Tasting Lab: Sticky Rice Puerh

So far in the Tasting Lab, we've explored discontinued blends, old recipes from the blend book, and new blends following old techniques. It's been a lot of fun! But for May, we're swinging in a new direction, and trying something more single-origin.

This month's tea is a compressed puerh. Each piece comprises about five grams of material, enough for a two-cup pot, or multiple steepings in a mug. But what makes this tea unique, is it blends tea with semnostachya menglaensis, or nuò mǐ xiāng (literally 'sticky rice fragrance'), an herb that smells deliciously of cooked basmati rice, sweet bread and vanilla. The resulting tea has a rich, earthy, sweet flavour, with roasty cooked rice and vanilla notes throughout.

Puerh can be a daunting tea for drinkers to first get into. The dark colour it brews can be intimidating, and with flavour descriptions like 'earth', 'wood' and 'tobacco', it's difficult to know what to expect. This won't be an in-depth introduction to puerh (that's its own deep, deep rabbit hole!), but I hope to spur a little appreciation for this interesting tea.

Carrot Cake Rooibos & White Hot Chocolate

Honeybee Chia Milk Tea

Tasting Lab: No. 9

One of the more difficult aspects of reviving old recipes from our Blend Book, is that styles of tea production have changed over the years. For the particularly old blends, sometimes there's not a perfect analogue in available teas today. This leaves recipes open to interpretation, and can result in a lot of variation.

Earl Grey Chocolate Mug Cakes

Happy New Year! Here’s to optimising flavour while keeping things simple in the kitchen with this Earl Grey chocolate mug cake recipe!