TeaChat

I'm interested in hearing ideas on ways to add your own flavor to teas, especially green tea. I love the carmel flavor that is in a black flavored tea call French cream brul'e, and wonder what could be used to get that flavor on my own added to green or white tea. Or other flavor ideas people have used.

Creme brulee's flavor is mostly carmalized sugar and vanilla bean... you could easily do this on your own.

The sugar is carmalized via a hand held butane torch used that is readily available at most gourmet kitchen supply stores. This creates the unique flavor topping of creme brulee desert. Simply adding caramal to your tea with vanilla will likely taste different.

Thank you, I'll try that. Though it sure would be grand to find a short cut...if only someone sold flavoring to add to teas. Hummm maybe someone does, and I just don't know about it.

Flavored syrups, like you'd use in coffee or Italian soda.

Monin has a large-ish selection.

Although not for creme brulee, you can most certainly stew various herbs (cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, anise, cloves, nutmeg) and add them to the infusion.

I think I heard somewhere that most commercial flavored teas are created by spritzing tea leaves with essential oils. I assume there are websites out there where you could buy them (unless you have your own distillation rig at home ).

I've always wanted to get a fruit dehydrator, mostly for eating, but I also thought it'd be a fun way to experiment with flavoring teas. It might not work at all, but I had thought of just throwing dried pieces of fruit into the tea, and also of powdering the dried fruit to mix into the infusions.

I appreicated the feed back. The comment on commercially flavoring by [quote]spritzing tea leaves with essential oils[/quote], is interesting, as it would explain why so many of those teas smell wonderful, but offer no flavor. Perhaps I should explore flavored extracts to add to the tea, as well as the stewed flavor, and coffee flavorings.
Thanks
SS

I think other people do this, but I put almond extract or almond syrup in strong earl grey. I think that is one of the best pairings of all time.

I used to add fruit to my tea but it never came out quite right -- I did buy my boyfriend a food dehydrator for Christmas so I will definitely be using that. Has anyone else had any success with this?

Regardless of tea, dehydrated strawberries are one of the best munchies out there.

I got a green tea blend with strawberries in it awhile ago and absolutely hated it. Berries seem to make tea really, really tart, and I really don't like that flavor, particularly strawberries.

I bought some blueberry icewine tea when I was in Ottawa, and that's thus far one of the few berry-flavored teas I enjoy because it's not as tart.

Oh noes!

The tart flavor is one that is much loved by us Japanese greeners. You must at some point try a naturally tart tea, like Sencha Karigane from Hibiki-an and see if it is better.

Blueberry icewine tea?? I have a couple family members that might be extremely interested in that. What does the icewine part refer to? Do they mix icewine into the tea? Or flavor it somehow?

Serioulsy, why would you want to flavor tea to begin with! Arghh

Perhaps for the same reason people like peach-tasting Dancong.

I've had icewine tea before, also from Canada. From what I was told, it has to do with when the grapes (or blueberries) are harvested. They wait until after the fruit is frozen which changes the taste & makes it sweeter. I personally didn't care for the grape but the blueberry sounds delicious. What company produces it?

And BTW, if you don't like flavored teas, don't knock the rest of us who do. We each are entitled to our own likes & dislikes.