Blue Raspberry Tea – Bluebird Tea Co.
Today’s tea is one of the Bluebird Tea Co.'s newest permanent offerings, Blue Raspberry. It started life as a limited edition but was recently voted back by a landslide and so now everyone can enjoy it forever.
Ingredients: Chinese sencha green tea, blue pea flowers, freeze-dried raspberry pieces, natural flavouring
They describe it thus:
The magical butterfly blue pea flower turns your cuppa a bright blue colour, naturally! This pretty plant is full of antioxidants and our addition of raspberries + green tea makes this a health boosting brew indeed! Mixologist tip off - try adding a squeeze of lemon and see the colour change!
The first thing to say about this tea is that it really is very pretty. It is worth making it in a clear teapot because it is a beautiful vibrant blue (that I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to capture in a picture because I’m not a very good photographer). It also has a good quantity of raspberries, and whole raspberries at that, not just little pieces, so it has a decent flavour too.
Now, I have to admit that I’m not a very big fan of green tea, and believe me I have tried it several different ways – usually I add it to a green smoothie instead of plain water so I’m getting some of the good things it imparts without having to put up with the (depending on brand) bland or generally not very nice taste.
As a massive fan of raspberries (they and bananas are my favourite fruit), I was hopeful that their addition might seriously improve the green tea flavour, and it does, sort of.
Raspberries can be pretty tart, and as you know I have an extremely sweet tooth, so while this tea has a lovely raspberry flavour and smell, I’m not very keen on it without adding a teaspoon of sugar. For me, the sugar only increases the raspberry flavour although I’m aware that it’s not really the done thing to have sugar in green tea.
But while I’m in confessional mode, I might as well go the whole hog and admit that actually, for me the best way to drink it is with a dash of milk too — yes, yes, I know I’m a complete philistine and all you tea purists will be having a heart attack at the idea of me putting milk and sugar in green tea – but look at it, it looks so pretty!
The milk dulls the slightly bitter taste of the tea and helps to lift the raspberry flavour even further, and as I’m drinking tea because I want to enjoy it not because I’m after the health benefits, I see nothing wrong with making it exactly as I want it regardless of what the 2 million plus entries on Google say about never adding sugar or milk to green tea.
In conclusion, if you like green tea and like raspberries you’ll probably love this. If you don’t like green tea and like raspberries you’ll probably love this with milk (perhaps go with almond milk if you’re that worried about it).
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