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“Gather round, Steepsterites, because I am going to have probably one of the most interesting teas of a long time now. I have a colleague, a turkish girl, and she asked me, “Have you ever had...” Read full tasting note
“Had this at my local turkish cafe in Leicester (Zesty Meze) great food and drink! Sorry brand unknown, but made and served in the traditional way.” Read full tasting note
Gather round, Steepsterites, because I am going to have probably one of the most interesting teas of a long time now.
I have a colleague, a turkish girl, and she asked me, “Have you ever had Turkish tea?”
I told her I had once. I’ve never been to Turkey, but I’ve studied with a turkish girl and once when we were writing a paper to do with some questionnaires she had asked her uncle to take a stack with him to the mosque next time he went. He invited us for tea, so she could explain to him what the questionnaires were about. Her aunt made traditional turkish tea for us.
Then we talked about about how to brew it and my colleague told me that while they do drink a lot of that apple tea, they also drink a lot of plain black tea, taken with sugar. They brew it so strong that it’s nearly undrinkable without sugar, and my colleague gave me this that she had and never drank at home and explained to me how to brew it like a turkish person would. Of course I didn’t write it down at the time, thinking it was easy enough to remember, but when I came home I still had to google it. I found this site (http://turkish-food.suite101.com/article.cfm/turkish_tea) which has guidelines for brewing. It rang a bell, so I feel pretty confident that this is also how my colleague told me to do.
_QUOTE
1. Prepare a small teapot by adding about one heaping teaspoon of good, black tea (Keemun, Assam, Russian Caravan, English Breakfast all work well) per cup.
2. Boil about 1 cup of water per cup of tea (either in a samovar – or on a stove top).
3. Pour HALF of the steaming water into the teapot and let it steep for at least 15 minutes, keeping both the teapot and the remaining water piping hot. (Without a samovar, you can accomplish this with a good tea cozy for the pot and a very low flame for the water. (I almost hate to admit it, but a microwave works pretty well, too, for keeping the water very hot…. but I “didn’t say that…”).
4. Pour the tea into a small glass cup, about halfway up, and add the water to fill the remainder. Add sugar to taste – BUT NEVER MILK OR HONEY.
Read more at Suite101: Turkish Tea: Brewing and Drinking Tea in Turkey http://turkish-food.suite101.com/article.cfm/turkish_tea#ixzz0chWxExdO
END QUOTE_
So now I’m wondering what sort of leaves she has actually given me. They don’t have a very strong aroma. Ever so slightly smoky-ish is about the only characteristic I can pick up. It’s a quite large leaf size for a black though. Since my colleague actually travels to visit her husband’s family in Turkey at least once a year, I wonder if I could be so lucky that it was actually a tea produced in Turkey. Think about it, it’s not that unlikely. It would be cool if it was. I may have to interrogate her some on this matter. She gave me a relatively small amount. Big for a sample, but small for an amount to have lying around when one never takes tea. I’m not sure if that was what she meant but it did sound like, if I liked it, she had more that I could have. Anyway, the leaves look a bit faded in colour, so they’re probably getting a bit on in age. With this method of brewing, though, I can’t imagine it would spell disaster.
Five minutes still to go of this extremely long steep!
Okay, ready for the next step! Obviously, I don’t own the proper tulip-shaped tea glasses, so my cup with the farm animals on it will have to do. I tried a sip of the tea before adding more water to the cup. It had a nice reddish amberish colour and while it did have a strong flavour, it wasn’t undrinkably strong. Not at the one small sip, anyway. Quite astringent, but it didn’t taste bitter or oversteeped.
After adding water the taste was a little less astringent, but still not undrinkably strong. I was expecting something almost tar-like here and I’m actually wondering if I didn’t add enough leaf. I think I was supposed to have made it with another spoonful.
I feel pretty certain that I could easily have taken it without a grain of sugar and enjoyed it, but I’m trying to be authentic here. I did wonder about whether the type of sugar used was important since the instructions said to not use milk or honey. I’ve decided they probably would have said if it was, so I used cane sugar.
The aroma is very similar to the dry leaf. Not as smokey, though, which I think must be because of the sugar in it.
It’s definitely sweet to the taste. If you want a dessert tea, forget about any odd additives and flavouring, because this is a dessert in a cup. I can’t really pick up anything underneath the sweetness though. It’s a flavour where you’re aware that there is tea there, but apart from a light astringency, I can’t really tell you anything about it. I know it’s odd to my colleague that I can drink tea at all without sugar in it, so it’s supposed to be very sweet, but the unobtrusiveness and the lack of strongness of the black tea, only strengthens my belief that I should have used a spoonful more leaves.
Still, I used a third more leaf than usual (should probably have been double) and I steeped it for a quarter of an hour. I’m shocked that it didn’t turn out stronger! I’ll have to try again though, but for now… I don’t know if I’m really a big fan of tea turkish style, but I think I might rather like it as a rare treat rather than a regular occurence.
eta: why is it the quoted bit refuses to be in italics? What am I doing wrong? squints at it
Thanks for taking one for the team.
Hey, it was fun. :)
There was a lot of good stuff in this review! I’ll have to come back to it later and read it a 2nd time to let it all sink in. I wonder what she’d think of UTI’s turkish apple?
She doesn’t really drink tea much at all, so she probably wouldn’t be particularly interested. I gather it’s mostly something she drinks when they’re visiting or when they have guests in a more formal sort of way.
Super-interesting! I love how it’s so super-concentrated that you need sugar!
It worked a lot better on the second cup, but then that one had had a half hour steep. :p
This is where the making 2 teas at once would come in handy. I can’t wait that long between infusions lol.
The second one had steeped longer because of the way I brew. I always have the leaves loose in the pot, so when I don’t drain it completely, there will be some stewing while I’m drinking the first cup.
Gotcha. I do that too, but I have a reverse french press so there isn’t any left. I do have a problem getting my pot from Dr. Tea’s Tea Garden to drain completely though.
Huh. This sounds incredibly interesting. I’ll try this sometime when I’m feeling brave.
Also, I’m unsure on the italics, but perhaps try removing the colon? Or maybe the URL is throwing it off. Just thoughts.
You should, it would be fun to see what you think. :) I’ll have to find out what sort of tea this is, since it would be so cool if it was turkish grown, but since you can use any good black, there’s lots of room for experimentation. :)
Yes! Suggest a good Turkish tea for us:)
According to the website I quoted above, Turkey grow tea in the Black Sea regions, but the production is all for the home market. So you would probably have to go there to get some.
boo :(
I found this for turkish tea: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_sq_top?ie=UTF8&keywords=turkish%20tea&index=blended&pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B0002DQYGE&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=00JPK7HGY0VAQ470SDY3 both the tea itself and the glasses.
We’ve been gathered! =], I LOLed at the end. I stupidly put my face close to the screen and started staring or maybe squinting at the words squints at it OH, I think I was thinking it was a command. Sort of like, come closer so I can finish the story. =P
Ricky, LOL! No, I put it in *s because that’s how I’ve always been used to denoting an action. It disturbs me a bit that that’s also how I make it bold here. I suppose I should try to get used to using ::s at Steepster, but it just looks wrong to me. I like the *s better. (And it’s probably going to make a large portion of this comment bold now too)
And yes, you have indeed been gathered. :D I don’t recall any of my posts ever having been this popular before. O.o
Speaking of which, I meant to click the heart. Today is not a good brain day for me.
Bad brain days suck. I hadn’t even noticed you hadn’t clicked it the first time you were here. :)
That sounds really neat. My friend’s boyfriend is from Iran and that’s how they drink their tea there aswell.
It’s probably a general middle eastern thing, then. I had a colleague from Iran, who said that the next time she went to Iran, she would get me some Iranian grown tea. Unfortunately she was in a temporary position and left before she had the opportunity to do so. But then again I’ve since read somewhere or other that the iranian grown tea has a little trouble measuring up to the quality we’re used to from India, Sri Lanka and China.
Interesting! Why did my updates not clue me in about this? It sounds fun. This is going on the To-Do list!
It was definitely fun to try. I’m not done experimenting with this method of brewing by far, but I’ve decided that it would be awesome to have a real samovar in my living room. :D The brewing method after all is pretty similar so far as I can tell. A real old-fashioned russian one, that would be so cool. But I’ll have to keep dreaming. :)
They’re very pretty. I was in NYC recently to visit friends and went to the Russian Tea Room, and the ones they had displayed were gorgeous…I was sort of disappointed that they didn’t actually have any samovars in use, as I’ve only ever seen them from afar.
I only googled briefly and apparently you can get some electric ones that have that oldfashioned look, but you would have to shell out some 2-400 dollars for it. I tell myself they probably use a dreadful amount of energy anyway. ;)