Ingredients for making Brownie Boba

Black tea leaves

The best black teas for this bubble tea are teas with natural chocolaty flavour, such as Chinese Dian Hong or Indian Assam tea with less maltiness and more chocolaty notes. To bring out a slightly toasty note, dry roast them before steeping for a couple of seconds using a clean preheated saucepan.

Milky ingredients

For this recipe, you’ll need regular whole milk and condensed milk. Whole milk is used to make the bottom layer. You can replace it with semi-skimmed milk. If you want to replace sweet, condensed milk, you can use either evaporated milk (less sweetness) or single/double cream.

Cocoa powder

Since cocoa is a main flavour in this boba tea, choose only high-quality cocoa powder. But instead of adding cocoa directly to tea, a much better way is to make chocolate syrup instead. This syrup is much lighter than the classic syrup. It contains more milk and a bit of butter.

Boba pearls

Boba pearls are what makes boba tea a boba tea. They are mad from tapioca starch and sugar and readily available. The most classical flavour is black sugar flavour that goes well with almost any milky boba tea. Alternatively, you can make your own boba pearls at home.

Sugar

You’ll need sugar for both chocolate syrup and for making brown sugar syrup. The best one? Brown sugar! Brown sugar has a unique caramel touch, and it’s perfect for making bubble teas. Both light brown or dark brown sugar will work. However, if you want to get as close to the traditional flavour, use dark muscovado sugar or soft dark sugar.

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Homemade Brownie Chocolate Boba

Delicious boba from a scratch

Course Drinks

Keyword Black Tea, Boba Tea, Chocolate

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 1

Equipment

• small saucepan (for making sugar syrup, cooking boba pearls and making chocolate syrup)
• Flat saucepan
• Kettle
• Serving glass

Ingredients

For the bottom chocolate layer:

• 80 ml milk
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 3 teaspoon brown sugar
• 4 teaspoons cocoa powder

For milk tea:

• 220 ml water
• 1 heaped teaspoon roasted Dian Hong tea
• 1 tablespoon condensed milk
• 30 grams black sugar boba pearls
• Ice

For sugar syrup

• 4 tablespoon brown sugar
• 50 ml water

Instructions

• Combine 4 heaped tablespoons of brown sugar and 50 ml of water in a small saucepan. Bring it to a boil over medium heat and stir gently until sugar dissolves. Reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for3-4 minutes.
• Cook boba pearls per instruction on the packaging and coat them in sugar syrup. You don’t need to use all syrup, just enough to cover all pearls.
• Add milk, sugar and sifted cocoa powder into a small saucepan. Simmer over low heat until it thickens. While simmering, stir using a spoon or a whisk until smooth. Turn off the heat, add butter and stir.
• Preheat a flat saucepan, add tea leaves and dry roast them for 5-10 seconds on medium heat until fragrant.
• Bring water to a boil and steep 1 heaped teaspoon of dry roasted tea leaves in 220 ml of water for about 3 minutes.
• Pour chocolate syrup into a serving glass.
• Add syrup coated boba pearls.
• Add ice cubes.
• Gently pour tea over ice cubes.
• Add 1-2 tablespoons of condensed milk and serve.

The post Brownie Chocolate Boba appeared first on All That Tea.

Ingredients for making Milky Chai Slushie

Spices

Basic ingredient to any good masala chai is a fragrant spice mix. While there are many delicious pre-made chai blends, nothing is better than making your own mix from a scratch.

This recipe is made with cloves, cardamom, mace blade and cinnamon. All of them, except mace blade, are quite common in making masala tea. Mace blades are outer layers of nutmeg and they are super fragrant. Always use fresh spices and crush them using pestle and mortar.

Milk

Whenever you are making milky tea, you want to use full fat or even full cream milk that will be able to hold all those flavours together and still offer a rich and full texture. Using whole milk is a must.

Tea

Proper chai requires a proper black tea. The most common tea to use is strong broken Assam tea or CTC Asaam tea. CTC and broken leaves will infuse into a much bolder and stronger tea. Tea doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact, chai is rarely made with super high-quality tea. However, it has to be fragrant. Use tea leaves that are fresh because it will have a tremendous impact on the flavour.

Ice

You’ll need lots of ice. Although there are many ways of making slushies at home, this is by far the easiest one. It may not be a classic recipe as it doesn’t require any special steps or freezing. However, most importantly, it has a slushie texture.

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Homemade Masala Chai Milky Slushie

Super aromatic and easy to make summer recipe

Course Drinks

Keyword Black Tea, Chai, Sluhie, Spiced Tea

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Servings 1

Equipment

• Blender
• saucepan
• Serving glass

Ingredients

• 3 cloves
• 2 cardamom pods
• Small piece, about 1 cm mace blade
• 2 cm cinnamon stick
• 150 ml milk
• 50 ml water
• 1 heaped teaspoon CTC Assam tea
• Cup of ice
• 3-4 teaspoons brown sugar once you blend it,the sweetness will reduce

Instructions

• Gather all spices and crush them using a pestle and mortar.
• Add spices into a small, preheated saucepan and heat them over low heat until fragrant. This will take less than a minute.
• Add water and tea leaves, increase the heat to medium and bring it to a boil.
• Add milk and bring it to a boil again, then reduce to low, add sugar and simmer for 5 minutes.
• Strain the tea into a cup. Let it cool for 5-10 minutes.
• Add ice, tea and ice into a blender and blend for a minute or until fully blended.
• Pour into a serving glass and serve immediately.

The post Masala Chai Milky Slushie appeared first on All That Tea.

What’s in Jasmine Green Tea?

BOH, a tea company with a 100-year history, is the biggest Malaysian tea producer. If you visit Malaysia, there’s a high chance you’ll run into BOH’s teas. You can get them from supermarkets, and you’ll find them in hotels too. This Jasmine green tea comes from Cameron Highlands, where most of Malaysian tea is growing. It’s flavoured with a natural jasmine flavour, and it smells absolutely delicious.

What’s also interesting is that Malaysia is not only producing small quantities of tea, but most of its tea is black.

Ever heard of Teh Tarik? It’s a type of Malaysian milk tea, and it’s easy to make at home too!

Boh Jasmine green tea is very far from a typical from a regular supermarket jasmine teas. It’s playful, vibrant, fresh, with a beautiful and intense jasmine scent. It almost feels as if you are smelling fresh flowers, rather than tea. The whole blend feels light and airy.

This tea is available only in classic tea bags.

How to brew this tea?   

To make the best cup of green tea, always bring fresh water to a boil and let it cool down to 80 degrees Celsius. Steep one tea bag for 2-3 minutes in a cup of water. Temperature is quite important for this tea, as it has a slight astringency if over brewed. However, this is quite common with traditional tea bags, especially with green tea.

Once brewed, both scent and flavour are exactly the same as the scent of dry leaves. This tea feels quite rich, with a light natural sweetness. Although this tea can easily be described as a full-bodied green tea, it feels light. While the jasmine scent and flavour are very pronounced, they are not overpowering. Jasmine is present as an aftertaste too.

Because of a beautiful jasmine scent, this tea is a wonderful choice for a relaxing me-time. Who would like this tea? If you love the scent of jasmine flowers and love full-bodied green teas, you’ll love this tea too. Since it’s quite deep and flavourful, this would be a great tea for making a proper sweetened iced tea too. However, if you are prefer classic jasmine teas, you may find the scent too intense.

Tea Recap

Water or milk? Water

Day or night? Day

Hot or iced? Hot or cold

Sweetened or pure? Pure or sweetened.

Caffeine? Yes

What’s the price? $4.40

Where to buy? Get it from BOH website.

The post BOH – Jasmine Green – Malaysian Jasmine Tea appeared first on All That Tea.

What is Lemon Curd Tea?

First, let’s talk about lemon curd. Lemon curd is a dessert spread made with lemons, butter, sugar and egg. It’s smooth and zesty and can be used for baking or enjoyed simply spread over bread. Lemon curd is so tasty that it really deserves a tea of its own. With the Lemon Curd Tea, Fortnum & Mason have made that a reality.

Lemon Curd Tea is made with green tea, white hibiscus, liquorice root, lemon peel and lemon curd flavouring. It comes in individually wrapped pyramid tea bags with loose tea. The packaging is pretty and cheerful and has a feel of a proper desert blend. In short, super pretty and exciting.  

This tea has only a few ingredients, and all of them contribute to the flavour. Perhaps, the most interesting one is white hibiscus, not as common in tea as its red counterpart. Hibiscus is an amazing ingredient that gives a perfect amount of tartness and is not as sour as lemon. A big difference between red and white hibiscus is that the white one won’t colour the tea. There’s also liquorice, a natural sweetener that is perfect for balancing this blend.

How to make this tea?

Lemon Curd is a loose tea in pyramid tea bags. That means it’s easier to brew than loose tea but offers a better flavour than a classic tea bag. Bring fresh water to a boil and let it cool down to 80 degrees Celsius. Steep one tea bag in 150-200 of water for 3 minutes. 

It brews into a light-coloured tea with a delicate, but deep and rich scent of lemon. There’s absolutely no astringency and green tea serves as a perfect base for this tea. It’s not grassy, it’s not smoky, it’s just smooth and rich to carry all the flavours and combine them into a true dessert tea.

Lemon Curd tea has a surprisingly delicate and refreshing flavour with gentle sweetness, zesty and creamy mouthfeel and a gentle lingering tartness of white hibiscus. It’s not overpowering, and yet it has a very rich flavour with incredible lightness.

This tea doesn’t need any condiments, but both sugar and honey would be good for this tea.

Lemon Curd green tea would be perfect for tea drinkers that like the flavour of lemon and fruity teas. Although the base for this blend is a green tea, it’s very far from a typical pure green tea flavour. It’s delicate and light and would be great for tea drinkers that rarely drink green tea, because they don’t enjoy grassy or smoky flavours or don’t like the bitterness.

At £6.95, this tea has a lot of expectations to fulfil, and it fulfils all of them. It’s a blend that’s just perfect for special me-times, when you want to feel happy, relaxed and pampered. It’s delicious, unique, and most importantly, it really tastes like lemon curd.

Tea Recap

Water or milk? Water

Day or night? Day

Hot or iced? Hot or cold

Sweetened or pure? Pure or sweetened.

Caffeine? Yes

What’s the price? £6.95

Where to buy? Get it from the Fortnum & Mason website.

The post Lemon Curd Tea – Fortnum & Mason appeared first on All That Tea.

How to make peach chai?

The perfect season for making chai tea is usually autumn or winter. But the perfect season for making peach chai is from late spring to late summer – during the peach season. The deliciousness of this drink will depend on the type of peaches you use – they have to be fresh, juicy, and ripe.

To make peach chai, start with making a peach syrup first. This will take most of your time, as you’ll need to boil them in sugar and water. You can store the syrup in the fridge and even use it for making other peach-based drinks.

Ingredients

Fresh ripe peaches

Always use fresh ripe peaches, preferably organic to use the skin too. Unripe peaches will not have much of the typical peach flavour. They also won’t release too much colour. If you only plan to use peach syrup for making this drink, you can use 1 large peach only. Store any leftover syrup in an airtight glass container in the fridge.

Spices

This recipe is made with typical masala chai spices – cloves, cardamom and cinnamon. You can replace them with other spices. However, don’t add too much, as spices should only add an aromatic touch, rather than overpower the drink. Other great spices are ginger, mace blades and fennel seeds.

Sweeteners

Use only peach syrup as a sweetener. Do not add sugar when making the tea or it may be too sweet. If you like your tea to be super sweet, add one more teaspoon of peach syrup instead.

Darjeeling tea

Assam black tea is usually used for making chai. However, for this peach chai recipe, Darjeeling is a perfect choice. Second flush Darjeeling tea is fruity, rich, full-bodied and muscatel and goes really well with spices and peaches. Use only the tea that you enjoy drinking. Good quality Darjeeling tea with full and rich flavour is often difficult to find and many may have a very light or flat flavour. If your Darjeeling tea doesn’t have ripe fruit and muscatel notes, use Assam tea with a well-balanced maltiness instead.

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Homemade Peach Chai

Spiced Chai with Homemade Peach Syrup

Course Drinks

Keyword Black Tea, Chai, Peach Tea

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 1

Equipment

• Pestle and mortar
• saucepan

Ingredients

For Peach Syrup

• 100 ml water
• 1 whole larger peach ripe

For Peach Chai

• 5 tablespoons sugar 
• 1 cardamom pods
• 2 cloves
• 1 cm cinnamon
• 1 heaped teaspoon Darjeeling tea
• 3-4 teaspoons peach syrup
• 150 ml milk
• 150 ml water

Instructions

• Wash and slice one ripe peach. You don't need to peel off the skin.
• Add it into a small saucepan together with 100 ml of water.
• Simmer for 20-30 minutes, until peaches are very soft and mushy.
• Strain the liquid into a clean saucepan and add sugar.
• Bring it to a boil, then reduce and simmer for a few more minutes.
• Store in a clean, airtight container.
• Crush spices and add them to a saucepan.
• Dry roast them until fragrant, then add water and bring it to a boil.
• Reduce to medium, add tea leaves and let it simmer for 2-3 minutes.
• Add milk, bring it to a boil, then reduce and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
• Strain into a serving cup, add peach syrup and stir.  

More Chai Recipes

The post Homemade Peach Chai Recipe appeared first on All That Tea.

What’s in Banana Shake tea?

Banana Shake is an herbal tea blend from Twist Teas, a tea company that’s all about flavours, quality and personality. Twist Teas has a whole range of intriguing blends (see Beetroot Acai Matcha and Choffee Mint), and, also important, an exceptional customer support. Twist Teas blends are available as loose tea and in pyramid corn silk bags, each containing 2.5 grams of tea. Tea bags are big enough to allow tea to fully expand, so you can enjoy the same flavour as when brewing loose tea.  

Banana Shake, an award-winning herbal blend, contains only a few natural ingredients – red rooibos tea, freeze-dried banana, sunflower petals and natural flavouring. It has a deep intense banana scent with deep and sweet notes of red rooibos tea. It smells very inviting. This is undoubtedly a red rooibos blend but crafted in a way to respect both key ingredients, with a personality of a dessert tea.

How to make this tea?

What’s great about rooibos (and most rooibos blends) is that it’s very easy to brew. It’s one of the most forgiving teas out there. Even if you are new to tea brewing, with rooibos you’ll always get the best flavour no matter how you brew it. Bring fresh water to a boil and steep 1 tea bag in a cup of water for 5-10 minutes. Even if you steep it longer, it won’t become bitter.

Banana nots are light, but present in the scent, flavour and ever as an aftertaste. While this is predominantly a red rooibos tea, it’s definitely a banana tea, too. It feels very natural, very pleasant and easy to drink. Although you can drink it with no condiments, to get that proper banana shake experience, prepare it either as a latte, or add 10-20 ml of single cream or full cream milk.

Milk will mellow out the rooibos notes and bring out the milky banana shake flavour. This tea is light, and it doesn’t need any sweeteners as it’s naturally slightly sweet. However, if you do need a sweetener, light honey or regular white sugar are a good choice.

Banana Shake is great tea for afternoon me-time and soothing evening caffeine-free lattes. You’ll like it if you love red rooibos blends, even if you don’t like pure red rooibos tea. You’ll also enjoy it if you love bananas. It’s a light, but very tasty blend, and suitable for tea lovers that don’t like heavily flavoured teas.

Tea Recap

Water or milk? Water or milk

Day or night? Day or night

Hot or iced? Hot or cold

Sweetened or pure? Pure or sweetened.

Caffeine? No

What’s the price? From £5.00 (different options available)

Where to buy? Get it from Twist Teas website.

The post Banana Shake – Banana Flavoured Herbal Tea appeared first on All That Tea.

What is chai mocha?

Chai mocha is a spiced tea with milk and chocolate syrup. Just like a regular tea mocha, chai mocha tastes super indulgent too. The usual mocha drinks are made with steamed milk, but this recipe is following the classic chai making procedure – simmering all ingredients in water and milk. Why should you bother with the longer process and simmer the ingredients rather than simply brewing a cup of spiced tea and adding steamed milk? The answer is quite simple. Simmering will release much more flavour than brewing. If you want to learn more, check this article here.

Ingredients

Black tea leaves

Proper black tea leaves are a base of any classic chai, spiced or not. The most common tea used for making chai is Assam tea, however, some other types may work well too. Your tea doesn’t need to be of the highest quality. In fact, cheaper types such as CTC are even better. However, it’s absolutely essential it is fresh and not stale, and has lots of flavour.

Spices

Depending on your preferences, you can use more or less spices. For a lightly spiced tea, use the amount of spices specified in the recipe. If you want a more aromatic drink, you can double the amount of spices, but do it only with one of them – not all.

Milk

Use whole milk rather than skimmed or semi-skimmed milk. A good chai should have a good texture and it shouldn’t be watery. You can also replace most of the water with milk.

Chocolate syrup and sweeteners

You can use either a homemade chocolate syrup or a pre-made chocolate syrup. Either will be fine. Chocolate syrups are usually quite sweet, so don’t add too much sugar into tea. ½ teaspoon will be enough to balance out any bitterness from black tea leaves.

Find the recipe for chocolate syrup here.

Whipping cream

Whipping cream will add that final delicious touch to chai mocha. Mocha drinks are usually served with whipped cream although this is optional. In this recipe, whipping cream is only lightly whipped, so it has a consistency of a thicker liquid cream, stays on the top and is easily mixed into a drink. Add ½ teaspoon of black sugar if the cream is unsweetened.

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Homemade Chai Mocha

Delicious spiced chai with chocolate syrup

Course Drinks

Keyword Black Tea, Chai, Chocolate

Prep Time 4 minutes minutes

Cook Time 6 minutes minutes

Servings 1

Equipment

• saucepan
• Pestle and mortar
• Serving glass
• strainer

Ingredients

• 1 ½ teaspoon of Assam black tea
• ½ teaspoon of light brown sugar
• 160 ml of whole milk
• 160 ml of water
• 1 cardamom
• 2 cloves
• 1 cm Ceylon cinnamon stick
• 3-4 teaspoons of chocolate syrup
• 50 ml whipping cream
• ½ teaspoon of light brown sugar for shipping cream if unsweetened

Instructions

• Add spices into a pestle and mortar and crush them.
• Add spices into a small saucepan, turn the heat to high and dry roast them until fragrant.
• Add water and bring it to a boil.
• Reduce to medium heat and add tea leaves. Simmer for 2 minutes.
• Add milk and sugar and bring it to a boil again, then reduce and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
• Pour the tea into a serving glass.
• Add chocolate syrup.
• Whip the whipping cream until creamy but not stiff (soft peaks).
• Top up chai mocha with whipped cream.  

More Chai Recipes

The post Chai Mocha – Indulgent Spiced Tea with Chocolate Syrup appeared first on All That Tea.

What’s in The Butler?

Remember The Pinup, a classic vanilla black tea with an alluring vanilla scent and flavour? It wasn’t only the quality black tea and vanilla pieces that made it so good. Calendula petals and jasmine flowers made it pretty, too. The Butler is following the same recipe – great Ceylon black tea leaves flavoured with natural bergamot flavour and a few carefully chosen ingredients – sunflower petals and lime leaves.  

It’s available in as loose tea in pyramid tea bags and pouches. Tea bags contain a very generous quantity of loose tea and enough space for tea leaves to expand. Although there’s a lot of difference between tea bags and loose tea, in this case, the only difference between loose tea and tea bags is the brewing method. Quality is the same for both.

This tea has a very intense bergamot scent and a deep black tea base. It’s sharp and aromatic with a touch of sweetness. Freshness comes from Ceylon black tea, which is typically brisker and brighter than many other black teas.

What does it taste like?

To make a cup of this tea, bring fresh water to a boil and steep 1 tea bag or 1 teaspoon of tea leaves in a cup of water for 3-4 minutes.

Even though the scent is very intense, it’s a very mellow tea. Bergamot is not overpowering, not dominant. It perfectly balances the black tea base and offers an unmistakable earl grey flavour. However, it may be good to pay attention to the brewing time, as over brewing may reveal some astringency.

Because of the fresher Sri Lankan black tea as the base, this tea is great for adding either milk or lemon. A splash of milk will mellow down any potential astringency and add a creamy touch, with an aromatic bergamot bottom note and a hint of lime leaves. This also makes it an excellent breakfast or afternoon tea. Honey is the best sweetener for this tea, especially if you add lemon. With milk, you could even avoid sweeteners as the milk itself will add enough natural sweetness. However, you don’t need to add any condiments, as this tea doesn’t really need any.

This earl grey would be an amazing iced milk tea, hot earl grey lattes including London Fog, and it would be equally great for making iced teas with lemon. It’s a perfect choice for making earl grey based drinks.

It has just the right balance of bergamot and black tea. If you love traditional earl grey, you’ll like this tea too.

Tea Recap

Water or milk? Water or milk

Day or night? Day

Hot or iced? Hot or cold

Sweetened or pure? Pure or sweetened

Caffeine? Yes

What’s the price? From £3.49 (different options available)

Where to buy? Get it from Tea and the Gang website or Amazon

The post The Butler – Earl Grey from Tea and the Gang appeared first on All That Tea.

Ingredients

To make any milk tea at home, you’ll need only a few basic ingredients – tea leaves (or tea bags), syrup or honey, milk, ice and water. To make a super delicious milk tea dessert, you’ll need one more – Angel Delight.

This milk tea is not a typical boba tea – it’s prepared by simmering, rather than steeping. It does contain boba pearls, but you can easily exclude it and still have a delicious milk tea.

Black tea

Black tea is one of the best choices for making any classic milk tea. Many pure black tea types go well with milk and give a rich deep flavour. The best teas to use for this drink are:

• Strawberry flavoured black teas
• Pure Assam tea
• CTC teas
• Kenyan black teas
• Strong breakfast blends, including English, Irish and Scottish breakfast teas

Preferably, you want to use tea that has smaller broken leaves that will give a stronger and deeper infusion. Alternatively, use tea bags.

Milk

Full fat (whole) milk is always the best option for making milk teas. Semi-skimmed is fine too but try to avoid the skimmed one. Some milk alternatives such as cashew or barista style oat milk are great too. You can make this tea more or less milky, depending on your preference.

Angel Delight

Angel Delight is a true classic among instant desserts that seem to never go out of fashion. It will give both flavour and incredibly rich texture to this milk tea, transforming it into a proper dessert. This recipe is made with strawberry flavoured Angel Delight, but you can use Butterscotch, Banana, Chocolate or even Chocolate Mint flavours too. If you are using flavours other than strawberry, use pure black tea leaves. Three teaspoons of Angel Delight will give the right amount of flavour while not overpowering black tea.  

Sugar syrup

You’ll need sugar syrup to add sweetness and to coat boba pearls. To make a simple sugar syrup, use 1:1 ratio of water to sugar. Use regular white granulated sugar for a neutral flavour or replace it with light brown or dark brown sugar. Both of them will add either lighter or stronger caramel note. Brown sugar syrup is great for Butterscotch, Banana and Chocolate flavours, and regular sugar syrup may be better for Strawberry and Chocolate Mint. If you don’t have or don’t want to use simple syrup, you can replace it with light floral honey.

Learn how to make chai demerara simple syrup here.

Black sugar tapioca pearls

No boba is ever complete without a chewy topping. Black sugar tapioca pearls as great in this milk tea, with any of the flavours. Cook them as per instructions on the packaging and coat in sugar syrup.

If you want to make your own tapioca pearls at home, check out this recipe here.

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Angel Delight Milk Tea

Delicious boba tea dessert

Course Drinks

Keyword Black Tea, Boba Tea, Milk Tea

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Servings 1

Equipment

• saucepan
• Electric hand whisk

Ingredients

• 100 ml water
• 100 ml milk
• 3 heaped teaspoons Angel Delight
• 1-2 teaspoons simple syrup or honey
• 30 grams black sugar tapioca pearls
• 1 ½-2 teaspoons black tea

Instructions

• Cook boba pearls following instructions on the packaging and coat them in 1-2 teaspoons of simple syrup.
• Add water to a saucepan and bring it to a boil.
• Add tea and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
• Add milk and simmer for 5 minutes.
• Strain into a glass, add Angel delight and whisk with a hand frother.
• Add boba pearls.
• Add ice and serve immediately.

The post Angel Delight Milk Tea Recipe appeared first on All That Tea.

What’s in Basilur Raspberry Infusion?

Fruit teas are infusions made with dried fruit pieces and often some other herbal ingredients. They don’t contain any Camellia sinensis tea leaves, so they are technically not teas, but infusions. Some fruit teas are made only with fruit pieces, and many contain other herbal ingredients, too.

Basilur Raspberry Infusion contains hibiscus flower, orange peel, apple, stevia leaves, natural raspberry flavour and citric flavour. It comes in a classic, individually wrapped tea bags.

It smells sweet and deep, with a light, dusty note. Since hibiscus is the key ingredient, it’s also a dominant scent. Most fruity blends are made from one main ingredient, usually hibiscus or apple, secondary ingredients and flavourings. Although not a fruit, hibiscus is great for adding a deep crimson colour and unique deep and tart flavour. Another interesting ingredient in this tea is stevia, a natural sweetener with a distinctive sweet flavour and no calories. The first thought? This tea would be great for making iced or cold-brew tea.

What does it taste like?

To make a cup of fruit tea, use freshly boiled water and steep it for 5-10 minutes. Fruit teas will rarely get bitter, unless they contain lots of orange peel. This is mostly true for loose blends, rather than classic tea bags.

Once brewed, hibiscus gives it a pretty deep crimson colour. This tea smells like a rich hibiscus tea, with key notes of regular fruity teas that contain tart hibiscus. However, raspberry comes as an under flavour and really comes into a focus as an aftertaste. Raspberry scent is also pronounced, accompanied by an intense sweet note.

Basilur’s Raspberry infusion is a flavourful, strong and deep tea. It’s quite sweet but not sugary sweet. You can definitely feel that the sweetness is coming from an herbal ingredient rather than refined sugar. It has a light zesty note from hibiscus, and a light raspberry aftertaste. Raspberry is not an actual ingredient in this tea (which is often a case with raspberry flavoured teas, and the flavour is added with natural raspberry flavouring). This tea doesn’t need any sweeteners as it already contains stevia leaves. However, if you prefer very sweet teas, both honey and white sugar are a good choice.

Because of its strong flavour, this tea is a good choice for making iced teas. Steep it together with some fresh raspberries to give it a real raspberry punch.

Who would like this tea? If you enjoy strong and bold fruit teas with hibiscus, you’ll enjoy this tea too. If you are looking for a strong raspberry tea, this may not be the right infusion for you. That said, many raspberry teas are rather light in raspberry flavour, and mostly contain other ingredients including natural flavourings too.

Interestingly, the flavour is deep, and complex, even though it’s made with tiny particles. Because of its rich flavour, this tea is a great alternative to regular supermarket fruit teas.

Tea Recap

Water or milk? Water

Day or night? Day or night

Hot or iced? Hot or cold

Sweetened or pure? Pure as it already contains a calorie-free sweetener.

Caffeine? No

What’s the price? S$8.15

Where to buy? Get it from Basilur website

The post Basilur Raspberry Infusion appeared first on All That Tea.