Recently I got very cool items from Golda’s kitchen including LorAnn flavouring oils: chocolate, peach and apricot for only $2.25 each.
Why? I love flavoured black tea and can not have decaf. The only way to have it is to make it myself. So I did! Also, decaf apricot black tea is my favourite and I need some extra comfort from tea these days. Plus, I just wanted to see if I could do it!
The Process
I wanted to use the best decaf black tea there is. For me? That is King Cole. It really does taste like regular orange pekoe tea unlike most other brands. I do have to be careful. I can not have it every day because there is still a tiny bit of caffeine in there that can trigger migraines but all decaf black teas are like that.
Yes, I could just put a few drops of the oil directly into my mug but that would make the flavouring oil disappear way too quickly. The idea was to flavour the actual tea.
I wanted to be sure that it would be the same amount of tea when I brewed it so I cut open a tea bag.
One bag measured just under 1 tsp of tea.
I put out 3 little mason jars and put 3 bags of tea in each one.
Then I added 3 drops of the oil to the bottles, closed them, shook them around and let them sit for a few days.
Making the Tea
I was hoping I could use a tea strainer but the King Cole tea was just too fine.
No worries! I got out one of my coffee filters.
I tied it up with butcher’s twine.
I added boiling water as usual.
Steeped for four minutes like I usually do.
Foodie Results
My first mug of tea was the biggest experiment of all. What would chocolate tea taste like?!
Unfortunately, very subtly chocolatey. I immediately knew that this would have worked much better with coffee, it is more of a natural fit but still very interesting. I am going to add some raspberry oil to the remaining tea which I think will work much better.
The next tea I brewed was the peach. Oh, it tasted like summer! So pretty, lovely and a tad feisty… I was so relieved. Not to mention absolutely impressed. It was delicious!
Apricot was the final tea and the one I was most nervous about. The other two were just experiments but I went through years of drinking decaf apricot tea and I needed that comfort. And, I got it. Oh man, did I ever! It tasted just like the tea I used to buy at the mall near our home at a store I loved dearly. It made me feel at home and like life was going to be OK.
Sometimes you just need a taste from your past. To make it happen, you need to be proactive and inventive. It is also fun to go the extra mile and experiment to see what happens. I am thrilled with these results and will be making a ton of my own flavoured teas. Super exciting.
I’m happy for you that it worked so well! Enjoy your decaf apricot tea!
Perhaps it would be easier to purchase some loose leaf tea? The quality is better, and the leaves are a bit bigger, eliminating your filtering issues. And wasted empty tea bags!
Regardless, glad it worked out for you!
ljd
Thanks Debra and I am enjoying it. 🙂 So good!
Lana, I would love to use loose leaf tea but finding decaffeinated black loose leaf is really hard. I even checked at David’s Tea and had zero luck. But if I ever find some, I will do that! BTW, I compost the filter so and the tea bags. Thanks so much!