Tea blending: Where did you learn?

I just experiment and blend on my own. I just takes teas and ingredients that I think will taste good together and try them out. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get things right. I have mostly been quite successful but I know what tastes and textures I like so it was pretty easy. (I am the same way with cooking, don’t really follow a recipe, just throw things together).

I often get inspiration from other tea blends I have seen or reading others reviews.

I make my own blends (no tisanes) for breakfast and afternoon/evening.

I just go ahead and blend teas that are open/I like/not that good on their own…/etc…
most of the time it worked, and even had some remarks about an afternoon blend I created.

it’s so much fun… :)

Having taught dozens of blending classes I’ve always stressed that its more an art than a science when you are creating blends. There are a few general rules to be aware of, but unless you plan on scaling a recipe then I wouldn’t worry too much about recording ratios of what you put in a blend.

I’m in the final stretch of launching our tea blending kits. Hoping to have them soft launched to our waiting list next week. You can sign up on the list here if you want to be notified:

http://herbalinfusions.launchrock.com

The Internet Archive’s collection of public domain tea-blending books is a good place to start when it comes to learning general theory. (Example: http://archive.org/details/teablendingasfin00wals — Do note that the names of teas and the way they are manufactured have changed since these books were written.)

To be a good tea blender, one must be a good tea taster — unless someone can identify areas where a tea is lacking, they will have trouble determining what needs to be added to create a blend that will correct it.

It also helps to know the flavor profiles of many tea-growing regions — that makes it easier to think of potential teas for solving tea blending problems without having them there in front of you.