telophase: (Saiyuki - drinking)
telophase ([personal profile] telophase) wrote2009-03-12 10:18 am
Entry tags:

Tea blends

I was poking back at Adagio Teas, to see what they'd come up with since the last time I'd been there.* They offer custom blends of teas now - you can blend like mad and not be obligated to buy - and while I knew about it, I hadn't paid much attention to it.

But now ... I feel inspired to create a Sanzo-themed tea, and have done so. It's currently marked private, until I feel it's right (and dare to buy it). At the moment it's 80% gunpowder and 20% lapsang souchong. Gunpowder is a green tea whose leaves are rolled into little 'bullets,' described as producing a full-bodied cup with a hint of smokiness. Lapsang souchong is a tea formed by smoking the tea leaves over a fire, and when it's brewed it smells like wood smoke.** You either love it or hate it, and I love it. You can toss some into another kind of tea when brewing to produce a nice hint of smoke.

Whether I like the blend or not...? The teas I like seem to be described as "smoky" (although not to the literal extent that Lapsang Souchong is), so there's a possibility, although I tend not to like green teas. Hm.


Anyway ... ideas for tea blends for the rest of them? I'd think that Golden Monkey might be a large component of Goku's tea, while Hakkai might sip demurely on an oolong. If you wanted to be literal, Gojyo might be a rooibos (a.k.a. red tea), but ... I really don't like rooibos. :)




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* [livejournal.com profile] chomiji, of the things off my wishlist you sent, I really love the Fujian Baroque. Yum!

** To the point where I don't brew it at work, because otherwise people from down the hall will be sticking their heads into the office, asking what's on fire. No joke.

Re: slightly off-topic

[identity profile] heyoka.livejournal.com 2009-03-12 06:27 pm (UTC)(link)
EEEEEEEE someone else who's read them!
ext_6284: Estara Swanberg, made by Thao (Default)

Re: slightly off-topic

[identity profile] estara.livejournal.com 2009-03-12 09:18 pm (UTC)(link)
I actually only this year bought the English originals ^^. These were some of my first modern fantasy books in German (at a time I couldn't read English that well). So this year I scrounged around and bought them used AND her Damiano trilogy.
ext_6284: Estara Swanberg, made by Thao (Default)

Re: slightly off-topic

[identity profile] estara.livejournal.com 2009-03-12 09:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Addendum: that's one time that the German covers actually are nicer than the English ones, but as always the original content is more subtle than the best translator... I'm keeping the German versions out of nostalgia, though.