Mixing tea on a friday night? Oooh rock and roll.
With Sue Mills
Sue is Product Manager at Parkinson's UK and essentially the shop is her baby. She selects the products and even co-designs a few of them so her stock knowledge is phenomenal. Sue is also on my devices and apps working group and helps me steer the project through the many minefields that come from innovative thinking. On a personal level Sue is an absolute sweetheart and it was lovely to spend some time with her this evening.
When I saw this workshop advertised I thought it sounded really lovely. Being quite sensitive to caffeine I wasn't entirely sure it was going be a good idea. But in the true attitude of this project I thought 'f---it! What's the worst that can happen?' Well, on previous experience 4 hours of heart palpitations and a trip to A&E but I blasted through that thought.
Our first activity on arrival was to pick a tea based cocktail from the list and whilst that was being made by Maggie, Tizzy, our knowledgeable host, set us a game to try and name some leaves and put them into groups i.e. green teas, black teas, white teas. We then had to arrange them from the most processed to the least processed. These exercises taught us a lot, mainly that we don't know very much about tea!
Once we had finished our cocktails we went up to the counter where 20 or so tins with different teas in were laid out. We then went through and tasted each of them to see what kind of flavour profiles we liked.
Then back to our seats for another cocktail. All the while running ideas over in our heads about what we could make for our three infusions.
We then had to choose a base for our teas, things like rooibos, white tea, green tea and black tea. We could mix these or just use one. We then had a selection of herbs, spices and fruits and other flavourings such as cocoa nibs, coconut, chilli etc.
I made three teas;
'GUILTEA PLEASURES'
rooibos base with cocoa nibs and coconut
'WHITE ON THYME'
white tea base with orange and lemon thyme
'DEJA BREW?'
my favourite mint tea base with licorice but with the addition of cloves
I'm really excited to try them and hope they aren't too disgusting.
The workshop was fantastic. Something different to do on a Friday night instead of the pub with a good social element and delicious cocktails thrown in for good measure.
You can buy your tickets here.