Welcome to my blog. I hope you will join me for a cup of tea!
All tagged tea blogger
If you’ve seen my previous posts about tea chocolate, you know that I am obsessed with bean-to-bar chocolate maker Fossa from Singapore and their single-origin tea chocolate bars made in collaboration with tea curator Pekoe & Imp. I was able to find two bars I had not tried yet, Duck Shit Dancong tea chocolate and Himalayan Royale Tips Hongcha tea chocolate.
I came across a tea-infused chocolate bar by bean-to-bar chocolate maker Fossa from Singapore. It is infused with Honey Orchid Dancong Oolong from China. Read my thoughts and tasting notes.
I came across the recipe for a mocktail called A little bit Russian by Julia Bainbridge. I had heard of Julia Bainbridge before, she’s a writer and the author of Good Drinks, a recipe book on non alcoholic drinks. A black tea concentrate is shaken with coconut milk, simple syrup, bitters and ice, then strained and garnished with orange peel. I tested out this recipe to see if it would meet my tea-centric expectations and slightly adapted it to make the tea flavor shine.
You might be familiar with cold brewing tea but have you tried ice brewing it? I’ve only ever seen ice brewing applied to Japanese green teas and I was curious to experiment with it, which is why I decided to test this method for different tea types from different origins.
After drinking caffeinated teas for most of the day, I find myself craving something refreshing later in the afternoon or to enjoy at sunset. I invented this thirst-quenching, insanely flavorful iced herbal infusion/mocktail by total chance. Picture yourself on a tropical vacation and that is exactly what the pink drink à la Tea Squirrel tastes like.
Today I want to talk to you about one of my favorite caffeine free tisanes (infusions not from the camellia sinensis plant). In the afternoon and evening, I usually switch from caffeinated beverages to caffeine-free ones. There is as much variety in the herbal tea realm as in the camellia sinensis world and I love discovering new flavor profiles. Soba cha, also known as roasted buckwheat tea, comes from a type of buckwheat that is related to the one that is commonly used in the kitchen.
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by doctoral students Ashley Miller, Joslyn Williams and Hannington Masereka Kule who are taking a global leadership course within an educational and organizational learning and leadership program at Seattle University. I had never thought of myself as a global leader and I am honored to have been interviewed for their project. Their questions made me reflect on many interesting topics that often get overlooked when thinking about tea.
That is the question that I asked myself while holding a nondescript pouch I had just retrieved from the back of my tea cabinet. It was still sealed, unlabeled and had a long code handwritten on one side. I knew exactly what it was. A micro-lot Korean green tea I had purchased at a tea tasting two years ago. Unintentionally, I had been putting off opening it, waiting for the perfect occasion. Honestly, my first response to the question “can you age green tea?” would be a resounding “no”, but I was about to find out firsthand anyway.
Because I haven’t been able to travel in over a year now (thank you, pandemic) and I miss traveling more than anything right now, I thought it would be fun to round up all the best tea experiences I’ve had around the world. Honestly, I’ve had more than 7 (at least 12) and I could write chapters about them but I’ll keep those for my memoirs. What are the best tea experiences you’ve ever had? Please let me know in the comments below, I’m curious!
As a tea lover and cat mom of two (but also an animal lover in general), I’ve always wondered whether there is a connection between being a tea drinker and being a cat lover. There seems to be a recurring pattern but is it true or is it a misconception or a stereotype? I asked my newsletter subscribers and here are the results of that survey.
Hello, tea lovers and welcome back to The Tea Squirrel! This is episode number two of my series on tea and mindfulness. Being present in the moment, enjoying the beauty of little things, being intentional with one’s thoughts and actions are all things that tea lovers can easily teach themselves by cultivating a tea ritual, however simple or elaborate. My goal for this series is to practice mindfulness more consistently and explore it in a creative way.
When Elisa Da Rin Puppel, the Italian tea blogger at Il Bollitore, asked me about working together on a blog post for The Tea Squirrel about her recent experience at The Tea Crane in Kyoto, I was already familiar with Tyas Sōsen and his natural teas. Here’s Elisa’s tea tasting experience at The Tea Crane. Enjoy!
Italian tea expert in London Alessandra Rovetta is going to give us a behind-the-scenes look at a one-of-a-kind custom tea blending service and tell us all about her tea journey and tea dream job in London! She’s going to share her top afternoon tea recommendations in London along the way too!
Decluttering means making room for new teas and restocking old favorites. Therefore, in order to find my favorite teas and understand what other teas I might want to try, I had to adopt a structured approach to the content of my tea cabinet. It’s called a “showdown” and it’s a type of contest. You take your teas and taste them side by side to determine your favorite. Keep reading to find out the winner of this round.
In times of chaos and uncertainty, I find decluttering, cleaning and organizing extremely therapeutic. There’s something comforting about having things under control, especially when everything else is beyond my control. I had already embraced the “drink-what-you-own” approach to my tea stash a while ago, because while some teas age well, some others don’t and when you have a lot of them, chances are, many are getting stale and it breaks my heart to be wasteful. Decluttering also means making room for new teas and restocking old favorites. Therefore, in order to find my favorite teas and understand what other teas I might want to try, I had to adopt an analytical approach to the content of my tea cabinet.
Mochi muffins have become so popular in San Francisco and the Bay Area that I challenge you to find a café or tea house where they’re not on the menu. They are soft and chewy on the inside, an unusual but surprisingly pleasant texture, and crispy on the outside. I added a few twists to my mochi muffins, including matcha green tea, because - let’s be honest - this is a tea blog after all AND everything looks and tastes better with matcha.
How much do your expectations about a specific tea influence your tasting experience? Mine definitely influenced me more than they should have when I tasted this tea for the first time. Read on to discover more.
I won this cake a while ago at a giveaway on Instagram and it had been sitting - untouched - in my tea cabinet for a while. Puerh is meant for aging, so I was not overly concerned and I was waiting to be in the mood for it. Let me tell you, I’m rarely in the mood for puerh. I can hear all the pu-heads gasping in horror. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it a lot, but not for solo tea sessions. Strange, isn’t it? Anyways, I somehow associate young (or relatively young) raw puerh with grape skin notes, but I could not detect those here and I did not miss them because there was plenty of other intriguing notes going on.
