eggs & tea

A week ago, i went to a local event celebrating local agriculture, called “Hamakua Alive!” All the prominent local farms were there – the goat cheese, mushrooms, hearts of palm, honey, vanilla, coffee - and two tea growers, Takahiro and Kimberly’s Mauna Kea Tea, and Mike and Rob’s Onomea Tea Company.

Mike and Rob started back in 2002 so they have actually have tea available for sale, five kinds, in nice packaging. I tasted two samples and picked out a ‘Roasted Black’ tea to take home. There are so many factors on brewing fine tea, including water, temperature, time, and the individual taste of the drinker. The included instructions suggest 1-2 teaspoons per 4-5 cup pot. That sounded fairly dilute to me, my own tastes run to stronger tea, so i put 2 teaspoons in 2 cups of water. The result was, a bit subtle. The next time, i tried 2 teaspoons in 3/4 cup water, and was sure to let it steep for many minutes. Now, i got a cup of nice tea:

YMMV.  This tea is really unique.  There is no comparison to normal black tea like ‘english breakfast’.  For one thing, the flavors are subtle and complex, so you wouldn’t want to add cream and sugar.  I tried, and it overpowered the tea (just the ‘roasted’ flavor hit remains.)  I also tried a second steeping, which is not usually done with black tea, but in this case it came out quite nice, the tannins a bit more prominent but that’s expected for a second pour.

It’s going to be fascinating when we finally have some tea to harvest and process ourselves, someday!

Related posts:

1. Hamakua Alive! 2008 There were 50 tables at yesterday’s agricultural fair – local...
2. Hamakua ag classes It hasn’t been widely publicized, so i want to help:...
3. Tea trouble: yellowing After my last post about increasing success in the greenhouse,...
4. New tea farm site Now that we finally have some processed tea to share,...
5. Lawn, right or wrong Recently i mowed the lawn and gathered the cut grass....

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 9:22 pm and is filed under tea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.