Ok, this dry tisane smells like BERRIES! (all-caps and punctuation included). I brewed it according to Tea Sparrow’s suggestion, which was 1tbsp (4g) per 8oz of water (well, my mug has 10oz) for 4-6min (I went with 4). It brews up this gorgeous purplish red colour, amazing. It tastes… holy crap, TART! Like, puckeringly sour, LOL. I’m actually kind of enjoying this, but I’m one of those people who love sour candies too. OMG I think this is actually bringing tears to my eyes. Holding off on rating this for now, obviously I need to experiment with some different steeping parameters. :)
Flavors: Berries, Sour, Tart
Preparation
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Maybe I’ll just brew it this way forever. I’m sitting here puckering and giggling to myself. :)
Well, that sounds entertaining, if not enjoyable. :)
Does Tea Sparrow regularly recommend 1 tablespoon for 8oz of water? I think the Kenya black you sent me had the same recommendation, which seemed like way too much tea, so I went with a third of that and got a pretty potent cup.
They do! It’s kind of weird. I asked them about it once and they said “we like our tea strong”. Ok, can’t really argue with that. I usually just brew according to my own preferences. In this case, it’s a pretty chunky tisane so measuring it out with a tablespoon makes a certain amount of sense.
OMG. 1 tbsp per 8 oz?! I was introduced to tea via Silk Road, which recommends 1 tsp per 16 oz. O.o
Rishi recommends the same thing, regardless of tea type. I find it very odd.
I noticed that when I went to make Rishi’s Chinese Breakfast today. I can understand recommending lots of leaf if you do a much shorter steep, but I can’t even imagine steeping 1tbsp of black tea in 8oz of water for 4 min as suggested.
Then again, lots of purveyors of good tea seem to have really strange steeping directions which sound to me like they would make undrinkable tea.
Part of the problem is that spoons are a really innacurate way of measuring tea in the first place. So like, maybe the shape of their tablespoon is such that it’s not a whole lot more tea than the “perfect tea spoons” people use (that are really more like 1.5tsp I think). I don’t think a tablespoon of tea is actually the same as 3 teaspoons of tea.
DavidsTea has two perfect teaspoons. The old one is 1.5 tsp, the new ones are 2.5 tsp. The more you know. :)
I do like grams, though. Grams and mls make me happy.
Me too. :)
Lindsay, that’s a great point. I checked out Rishi’s site, and sure enough they have their own measuring spoon. I’d be interested to see how much it actually holds.
Grams are always good. For the longest time I didn’t have a scale, but it was a very small, very useful investment. Volume measures are okay for stuff like matcha or CTC, but not so useful for whole leaf teas.
I think the spoon I have is an actual teaspoon. Rishi’s site says their measuring spoon holds an actual tablespoon.
Maybe I’ll just brew it this way forever. I’m sitting here puckering and giggling to myself. :)
Well, that sounds entertaining, if not enjoyable. :)
Does Tea Sparrow regularly recommend 1 tablespoon for 8oz of water? I think the Kenya black you sent me had the same recommendation, which seemed like way too much tea, so I went with a third of that and got a pretty potent cup.
They do! It’s kind of weird. I asked them about it once and they said “we like our tea strong”. Ok, can’t really argue with that. I usually just brew according to my own preferences. In this case, it’s a pretty chunky tisane so measuring it out with a tablespoon makes a certain amount of sense.
OMG. 1 tbsp per 8 oz?! I was introduced to tea via Silk Road, which recommends 1 tsp per 16 oz. O.o
Rishi recommends the same thing, regardless of tea type. I find it very odd.
I noticed that when I went to make Rishi’s Chinese Breakfast today. I can understand recommending lots of leaf if you do a much shorter steep, but I can’t even imagine steeping 1tbsp of black tea in 8oz of water for 4 min as suggested.
Then again, lots of purveyors of good tea seem to have really strange steeping directions which sound to me like they would make undrinkable tea.
Part of the problem is that spoons are a really innacurate way of measuring tea in the first place. So like, maybe the shape of their tablespoon is such that it’s not a whole lot more tea than the “perfect tea spoons” people use (that are really more like 1.5tsp I think). I don’t think a tablespoon of tea is actually the same as 3 teaspoons of tea.
DavidsTea has two perfect teaspoons. The old one is 1.5 tsp, the new ones are 2.5 tsp. The more you know. :)
I do like grams, though. Grams and mls make me happy.
Me too. :)
Lindsay, that’s a great point. I checked out Rishi’s site, and sure enough they have their own measuring spoon. I’d be interested to see how much it actually holds.
Grams are always good. For the longest time I didn’t have a scale, but it was a very small, very useful investment. Volume measures are okay for stuff like matcha or CTC, but not so useful for whole leaf teas.
I think the spoon I have is an actual teaspoon. Rishi’s site says their measuring spoon holds an actual tablespoon.