Inspired by Infinity Bottles of whiskey, I’ve adapted the concept into what I’m calling InfiniTea™ Tins. The idea is to collect the remaining tea from all my sample packets (or the lingering remnants of a bigger container) into one storage tin, thus creating a personalized blend. I have a lot of 10g-20g sample packets because I like to try lots of different flavors and styles, so if done right, these blends could be quite nice.
Three Examples
I currently have 3 InfiniTea™ tins going:
- Single Estate Assam Blend – I realize this sorta defeats the purpose of Single Estate teas, but this blend of black teas turned out pretty great. There’s not much to say about this though, because it’s just straight black tea. It’s also the smallest of the tins, if that matters.
- Earl Grey Vanilla Blend – I love Earl Grey, and about 6 years ago, I discovered Upton Teas Earl Grey Crème Vanilla. It has come to be my favorite go-to tea. Alas, over the years, the recipe has changed and I’ve also noticed some variation from order to order, so I have been branching out and trying a bunch of others. Dominion’s Earl Vanilla is very light on the vanilla, Art of Tea is better, but not as good as Upton (even the lesser recent batches), and Culinary Teas makes a great Vanilla Crème… but it’s not Earl Grey! Finally, I’ve got something I bought at a local Amish Market. It wasn’t labeled with a brand, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t tea grown in Lancaster, PA. It’s pretty decent, comparable to the Upton but a bit more bergamot. I’d been mixing the Culinary Teas an Upton and getting something good, but this InfiniTea™ Tin is doing pretty well now too.
- Chai, Spiced, and Christmas Blend – I like to get in the spirit of the season and spiced teas are nice, but they can be a bit unpredictable. Are you going to get a ton of cinnamon or is it going to be more ginger focused or did they add some other bizarre ingredients? I’ve definitely tried lots of these, and now blending them together has brought them new life. It’s a good wintery blend.
Other Assorted Thoughts
- One of the things I’ve noticed with flavored teas, especially the vanilla-based ones, is that they tend to fade over time. So I’m curious to see how well the InfiniTea™ Tin fares. So far, it’s great. The spiced blend has lots of really old components, but they remain pretty potent.
- As with Infinity Bottles, there is a sorta “livening” of the blend that happens when you add new components. And even when there’s a tea that I’m not particularly fond of… it still sorta tweaks the blends in a beneficial way.
- I don’t drink enough green tea to do an infinity tin, but I could see that happening someday. Mixing green and black teas is obviously a bad idea, and the concept of trying to only include complementary flavors holds too. Just like you wouldn’t add Islay Scotch to a non-peaty blend (the peat smoke would overpower anything else), you wouldn’t want to add Lapsang Souchong (a smoked tea) to a normal blend.
- I never used to drink that much tea. It was a once in a while, on the weekend sorta thing, but then Covid hit and being home all day, every day made it more convenient. So now I drink around a cup a day. These InfiniTea™ Tins have actually become go-to choices.
- When it comes to most of the stuff that I cover on this blog, I’ve found that I’m often driven by novelty. Stuff like Infinity Bottles and now InfiniTea™ Tins helps me indulge in that exploration, I think.
We’re not quite halfway through my annual beer slowdown, so expect a couple more non-beer posts like this (on the other hand – I do have a backlog of beer reviews too, so maybe one’ll sneak in). Stay tuned!