Tue Mar 22, 2005
More Useless Information [Observations]
This tea that I am drinking right now, tastes weird. It's a Stash Tea product, and Stash makes some of my favorite teas....but I'm not sure this one is a winner.
The tea, or more precisely, the hebal infusion I am drinking is called Licorice Spice and has 100% natural ingredients. ( I'm brewing myself another cup now as I am writing. Maybe I just didn't let the first one steep long enough and I'd hate to blast one of my favorite company's products just because I didn't follow the instructions)
.....
Winston, who likes many kinds of tea anyway ( Hey he is an ENGLISH mastiff) seems very interested in it. It's made from Licorice root, cinnamon, orange peel, star anise, sarsaparilla and natural flavors of vanilla, orange, clove, cardamom and cinnamon.
Now, of course, that flavor combination isn't going to be a turn-on for everybody. I know a lot of people who don't like licorice ( I hate it in the chewy candy form but love the flavor any other way) or anise. Moreover, sarsaparilla has a very distinct flavor. I can always tell if something really has real sarsaparilla in it - I don't know why. It's not the same thing that is makes the flavor for root beer ...that stuff comes from the tree that has the same name, but it is a different plant, and / or the sassafras tree. The sarsaparilla IN root beer is the stuff that makes the root beer foam. Bless my soul! Imagine how successful I could be in life if my mind was so jammed up with this useless information.
But real sarsaparilla, like licorice root, really does have some medicinal properties, which is the whole point of why I tryed the tea. These two things are supposed to be good for inflamation and have been used in traditional medicine to treat asthma. Anything that is not a $65.00 inhaler looks worth a try to me these days, so I picked up this Stash product in the market.
And to be fair, it tastes really good for medicine! A heck of a lot better than that horehound I brewed up for The Hub when he had the flu.
But the wierd part about it is that drinking it ( even the second cup that I brewed for 5 minutes on the kitchen timer that's shaped like a lemon) is that it tastes like the flavors are floating on the hot the water! It's like you take a sip and all you taste is hot water....then the other flavors come in as an aftertaste. It's not even bad. It's just weird.
So Stash's Licorice Spice "Tea" gets the Wing Award for Strangest Taste in a beverage.
Now YOUR head is jammed with useless infomation!
Ayup - the flavor of Licorice Spice comes more as an aftertaste than a primary flavor.
Now I get to drop some science on ya.
The main reason is that the flavors in Licorice, Anise, cinnamon, orange, clove, vanilla come from the aromatic compounds called phenols and vanillins. Note "aromatic" - they have little "flavor", that which can be perceived by the tongue alone (salty, sweet, sour, bitter, savory). For you to "taste" these compounds, you have to get them up to your olifactory buds. Other herbal infusions and true teas have alkaline components that can be sensed as bitterness and astringency in the mouth.
So, you sip the tea. Usually, you don't breathe and drink at the same time - for obvious reasons. Being that the infusion doesn't have a particularly high bitterness or astringency, you don't "taste" anything other than the hot liquid. Then, you exhale through your nose. All of those aromatic components then hit your olifactory senses and the "flavor" of the tea appears. In addition, the moving air through the oral/nasal cavity produces a "cool" sensation from the licorice and cloves.
Posted by: Rob at March 23, 2005 3:31 PMYayyyy for science! Woo hoo!
Posted by: Devilcat at March 23, 2005 4:33 PMThat's one of my favorite teas, and I don't usually like licorice! Maybe you have to smell the tea and then drink it.
I think the big rice cakes from the Asian gorcery store would be just the right size for training treats for Winston! Does he like rice cakes?
Posted by: Theresa at March 23, 2005 7:55 PMAnyway, I made him a hair brush with his name on it.