Pinhead Gunpowder Tea | 珠茶 | pinyin | zhū chá

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Pinhead Gunpowder is a very famous green tea produced in the

Zhejiang Province  in China.

Each leaf is rolled into small round pellets that look rather like leadshot,

hence its name. Pinhead Gunpowder is rolled into even tighter pellets

than other gunpowder teas, indicating a higher level of skill and quality.

We steeped our Pinhead Gunpoweder for 3-4 minutes in our tasting cup.

Our cute tasting cup.

We then poured the tea into the bowl for tasting. It has a lovely amber colour or “liquor” as it is known.

Look at the leaves unfurled in the cup after steeping – the leaves were virtually

exploding in the cup as we steeped.

The contrast before is stark! However the taste is wonderful! Strong, nutty, wood, earth.

Herb of the Day – Spearmint

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spearmint

Reputed to have been spread across Europe by the Romans, who drank spearmint tea to “stir up the mind”, spearmint has been known for at least 2000 years. It’s botanical name is “mentha spicata” and it is the best known of the mint family when it comes to cooking and flavouring. Spearmint leaves can be used fresh, dried or frozen.

Peppermint is more commonly used in herbal medicine but it has a high menthol content that can be irritating to the digestive system, spearmint on the other hand has minimal amounts of menthol. Both mints are used for digestive problems and sometimes for catarrh and colds.

Spearmint is also thought to stimulate the appetite and helps to combat hiccups, and there has been some recent research into whether spearmint tea might be used as a treatment for hirsutism in women.

Spearmint is one of the key ingredients in our Cool Mama tea as it is good for heartburn and indigestion, it can also be used to soothe morning sickness, or simply drunk as a tasty and refreshing alternative to peppermint tea.

Instant Tea – have you drunk it?

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mama tea teapot

No need for a teapot with instant tea

A quick poll of the Mama Tea office and we discover instant tea is something we’ve all heard about, seen in the supermarket even, but none of us have bought or (knowingly) drunk. With this in mind we thought it might be a reason to dig a little deeper into instant tea, after all most of us drink, or have drunk, instant coffee, so why has instant tea not made the same impression on our lives?

Instant tea was first available commercially sometime around 1950 (some reports say 1946 whereas others quote dates in the early 1950s). It is produced from black tea by extracting the liquor from processed leaves, this liquor is then concentrated under low pressure and then dried by freeze drying or spray drying, therefore turning this concentrate into a powder. This process is similar to the one for making instant coffee.

A quick online search tells you that most of the instant tea on sale today are flavoured instant teas, that are aimed at the iced tea market and don’t require boiling water, or instant tea containing powdered milk, and often sweeteners, and aimed at the market looking for the ultimate in convenience tea. There is very little instant black tea that could be used as a direct replacement for the tea bag.

In America, where over 80% of all tea drunk is iced tea, instant tea seems to have a greater presence in the tea market than here in the UK, and flavoured instant teas form most of that market. A report from 1996 on the American tea market indicated that approximately 14% of the tea market was instant tea, whereas in the UK it is less than 1%.

So could the stumbling block to the success of instant tea in this country be that we are just too traditionalist, we have managed to adopt the teabag though, or is it because it doesn’t taste close enough to a cup of tea for our taste buds? We don’t have the answers but we are just pondering why none of us have even tried instant tea and yet we work in the tea industry!

If you want to find out more about Mama Tea and our teas please go to our website www.mamatea.com.

Inspired by a cup of Mama Tea!

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I’m having one of those days that everyone that writes regular blog posts experiences, the day where the ideas for blog posts runs dry and the inspiration is not forthcoming. I’ve done the usual; I’ve scanned the news websites, I’ve read other blog posts, I’ve looked at what’s trending on Twitter, I’ve even stared out the window at the trees imaging I’m Carrie Bradshaw in SATC and still the inspiration still does not come.

view from the window

The view from the window

I was in a good mood this morning as I walked to work, it had felt like it was going to be a good day so this feeling of complete lack of ideas is a surprise. I normally find the ideas lacking when I’m tired or frustrated not when I’m feeling happy and relaxed. I keep checking the inbox in case a really important email comes in that I have to deal with and will allow me to forget about blogging for an hour or two, but no such email appears and I’m still staring at a blank page.

So off I go to make a cup of tea, a very British reaction to any situation. I come back to my desk with my cup of Cool Mama, take a sip and then inspiration hits me; why don’t I write about inspiration or my complete lack of it today! Why did making a cup of tea inspire me? Was it just removing myself from my desk and computer screen for five minutes? I do know that in all aspects of my life I’m normally at my most creative when I’m relaxed, the creative juices often go crazy when I’m on holiday and the ideas flow non-stop. I’m not one of those people that is creative under pressure and I’ve never managed to harness, control or force my creativity. Whatever it is, that cup of Cool Mama has worked as whilst writing this I’ve just come up with another idea for a blog post, looks like my creativity is back for now, thanks Mama Tea!

Case Study: Babye

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babye logo

Babye is an award-winning destination maternity boutique in West London, founded by Liz Pilgrim in 2004 not far from Ealing Studios this beautiful boutique has supplied stylish and luxurious baby and maternity products to mamas and mamas-to-be for over eight years.

babye

As well as the shop in Ealing there is also an online shop that can deliver internationally. The stock is carefully selected for quality and style as well as ethically. Babye is passionate about ethical manufacturing and only works with suppliers that adhere to such policies. Babye also strives to stock organic products where possible and recycle as much packaging as possible.

The stock ranges from maternity and nursing wear, including one of our favourites Isabella Oliver, to designer baby clothes and toys, to personalised gift baskets and everything in between that is both practical and luxurious. There is such a lovely range of brands stocked the best idea is to have a look for yourself. Visit the shop in person at Babye, 20 The Green, Ealing, London W5 5DA, or go to their website www.babye.co.uk.

You can also follow Babye on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Babye is a stockist of Mama Tea, to buy Mama Tea from Babye click here.

Our top 5 fictional tea drinking characters

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In no particular order, here’s our top 5 fictional tea drinking characters.

1. Hercule Poirot

hercule poirot and tea

Agatha Christie’s fictional detective was known for drinking his tisanes (herbal tea).

2. Ana In Fifty Shades of Grey

50ShadesofGreyCoverArt.jpg

A current chart topper in the in the fiction lists, E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades” trilogy has a lead character, Ana, who loves to drink her English Breakfast tea. Let’s hope her tea drinking is not replaced with coffee drinking come the film adaptation!

3. Captain Jean Luc Picard

jean luc picard and earl grey tea

Captain Jean Luc Picard from Star Trek was famous for his fondness of earl grey tea,  he always asked for “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”

4. Precious Ramotswe , No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

book cover: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

In Alexander McCall Smith’s “No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”, Precious Ramotswe enjoys a cup of rooibos tea, regularly brewing a pot of tea in order to ponder a case.

5. Arthur Dent, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Arthur Dent Livid.jpg

Arthur Dent was always in search of a perfect cup of tea, the only difference between his search and our search, at Mama Tea, was that his search was taking place in the outer reaches of the galaxy whereas our search takes place here on earth!

Have you any suggestions? If so, please let us know.

Herbal Tea is not just for drinking!

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mama tea cupcakes

We have been experimenting with baking Mama Tea cupcakes and it’s got us thinking of other things we could make with herbal tea for, so here’s a run down of some of the ideas we’ve had.

Herbal tea ice cubes

herbal tea ice cubes

Really simple to make; brew some tea (you may want to make it stronger than usual as the flavour dulls when cooled), allow to cool a bit then pour into an ice cube tray and freeze. To make the ice cubes even more special how about freezing some mint leaves or strawberries or lemon slices in them.

Herbal tea stock

We haven’t quite got this idea figured out yet but, working on the theory that where ever you use water in recipe you could potentially consider using tea for an alternative flavour, we feel there could be potential to use tea instead of stock when making soups. How about carrot soup made with a morning mama stock (ginger and chamomile) or sweet potato soup with a glowing mama stock (rooibos and elderflower)?

Herbal tea sorbet

sorbet

Similar to the ice cubes and stock, replace the water content of your sorbet recipe with brewed herbal tea.

Herbal teabag eyemasks

cool mama

We think Cool Mama would be particularly good for this one, spearmint to cool and chamomile to soothe. After enjoying your cup of Cool Mama place the teabags on your eyes and relax!

If you want to find out more about Mama Tea or buy our teas, go to www.mamatea.com.

Case Study: Boob Baby

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Boob Baby

Sarah Appleton and her husband Ryan set up Boob Baby following the birth their son. They wanted to provide a place where women could come for breastfeeding products, at competitive prices and with good customer service, and advice that is clear and easy to find.

Boob Baby is a lovely, easy to navigate website consisting primarily of a shop, stocking everything breastfeeding related including Mama Tea’s New Mama, a breastfeeding zone, aimed at providing lots of easy to read advice including a section called “Mum’s Top Tips” with lovely pieces of breastfeeding encouragement, and a blog sharing the latest news about products and breastfeeding. One of our favourite quotes from “Mum’s Top Tips” is;

“my best advice would be that breastfeeding isn’t about just food. Newborns feed all the time, it’s their source of warmth, comfort and mummy.”

As we embark on World Breastfeeding Week 2012 this is a great website to inform and shop breastfeeding accessories for mamas to be and new mamas alike.

Visit the Boob Baby website, follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

To find out more about Mama Tea and our full range of products, visit our website at www.mamatea.com.

Milk with your herbal tea?

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Inspired by a customer commenting that she added milk to her herbal tea, and it not being something any of us at Mama Tea have done, we thought we would dig a little deeper into it and find out if it was more popular than we realised. From experience, we know it is common in South Africa to drink rooibos tea with milk and/or sugar or honey in much the same way as many of us drink black tea here in the UK. Early European settlers in the Cape area of South Africa, where rooibos is grown, could not afford to import black tea so they drank rooibos tea as a replacement, it would seem fair to speculate that they served the rooibos tea as they would black tea, adding milk, and hence this tradition continues on to the present day.

rooibos tea

Do you add milk to your rooibos?

We’ve not tried it, but from what we remember of our chemistry lessons from school, we suspect adding milk to teas with citrus, e.g.lemon or orange, in them will result in curdled milk. This drinks guide suggests warming the milk, before attempting to add it to citrus teas, to prevent curdling. Researching online it appears that the herbal teas that people commonly add milk to are chamomile and mint, there are also people debating the rights and wrongs of adding milk to green tea too; some saying it lessens the health benefits and anti-oxidant levels if milk is added. Chamomile and mint are both herbs commonly used to make hot milk drinks, sometimes called milk teas, so maybe there is a link between these and adding milk to herbal tea.

Ultimately it is down to personal taste and preference, at the end of the day it is your cup of tea to enjoy. We would love to hear about any of your tea drinking habits and preferences that may not be regarded as the norm.

Tea Gardens

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To us nothing represents the ideal of a British summer than being able to take afternoon tea in the garden, these days it’s more likely to be a mug of tea as we sit on the patio, rather than the period drama image of delicate china, butlers and white table cloths, but it still sums up the joy a lovely summer day and taking a moment to enjoy it and relax.

st-helena-tavern-and-tea-gardens-2

St. Helen Tavern and Tea Gardens

But did you know that outdoor drinking of tea, in Britain, has an interesting history? Tea gardens were inspired by the Dutch “tavern garden teas” and flourished in Britain in the eighteenth century, tea was not the only beverage served but it was the most popular and fashionable. They opened for the summer and were often only open on Saturday and Sunday. They were designed for the drinking of tea, strolling and entertainment, a place where men and women took tea together. This was the first time that it was socially acceptable for women to enter a mixed public gathering and not be criticised. It is rumoured that Lord Nelson met his future wife Emma at a tea garden. The tea gardens attracted a mix of social classes including the aristocracy, who were known to visit on occasion.

The other interesting thing about tea gardens is that it is where the custom of tipping originated. On the table in the tea garden there would be a wooden box with the acronym T.I.P.S. on it. Into this box the gentleman would put some money “to insure prompt service”.

Think it’s now time to go and make a pot of mama tea and imagine we’re in our own tea garden!

To buy Mama Tea, or find out more about us, please go to the website; www.mamatea.com.