So… we bought Adagio’s triniTEA (automatic tea brewer) to supplement the Zarafina. It was getting crazy with waiting for the other person’s tea to finish brewing and for resteeps, what do you do with the leaves, and so on. We thought that the increased capacity of the triniTEA would be nice for making large pitchers of iced tea, as well.
The first batch didn’t go so well. We’ll ignore the machine’s faults and just talk about the tea… Nathaniel followed the instructions that came with the machine and not the instructions that came with the tea, so he put the timing knob on 5 minutes (Teavana says to brew the English Breakfast for 2-3 minutes and the Lemon Youkou for 5-6 minutes, but we usually just brew it as a black tea). The result was BITTER and had no lemon taste. UGH. It was totally overbrewed.
Not the tea’s fault, or the machine, really. We have to do another run with a shorter time.
(I’m leaving the rating where it is because when brewed right this tea is really good)
More a review of the triniTEA than this particular tea blend…
The bitterness from the last brew totally covered up the taste of PLASTIC! Yuck! I wrote to Adagio to see what they would say, but it’s totally undrinkable (IMO).
So we’ve never tried this cold brewed, and I thought that I’d give that a go. I’ve actually never done a black tea cold brewed (just tisanes) so I had no idea how long to brew it for. I stuck it in the fridge and every so often we’d taste it.
It went from “not strong enough” to “OMG, something is WRONG with this!” in between two tastings. I think the lemon got stronger than the english breakfast and threw the balance off. If I was going to do it again, I would go lighter on the lemon, but I don’t think I’m going to do it again.
I thought I’d update on the experimentation we’re going through with this blend and the triniTEA.
I’m using about 6 tsp of English Breakfast and 2 (heaping) tsp of Lemon Youkou. It’s on the hotter setting of the triniTEA (II) and brewing for 2 minutes.
We’ll get about 32 oz of tea, which will then have sugar added to it (about 1/3 cup) and the pitcher will be topped off with ice (it’s a 1 L pitcher).
The bitterness seems to be gone (good, because I can’t brew it for any less time on the triniTEA!). I’m still playing with the amount of lemon because the last one I thought was not enough but the husband said it was too much. I’m making it more to his taste becuase he tends to drink it more than I do.
backlogging from the weekend…
I’m thinking that perhaps I need to ask the hubby to cut back on the sugar a touch (gasp!). I know we’re from South Carolina, but it was just Too Sweet. I think I’ve been living in Maryland too long.
Still loving this blend, though. It’s awesome.
