Tea Blends

Blending is a process of blending different teas together to enhance the flavors and create a new or favored flavor profile. Tea blends can be blends from different growing regions or leaves can be blended with herbs, dried fruits and fruit zest and flowers. Perfumes, flavorants and essential oils are often added to add flavor and aroma.

Black Blends

Breakfast teas are blends of different black teas that together are more robust and full-bodied in flavor than the individual; eaves. English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast and Scottish Breakfast are all popular blends of robust black teas.

Afternoon blends are also blends of black tea. These blends tend to be lighter in flavor than breakfast blends. Breakfast and Afternoon Tea are often enjoyed at any time of day.

Flower Blends

Jasmine tea is a well know blend of green le with jasmine flowers, resulting in a delicious brew that is mildly flavored and scented by the jasmine flowers. The jasmine flowers are usually removed after the flavor and scent have been absorbed.

Chrysanthemum tea is often pure chrysanthemum flowers, although sometimes the blend contains black or green tea leaves.

Herbal and Fruit Blends

An herb that is commonly blended with tea is mint. Mint is often used alone as an herbal tisane, or blended with black tea. Fresh mint is often used as a garnish as well.

Dried fruit and fruit zests are popular. Citrus zests combined with cinnamon and spices are popular in "Russian" blends. Bits of dried cherry, mango, cranberry, peach and other fruits are often combined with tea leaves and spices.

Spice Blends

Spices are often blended with tea, especially in Indian, African and Middle Eastern cultures. Chai and Thai Tea are popular spice blends. Spices used most often include ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cassia, black pepper, clove, anise, fennel, bay leaf, nutmeg, mace and vanilla.

Most blends are made with black leaves, but green blends are becoming popular because of their additional health benefits. White tea can be easily overpowered by strong flavors, so it is used with only very delicate flavor blends.

Look for Quality Specialty Blends

Blending tea with these flavor enhancers is a common technique used to boost the flavor of poor quality leaves, so it is important to know that you are purchasing from a high quality purveyor. Often these blends will sell at a premium over the cost of the individual leaves, so you want to get the quality you are paying for.

How to Blend Herbal Teas

Art is defined as "the quality, production, expression, or realm of what is beautiful, or of more than ordinary significance." A finely blended herbal tea can be just that; a colorful blend of herbs, varying textures, contrasting and complimenting flavors to create an extraordinary cup of tea. With a little creativity and experimentation, the pleasure of creating your own blend can be a rewarding and enjoyable artistic outlet.

Before you begin blending herbs for tea, you should know what the herbs taste like individually. Make up simple teas with one herb at a time until you become familiar with the various flavors. During this process it is best to drink the tea unsweetened. Sit back, savor and enjoy.

As you begin blending, start with equal measurements of the herbs (except lavender, licorice and the spices that tend to overpower a tea if used too freely). You will find it helpful to keep a journal of your creations, including notes on the teas made with just one herb. Combining herbs will tend to alter the taste of the individual herbs so although you may not care too much for one, adding another herb to the blend may create an enjoyable tea. Part of blending involves finding the herbs that enhance or complement each other to your liking. For some, herbal teas are an acquired taste much like a fine wine.

Here is a list of some of the more popular beverage tea herbs categorized by flavor to get you started.

• Florals - lavender, jasmine, rose petals, chamomile, red clover, chrysanthemum
• Lemony/Citrus - lemon balm, lemon verbena, lemongrass, orange, lemon or lime peel
• Tart - hibiscus, rose hips
• Spicy - cinnamon, clove, ginger, cardamom
• Sweet - licorice, fruits, stevia, aniseed, fennel
• Woodsy - sage, rosemary, thyme, marjoram
• Mints - peppermint, spearmint, bee balm, catnip, hyssop

Herbal teas can provide the additional benefits of being healthy, nutritious, and healing. Although this article is intended to discuss beverage teas, consideration can be given to the healing qualities of the herbs used in your blend.

Following are the more traditional uses of some of the herbs you may use in your teas.

Peppermint is calming and aids digestion. Catnip is relaxing, aids digestion, and is known to promote a restful night's sleep. Lavender is calming and good for relieving stress headaches. Hibiscus, rose hips and lemongrass are all high in vitamin C. Chamomile is soothing, promotes sleep, and eases stomachaches. Ginger is warming, stops nausea, and relieves headaches. Rosemary eases anxiety, depression and tension headaches. Thyme is a decongestant and strong infection fighter.

Teas can be blended with just taste in mind, the healing properties to be gained, or a combination of the two.

Some ideas to get you started on creating your own custom blends:

• An iced tea made with equal parts of peppermint and lemon balm
• Lavender and lemongrass
• Hibiscus, rose hips, lemon verbena and orange peel
• Orange peel, cinnamon, clove, ginger and licorice
• Rosemary, sage and fennel seed

Be creative, give your tea blend a name. Package them in decorative tins with a muslin herb bag or strainer as gifts. Have fun and enjoy.

How to Blend Tea

Tea blends are basically mixtures of different kinds of teas. There are two main reasons why people blend tea. One is to produce unique flavors and aromas. The second is to maintain the same distinct flavor and aroma regardless of the changes brought about by the various seasons.

The first reason is easy to grasp, so let’s elaborate more on the second. To start with, know that there are good seasons and bad seasons. For example, this year's summer might provide the right conditions, i.e., right temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, soil acidity, etc. However, there's no guarantee that next year's summer will have the same temperature, pressure, and all those mentioned above.

Therefore, this year's summer might give you a good harvest with high quality taste of tea, while next year's summer might provide tea with substandard taste. This inconsistency in taste is bad for business. Consumers always want the products to be predictable. When they buy a particular kind of tea, they assume it would have the same distinct taste that they can easily identify.

To make the taste inconsistencies less noticeable, the art of blending teas was invented. When different types of teas are mixed together, the inconsistencies of one variety can be easily hidden by the prevailing taste of the entire blend.

Although it cannot be ascertained as to when the practice of tea blends actually started, experts believe that it dates as far back as the origins of tea consumption itself. That is, thousands of years ago in ancient China, when they were originally used as medicinal herbs. In fact, it very well might have been in mixing them to produce more potent medicines that the art of tea blending was discovered.

Among the common blend of tea are English, Irish, and Scottish breakfast; British Isles; and Russian Caravan. English breakfast, for example, is a combination of Assam, Ceylon, and Kenyan tea varieties.

Some of today's favorite blends no longer rely solely on mere flowers, herbs, spices, and smoke. There are those that make use of flavorants and perfumes like citrus oil, spice, rum, roasted grain, as well as flowers like jasmine, osmanthus, rose, chrysanthemum, and lotus.

Different Tea Blends

Tea comes in various blends, such as green, white, and black teas, as well as yerba mate and oolong tea - all of which are caffeinated. When tea is produced, each blend, however, doesn't come from a different plant. What plant tea comes from varies with location, with teas from China and Japan coming from one tea bush and teas from India and Sri Lanka coming from another. Tea blends, in addition to the antioxidants in the blend, are created from the process between picking and blending the leaves. Generally, combinations of allowing the tea leaves to wilt and if they are oxidized create various blends.

The plant that all caffeinated tea originates from is Camellia sinensis, an evergreen plant that grows in tropical and sub-tropical climates like those in eastern and south Asia, although tea plants are actually grown as north as Seattle and Cornwall, UK. In order to grow, tea plants need fifty inches of rain per year and acidic soil. In addition, tea grown at higher elevators tends to produce higher-quality blends, as the plant is allowed to grow slower. The tea that you see in a bag or in a loose blend, however, is only picked from the top two inches of a bush. The top two inches, referred to as a flush, grows again every seven to ten days. If allowed to keep on growing, the tea bush would eventually become a tree.

The species of Camellia sinensis varies with the location in which it is grown. In China, as well as in Japan and Taiwan, the species of tree is C. sinensis sinensis, a smaller leaf species. Assam tea, the blend grown in India and Sri Lanka, is a larger leaf tea that goes by the species C. sinensis assamica. Generally, teas in this region, including Ceylon blends and Indian black tea, but Darjeeling does not. In addition, a third species can be found in Cambodia, C. sinensis parvifolia, a tea bush with medium-sized leaves.

How are the separate tea blends created? Once the tea leaves are picked, they go through a process called enzymatic oxidation, which is heating the picked leaves to deactivate the enzymes in them. The leaves, before being oxidized, may be wilted or dried. For black tea, the leaves are heated and dried at the same time. White tea, on the other hand, is neither wilted nor oxidized, and an offshoot of white tea, yellow tea, has the same process, but the leaves are allowed to "yellow" or age slightly afterwards. Green tea is similar, as well, only the leaves are wilted. Oolong tea, generally a stronger flavored black tea, has leaves that are wilted, bruised, and partially oxidized.

When you purchase tea, the blend isn't always pure. For better flavors, tea from both types of plants, as well as different blends, are mixed together for a better-tasting blend.

Tips for Buying Herbs for Herbal Tea Blending

Tea herbs are used to infuse loose leaf tea, or brew up some herbal tea. Typically herbal teas are made for one of their medicinal attributes making them medicinal tea. There are many recipes for different herbal teas on the internet today. What is more difficult to find is a great supplier of herbs once you have begun to make your own blends.

Here are the top things we look for when buying herbs for herbal tea blending:
1. Is the herb Certified Organic?
2. Are different quantities of the herb available?
3. Do I get a discount for ordering in bulk?
4. What are your shipping rates?
5. How long for my tea herbs to arrive?

These are our top 5 questions and we have found a couple of suppliers that have been able to meet our criteria. However none of them turned out to be the local health food store! So if you are looking to make the best herbal tea you can our advice to you is to do your research. There are some pretty shotty suppliers of herbs out there. One product we had purchased was over 50% filler.... needless to say we asked for a refund.

Remember to store your herbs in a sealed container in a dark place. Sunlight and moisture will destroy the integrity and medicinal properties of your herbs.