Fun and FlirTea

When I first heard from The Persimmon Tree, I admit I thought they would be another “tea” company that doesn’t actually carry tea, but some weird persimmon-based herbal remedies. I don’t have anything against persimmons, per se, but they aren’t my favorite fruit and I wasn’t exactly interested in soaking dried persimmons and flowers in hot water and drinking the result.

Thankfully for me, The Persimmon Tree really is a legit tea company with a pretty awesome variety available. There were more than a few teas I was interested in trying, so I provided a short list and let my contact decide which one to send out for review (thanks so much for the free sample, by the way!).

The 2 oz. sample tin of the Green Pomegranate tea is not only adorable, but will work wonders for any future refills.

I don’t always care for flavored teas. Most of the time, they are too sweet or have a weird after-taste or just have a weird flavor to begin with. When I opened this tea, the sweet pomegranate scent was pretty close to over-powering for me. On the plus side, it didn’t smell like a sugary, fake pomegranate flavor. And you can see the actual pomegranate bits mixed in with the green tea itself. So as much as I was worried, I wasn’t too concerned it would turn out to be a failure for me.

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Image by Hallie Torrey
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Image by Hallie Torrey
Japanese Tea Garden (Ricardo Martins) / CC BY 2.0
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Hey-yo! Here I am, typing this post away from merry old England! It has been quite a ride so far, to say the least.

It’s been difficult to find the focus I need for this first post of my adventures. Part of it is that many of my adventures so far have been within pubs and restaurants, not in tea shops. In fact, there has not been a single day on my trip so far that does not feature me in a pub having a few drinks. Literally.

I was interested to find, when wandering about London, that tea shops are not nearly as common as I had hoped. There were quite a few coffee shops, but most of those simply had a selection of bagged Twinings behind the counter, and I’ve already had plenty enough of that to be satisfied. To be fair, I hadn’t exactly done advance research into tea shops around London, so I was wandering blind.

I did go to the British Museum and, in the Japan section, found a really neat set of old tea tools and a mock-up tea room. They were very cool! (more…)

I know I don’t normally put any commentary on my Friday Photos, but today I shall! Just a fun note to highlight the fact that I’m totally posting this quote today on purpose because I’m currently in England! So look forward to some posts about British tea shops and adventures in the coming weeks!

Image by Hallie Torrey
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Image by Hallie Torrey
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Image by Hallie Torrey
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Image by Hallie Torrey. Purchase a print of this artwork HERE.
Ring stain source.
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I had the greatest time ever “researching” for this post. I’ll just be upfront about that. I not only got to drink a lot of beer, but went on a tour of a brewery. I don’t know about my readers, but I seriously love beer. It’s delicious and cold and flavorful. In fact, my family loves beer so much that my cousins host an annual Wine and Brewfest at their home the Saturday prior to Easter. (Did I mention I love to drink wine as well?)

The best part about my love of drinking beer is the fact that I happen to live in the same place as one of my favorite breweries, Sierra Nevada Brewery. My US readers may be familiar with some of their beers (Pale Ale, Bigfoot, Ovila). If you are in the US and haven’t had Sierra Nevada, you should probably find a local distributor…. seriously. For those who are further off or not quite as familiar, just a brief heads up… Sierra Nevada cultivates a reputation for producing a deliciously hoppy brew.

In any case, Sierra Nevada offers a free brewery tour that lasts around an hour or just over, at the end of which they ply you with their wares (by which I mean, they feed you free 2 oz.+ samples of 8 of their beers, including at least one from their “Willy Wonka Factory” of an experimental section in the brewery used to create exciting new concoctions).

For those of you who have blended your own teas, I think you’re beginning to see one of the connections I’m about to discuss, aren’t you?

So why don’t I get down to it now, then?

Making the Deliciousness

First, let’s talk about how each of these tasty drinks is made. While the actual production of tea and production of beer are very different processes, each of them utilize a key similarity: attention to ingredients. We’ve already discussed how tea is made, but not really gotten into how tea blends are made. Making beer is like making a tea blend. You have a certain array of ingredients that go into the blend/beer. As with anything, there are different levels of quality coming from different producers, but each one will take a look at the ingredients and find exactly the right ingredient to achieve the end result they’re looking for.

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Photo by Amy Brown of Amy Brown Photography
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