by  Angela McDonald

Most of the teas that we drink these days are blended at some point. Even teas that seem simple such, as ginger or English Breakfast. The reasons for blending teas are varied but the most important one is this: blended teas taste good. My favorite reason is that when blending teas, the possibilities are endless! 

There is nothing magical about the process of tea blending. Just like cooking, it mostly takes experimentation and creativity. Though big companies have whole departments dedicated to flavor experimentation and precise tea blending, there is no reason that we cannot all do this in our home kitchens. The hard part is knowing how to start. 

Here are a few tips for blending:

Know your ingredients – not all herbs taste the same even if it seems like they should. Taste each ingredient individually so you can understand it before you start blending it with others. 

Make sure your flavors are not conflicting. Nobody wants an identity crisis in their cup. I’m often amazed by how many professionally blended teas have competing or conflicting flavors. Flavors should be layered and complimentary, not fighting for space. 

Take notes! There is nothing worse than making the perfect tea then not being able to recreate it. It’s also easy to try the same thing over and over again because you forgot that you tried it. 

From there the sky is the limit! You can start by trying to recreate a favorite tea, or start from an ingredient that you are fascinated by and see what goes well with it. Start with only a few ingredients, as the more ingredients the more complicated it gets. Play around with it and see what you like best.

Join Angela on Thursday, June 22, at 1pm Eastern for her webinar: Tea Blending: Creating Herbal Tea Blends with Balanced Flavor. Our webinars are free to The Herb Society of America members and $7.50 for guests. Become a member today, and enjoy all of our webinars for free along with access to the webinar library with over fifty program titles. To register, visit https://www.herbsociety.org/hsa-learn/herb-education/hsa-webinars/