The 8th Tea of Christmas!
My original plan for the Oolong tea of our Holiday Package was to reblend the Winter Treat tea – which is a charcoal baked Oolong with banana and notes of marshmallow, cinnamon, buttered rum & cream. It’s absolutely delicious & I was super excited to be reblending it – unfortunately, when it came time to go shopping for the teas that I’d need to start blending – none of my tea vendors had any charcoal baked Oolongs available. Since the base is a pretty important part of this blend, I didn’t want to swap a different type of Oolong for the charcoal baked TieGuanYin.
Instead, I managed to find a fresh, beautiful green TieGuanYin & I created a tea around this Oolong. Since the Winter Treat tea is a banana tea, I wanted this blend to also include bananas – so, I thought – how about a Banana Eggnog blend? I was praising myself at this unique idea until I googled it & learned that it’s not so unique. It’s a thing. Maybe not a thing I had heard of until now, but it’s still a thing.
So, it’s unique to me!
This is a creamy, delicious Oolong blended with freeze-dried bananas, eggnog essence (It’s vegan!) & rum essence (It’s alcohol-free!) & some freshly shaved nutmeg. It’s so good! You get the sweet banana, a note of creamy, custard-y eggnog, a hint of rum & a kiss of nutmeg in every sip. This turned out to be every bit as good as I imagined it to be, even if I’m not the first one to imagine it.
organic ingredients: oolong tea, bananas, nutmeg, calendula petals & natural flavors
to brew: shake the pouch before you measure it, so you can be sure to get a little bit of nutmeg in your measurement. Those freshly shaved flakes of nutmeg are extremely fragile & will have most likely dissolved into dust by the time you open your pouch, but that doesn’t mean that those tiny fragments shouldn’t be part of your measurement!
Use 3g of tea to 12oz of very hot water (180°F) & steep for 3 ½ minutes. Strain & allow to cool for about 5 minutes. Enjoy!
Or – if you have a gaiwan & aren’t afraid to use it – I measured 4g of tea into the bowl of my gaiwan (my gaiwan is a slightly larger than usual gaiwan, so feel free to alter the measurement to 2 – 3g, depending upon the size of your gaiwan bowl). Fill the bowl with heated water (180°F). I steeped the first infusion for 30 seconds, the second infusion for 45 seconds & the third infusion for 1 minute – combining all 3 infusions into one teacup. LOVELY!
serving suggestion: Generally, this time of year, I focus primarily on drinking tea hot, but I would imagine this blend tastes amazing as an iced tea. Since I consumed my testing samples as a hot beverage, it is outstanding as a hot tea. I didn’t add any additions & it tasted amazing. After trying it without addition, I did try adding just a teensy bit of sugar (about ¼ teaspoon) to the 12 oz cup & I found that the sugar brought the flavors into focus just a little more, but there wasn’t a significant difference to my palate so I think I rather prefer this one without sweetener.
