SBT: Monkey Fart

Just made a pitcher of this at home. It’s another blistering day in Wichita. This is unmistakably banana. I’m thinking the black tea base maybe takes some of that Laffy-Taffy/Runts flavor away and makes it a bit less artificial tasting. To me, it’s just the right hint of sweetness in an awesome black tea without actually BEING sweetened. My wife prefers her iced tea with Splenda and insists this is amazing that way (too sweet for me, but to each their own).

I reallly love the ease of these teabags. I’m getting some samples of different pillow pack bags in to consider for the next round. As cute as these little bags are, they were a bear to get the teabags into.

Thinking about the teabags makes me a little sad. I would love to be able to share our teas with LOTS of people on a much larger scale. The truth is, it is VERY difficult to compete with the big teabag companies. The level of automation they employ and the economies of scale they enjoy are just unbelieveable. At one point I calcluated that to keep my labor costs in line, I needed to be able to produce 80 teabags an hour, weighed, filled and sealed—which was challenging. But if I had $40k, I could buy a weigh-fill-seal machine, fill a hopper with tea and hang up a roll of teabag filter paper and it would make 160 teabags a MINUTE for me. That’s twice my hourly goal in a MINUTE!

Oh well. I spend entirely too much time looking at Youtube videos of industrial equipment. LOL. Maybe someday we could get a bunch of purchase orders from some grocers and take them to the bank and say, “Please, can you help us join the industrial revolution?” Or maybe we’ll crowd source a Form Fill Seal machine though our awesome customers and Kickstarter or one of those sites.

Okay. I’m rambling now. Anyway. The tea is hitting the spot on this very hot day. I hope everyone is having a good Friday and staying cool with some nice iced tea.

With the successful cold-brewing of the rainbow sherbet, I decided to go ahead and cold-brew the rest of the Southern Boy Teas, starting with this one. This time, though, I decided to keep the tea bag so that I could hot-brew it tonight for tomorrow’s iced tea. We’ll see how that works out!

But for now, I’ll focus on the glass of iced tea in front of me. This is really yummy. I have had the Monkey Fart Honeybush and I loved that – and that was one of the teas that I’d brew in the morning for my daughter before she went to cosmetology school. Definitely one of her faves.

I think I could even serve this to my hubby and he’d enjoy it, but, I don’t think I will, otherwise he’ll drink all my iced tea today and I’ll be left with nothing but hot tea or chilled water, and I want my iced tea!!!

Babbling! Anyway, this is even better than the honeybush, I think, and I don’t know why that is exactly. But I love this. Very refreshing and delicious. YUM YUM YUM!

Well, I got my haircut. Except instead of layers, I got Megan Draper a la Mad Men. Bah. Nice lady and all but seriously I said I wanted layers. I guess she was too busy yelling at me for bleaching part of my hair that was basically all cut off.

Thankfully I don’t mind it and my day was made better by more SBT bags coming in the mail, yay! I was feeling like banana so I decided to have this one.

It’s somewhat subtle, which I like because banana is a pretty difficult flavor. Too much tastes like candy and it seems like it’d be really hard to get a natural tasting flavor. Of course, if banana candy is what you’re after, give it a good bit of sweetener, and you’ve got it. I thought it was pretty good with nothing added because the banana just tasted so good with the black tea. But with a good bit of agave, it’s even more banana tasting with a candy aftertaste.

Love it! Definitely going to give this bag another steep. I should have about 2 quarts of bottles to take with to Florida this weekend then and I can just put this all in them hahaha. I just steeped it up and once it cools I’ll pop the 2 cups in the freezer until Thursday. This had me worried though, when I go up to North Carolina for 5 days WHAT AM I GOING TO DO??? The water there is horrid, I think there’s a hot water dispenser in the lobby but I am still terrified to use it with legitimate tea instead of the cheap tea bags I recall them having. I guess it might be cold steeping in the cooler with water bottles up there!

I should also add this is even better after its spent the night in the fridge. Even more banana flavor without the need of any sort of addition! Now I imagine if you REALLY wanted banana runts, you could add sweetener and it’d taste like them. Awesome!

I’ve been making iced tea for our housemate lately, and Monkey Fart is currently in the pitcher. Tonight I had some with dinner (beef brisket and a big salad) and I have to say, yum! This tastes like a banana, and reminds me a little bit of hard candy. Pretty tasty, and this is housemate approved (but I didn’t tell him it was called Monkey Fart, it’s a secret).

I was given an Adagio Teas Ingenuitea iced tea maker a while ago and both me and my husband are off work today and felt like brewing up a batch of iced tea. A few months ago I placed an order with 52 tea’s and was excited to try this tea as I had never had banana flavoured tea before (and still haven’t). With my need for iced tea and my husbands love for banana’s it was easy to decide to brew this tea and use my Adagio Teas Ingenuitea gadget for the first time.

As I opened the little packet to expose the large prepared teabag I took in a strong smell of banana’s, it smelt almost milkshake like. The last time I had beer flavoured anything it was for my husbands birthday (5th November) last month when I bought some banana beer as a novelty. Funnily enough I can member saying that smelled like banana milkshake too, which means it also smells like the loose tea for this.

Brewed and left to chill for a few hours while my ice in the freezer becomes solid, it’s been difficult to leave the mixture in the fridge without sneaking a taste. I remain a good girl though and have left it well alone..until now. Serving time. :D

The iced tea is brown in colour, monkey coloured some may say, and it still maintains the amazing banana smell. It’s a sweet yet creamy banana smell, very candy like.

The flavour is more subtle, while I can taste banana I can also taste a rather malty yet cocoa nibbish. The balance is about right for me, it’s not too sweet nor too earthy and the banana lingers in the after taste quite nicely. Such a nice novelty :)

I would buy this again as it’s perfect for the occasional hot spells we get here in the UK (if we’re lucky) but at the same time I’m quite happy with a few others I have in for loose tea at the moment. Great job 52 Teas, yummy work. :)