I spent the night at a friend’s house and was very intrigued by their Keurig Hot Drink Maker. It makes coffee, tea, and hot cocoa out of individual cups into a single serve mug. Neat little device, had seen them before but never thought I would need one. So of course I tried the tea.
This one was powdered, no leaves to be found, no leaves to smell or enjoy, but you could tell (by shaking the “K-Cup”) that it was powder. Hmm. If you know anything about this device, it means you know none of the parameters for making the hot beverage: brewing time, temperature and parameters unknown.
The tea is an appropriate liquor color, the odor is faint green, but the cranberry and possibly destroyed green tea in the cup is very bitter. This of course could be for a number of reasons:
1. could be poor quality tea, who would know without ripping open one of the little K-Cups.
2. could just be abused tea, as in it is definitely powder, probably burnt, crushed and thoroughly abused in the process of making it into a single-serve cup.
3. cranberries can be very bitter, and they captured that flavor just right.
4. there are no adjustments on this machine, so no temperature or time adjustments, it simply could not be set up to make green tea.
So, I added a packet of Truvia (the natural no calorie stuff made from Stevia with the strawberry on the logo – thanks wombatgirl) and dealt with it. The tea itself was not good, but I do not blame the tea per se. I believe that the true problem with this product is that the tea was quickly made without taking the care or consideration of how tea should be prepared. After all, the Keurig, which is a product simply of convenience (and very much so for coffee I might add) that it is simply not made to make a good cup of tea, a convenient one, sure, but good, no.
I am curious to try another tea using the machine, just to see if it is the machine or the companies that make the instant tea. Next time I suppose.
