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Flavored Tea Info and News

Flavored Teas for Recipes - August 30, 2010

There are so many fantastic uses for tea other than drinking. Teas can be used for cooking and in recipes, adding a little extra flavor without overpowering the taste of food. Substituting tea in your favorite foods and beverages sounds tricky but is so easy, delicious and may just become your "cup of tea!"

Tea Flavored Ice Cubes and Popsicles
One of my favorite ways to make iced tea is to take some of the tea I've made, pour it into ice cube trays and add them to your glass of tea. It's such a great way to make iced tea without it getting watered down as the ice melts. You can also try to add different flavored tea ice cubes to regular iced tea to give the tea a great fruit flavor. Along the same lines as tea flavored ice cubes, freezing fruity teas in popsicle holders is the new, grown up way to enjoy a frozen treat on a hot summer day.

Mint Teas in Chocolate Recipes
I love chocolate mint, but using mint extract tends to be too strong for me. So in place of the extract, when cooking, I brew a fairly strong cup of mint tea and add a portion of this in place of the mint extract. This gives my recipes a softer flavor as opposed to that kick that the extract has.

Teas to Enhance Recipes
Raspberry or lemon teas specifically, along with pretty much any other fruit flavored teas can be added to glazes, icings or mousses to give the recipe a subtle taste without overpowering. Brew your tea as usual, making it as strong or mild as you like and in place of the portion of the water you would normally add to these recipes, substitute that liquid with the tea. I would advise you to add the tea slowly, less is better since you can always add more!

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She often can be found blogging about education and scholarships for college. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Large global specialty loose tea retailer wants to be #1 in the U.S. - March 18, 2010

One of the largest specialty loose tea retailers in the world, TeaGschwendner, is moving forward with an aggressive strategy to be number 1 in the U.S., a spot arguably claimed by Teavana. A recent interview with their Director of U.S. Operations reveals some interesting aspects of the company's strategy, including a comment about not wanting to be the "Starbucks of Tea." Read more...

Custom blend your flavored loose teas - Is Raspberry Dark Chocolate the next flavor? - November 19, 2009

We discovered a new loose tea flavor by combining our Very Raspberry with our Dark Chocolate Dream at the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show in Washington D.C. The result was a huge hit with the customers. We are now seriously considering combining these two loose tea flavors and offering it as a special blend from time to time. Stay tuned for further updates.

New flavored loose teas arriving next month - August 14, 2009

We are rolling out some new flavored loose teas over the next month or so. Rich dark chocolate tea and a naturally flavored blueberry rooibos are just some of the loose teas we will be adding to our tea selection. In addition, we will be offering our first Japanese tea, a light and refreshing green sencha.

New Flavored Tea Factory in Rwanda - July 17, 2009

Rwanda recently unveiled a new tea factory, Sorwathe, which has the capacity to produce 700,000 kg per year of black orthodox tea and green tea. The significance of orthodox manufacturing is that the teas are more delicate and more flavored, while less in strength compared to other teas. Most of the whole leaf flavored loose teas that are available in the market today are generally orthodox manufacturing. Read full article here.

Chai - Is it really a type of flavored tea? - June 30, 2009

If you go to your neighborhood cafe and ask for a chai, you will get a frothy mixture of tea, milk, spices and sugar. If you look the word, "chai" up on the web, you will see not only the flavored spice tea definition but another one as well. Chai is actually the generic term for tea in India, South Asia and many other parts of the world. Only in the West, particularly in the United States, has the term "chai" become synonomous with a flavored tea that consists of boiling tea with milk, sugar and a mixture of masala (cinnamon, cardomom, black pepper, ginger, etc.) spices.

So next time you ask for a chai tea, you are technically asking for a tea tea! But since we live in the U.S., and to avoid confusion, we also refer to chai as the flavored spice tea.

Tea flavored Coca Cola to debut in Japan - June 4, 2009

There was an article today announcing the debut of green tea flavored Coca Cola in Japan, which is to arrive in stores on June 8. I don't know about you, but somehow the idea of a sugary, artificially flavored, syrupy, caffeine loaded drink enhanced with green tea flavoring just doesn't sound very appealing. Read the full article here.

I guess brands, companies and the media are still riding the green tea wave, rolling out everything from slimming green tea diet pills to green tea skin products. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of getting creative with tea and flavored tea, such as tea cocktails, tea-infused cooking and tea infused desserts, but a lot of these products are all marketing and no substance and have absolutely nothing to do with green tea. The tea purists must be cringing.

Flavored tea - New tea flavor coming soon - April 7, 2009

We are rolling out a new tea flavor, Passion Fruit, within the next week or two. Passion Fruit will be a blend of whole leaf black tea with natural passion fruit flavor. With warmer temperatures approaching, this naturally flavored tea will be an ideal iced beverage for the spring and summer months.

Flavored tea - Why few have enjoyed a good flavored iced tea when they dine out - March 8, 2009

The other day I was dining at a local casual dining restaurant that prides itself on quality, gourmet food. Out of curiosity, I decided to order a Peach tea, their flavored iced tea offering. Big mistake. It was so bad I couldn't finish it. It tasted like someone had mixed heaping teaspoons of peach flavored saccharin with some really stale tea. What drives me crazy is that so many restaurants are great at using quality ingredients for their food items, yet when it comes to non-alcoholic beverages, the best option is either a Coke or the lame syrup based concoction I had posing as a flavored iced tea. This particular restaurant has great food, but their flavored iced tea offering is below average at best. The sad reality is that this is the scenario in 90% of casual dining restaurants.

Unfortunately, flavored tea gets a bad rap primarily because the low quality product offered by the restaurants is what is available to the consumer. Most people get their flavored iced tea experiences from a restaurant. I feel compelled to educate the tea drinker and let them know that there are some really good flavored iced teas available. For the time being, tea drinkers won't find quality flavored tea in their favorite restaurant and will have to resort to the web. Fortunately, we are also in the process of educating many in the restaurant industry and encouraging them to step up their non-alcoholic beverage offering, specifically flavored iced teas. One day, the consumer will be able to enjoy an all natural, raspberry flavored iced tea at their favorite restaurant without sending it back.

Assam tea vs. Sri Lankan tea - The importance of tea base when creating flavored tea - February 11, 2009

One thing I have noticed since I began sampling tea varieties and blends from all over the world is the distinct difference in body. I have also always wondered why most flavored teas I tried tasted a) watery and b) over flavored. What I came to discover is that 99% of flavored teas use either Sri Lankan tea as a base or some combination of Sri Lankan tea, South American tea and Kenyan tea. All of these teas are extremely light bodied and do not stand up to added flavoring very well. Because these teas have such little body, they are consumed by any added flavoring, and therefore taste like they have been over flavored.

Assam tea, on the other hand, is a very full bodied tea. Because of the full bodied nature of Assam tea, a major misconception involving this tea is that you automatically add milk to it. While some Assam tea blends go well with milk, others do not. Also, what most tea consumers don't realize is that Assam tea provides a great base for added flavoring. The reason is that the full bodied nature of the Assam tea holds its own flavor when other flavoring is added. The end result is a flavored tea that allows the consumer to taste the tea and the flavoring.

Think of Assam tea in comparison to a full bodied wine or beer. You wiil find that the full bodied varieties will hold up much better to added flavoring and ultimately produce a much more balanced taste.