Friday, February 22, 2013

The Commune - Our Humongous Tea Collection


Just recently Rachel, of Brightest Star Of All, and I got to talking about our "tea collections". Yesterday she wrote a blog post about her teas and now here is the tea cabinet in my commune. In my commune, we drink a LOT of tea! So we have a lot of tea! It is rather a ridiculous amount of tea, is it not? Wonder how long it takes for three people to drink this much tea? 
About one third of the tea in this cabinet is black, one third is green and one third is red, white, herbal or just plain weird. As you must realize I can´t write about all the tea in this cabinet so I´ve selected a few teas that I have  either bought myself or that I like very much. We all mostly buy loose tea from various tea shops so I generally don´t know what brand they are, if they even have a brand...



Hare is a selection of black tea. The on on the left is called Fina Augustina and is a creamy coconut and fruit blend. The bottom one is a blend with chocolate and piri piri. I really like this one because I love really spicy tea! The last of these three is a wonderfully weird blend with flower petals and pieces of salmiak. That´s a kind of tea that you can probably only find in the salmiak obsessed Finland!


Here is a selection of green teas. The top one is a Japanese rice tea. Bottom left is a minty one and bottom right a green chai. I´m not particularily fond of green tea anymore, but the rice tea is tasty, the green chai is wonderfully spicy and the minty one is very refreshing!


These teas are a bit stranger. The left one is a green and black blend with ginger and other spices. The top one is a herbal spice blend with fennel, anise, cumin and nettles and the bottom one is a white tea with, believe it or not, dried spirulina algae and exotic fruits.


Here are some more rather strange ones. At the top is a classic yogi blend of spices like clove, cinnamon, cardamom and ginger. The right one is a herbal blend with rose hips, chamomille, lemon grass, orange peel and so on... Now, the bottom one is the really strange one! It is lapacho, a south american bark tea that is supposedly good for you... but it doesn´t taste very nice, and it certainly looks weird!


And finally some tea bags from my favorite brands. Pukka and Yogi Tea are brands that make herbal spice blends. They are ridiculously expensive, but also so delicious!! 
Pukka Three Ginger is a blend of ginger, galangal and tumeric. Pukka Green Chai has a green tea base with ginger, cardamom, star anise, cinnamon and licorice root. Pukka After Dinner contains fennel, anise, chicory and cardamom. 
Other Pukka favorites are: Revitalise and Licorice & Cinnamon.
Yogi Tea Classic is a powerful cinnamon blend with cardamom, ginger and clove. Yogi Tea Throat Comfort is a licorice root tea with lots of other spices.
Other Yogi Tea favorites are: Licorice Egyptian Spice, Sweet Chai and Sweet Chili Mexican Spice.

And last but not least my poor little pack of English Toffee Dessert Tea from Celestial Seasonings that is, o horror of horrors, discontinued *black cloud of depression*! Three bags left, after that I´ll miss it forever... Among the discontinued teas I also found Canadian Vanilla Maple and Vanilla Hazelnut Dessert Tea. :¨( All three of my Celestial Seasonings favorites discontinued. *Sigh* I´m out of luck! I´d love to try Honey Vanilla Chai or Nutcracker Sweet though, but I dont think they can replace the delicious descontinued teas... 

So there is my tea collection! What kinds of tea do you like? What is you favorite tea? Do you prefer loose tea or tea bags? Or are you one of Those That Drink Coffee (Heathens!)?

11 comments:

  1. Wow, very impressive! I thought that I have a big collection of tea but it would be just half of yours.

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    1. Well to be honest, I do live in a commune with two other people and this is our shared stash so it´s not just mine... About a third of them are teas that I have bought, but I do have just as many at my parents house! ;D

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  2. Wowee! What a collection! This makes my heart sing! You and your housemates are awesome!!

    I am SO sorry your beloved English Toffee is discontinued! That just sucks! I tried to find it on Amazon for you, but no luck :( Maybe I will stumble upon another dessert tea for you. I will definitely be sending you some of my Nutcracker Sweet! You might like it!

    I'm going to go take care of my hamsters, then I'll link this post to my tea collection <3

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    1. Yes, we do love our tea (though Some Of Us drink coffee too... o_O)!

      My favorite teas can generally be split into two categories, very creamy and candy sweet black tea and very spicy non-tea... ;) I´m strange!

      <3

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    2. I'm a coffee drinking heathen. In fact, I'm drinking blueberry coffee right now! :O
      I don't even know why I drink it... I just assume it will wake me up in the morning, but it never does! It's become habitual at this point. When I first started working at a Statbucks franchise, I had to practice making the drinks- so I should have been wired with all the espresso beverages I tasted. Nope. Not one bit!

      Are there any other teas I mentioned in my tea post that you'd be interested in trying?

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    3. My whole family are coffee drinkers! My dad takes tea with him to work, but only really generic and cheap black tea so he doesn´t count as a tea drinker really... I´m the black sheep! Finland is the country in the world where people drink by far the most coffee per capita... 12.0 kg per year... So not drinking coffee is VERY STRANGE! But I just hate coffee, I like useing it for flavor when baking and I like it in desserts and ice cream... And I love the smell of it! But it just tastes horrible! I don´t think the caffeine would do anything for me either...

      I´ll go have a look at your teas again!

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    4. Had a look now and the ones that seem really tasty are all CS teas. Mandarine Orange Spice, Candy Cane Lane and Madagascar Vanilla all sound delicious! Do tell if any of my loose teas strike your fancy. I´ll include samplings of all the teas that are in tea bags for you in the care package but I can also put some loose tea into ziplock bags!

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  3. I'm a coffee drinker - I hate tea. I really want to like it, because I love all the accoutrements like tea cups and teapots and those little wire squeezy things, but I just cannot acquire a taste for it, even though I've tried many times with many different varieties. :-(

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    1. I am of the firm belief that it is impossible to hate tea in all it´s shapes and forms! I don´t like tea made from tea leaves very much, neither black, green nor white. Not very fond of rooibos either these days. I prefer spice and herbal blends! Have you tried any of those?

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    2. I've tried a lot - black, green, white, Japanese green, etc. I did drink herbal teas when I was pregnant, mostly peppermint and ginger for nausea. But as soon as she was out I was back on the coffee. ;-)

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  4. I'm a big tea drinker. I prefer coffee flavourings in desserts and sweets. I should favour the typical builders brew of the Brits but I hate milk in tea and much prefer Chinese and Japanese teas, green and black. My top teas are jasmine, am obsessed and genmaicha, I LOVE a roasted rice tea. So obsessed. Also like oolong, matcha and hojicha. Earl Grey is also a favourite

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