Tea Tasting – The Way I Do It

Okay, so I thought I would give you a quick rundown on the way I go about tea tasting. I am not trained in any way, I’m just a tea lover who can be quite fickle and thinks that flavoured teas often smell much better than they taste. I am not good at subtle nuances of flavour nor am I particularly good at describing them, so you’re generally just going to get me just telling you whether I like it or not and if it tastes like the flavour it’s representing or whether it just smells nice and tastes like dishwater.

Usually, I will use tea leaves rather than bags, as I have recently come to prefer this (especially as I now own several teapots), although I am slowly accruing a collection of teabags thanks to the Bluebird Tea Company’s wonderful policy of giving away free samples with every order and so, eventually, I will no doubt get around to reviewing them too.

In future I will try, where I remember, to taste the tea after the recommended brewing time to see what it tastes like but as I like my tea strong, I tend to leave it to brew far in excess of what is recommended by the tea company (also I have a bad memory and forget it’s there) as I often find this is required in order to get any taste out of flavoured teas – although I think the newer artisan tea companies are much better than the large corporations at providing decent flavour without needing to stew forever.

It's the 'perfect' spoon!

As stated previously, I make my tea in a ½ litre teapot, using 1 ‘perfect’ spoon of tea - both birthday presents from the divine Miss Q – (I do not subscribe to the old adage that you should add a spoon for the pot nor do I bother with heating the pot with hot water first as I’m far too lazy and in need to of tea to bother with that sort of thing). This makes just enough tea to fill my Harry Potter mug, and thus provides the equivalent of roughly 2 normal mugs of tea.

Tea drinking equipment - my teapots and my Harry Potter mug 

I have just realised that I probably should be using 2 teaspoons of tea per pot (as it should be 1 per cup), and this might explain why I need to steep for longer than the recommended time, but I won’t be changing the way I make my tea, so it’s a bit of a moot point.

Once made and poured, I will initially taste the tea without any accompaniment so I can get an idea of the ‘true’ flavour of it. I need to say at this point, that I have an extremely sweet tooth and so most of the time I will then add some form of sweetener.

At the moment, my sweetener of choice is demerara sugar, which I find adds a better flavour than white sugar but without changing the underlying flavour of the tea too radically – as honey does, although honey definitely does have its place and is sometimes preferable. Once this has been tried, and if I think it might add something by doing so, I will add milk or, if I have it, double cream.

If I try a tea that I’m not keen on, I will try a variety of sweeteners and milk to see if I can come up with a combination I like before I completely write it off but not everyone likes every flavour of tea so I expect to come up against some I don’t like. This is why sample packs are such a good idea as it means I don’t have to spend a fortune on tea I might not like but can still try new and interesting flavours.

Similarly, occasionally I’ll have a bad reaction to the tea – it might induce a headache or something. Most of the time I may already be pre-migraine so it won’t stop me trying it at a later date but at the same time, it can give me a clue about ingredients I should avoid, particularly in combination.

If you have any questions about the teas or anything else, please feel free to ask them in the comments.