jducoeur

Been meaning to mention for a while: kudos to mermaidlady for prodding me to try MarketSpice Tea, out of Seattle. It's traditionally a pain to get -- one of those things you send people on pilgrimages to the West Coast for. Now Amazon is carrying it; no reports yet on whether it suffers from the shipping. (msmemory brought back a pound for me when she was out there for a conference.)

Regardless, it's extraordinary stuff. Intense flavors of cinnamon and orange, and a fundamental sweetness so strong that adding sugar (or indeed, any adulterants) would be a crime. Works beautifully both iced and hot. Not cheap, but not expensive by the standards of good tea.

My tastes run to the dark and smoky: I'm one of those people who really, truly loves lapsang souchong, and this is the absolute opposite pole of the flavor spectrum. So that should underscore my statement that this is one of the finest teas around. I can imagine the tea purists not going for it -- the flavor is really about the cinnamon and orange, rather than the tea itself -- but for anyone else I give it a very strong recommendation...

Just in case anyone was curious about the resolution of the iced tea question: the answer appears to be "follow the bloody directions". After doing several experiments in both hot and cold brewing, the best solution seems to be the one that had the most support among the commenters -- *lots* of tea, the right temperature, and a quick brew.

The details of the current recipe: bring the water to a boil, then let it cool for 5-6 minutes. Put 10 tsp of hoji into a ball (in practice, this mostly fills our large tea ball), and put the ball into the carafe. Slowly pour the water in to fill, and steep for 2 minutes, agitating gently (basically just raising and lowering the ball slowly, to get some circulation). Take out the ball, cool to room temp, and chill.

The result is a lovely iced tea: dark as a "green" tea can imaginably get, strongly-flavored without major off-notes. It took a while to get past the idea of using that much tea, but it's still pretty cheap: 3.5 oz of basic Hoji (enough for about 5 32-ounce carafes) costs about three bucks at China Merch, compared with $1.50 per 12-oz plastic bottle of the commercial stuff. I'm not *quite* as good as the Ito-en variety yet, but I'm getting close enough to be more than worth the almost-tenfold price difference (and reduced garbage).

Now I just need the right travel cup to drink iced tea out of when I want to grab some for the road...

Okay -- I know a few people on my flist are far more experienced tea aficionadoes than I. Time to mine that expertise a bit.

My very favorite drink in recent years is the iced Hoji tea from Teas' Teas. This is a high-end brand that's sold at Whole Foods and the fancy section of Shaw's. They make green teas perfectly: smooth but intensely flavorful iced teas that would be sacreligious to sweeten, strong enough that I don't miss the calories at all. All of their varieties are good, but I prefer the smoky varieties: the Hoji and now-discontinued Genmai.

The problem, of course, is that the stuff is preposterously expensive ($1.50+ per bottle), and not exactly environmental with all those wasted plastic bottles. So I'd like to learn to make it myself. I've been doing some experiments with both Genmai and Hoji: the results aren't terrible, but they're not great, so I'm seeking advice.

The problem seems to be a sour edge that I'm getting rather strongly in my iced tea results. It's moderate in the Hoji, and strong in the Genmai. I suspect it may be the result of overbrewing, but I'm trying to get as much of the smokiness of the flavor as I can, since that's what I really love in both. (I love my tea very much the same way I do my scotch, with a lot of smoke in it.)

So that's the challenge: how does one extract maximum flavor in an iced tea, specifically for a smoky iced tea, without that sourness? I've only begun to experiment, and I'll be trying a number of things (including cold extraction), but if folks have any suggestions, I'm all ears...