Featured Reblend for June 2019
Frank originally crafted this tea back in the summer of 2012, and I thought it made a delightfully different summertime tea because I tend to radiate toward fruitier flavors for iced tea brewing – which is the majority of my tea drinking in the summer. I do drink hot tea occasionally, usually early in the morning or later at night when it’s cooler – because when it’s hot . . . it’s just too hot to drink hot tea. So you may notice that most of the teas that I tend to create this time of year tend to be those that are very ‘iced tea’ friendly.
And this one is definitely iced tea friendly!
Frank’s original description went like this:
“This week’s tea of the week is a real gem. I am enjoying a big icy stein of it as I write this. I’m sure it’s good hot too, but as an iced tea, it’s amazing. A friend of the family is over visiting and he insists it’s “like a carnival in your mouth.”
It does taste a bit ‘like a carnival in your mouth’. It’s sweet and tastes so much like cotton candy that if I didn’t know better, I’d think someone stuffed my cup full of cotton candy and then poured hot black tea over it (because even though I tend to prefer iced teas in the summer, when I conduct the taste test for the tea, I taste it hot before I brew it for iced tea – which these days means cold-brewing!)
I did tweak the recipe slightly from Frank’s 2012 version – which was the debut of his (at the time) “new” black tea blend. Instead of using a tea blend for this, I went with a single estate Ceylon. Specifically, the Petiagala estate organic OP Ceylon). For those of you who have been drinking my tea for a while now, you might recognize this particular single estate tea as the one that I utilized for the Bananas! Black tea blend -which I happened to search out specifically for the Bananas! tea . . . because that’s what Frank used in his original batch of the Bananas! tea. I really liked how well that tea complimented the banana flavor – and I hoped that it would do the same kind of thing for the cotton candy. I also tweaked it a bit by adding vegan, gluten-free/allergen-free sprinkles. (Note, the sprinkles do contain coconut oil!)
And it works remarkably well – if I do say so myself! If you don’t want to take my word for it though, you can order some and try it for yourself!
Oh – and as always, this tea IS gluten-free, allergen-free, VEGAN & organic!
ingredients: sprinkles (Sugar, Potato Starch, Maltodextrin, Coconut Oil, Spirulina, Natural Colors & Glazing)
organic ingredients: single estate black tea, petals (cornflower & amaranth) & natural flavors