pigs. We finalized our v1 of the Earl Grey base and, well, we needed it tested by people other than us. Fortunately enough, a friend and alum was in town and he was happy to take a tin and give it a try for us! Plus, he brought us something new and different, a ginseng oolong blend (their packaging is a little fancier than ours). It looks and smells awesome, with a slight hint of seaweed of all things. We can’t wait to give it a try! Thanks Eli!

-A

We got a whole bunch of new teas in this week. We found a new source for organic black teas in a number of preparations (including the Yuunan black that is in the photo) and we’ll be tasting them all this weekend. We couldn’t wait to put at least one of them into the testing phase for our Earl Grey blend, which has some additional color now from dried orange peel. We have to wait (impatiently) for the tea to cure properly, but fortunately we have several other teas to try in the meantime. Look for that in next week’s update!

-A

We’re on the search for more tea! We’ve been having some trouble with the original black tea that we sourced, and so we’re trying some other varieties that are due to us sometime next week. We really want to finalize a good Earl Grey base recipe, and our hope is that with some other base black tea varieties we can get a really nice Earl Grey out of it. Or, we’ll find out that the original black was just fine, but we had been messing something up along the way!

-A

Several years ago, Disney moved on from a large corporation (Nestle) for their coffee, and to the surprise of some, ended up contracting with a small company out of Tampa for all of their coffee and tea (well, outside of Starbucks) called Joffrey’s Coffee and Tea. To say that it was a dramatic improvement would be underselling the change. I wouldn’t buy Nescafe in the stores, but I have purchased several bags of coffee directly from Joffrey’s since the change.

That all being said, we haven’t really tried any of their teas before now. And the tea we chose, isn’t really a tea! All regular teas come from a single plant - camellia sinensis, and any “teas” that don’t have the leaves of this plant are more properly termed tisanes. These herbal teas have flavors that are far-ranging, from fruity to flowery to spicy. The African Celebration tea from Joffrey’s uses an herb called rooibos (or redbush) and it is particularly popular in South Africa. It has no caffeine (somewhat to our dismay) and has a woodsy, smoky flavor. In the blend we tasted, it has hints of vanilla and citrus. For me - it tastes somewhat like the way a wicker basket smells. I needed a bit of sweetness and cream in mine - not my favorite herbal. Lindsay seemed to like it quite a bit, though!

We’re on the lookout over the next few weeks for a new wholesaler for our blends. The black tea we have on hand is just a bit too astringent for our tastes, even at low steeping times. Hopefully we’ll be back into making our final adjustments to our Earl Gray recipe and get it out to taste testers soon!

-A

It was nice and lightly citrusy; very smooth and easy to drink. There was more Earl Grey flavor than the Winter White Earl Grey we tried before.

Until next week!

-L

It’s been a few weeks, hasn’t it? We haven’t had much to report due to some travel that got extended due to Hurricane Florence, and the prep involved with being gone for so long. But, that doesn’t mean we didn’t get a chance to do some tea work while we were gone!

We were in Orlando for a conference as part of our travel, and that of course meant that we had to go visit the house of mouse - Walt Disney World. Normally, we aren’t interested in gimmicked, super branded teas, but we actually adore some of the tea that is branded with Alice in Wonderland. Our favorite? The Mad Tea Party Blend - a bit fruity, but not so much that it masks the essential tea flavor. You can get it in a kit like in the picture, but we aren’t as big of a fan of the other fruit inclusions. If you’re in a Disney park, see if you can find the packages with just that blend, you won’t be sorry (if you like fruit teas)!

-A

When we were thinking about building this proto-company, it was actually a question about what our next home would look like. We eventually settled on building a home somewhere with a decent amount of land, but then, what do we do with that land? A few folks in this area that have large lots rent that land to the farmers, but couldn't we do something with it that blends our profession and our love of tea?

This brought us to the idea of building a hydroponic farm, with automation systems in place to monitor and even harvest the plants we grow. We're pretty far from that goal at the moment, but it is the long-term vision of where we want to take this. And even kid #1 got into it and did a hydroponic farming activity at a local middle school, bringing home her first hydroponic plant (pictured above)!

Not now, but hopefully soon.

-A

Well, this week's update is going to be super short and sweet. This was week 1 for us here at the College, and we just didn't get a lot of time to do much anything other than getting the academic year started. We have plans for some serious tea work this long weekend though! Have a great and safe Labor Day weekend for those of you in the States!

-A

We had a lot of grand plans for the week. We were going to taste a bunch of different teas (6 of them, in fact), and taste and iterate on our own Earl Grey blend. How many of those did we get to? 0.5 of them. We tasted our Earl Grey and are getting closer to the base flavor that we want. We'll be putting together another try at our blend, and we have a good feeling that it'll be the one! Assuming that the other distractions start to lighten up.

-A

This week has been all about research! We got a bunch of tea from NYC and, thanks to Tim and Meggie, we got some awesome samples from Huntsville. Needless to say, we've been drinking a lot of tea. We're still getting through all of it, but thus far, the winner has been the tea from Piper and Leaf (www.piperandleaf.com). Their approach of sourcing produce locally and working with the best tea producers abroad is something we strive for and I personally love that there are tea blenders out there like us!

We're also on attempt number 2 for our Earl Grey base. We got the pipettes in and immediately put together a new recipe to try. It's aging now and we'll be trying it early next week. We are also on the hunt for more suppliers of black tea, and if I can convince Lindsay, of green tea as well. The black tea we're using is great, but we want some different varieties to use as a base.

-A

This week was quite the whirlwind, with trips to NYC, Baltimore, and Annapolis all taking up a bunch of time. I still had time to go do some research (read: buy a bunch of tea stuff in the name of research) and Lindsay and I got to taste our first attempt to blend an Earl Grey tea. Our process is simple - given a properly cured tea (at least 3 days for Earl Grey), steep for 3 minutes and 5 minutes in 6-8 oz of water, remove the strainer, then let sit for 5 minutes. We vary the amount of tea leaves, temperature, and infuser, and record all of those variations in our notebook for the blend.

If you've been following along on Instagram, you'll recognize the two infusers we used for today's tasting! Aren't they great? Turns out they let a bit more particle matter into the liquid than we like, but otherwise they do a fine job.

So, what was the verdict? Was our first blend ready to rock and roll? No. Not even close. Our original thought was that we had put way too much bergamot oil into the black tea, but that turned out to be woefully incorrect. The flavor of the bergamot for this recipe was just meh. We're getting some food grade pipettes in order to make accurate measurements for the oils and once we've got them we'll be amping up the bergamot and crafting a new recipe. We'll keep at it until we're satisfied, then move on to the next one!

-A