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A lovely tea, reminiscent of the fall, yet strangely refreshing in the summer, Angel’s Dream black tea from The English Tea Store is a blend of maple and blackberry flavors. These two flavors blend surprisingly well together, making a cup which is both warm and refreshing.
A full-bodied blend of black teas from Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Assam (India), and Formosa, the black tea base is absolutely perfect for the flavors it presents. It is strong enough to also stand up to a bit of milk, cream or soy milk which complement this tea well, as well as a bit of sugar which would bring out the flavor to it’s fullest.
Angels Dream lose leaf tea
This particular tea is available in both 4 ounce and 16 ounce (1lb) resealable packages which keep the tea at it’s freshest. I recommend the 16 ounce size as it is much more economical. And as the English Tea Store website states, “98% or more of this tea comes from estates that are part of the Ethical Tea Partnership. The ETP is an initiative started within the tea industry to monitor and regulate living and working conditions on estates around the world.” Making this not only a delicious tea, but also an environmentally and people-friendly tea as well!
With full tippy leaves, dreamy maple and blackberry flavor, and lovely deep aroma, this is a tea you will want to have on hand, especially in the fall and winter months. This Angel’s Dream tea is especially lovely served with a breakfast of blackberry or blueberry pancakes served with maple syrup, in fact it’s almost the perfect breakfast! It’s truly amazing how they combined the two flavors and balanced them perfectly to create such a well-refined blackberry and maple blend. Neither flavor stands out as overpowering, yet the two work together in such a way that the tea is made into a drink that is at the same time refreshing and indulgent, a rare combination indeed.
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© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Monk's Blend
Monk’s Blend Tea is a highly prized grenadine flavored black tea. This particular Monk’s Blend Tea combines a bright and delicious grenadine with a more mellow vanilla flavor to balance out the slight tartness that the grenadine brings.
Grenadine is a red syrup used in some cocktails and other specialty drinks. The slightly tart yet sharply fruity characteristic flavor of grenadine can be obtained from a mixture of blackcurrant juice and other fruit juices, as long as the blackcurrant flavor is dominant. So one might say it is a Blackcurrant blend, even though grenadine was originally created from pomegranate juice. And indeed the flavor is somewhere between the more bitter blackcurrant, and the juicer pomegranate.
Blackcurrant is well known throughout Europe and especially the United Kingdom, as a distinctively sweetly sharp berry used in candies, liquors, jams and more. However it is much lesser known in the United States where it has been banned from being farmed since the early 1900s as it was seen as a threat to the logging industry. The ban was only lifted in some states as recently as 2003, and in some states such as Maine,Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
However due to the ban on blackcurrants, most people in the United States remain unaware of this antioxidant and vitamin-rich berry, and it’s unique flavor. Although now that the ban on farming has been mostly lifted, it is making a slow but sure comeback in the United States, and awareness of it’s potential as an extremely healthy addition to the diet is growing.
Grenadine is said to have a flavor very similar to that of a blackcurrant and indeed this tea does have an overall flavor which is similar to blackcurrant combined with pomegranate juice, with a subtle whisper of cherry. The aroma is strongly juicy with a delicious fragrance whether the leaves are dry or brewing. The flavors blend very well with the solid black tea base and make this a delicious, refreshing tea whether served hot or iced.
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© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Coffee beans
Did you know that drinking tea is much healthier for you than drinking coffee? Many coffee drinkers say that they love their coffee and would never switch to drinking tea instead. However there are numerous reasons why making that switch to tea can really improve your life!
Although recent research has shown that coffee does have some benefits for the human body such as helping to fight diabetes and that it is a strong stimulant, tea has considerably more health benefits than coffee. For example, while coffee drinking can make your teeth brittle and discolored, tea drinking can actually greatly benefit your teeth, helping to prevent cavities and improving halitosis (bad breath).
White Tea
Tea also has significantly less caffeine than coffee on average. Coffee has an average of 125 – 185 mg of caffeine per cup while a plain black tea has about 55 mg per cup. Some teas have much lower caffeine content, and herbal teas have none. While this may seem like a bad thing to coffee drinkers who consume coffee for it’s stimulant effects, remember that tea such as Matcha can give you an energy boost equivalent to that of coffee, but it doesn’t make you crash, and it allows you to be alert for hours as it regulates the release of it’s own caffeine!
There are also infinitely more varieties and flavors of tea than there are for coffee drinkers. Overall, the significant health benefits of tea greatly outweigh the relatively weak health benefits of coffee.
If you would like to switch from coffee to tea, but aren’t quite sure if your ready to give up your java, I suggest trying teas that are somewhat similar to coffee in flavor. While you can actually find coffee-flavored teas on the market, a strong black tea served the same way you usually take your coffee can easily do the trick. For strength, the best strong black teas are Irish Breakfast teas, English Breakfast teas and Assam tea.
If you do decide to make the switch, check out www.englishteastore.com for the best tea deals on the internet!
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© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Editor’s note: The information in this article should be taken as being presented for entertainment purposes only, since much of it has since been shown to be unproven scientifically.
Many people add milk to their tea, especially when drinking black teas. However milk, or even milk alternatives such as soy milk, have been said to greatly affect the quality and flavor of the tea you are drinking as well as reduce the potential health benefits of the tea leaves.
The first thing to consider when adding milk or milk alternatives to your tea is temperature. Dr. Stanley Segall, Professor Emeritus of Nutrition and Food Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia and spokesperson for the Institute of Food Technologists says of adding milk to tea, ““Changes in brewing temperature affect extraction of color- and flavor-responsible chemicals exponentially. Reaction rates generally double for every rise in temperature of 18 degrees Fahrenheit and conversely decrease by the same factor when the temperature is lowered.”
So even when you add a small amount of milk to your tea, you are lowering the temperature drastically enough that essentially, the tea leaves don’t release much more flavor. Pre-heating your milk before adding it to the tea therefore, is recommended to keep the full flavor of the tea.
If you are drinking tea solely, or mainly for it’s health benefits, it would be wise to avoid milk completely as some studies have reported that the caseins in the milk completely destroyed all the wonderful antioxidants provided by the catechins in the tea leaves. This may partially explain why there is a higher risk of heart disease in countries where adding milk to your tea is more prevalent, such as in the United Kingdom and the United States, as opposed to countries where adding milk products to tea is less common, such as China or Japan.
However, June Davison, cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), wisely reminds us that: “”It is difficult to say from this small study the impact of adding a drop of milk to your tea can make. Leaving milk out of your tea is far less likely to help protect your heart health than other measures, such as taking regular exercise, avoiding smoking and eating a healthy balanced diet.”
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© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
East India Trading Company logo
In China, the custom of drinking tea leaves has been around for thousands of years, at least since the Tang Dynasty (June 18, 618 – June 4, 907) if not earlier. However, tea only migrated into England much later in the 1660s when King Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess who enjoyed the pleasures of drinking tea and brought that custom with her to England. Tea was thus experienced by the courts of England in the 1690s onward, however tea did not become a popular beverage until the British East India Trading Company began a vigorous campaign to popularize tea amongst common people – mainly to establish a “return cargo” (a trade) with the East Indies that seemed fair in exchange for their exotic fabrics.
It was in the coffee houses of London in the early 1700s that tea was made popular to the lower classes. By 1750, tea was the most favored drink of Britain’s lower classes. This greatly upset tavern owners at the time, who lost a lot of their alcohol sales to tea. Another entity unhappy with the popularization of tea was the British Government who also lost a lot of taxes on the sales of liquor when tea rose in popularity.
William Pitt the Younger
Unfortunately, the fine teas in China were in great demand by England, however the Chinese had very little use for English goods, so the teas were paid for in silver bullion – again cutting into England’s wealth and causing great critique from some. In fact, Charles II did his part to try to stop the growing sales of tea in England with several acts forbidding the sale of tea in private houses. These acts were extremely hard to enforce though, as the public resented such efforts to control the sales of tea.
Finally in 1696, a tax was placed upon all teas and all coffee house operators were required to apply for a license. Taxation efforts rose to an absurd 119% tax by 1750, causing the creation of a new industry…tea smuggling. Tea would be smuggled on ships from Scandinavia and Holland, and often smugglers would “cut” the tea with other herbs such as willow or licorice to make a profit. Some tea smugglers would even use old used tea leaves to blend in with their shipment. All of this was effectively ended when in 1784 William Pitt the Younger introduced the Commutation Act, which dropped the tax on tea from 119% to 12.5%
From there, tea flourished in England, with Tea Gardens being introduced in the mid-Eighteenth century, and “Afternoon Tea” being established in the 1800s. In 1864, the first official Tea Shop was opened in England by the Aerated Bread Company, and spread in popularity thereafter. To this day, tea is seen as a symbol of Great Britain, but also – to some extent – British Colonialism. In today’s world, tea is still very much a part of British culture and very representative of British society.
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© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Iced tea (known in other parts of the world as “ice tea”) is a cold beverage of tea served over ice. Although iced tea is drunk worldwide, it is perhaps best known and loved in the United States, and is especially a staple of southern America’s diet, especially in the hot summer months.
A pitcher of the "good stuff"
The following quote appeared in the New York “Herald of Health” in the year 1869:
“Iced tea is now coming into use in the hot summer months; but this is an eccentric innovation, not likely very soon to become a common custom”
While in retrospect, their foresight was somewhat lacking, as iced tea became even more common in the United States in the 1870s, when it was on sale mainly at hotels and railroads. The oldest printed recipes for iced tea in the United States also dates to the 1870s.
However, the history of iced tea dates back much further than this to Russia, as shown by this quote from a visitor to Russia in 1842:
“The Russians cool all their drinks with ice – iced beverages of various descriptions are commonly sold in the streets throughout the summer – and, not satisfied with their iced water, iced wine, and iced beer, they even drink iced tea, substituting for a lump of sugar a similar portion of ice.” (Johann Georg Kohl, quoted in 1842)
Iced tea has been around for at least 150 years, if not longer. It is now available in almost any grocery store or convenience store, or can be brewed in one’s home. The flavor possibilities as well as the preparation ideas are almost limitless. Iced tea is usually served with sugar and lemon, although unsweetened iced tea is also quite popular.
In the southern United States, “Sweet Tea” is a common iced tea drink made by boiling very strong tea leaves along with copious amounts of sugar which is then served over ice, optionally with a slice of lemon. This results in a very strong, sweet iced tea. Iced tea is a versatile and inspiring beverage as any tea leaves can be brewed into iced tea to be enjoyed in hot summer months, or as a refreshing, cooling drink.
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A tea egg is a common snack found in China and Taiwan. It is prepared from hard boiled eggs and tea leaves, and is commonly sold by street vendors in Chinese communities around the world. Tea eggs are a beautiful way to use tea to create an edible art form. The tea leaves a deep brown marbled pattern on the hard boiled eggs, making them lovely to display as well as to eat!
Tea Egg
To prepare your tea eggs, first boil the amount of eggs to be prepared until they are hard-boiled in a saucepan. Once they are completely hard-boiled, you must then take a spoon, and carefully crack the outside shell all the way around on the outside, or roll the eggs lightly on a towel. The more cracked the shell is, the more dyed your eggs will be! Once you’ve lightly cracked all the hard-boiled eggs, return them to the saucepan filled with water. This time, add to the water the following:
- 5 tablespoons soy sauce
- 2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoon sugar
- 2 tablespoon black tea leaves or 2 tea bags (you can also use Pu-erh)
- 3 piece star anise
- 1 small stick cinnamon or cassia bark
- 1 teaspoon cracked peppercorns (optional)
Cover the eggs in that preparation and simmer on low for 3 hours, adding more water if necessary. Drain and serve the eggs either hot or cold. After the peel comes off of the egg, you will see a beautiful marbled spiderweb of light and dark browns formed by the tea mixture the eggs were boiled in. You can also change the flavor by adding or substituting other spices, or Chinese five-spice mixture, which adds a savory, slightly salty tone to the egg.
It should be noted that green tea should not be used to make tea eggs as it will produce a more bitter egg. Black tea and Pu-erh teas are optimal, and you can even substitute chai spices for Chai Tea Eggs.
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© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I know you’re probably familiar with iced tea blends sold in the stores specifically to make iced tea, such as Luzianne and Lipton Cold Brew. However, did you know that you can make a much more delicious iced tea out of absolutely any tea leaves using special methods of brewing the tea? There are actually a few good methods for brewing iced tea, which I will explain in detail below. The method you choose is entirely up to you, as all of these methods will result in a great iced tea.
The Coffeemaker Iced Tea
They actually do sell electric tea makers which are nothing more than modified coffee-makers, which is one way you can brew your tea leaves quickly and easily. Brew the same way you would coffee, except replace the ground coffee beans with tea leaves in the filter. Use double the amount of tea leaves than what you would use if you were making hot tea, and once you’ve brewed the tea, simply pour it over a pitcher half full of ice cubes and you have instant and easy iced tea!
Overnight Brew Iced Tea
Using cold or room temperature water, add 2 tsp of tea per cup of water and allow it to stand in the refrigerator overnight, then strain into a second jug or pitcher in the morning or after at least 6 hours.
Simple Iced Tea
Brew up the tea on the stove using the same amount of tea you would use for hot tea, adding any sweetener you would like, then allow to cool slightly before transferring into a pitcher and allowing it to cool in the refrigerator for a couple hours. Serve over ice.
Iced tea is easily one of America’s great contributions to the world of tea, and is so refreshing in the heat of summer. All of the above methods are good for making your iced tea, but remember that the resulting tea is only as high of quality as the tea leaves and water used to create the tea. Using high quality tea leaves and filtered or purified water will greatly enhance the quality of your iced tea brews.
Adams Peak Loose Tea
The average tea consumer tends to purchase their tea at the supermarket, in convenient bagged form. However you’ll notice that many tea enthusiasts show disdain for tea bags, preferring to purchase their tea in loose leaf form. There are many reasons for that disdain, but let’s take a look at how much tea bags really do differ from loose tea.
First and foremost, tea bags make it easy to hide the low quality of inferior teas, usually made of what is termed tea “dust” made from very finely ground cheap leaves. The dust provides an almost instant deep dark color to your tea and has a strong, consistent flavor from one cup to the next. This consistency is one of the advantages of bagged tea over loose tea as bagged tea tends to be much more consistent from batch to batch. With loose tea you can see the quality of the leaves yourself.
Additionally, when using loose tea, you can brew an amount of leaves according to your taste. Pre-bagged tea is already rationed into equal portions of tea that may provide a stronger or weaker flavor than what you would like to taste. With loose leaf tea, you can measure your tea to the strength you prefer.
Because, as I mentioned earlier, bagged tea is usually much more finely ground than loose leaf tea, bagged tea goes stale a lot faster than properly stored loose tea. If the bags are wrapped in paper instead of foil , the airflow through the tea leaves is increased and therefore the tea loses it’s flavor much more quickly. Foil wrapped teabags are usually much preferred over paper-wrapped bags. Loose tea does, however, keep it’s flavor and aroma much longer than bagged tea. All teas should optimally be stored in an opaque, dry and airtight container out of sunlight and away from sources of heat.
Pyramid Tea Bag
Some companies are now using triangular see-through bags made from mesh for their teabags, instead of the traditional flat rectangular bags, to allow the tea leaves to be properly infused with water (allowing the water to freely flow through the tea leaves). This also allows the tea leaves to unfurl completely, releasing the greatest amount of flavor into the water. Traditional tea bags do not offer these features and as you can see, they can greatly influence your experience of your tea.
For these reasons, I recommend that you use loose tea, using an infuser or strainer to brew the leaves. However if you must use bagged tea for the convenience, try to use the mesh pyramid tea bags as they are almost always of a higher quality than traditional paper tea bags.
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© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Tea Dye
Using tea to dye fabrics and clothing is an easy, enjoyable way to give them a muted or antiqued look. In fact, tea dying can produce some very interesting visual results! Tea dying does not give consistent results however, and each article you dye will be different from the next.
Because you use teabags to dye your project, this is not recommended for large articles like blankets. However t-shirts, socks, tea towels and other similarly sized items are ideal. Please note that tea will only dye 100% natural fibers. Cotton is ideal, however you may also use silk, linen, and perhaps even wool. Tea dying will not work on polyester or similar man-made fabrics. You can also use tea to dye your own yarn as well! However the stain is only semi-permanent – most modern detergents will remove tea stain from clothing, so hand-washing may be more appropriate.
To stain the item, bring 4 cups of water per yard of fabric to boil. After the water has come to a boil, remove it from the heat, then add 2 tea bags per 8 ounces of water, or more, depending on how darkly you would like the fabric dyed. Experimentation is best at this point. Leave the tea to steep for approximately 5 minutes, then remove the tea bags and place the article to be dyed in the water. If you would like a mottled effect, don’t move the article at all in the water, however if you would like a smooth even dye all over, swish the water around for a few minutes to cover the article evenly.
Once you’ve dyed your cloth or yarn to achieve the look you want, remove it from the tea bath and rinse it under cold water until the water runs clear. You will lose a lot of color doing this, so if it turns out too light for you, you can soak it longer until you achieve the desired effect – you can even soak it overnight for a dark brown color! Once you’ve achieved the look you desire, place the yarn or fabric in the dryer and tumble dry.
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© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
