What is Candy Cane Popcorn Tea?

Candy Cane Popcorn tea is a holiday blend from Yawn. It contains a deeper black tea base, popped rice, apple pieces, white chamomile and safflower petals and natural flavours. Toasted and popped rice is commonly blended with Japanese green teas such as sencha, bancha or sometimes even gyokuro, to create a delicious tea with a toasty and nutty flavour called genmaicha or popcorn tea. Nowadays, both toasted rice and popped rice are used for modern style tea blends too.

While candy canes may traditionally contain a peppermint flavour, in this blend they represent sweetness and cheerfulness. Cany Cane Popcorn does not contain mint, but festive sweet flavour instead. It smells absolutely delicious – toasty, nutty, with deep caramel notes incorporated into a brisk black tea base. All the ingredients make it look very pretty too.

How to brew this tea?

To make a cup of Candy Cane Popcorn tea, use 1- 1 ½ teaspoon of tea leaves per cup of freshly boiled water and steep for 2-3 minutes.

When brewing black tea, it’s better to use more tea leaves and keep the steeping time at 2-3 minutes, rather than over-steeping it. Over-steeping may cause bitterness.

This tea steeps into a light and fragrant cuppa with light sweetness. Gentle toasty and caramel notes are layered on a stronger, brisk black tea, giving a light mouth-drying feeling followed by an intense and long, sweet nutty aftertaste. You can enjoy this tea with or without condiments. The best sweetener? Brown sugar, honey, or even a caramel sauce.

Who would like this tea? Candy Cane Popcorn tea is one of those blends you want to have when you need something to cheer you up. Flavour profile is great for combining with different condiments, including sweeteners and milk. It’s a wonderful choice if you enjoy sweeter but brisk black teas with caramel and toasty notes. Because it’s only lightly flavoured, it would also be great for those who prefer pure black teas but want something cheerful to enjoy during a holiday season.

Tea Recap

Water or Milk? Water or milk

Day or night? Day

Caffeine? Yes

Hot or Iced? Hot

Sweetened or Pure? Pure or sweetened.

What’s the price? from 5.95 GBP

Where to buy? Get Candy Cane Popcorn from Yawn website or Yawn Etsy shop.

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What is Santas Milk and Cookies tea?

Christmas tea blends are great for getting you in the mood for sharing and caring. As Yawn puts it, Santas Milk and Cookies are cookies and milk in one time saving for the big guy. And, for you too, as you won’t need to come up with different festive lattes recipes, when you already have a blend that you can prepare in different styles.

One thing’s for sure – Santa would love this tea and maybe he would even want to stick around for longer, maybe even for an entire year. While this is undoubtedly a festive blend, no one says you can’t drink Christmas teas every day.

Santa’s Milk and Cookies is a blend made from black tea and sumac berries and three types of petals – cornflower, safflower and plum. It looks absolutely gorgeous and smells incredibly delicious – like freshly baked buttery cookies. Ingredients in this tea are quite interesting. Sumac berries are mostly used for cooking, rather than blending tea. Plum petals are also not as common as cornflower and safflower petals, and they certainly add beauty to this tea.

How to brew this tea?

To make a cup of Santas Milk and Cookies, steep 1 teaspoon of tea per cup of boiling water for 3 minutes. This is a light, but strong tea, so don’t over-brew it. It has a buttery cookie scent and a fresh, deep, slightly sweet flavour with light buttery notes. This tea is perfect for adding milk and sugar. Try it with a teaspoon of condensed milk and some brown sugar or make a proper tea latte. When making latte, use 2 teaspoons of tea leaves and keep the steeping time for 5 minutes.

Santas Milk and Cookies is a brilliant choice for daily drinking, when you don’t want intensely flavoured teas or spiced blends, but would still like a festive cuppa. It’s great for afternoon tea parties too, especially if you intend to serve tea with a splash of milk. It’s available as loose tea and in tea bags.

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What is Coffee Lover tea?

Coffee Lover is a quite unique blend, not only because it contains tea and coffee. This blend contains two types of tea – black tea and pu’erh tea, two types of coffee – green coffee beans and ground coffee – cocoa beans and chamomile petals. Leaves are long and twisted, blended with whole green coffee beans. These ingredients are sweet, strong, calming, bitter and earthy, almost all of which can be attributed to a good cup of coffee.

What’s super interesting about this tea it contains green coffee, rather than roasted coffee. Green coffee beans are nothing more than regular coffee beans that haven’t been roasted yet. Green coffee is not uncommon at all, as all coffee starts from “green” coffee, but it’s rarely sold. Which makes it rare. Green coffee contains much more chlorogenic acid than roasted coffee, a polyphenol responsible for providing antioxidant properties in coffee (1).

Another interesting ingredient in a Coffee Lover tea blend are chamomile petals. Chamomile tea may provide soothing and calming benefits, and it’s often a tea of choice for tea drinkers that want to avoid caffeine. With these interesting ingredients, the Coffee Lover tea blend smells delicious. This tea smells like sweet, dusted chocolate pralines with a creamy coffee filling. Or imagine a rich, dark hot chocolate blended with roasted coffee and malty, earthy black tea. It’s one of those teas that will fill the air with scent and make you want to brew it immediately.

How to brew this tea?

Coffee Lover tea is a black and pu’erh tea blend, which means it’s OK to brew it with nearly boiling water. Bring water to a boil and let it cool down for a minute. Then steep 1 or 2 teaspoons of tea leaves per cup of water for 3-4 minutes. 2 teaspoons will give a stronger flavour and more caffeine. When brewed, this tea has exactly the same scent as dry leaves. It brews into an incredibly light tea with coffee and chocolate notes blended into a well-balanced flavour and a strong and long aftertaste. Although this is a pu’erh tea and a black tea, none of them are dominating this blend.

Coffee Lover tea is perfect for afternoon tea breaks when you want to awake all your senses. It’s not a typical black tea or a typical pu’erh tea. It’s not a cup of coffee either. If you love dark chocolate cocoa dusted coffee pralines, this tea is a tea for you. It’s incredibly light too, with no bitterness, only a perfectly balanced flavour. It doesn’t need any condiments, but you can add a splash of milk and a sweetener too.

Sources:

(1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8705492/

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What is Watermelon Oolong?

Watermelon Oolong is a very unusual, tropical, pretty blend. It’s made with greener semi-ball shaped oolong tea base, blended with papaya pieces and plum and safflower petals. It smells and looks tropical. There are no watermelons in this tea, but we didn’t expect that either. Watermelons are not a type of fruit you would typically eat candied or dried, so the next best thing to add a watermelon flavour to tea is watermelon flavouring.

This tea screams summer. Light watermelon, deep and sweet papaya, and a layer of deep freshness. It’s intense. It’s pretty. And it smells delicious. If you are used to light oolongs, this is not one of them. If you are used to dark flavoured oolongs. This is not one of them either.

How to brew Watermelon Oolong tea?

Lighter green semi-ball shaped oolongs are always better brewed traditionally. That means using more tea leaves, and re-steeping multiple times. Which is exactly what we did. Traditional brewing using a gaiwan is not really a method you would use for flavoured teas, but there’s something about this tea that says it’s worth a try.

Using re-steeping technique, the same leaves can be used 3-5 times, depending on how much tea you use and how long you steep them for. Start with 30-40 seconds for the first steep. Use at least 3-4 grams of tea per 150 ml of water.

We tried it the western way too, using 2 grams per 200 ml of water and steeped for 3 minutes. This tea won’t get bitter either way, which is a great plus.

Which way was better?

Watermelon oolong may have a strong scent, but the flavour is light regardless of the brewing method. Light in a very good way. Watermelon note is more intense if you steep it the western way. Even when you use more tea leaves and eastern brewing technique, the second, third and fourth infusion will start revealing the oolong base with fresher, greener notes. Surprisingly, there’s a watermelon note even in the fifth infusion. The first infusion with both methods is juicy, smooth and light, with quite strong watermelon aftertaste.

If you love flavoured tropical teas but don’t like the strength and possible astringency of a typical black and green tea tropical blend, this tea is for you. It’s flavourful, light and juicy and would be a great daily summer tea. It would be delicious iced, too. When making an iced tea, use at least 2 teaspoons of tea per cup of water to get a more intense flavour. Since this is an oolong tea, it contains caffeine.

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