Post
by Raid » Sun Jan 19, 2020 3:15 pm
Fancy tea.
I recently started buying loose-leaf teas from a shop in Lancaster called Atkinsons (who are known more for their own-roasted coffee beans; they supply an awful lot of independent coffee shops in the surrounding area and I think have expanded into Manchester now). I was bought a glass teapot with an infuser suitable for loose leaf six or seven years ago, and I originally bought tisanes (what people usually refer to as fruit tea, but they don't have any actual tea in them) which all sounded and smelled amazing in the shop, but generally ended up tasting like hot water that had been placed in the general proximity of the named ingredients.
Well the flavoured black teas are vastly better than what you get from the usual box of 600 tea bags that almost everyone in Britain owns. They have flavour, and because they're so much more expensive (I haven't worked out the cost yet, but I'd guess it's an order of magnitude more than mass market teabags), I find I'm drinking it more as a treat than as something to pass the time. I'm currently working my way through a bag of liquorice flavour, which smells like a box of Allsorts when dry, but it's much more subtle when brewed. The others I've tried have been the summer (very fruity, I'd say peach but it doesn't have any peach in it) and winter (cinnamon, clove, mulled spice basically) blends. They're sweet and comforting and not at all bitter like your usual mass-market brew.
And yes, I appreciate this probably makes me sound like a right ponce, but I actually took my teapot on a road trip over christmas and my very traditionally Northern father loved the stuff and didn't drink his usual PG Tips once while I was there.
