Loose tea benefits – making tea rubs with your flavored loose tea
Need another reason to switch to loose tea? For those of you who are also foodies in addition to being tea drinkers, try making a quality tea rub out of tea bags. With loose tea, not only do you not have to tear open tea bags, but you start with a much better quality blend. With its whole tea leaves, whole ingredients and spices, flavored loose tea, in particular, will provide much more flavor when preparing a tea rub as compared to a tea bag. You will notice the superiority of loose tea in the freshness, aroma and flavor of your tea rub. You can try different grades of loose tea as well to see how the flavor changes with the leaf size.
New Flavored Tea Factory in Rwanda
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 Tea recipe – Vanilla Chai Smoothie
Here is a delicious and refreshing chai recipe that has the wonderful spicy flavors normally associated with chai that you can even drink during the summer. We use Rooibos as a base tea in this recipe because of its mild, sweet flavor and also because it is caffeine-free. The Vanilla flavored Rooibos also gives this chai smoothie a wonderful, creamy flavor.
Ingredients:
1 tsp Rooibos tea with Chai spices (or Rooibos Chai)
2 tsp Vanilla flavored Rooibos tea (or Creamy Vanilla Rooibos)
2 tsp Agave nectar or sugar
2 scoops of your favorite vanilla ice cream
Tea Preparation:
Combine the Vanilla flavored Rooibos, Chai flavored Rooibos and Agave/sugar and brew for 5-7 minutes with 8 oz. boiling water. You can use the Smart Tea Maker or your favorite brewing method for loose tea. You might be wondering why 3 tsp. of tea for just 8 oz. of water. The reason for this strong brew is to offset the dilution from the ice cream and create a concentrate of flavors. After brewing, chill for 1 hour.
Smoothie Preparation:
Combine chilled tea and ice cream in a blender and blend well. Pour smoothie mixture into glasses and serve with a cinnamon stick. Makes approximately 2 glasses.