Not Quite Afternoon Tea – Citywest Hotel, Dublin


So, I haven’t had much time for tea tasting recently as I spent last weekend at the Harry Potter convention called LeakyCon which was held at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin — if you were there you would have seen me dressed either as the Fat Lady, Doris Crockford or in my Slytherin robes. It was an amazing weekend, full of magic and fun, but it was also pretty non-stop so there wasn’t much time for sleeping.

As I already knew this was going to be the case I prepared in advance by making up my own tea bags — Morning Kick to wake me up and get me going in the morning, Apricot and Garden of England to get me through the afternoon, and Milk Oolong Caramel for the evening wind down. I didn’t just drink my own tea, though. Over the course of the weekend, I also had several excellent pots of generic tea in the hotel lounge (as well as quite a few pints of their rather marvellous Orchard Thieves cider).

However, unfortunately, despite my best attempts, I didn’t manage to try their rather excellent-looking afternoon tea. Admittedly, the hotel was extremely busy that weekend (there was also a wedding, some golfing thing and the Galway Hurling teams celebrating their victory in the All-Ireland Championships) but I was surprised at how quickly their afternoon tea allocation got booked up.

Instead, I headed into next door’s café and treated myself to a mini-tea — and jolly nice it was, too.



My tea of choice was a breakfast tea. I began with a freshly made sandwich containing ham and cheese with a locally made relish followed by an Oreo cookie cupcake which was every bit as tasty as it looked. Sadly, I didn’t discover that there were scones available until after I had finished, but I didn’t really need them as this was just enough to enjoy a relaxing hour or so after the convention finished.




THIS WEEK’S DEALS

Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co. are having a sale on their Tea Caddies (while stocks last). Prices are up to 90% off so well worth checking out, particularly if you’re a tin collector.

 T2 have introduced a range of dessert-flavoured teas for those with a sweet tooth.

Bluebird Tea Co. has just unveiled their Autumn tea collection. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything Pumpkin-related (boo!) but they do have some rather interesting sounding teas on offer:

🍌 Banana Bread Chai 🍌
🍮 Treacle Sponge 🍮
🍐 Jasmine Poached Pears 🍐
🍫 Choc it Rock it! 🚀

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Honey Bee Beautiful - Bluebird Tea Co.

Image
So, tea that smells like weeds – I honestly can’t stand the stuff. When I was a teenager and still living at home my mum used to ‘enjoy’ and I use the word loosely drinking things like chamomile tea, a beverage which made me feel ill. It was the smell, mainly. I couldn’t even get as far as tasting it because the horrible smell was so off-putting. Fortunately, years have passed and chamomile is no longer quite as popular as it once was and so I’ve managed to keep away from its terrible ditch water smell, until today.  Today, I decided to try the Bluebird Tea Company’s Honey Bee Beautiful as I was having quite a stressful day at work (and that was before I found out about the General Election) and wanted something soothing. Ingredients: Rooibos, honeybush, chamomile, nettle leaves, cornflowers, calendula petals, flavour They describe it thus: ‘Have you ever considered the work it must take to make a queen bee? Their beauty regime is extensive and their mums a
Read more

Favourite Tea League Table (Updated 12 August 2017)

Image
I thought it might be useful if I keep a league table of my top 10 favourite teas, going forward. This list reflects the favourites of those I've drunk recently rather than all-time favourites as I've discovered its very difficult to have an all time list when I'm trying so many different teas and what I like is affected by the weather or the time of year.  For instance, over Christmas and through the winter I drank enough Gingerbread Chai to sink a battleship (is that a thing?) and I would definitely have said it was my all time favourite tea. But at the moment I have no interest in drinking it at all because it seems to me that its the wrong time of year for it and so it's dropped from the top of the charts completely off the list. It will definitely be back by Christmas, though, that I can guarantee. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that my all time favourite tea is definitely China Milk Oolong from Camellia's Tea House. I could, quite
Read more

Blue Raspberry Tea – Bluebird Tea Co.

Image
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 raspber
Read more