Well this was unexpected. After the article about Chamomile I felt I should get to know 2 other major herbal ’tisanes’ — Lavender and Hibiscus. Herbal teas have always been kind of uninteresting to me and I’ve avoided them, however the method of horizontal tasting was very eye opening and allowed me to quickly hone in on how to brew these teas to the best of my personal taste. When made well they are surprisingly enjoyable.
Unlike Chamomile — Lavender isn’t so problematic to brew well, even at its worst it’s still very drinkable. The aromas of lavender when heavily diluted remind me of latex paint and dust. Flavors of heavily diluted lavender taste like soapy water. To the opposite when lavender is heavily concentrated the aroma is definitely perfumey, it’s similar to those ‘scent sticks’ which disperse essential oils fragrance in a room. Flavors of the heavily concentrated tea is gross but not unpalatable. Bitterness becomes the dominant trait and the lavender flavor has such a strength that I want to put into tomato pizza sauce, or on top of cinnamon buns.
This particular lavender was sourced from extreme north-west China bordering Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Russia in the Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture of Xinjiang. They have a pretty huge lavender festival there, and they do grow quite an impressive amount of it.
For this test I brewed 6 pots of lavender tea using water from a boiler (hot tap water), steeping for 2 minutes, using 330ml of water per pot, with varying amounts of lavender flowers. 0.25g, 0.5g, 1g, 2g, 4g, and 8g.
0.25g:330ml produced a light spinach green color. A combination of paint, dust, and faint lavender create an overall chemical driven aroma while the flavor is very mild, borderline soapy but pleasant.
0.5g:330ml had a color of pale jade. The aroma was muted but did smell like lavender, slightly paint-y, dried nondescript flowers, and makes me think of things that are sweet. The mouthfeel is bolder than 0.25, the richness is nice. The actual flavor is still watery but not unpleasant.
1g:330ml was jade green in color. Aromas were unmistakably lavender, and beyond that the sweet aromas of 0.5 crossed a threshold into familiarity — rockets candy or Japanese ramune candy (pretty much the same thing, flavored powdery sugar), in a slightly less appealing way I would describe the aroma as being at the dentist. The richness of the flavor is about the same as 0.5g but at 1g it finally has a noticeable finish.
2g:330ml has a very appealing aqua blue color. The aroma is perfumey and reminds me a lot of the blue whales gummy candy I ate as a kid. The aroma is very satisfying in power and it presents itself in a way which is neither paint-y nor soapy but sweet and confected. The mouthfeel is heavier than 1g, texturally similar to 2% milk, it’s oily and rich. Very perfumey finish but now it is starting to give off slightly sour flavors.
4g:330ml has a color you would find in a box of pencil crayons as Sea Blue. The aroma is intense and candied, still very much lavender. It has kept the blue whale gummy quality but is starting to pull away from it towards… cherry? As if there was a cherry counterpart to blue raspberry, the kind of flavor you would find added to a soft serve ice cream. Red licorice and paint. Unfortunatey its aromatic to the point where most food isn’t aromatic like this so it’s giving me other ideas. Smells like the mens urinal mats when they have the cherry aroma. Nice. The flavor is a little bitter now, I’d say its unpleasant. The bitterness lingers.
8g:330ml was a very interesting color. The color only exists in german? Eichengrau. It’s the color that you see when you close your eyes, not black — very dark gray. The aroma is very concentrated, still sweet — still lavender — but more like perfume. Someone would spray this in their house. The flavor is gross… Not as unpalatable as I was expecting though. Bitterness is dominant and it’s certainly not an ideal flavor.
Surely more tests could be done to make it ‘perfectly’ but I am happy at least for now with what I’ve come up with. I think it’s most appropriate to steep Lavender at a ratio between 1:165 and 1:330, and to be more specific I think 1:194 would be ideal. What I want out of lavender is the blue whale gummy aroma, a nice aqua blue color, and no sour or bitter notes, is it too much to ask?
Josh
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