I’m not sure if I’ve written much about my tea obsession, but I love tea. Like really, really, really love it. Like I’m pretty sure tea is my blood type at this point, I love it that much, hehe. (And yes, I am aware that “tea” technically does not refer to the herbal varieties, but I will be referring to such as a “tea” all the same.)
One of my long-time dreams has been to make my own teas from scratch. Eventually I plan on growing many of my own ingredients to make said teas, but first I wanted to learn how to even put together good tea combinations to begin with.
So that’s what I was up to this past summer!
One of the tea brands I discovered through an incredibly amazing tea subscription box called Sips By, was “Tealyra”…and one visit to their website revealed LOADS of loose-leaf teas of varying individual ingredients! Like just chamomile flowers, or just peppermint leaves, or just tulsi, or just morninga, etc. Pretty much everything I was looking for in my future tea making endeavors was there. So last year I started collecting ingredients from Tealyra so that I could begin making my own teas.
I ended up not being able to do anything with my collection for a long time due to how sick I was from the unsafe living environment with our landlord at the time, but within a week of moving to our new place I was sleeping well enough to start making my dreams a reality and Cassia’s Tea Shop was born!
First things first, I needed a tea experiments logbook…a notebook dedicated solely to logging all of my tea endeavors. Well, for my birthday my beyond talented little sister Saron made me an INCREDIBLY beautiful, refillable resin notebook that was just perfect for that…
Next I needed ideas and inspiration. Well, it was insanely hot that first week in our new place, so COLD tea was a definite must. And particularly cold brew tea, since for me that’s the most low-maintenance…I can just throw it all together in the fridge at night, and ta-da! The next morning there is a beautifully refreshing drink waiting for me without any more effort. Yay!
And the last thing I needed was some kind of easy grading system for the teas I came up with, so that I could keep track of which ones were hits, which ones were misses, and which ones were potential hits.
This is what I came up with…
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ = Insanely chuggable; would cry if I could never drink it again; want everyone to try it
⭐⭐⭐⭐ = Generally delicious, delightful, or lovely
⭐⭐⭐ = Would drink again, but nothing to write home about or Not quite right, but definitely onto something and will try again to make it better
⭐⭐ = A for effort! …but no go
⭐ = Let’s pretend this never happened
So far I have 4 recipes that I’m a huge fan of; three 4-star recipes as well as a 5-star one. It’s a bit too cold these days to give cold brew teas to people, but once it gets hot again I can’t wait to start giving away tea gifts from my very own tea shop! Until then, however, it looks like it’s time to start working on creating some hot tea recipes…
Are there any other tea lovers out there?? Let’s be friends! 😘
Yours Truly,
~Cassia Dee
Yours Truly, Cassia Dee 