Christmas in Waikiki

I usually write about reverse culture shock themes, or running, when I'm back here in Hawaii.  We moved here 3 1/2 years ago, mostly so our kids could experience the US education system, and Keoni is half a school year away from graduating high school.  Kalani has experienced middle school for the first time this year, a big change from earlier elementary / grade school experience.  This won't mostly be about them; they would just as soon stay anonymous online, so even mentioning them breaks form.

Christmas has been nice.  I guess I've not experienced a Christmas here in nearly 20 years, back when Eye and I went to grad school in the University of Hawaii (at Manoa), where we met.  It would've been 19 years ago now.

It never feels completely like Christmas in the tropics, related to the winter expectation, but that's familiar in Bangkok.  There mostly malls and hotels decorate, and office buildings put up some token lights and a tree.  You don't hear the Christmas carols there, but that music does play around here, in Honolulu stores.  They put up lights as a city display, in two different places; that was nice.

I could add, about the kids, that we are terrible at observing holiday traditions in both cultures, but did ok for pulling together some token gifts this year.  Kalani's favorite gift was something she said that she wanted, seeing it in passing, an inexpensive karaoke system.  It's tiny, so small the speaker and microphone would fit in a woman's purse, but the function is decent.  It can play music through a bluetooth connection; the technology is mature enough now.  And it was so inexpensive; people buy coffee drinks for almost as much.

Keo's favorite gift was probably an above average quality headphones set, and he also got a Lego car set, both things he had mentioned wanting.  They were surprised; we usually drop the ball.  We didn't do much else for observance, walking around Waikiki some that day, but it was nice, spending time with family, even cooking basic meals.

Maybe adjusting to local culture, or the US version, went better this time, since I was last here 3 months ago.  For whatever reason I don't need any adjustment time back in Bangkok, in Thailand, but here it feels a little strange for the first week or two.  

Of course we are living in a tourist resort as a main residence area (for us), so that part is unusual.  I did that back in Colorado for a decade or so, in a different life phase, in a ski resort, in the Vail Valley.  It didn't seem so unusual then.  Lots of vacationers were visiting, but then it takes a lot of locals to support that particular industry.  Here resident locals might seem a little less integrated, since there isn't an isolated resort community; Waikiki is within a city of half a million or so people.

One part I always struggle to place is the emphasis on consumption, in local culture, to the extent it makes sense to call it that.  On vacations that seems relatively transparent, that of course you go there to eat special meals, to participate in special events or activities, and it all keeps costing money.  As a local there's a lot you just aren't doing.  Of course I don't miss whale-watching outings or luaus, but everywhere you go everything you see is oriented towards a tourist spending money.  

Even with the ocean right there, which you can experience for free, people rent or buy beach chairs or snorkels, or hire guides to take them places they probably could go, like to go snorkeling.  At least the tourists do visit the beach.  Surfing they couldn't do on their own; plenty take lessons for that.

Tourists don't always do much with the beach theme though.  A chance earlier life-phase contact visited in the Spring and her family seemed to barely see the beach, for doing guided outings to different places.  It seemed odd.  Seeing Pearl Harbor makes sense, or a waterfall somewhere, but the Polynesian Cultural Center doesn't really accurately represent Polynesian culture.  It's ran by Mormons, so it's like a Disney version of cultural summary.  

My Thai family loves that place, so it's not all bad.  Fire dances and whatever else are fine; there would be some historical basis for all of it, even though it also surely includes plenty of interpretation.  Any cultural summary would be like that, so I don't intend that as a unique form of blame.  It would be touchy summarizing "white American" culture, since half of what I valued in the late-middle of the 20th century might seem politically incorrect now, things like Thanksgiving, or pledging allegiance, that form of indoctrination.

This branches a little further into my own musing, not about local experience, but lots of this consumption-oriented tourism ends up dividing people into economic categories, more than they really need to be.  It's not about a intentional, central guiding "them" causing that, it evolves organically.  If you can spend $400 to 500 on a hotel that's who you will be surrounded by, and if you need to seek out "budget" alternatives it's a different class group.  Activities, and all sorts of other offerings, will naturally divide out from there.

At least people can still dress casually regardless of what context they end up within, and nature is still available to everyone.  Not a very natural version of it though; it is an intentional limitation, that tourists are steered to stay within either Waikiki or other appropriate areas.  In online discussion groups it's taboo to mention anywhere else.  I remember someone mentioning my favorite local beach, which isn't too far out of the way, and someone commented that they don't even tell their local Honolulu family members about that, never mind tourists in a broad Facebook group.  There are many more isolated places locals would never mention.  Not that it matters so much; going where lots of other people go instead is comfortable, and easy.

This reminds me of a discussion about tourists being airlifted from a popular local hike, which is definitely no secret, the Koko Head Crater hike.  It's essentially a set of stairs up an old rail line.  We've went up it twice, and to me once was already enough, given that context and theme.  If you get injured along the way it would be problematic getting yourself back down.  Of course locals were blaming people for not knowing their limits, which seems a little unfair to me.  How could someone know how they would react to hiking up over a mile of stairs, at a conventional steep incline?

It's a different story not knowing your limits about swimming in an ocean current, even within 100 meters of the shore.  Once you panic everything changes, and your danger level doesn't match what you might normally expect.  Once Eye and I were caught in a fast current just off a beach in Kauai, and she panicked, and even though she's normally a very strong swimmer it was all she could do to stay afloat.  The irony is that she can't sink in the ocean; salt-water makes you more buoyant, and when we would see sea turtles she couldn't swim down to get a closer look.  So out we went.  

A surfer girl was passing, and read the situation, and put Eye on her board, and she and I pushed her straight back in through that current.  Ordinarily the worst case is that you go out 100 to 200 meters and swim back in (a different way), but right there who knows.  We were at the "corner" of that island, and maybe we really would've been caught in a broader current, and headed out to Australia.

Enough of that tangent.  Tourists are safe and sound in crowded Waikiki beaches, in luaus, and overpriced happy-hour beach bars.  They sometimes feel an inclination to get out and see "the real Hawaii" but that's always a little contradictory, a tourist wanting to go somewhere tourists never go.

in a Waikiki McDonald's; a nice touch, the decoration

Homelessness and drug use

It can be hard to avoid touching on these darker themes when discussing US culture, but instead of adding more general perspective here I wanted to share a couple of unusual related experiences.

Of course I see mentally ill and drug-affected homeless people in Honolulu on a daily basis; it's almost not that big of a deal.  Until you are out late somewhere you shouldn't be, and then it is.  But we recently passed through one part of Chinatown, a sort of rough part of downtown, at mid-day, and saw two sets of people using drugs.  I see people smoke weed about a dozen times a day, but this was something else.  Two guys had a blowtorch and glass pipe of some kind; I guess that's crack?  Right in a crowded plaza space too; kind of strange.  It was a full-sized construction use blowtorch, along with elaborate glassware, straight out of a chemistry set; surely they could've used a smaller and functionally equivalent set-up.

We walked on to a bus stop where a guy was selling some sort of drugs, and one guy smoked some right there.  Off foil; I'm not sure what that means.  It was really something, seeing people walk up to buy drugs, and one guy smoking some.  He didn't react to doing the drugs all that much; that part was a little anti-climactic.  It all seemed normal enough to them, as if that bus stop was just their space for that kind of thing.  I guess it had good customer foot traffic?

It changes things a little seeing it, versus just knowing that's a part of where you live, and what those people are doing.  I don't mean "those people" in some sort of generalizing, negative sense; homeless people would surely all have different stories they're living out.  But at least a half dozen people are living that life, based on what we saw with our own eyes over the course of a half an hour or so.

Honolulu wouldn't be ok with tourists seeing that; it would get cleaned up in Waikiki.  Which reminds me; they had an extensive "spread Aloha" neighborhood watch sort of program before, maybe even back in the spring, and that's not going on now.  Maybe it's cyclic?  There are a few places that homeless people set up camp within 3 blocks or so of our house, with mats and bedding and such.  We don't live far from the zoo, for people familiar with this area.  I don't mean the sizeable encampment area by Paki park, or the outposts by the library, or the edge of the golf course, all within a 5 minute walk of the places I am talking about.  Over in Dillingham road there are whole homeless encampment villages.

Where am I going with all of this?  Nowhere, I guess.  It's a real issue.  That's not news to anyone living in any US city.

We always had a few homeless people around, 20 years ago, when I went to grad school here, maybe a half dozen or dozen you'd always see in Waikiki.  And many in other parts of the island.  But the numbers are different now.  I'm not the right person to shed light on what it means, the causes, or how to resolve it.  Of course I feel worse for those people than I do for myself for experiencing it, for being caused to see them.  

Having my kids be around relatively unstable people is a third thing; I also get it why people see it as a real issue beyond the aesthetic part.  In general not much violent crime is adjoined with homeless issues, but some it.  I've always discussed most themes with my kids, so talking about what drugs are and how they destroy lives is normal ground for us.  People smoke weed every 100 or so meters in Waikiki, so you get limited exposure to that other part of it everywhere else.

I should close on a happier note.  I met with online tea friends here this stay; that was a highlight of the trip.  They were here for the Honolulu Marathon.  I run, but I've never ran in an organized race, at least not since my teens, when I did run cross country and local 10ks.  I've been off running for half this stay, due to a minor tendon tear, and have been happy to get back to my normal route over the past week or so.  It's a fantastic place to run here, around Diamondhead.  It's a great environment for lots of reasons, and purposes.  The positives vastly outweigh the negatives.  I've been swimming even more, seeing sea turtles regularly, on a 200 meter route out in a lane from a local beach.

in Foster botanical garden, in Chinatown

with pineapple ice cream, sort of

gardening; we have two small boxes at Kalani's former school

One of the first photos from this visit, of Christmas decorations at home, from Kalani, our resident artist.  She made them for everyone, listing their favorite color, cat, and food, and Christmas wishes.

each cat's favorite cat was themselves.  I'm not so sure about that.

Barbote Nepal white tea

I'm reviewing the second of several types of teas passed on by that Nepalese producer, Narendra Kumar Gurung, owner of Barbote teas.  The golden needle version was nice, and an earlier round of Spring teas were great, so this should be more of the same.  I tend to like white teas most from Nepal, since they're generally very distinctive, flavorful, and intense across all aspect range, not as subtle as some types and versions of white teas can be.

Review

The brewed tea leaves looks a bit green; this may be less oxidized than the last version (or my memory of it).  I might've confirmed how harvest seasons work out there and included when this was produced, but didn't.  It seems best to just relate an impression of the tea.

My initial impression is positive; the tea is warm, complex, sweet, and very pleasant, with reasonably good intensity.  The earlier version really hit you with citrus and light mineral, even more intense, but there's something to be said for depth and range of aspects in a tea version, and subtlety.  There's no judging a tea based on one sip so I'll ramble on across a few infusions.  This will brew a half dozen, at least, since I'm preparing it Gongfu style.  At a guess it will give slightly better results made that way, versus Western style, but brewing it both ways would identify that better than guessing.

The light mineral from the earlier version is still present, flinty or like limestone versus "warmer" minerals.  It's perhaps just less intense.  This version doesn't seem quite as sweet; it's more subtle, with less distinct aspects filling in additional complexity.  That includes flavors along the lines of wood or grain, but I'll try to break that down further in the next infusion.

The tea is transitioning, or maybe just infusing more completely, more fully saturated after an initial round.  Some vegetal scope fills in that might overlap with green tea character but none of the astringency or grassiness common to that range is present; interesting.  Beyond the light mineral floral tone is the strongest component.  That seems to trail into a mild fruit, towards strawberry jam or marmalade.  It's a cool effect, that much going on in those ranges.  It compensates well for the later harvest version losing the intensity of the earlier one.  The flavors are very clean, well balanced, and well integrated.  It's "good" tea.  Good is all relative, it can mean different things, but the quality level is apparent.

It's odd the way that the tea is so green with edges that are so much darker, surely a by-product of a processing step's input.  I won't speculate further about that, comparing it to whatever else or guessing about the aspects input, just pointing it out.

Citrus seems to be picking up in this infusion; it's more like I remember the last version.  Anyone  who loves that distinctive mix of light mineral and citrus in Nepalese whites wouldn't be disappointed.  This is essentially the profile that seems standard to me.  Citrus is bright, towards lemony, maybe without actually tasting exactly like lemon, or only a little.  It's not that far off how I'd imagine the zest of a mandarin orange would taste.

Perhaps not surprisingly those oranges aren't called that here in Thailand, only referred to as Chinese oranges.  For all I know there could be variations of small, sweet types of oranges in China; that's kind of how that tends to go.  There are lots of versions of papayas, mangoes, and pineapples here, without English translations for almost any of the types, as far as I know.  I just bought a "Holland" papaya; that doesn't seem to be an original Thai name for that one.

This review seems to amount to random observations about flavors versus a comprehensive description.  I'll try to round out more about general character next round, an overall impression.


Warmth picked up a little.  I think part of these transitions is that slight variations in infusion strength allow the tea to show off different aspect range; very light and brighter elements come across more, slightly heavier and flavors seem to warm and deepen.  It's an interesting effect.  That would seem to get lost in preparing the tea Western style, but I can't be certain there isn't some other benefit on that side.  Maybe even brewed to moderate strength for 2 to 3 minutes complexity would seem greater, for example.  I doubt it, but messing around with approach and parameters and testing it out is the only way to tell.

A more complete summary then:  citrus and mineral stand out the most to me, at this point, although interpreting that sweetness and flavor complexity as floral range instead would be reasonable.  Mineral isn't quite as bright and light as I remember in the spring version; it's a bit warmer, towards a different kind of rock.  Feel isn't thin but this type of tea doesn't have as much feel-structure as some other types; it's not as full and round as oolongs can be, or as complex in feel as sheng range goes. 

Aftertaste experience is also moderate; it doesn't leave your mouth quickly, but isn't as drawn out as for some other tea types.  It's a generally flavor intensive experience though, which works well enough for my preferences.  The flavor has good complexity and depth beyond that.  An underlying tone might be grain or wood, or to me closer to a warm, neutral tone flower type, like chrysanthemom.  The overall flavor is so complex that a bit of dried fruit might join in with the rest, but those more pronounced aspects stand out more.


I let the next infusion run a bit longer, adding jam to bread since I'm having this tea with breakfast.  There is a simple tip for how to only taste the tea when tasting along with food: drink a couple of sips of cool but not cold water in between food and tea.  For more taste-experience precision skipping the food is better, while still cleaning your palate along with that using the water, but even for a tea blogger tea can be an integrated part of the rest of life, not something set aside for some functional or ceremonial form and context.  Or it can be that; someone could be wearing special clothes sitting at a special table in a special room instead; it's just up to the person.  For getting the most out of tasting for review detail keeping background noise and distractions to a minimum is critical; even turning down the music or turning off a television program makes a lot of difference.


Brewed a little longer the mineral tones emerge stronger, and citrus drops back.  Sweetness still gives it balance but the overall effect is different.  Even the citrus shifts from a bright lemon to a richer, heavier orange peel, or maybe relates a different kind of orange.

I brewed the tea a few more rounds and it's not finished yet.  Later infusions stay positive but longer times draws out more of a woody aspect, which works ok with remaining citrus and mineral.


On a different topic, the subject of tea blogger bias came up recently.  Is it clear how much I liked the tea, where it stands in relation to others, and what I see as its limitations?  To me it's good tea; a good version for the type, in a style I personally like.  I liked the spring version just a little more for being more intense, and maybe slightly sweeter, but after a few infusions of transition this isn't so different.  Related to other Nepal white teas made in a similar style it compares well; it seems above average.  Then again the versions I've tried were all fairly consistently positive, which could just relate to the luck of the draw.

The main limitation seems to be that the style might not be for everyone.  Flavor intensity (or even flavor aspects range, what it tastes like) is positive, but feel is a little thinner and aftertaste a bit less pronounced than for other tea types.  It's a set of concerns that applies to black teas in general too; they're often pleasant in flavor but might give up overall aspect range to oolongs or sheng.  Not to shou / shu pu'er so much, it seems to me, but even those can be very rich and full in feel.  Mostly the taste range just might not be for everyone.

It would be hard to judge that (trueness to type, quality related to the rest of the same range of tea versions) without direct comparison with a good version of a similar Nepalese white tea.  Not necessarily tasting them together, but using that as a benchmark.  Those seem more consistent than oolongs, sheng, and even black teas seem to me; most I've tried were quite nice.  Someone could drink only below average woody or cardboard tasting Wuyi Yancha for years, or only younger sheng that tastes bitter and a bit like kerosene or snuff.  Yiwu would tend to be floral and sweet instead but even for teas from that broad area drinking only the lowest cost versions might naturally turn up the worst examples.  From what I've experienced of Nepal white teas in this style versions being pretty good is normal.

Other business

I never really did include much of a "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!" section in a post.  I hope that you have had a great holidays and end of the year, leading into another positive and interesting year.  Of course 2018 had some glitches to work through, on the broader scale of events, but sometimes people go a bit far with the negative spin.  The world we had known is continuously ending, and some aspects of present reality are typically a bit messed up.

It's been a busy week here; lots of Christmas details to work out, three trips to a local play area, a good bit of tasting, and the normal errands never stop.

As usual I mostly just want to share pictures of my kids; they are the center of all I do.  Tea works well as a hobby for me to have an interest and focus beyond the work and parenting role but they still mean the most to me.

Christmas with family

an Elsa doll; Santa knew what she wanted

the Funarium, a Bangkok play area

their favorite gift

my view from the final edit too

we usually travel now, and add more activities this year instead

White chocolate masala chai Christmas blend

Originally posted as:  http://www.tching.com/2017/12/christmas-tea-blend-2017/


I've been meaning to get back to making a masala chai and a Christmas tea blend, so to clear through both I combined the themes.  This also contains a touch of bitter orange marmalade to fill in the spice range with a little fruit but the title seemed wordy adding it.

I've done Christmas tea blends before, and talked through what that's all about quite a bit.  Two years ago I did a fruit and spice blend, and last year's version went a bit further from the basics (black tea, orange citrus, and cinnamon) to include vanilla, cacao nibs, and black cherry jam, so based on chocolate covered cherries.  It was nice, just a bit removed from a typical dry tea and spice blend.

This year I didn't put the advance thought in and prep was mostly limited to what I had around.  That actually came up as both a positive and negative factor in the outcome.

Christmas nativity play; there to see that cow in the lower right

my cheerful Christmas cow

Ingredients

-Thai organic CTC black tea
-ginger, clove, cardamom, touch of salt and black pepper
-bitter orange marmalade
-white chocolate
-palm sugar, milk


I did have to buy the black tea for this; funny there was no CTC tea in the house.  I think my wife picked up a couple of free tea bags in a hotel stay once but I went ahead and bought some loose black tea anyway.

I used all dry spices; spice-rack versions.  If the spices are relatively fresh that's fine (not on the old side, I mean, anything in jars isn't fresh in the other sense), since spices have a pretty good life-span.  Flavor dropping off is one thing but after a couple of years they really can pick up a mustiness.  Ginger is typically easy to use fresh, since we cook with the root here, and it's even easy to find back in the US, but we seemed to be out.  I think the powdered ginger was the oldest of the spices and did contribute a slight mustiness.  Luckily the proportion of ginger was quite low in this version, something I'll get to more in the next section.

I would expect that black cherry would be nice for the fruit balance, or orange peel for citrus, but bitter orange marmalade was the closest thing on hand.  I considered squeezing in a bit of fresh pomelo juice (Asian grapefruit), since that was on hand around, but didn't expect it to work as well.

White chocolate was sort of a gamble.  I wasn't sure the texture would work, but then using real vanilla bean (in the past) does contribute a really thick, creamy texture to spice and tea blends, which is still ok.  Adding a touch of salt gives blends balance.  I'm not sure it changed much but I went with a dash of black pepper for this version, which isn't atypical for masala chai, I just don't like peppery chai.  Palm sugar isn't that different than a natural brown sugar; it was really just what was around.

Proportions, process

The blend was mostly black tea.  Clove was heaviest after that, with this version light on ginger.  There was a good bit of chocolate, nearly as much as in a Hershey bar, but not enough to make the drink into a tea flavored hot chocolate instead of a chocolate flavored tea.  I didn't measure those, which leads into an aside I've been meaning to mention, and probably have already covered, about not sticking to well-determined proportions or parameters.

It comes from an approach to cooking.  I taught myself to cook in my 20s, based on my mother's cooking (which is quite good, mainly traditional foods back in Pennyslvania), and on a partial study in making dorm food in college.  Part of my approach was to never, ever use recipes, except maybe for something like chocolate chip cookies--those are touchy.  It was about the process as much as the outcome.  Funny that just came up in talking about making tea; you can probably imagine why.  People get into the ceremonial aspects of that, or see it as some sort of Zen practice, with the Japanese tea ceremony based on that sort of thinking.  I could be more careful about using ideal parameters (I am an engineer too; I get it), but then it becomes about optimization, not the experience.  For me winging it is part of an organic process, and experience limited natural variation is too.

So back to that blend.  I mixed the ingredients and simmered for around 15 minutes.  For more whole spices I'd probably go with at least 20 minutes, but that's fine for finer processed versions.  Whenever you taste such a mix without milk it seems like you've completely ruined it, but adding the milk swings it all into a reasonable balance.  It's probably more typical to simmer along with the milk, and it's my impression that the milk does actually cook a little, changing the flavor, but this time I didn't.

Conclusion, outcome

It worked!  Often the first go at something novel really points towards how to get it right the next time instead, but this balanced well, and was nice.  The chocolate fell into a nice relation to the spicing, and the levels of all of the flavors worked out well.  Clove was strongest of the spice elements, but they all mixed so much that no one element was really pronounced over the others.  The marmalade folded in so well that it was hard to notice it even had any citrus aspect, but I think it probably supported the other flavors more than was evident.  The texture was fine, a little thick, but then ordinary masala chai tends to seem a little thick too.

It was a bit close to hot chocolate, of course, really in between a masala chai version and that.  It worked well for me, but I wouldn't want to drink either of those things too often.  It's a lot easier to review; it tastes like those ingredients.  It would match well with cold weather but it's in the mid 20s here (C; probably up to around 80 F now, cool for us in Bangkok but not cold weather).  I made enough to have two very large cups with breakfast, and judging from the amount of soaked tea and spices I was probably good and dosed with caffeine from that.


Part of the point was trying something new, and part was also about encouraging others that making tea blends is possible.  You don't just need to rely on Teavana or David's to hand something over, and really don't need to go find whole spice versions to make a costly tea blend either.


I'd think lots of things might work well for this holiday blend theme, lots of which I've seen in review posts about them:  pine needles (more on using those here and here), peppermint candy, etc.  It might be cool to try and figure out how to integrate nuts, or other things that wouldn't typically go in a tea blend, cognac, or egg nog, whatever comes to mind.  At worst a batch would be awful, so the time and ingredients would be wasted.

drying fruit for a version awhile back

Messing around with the tea input would be a natural variation.  I often use both CTC black tea and a mid-range quality orthodox black version (if I have both around), but an aged shou mei might fold into spice flavors just as well, or maybe better if you could balance the richness and subtlety well.  Smoked tea (Lapsang Souchong) has blending potential, but you know how it goes with those, finding a good one and getting the balance right would be tricky.

It starts to go a bit far but a Hunan brick tea might have interesting potential, keeping the spice a little lighter in that case so the unusual nature of that tea would have a chance to shine through.  One of those with a little cinnamon and nutmeg, dried orange peel, apple, and some dried fruit (raisin or date) might be great.  Crazy spicing like rosemary and sage might work for a different version, in the right mix.

Or just mixing black tea, cinnamon, and dried orange peel would be great, I'd think.

2016 Christmas in PA, with snow

visiting grandparents last holidays

holiday travel, tisanes / herb teas from pine needles

snow-Dad and snow-girl, at my parent's house (and some pine)

Long time no see!  I just returned from an extended trip back to the US, with stops in Western Pennsylvania to visit family, to Washington DC, and New York City, then onto a short stop in Taiwan on the way back.  I'll add a post about making an unusual version of a tisane / herb tea before getting into the more typical travel blog / tea blog hybrid post, since those notes are already basically a post.


The subject of tea did come up in New York City, and of course also in Taiwan, although I didn't have time to do it justice there, since it was just a three day layover to look around.  The tea theme dropped for the vacation, much more so than is typical, since the airline lost my luggage, so the dozen or two samples of different teas I'd packed were off shuttling around wherever, but not making it to me in the first two places we went.


I made herb "teas" from white pine and hemlock (pine, not the plant that killed Socrates), then later using red pine and Norway spruce.  This pine needle "tea" subject has came up a few times, most recently in discussing Christmas tea blends (here and here), some of which contain pine needles.  This summary post of that content for TChing (a different kind of tea blog site) drifted a little further into pine needle tea scope:


Beyond the basic set, other recipes add nuts, fruits, other spices, pine needles, mint, cacoa nibs or chocolate, and even peppermint candies...  A touch of rosemary might bring out that pine aspect to avoid experimenting with using needles from pine trees, which also does sound interesting.  Per my understanding most pine needles work for making a safe and healthy tisane, with more on that here and here, with a great deal of caution in order for preparing any wild plants as tisanes.


Odd quoting myself.  I didn't sweat the risk, I just drank tea made from pine needles, with more to follow on how that went.  One part of the traditional back-story--perhaps just myth--is that Native Americans taught the early settlers to make pine needle tisanes, a drink that provides lots of vitamins and minerals, including plenty of vitamin C.

Tasting notes:

I might first mention since my parents live in rural Western Pennsylvania I just walked outside and picked these needles off trees.  They're organic; no way anyone was adding fertilizer or pesticides to trees that just grow wild (although they had planted the one Norway spruce pine earlier from seedlings, but it was up to them to make it on their own without chemicals).

White pine: of course both diced needles smelled exactly like the pine types, and the brewed versions did too.  Both were really piney.  I brewed both for more than five minutes, in an open mug, perhaps not ideal but workable.   The white pine was a little lighter, although both were light and sweet (unsweetened).  It had a trace of dryness along with the pine - range taste.



White pine top, hemlock bottom



chopped needles

Hemlock:  the teas shared a lot of taste range but this was warmer and fuller, matching the way the trees smell.  They smell a lot stronger if you just break off and twist the needles, like doing a hiker's version of aromatherapy,  versus just smelling the tree or whole needles. 


Both were nice, to me, but it helps being really into teas, tisanes,  and herbs to begin with.  Supposedly both, and any true pines, are safe, and healthy, but at a minimum nothing negative seemed to come of drinking a few cups of it.

the "tea" brewed quite light but with plenty of flavor

I collected two more needle types for a second tasting, red pine and Norway spruce, both from my parent's house (all four). 

one source:  definitely organic

Norway spruce:  close to white pine, piney--they all are--subtle and sweet.  There is a trace of dryness but it feels soft and rich.  The feel has a resinous character,  as one would expect.   Of course it's not remotely close to any tea, to camellia sinensis. 



Besides pine it's hard to describe much, even though it is distinct from the red pine.  The needles are small and delicate, and relatively short, not as stout and thick as blue spruce,  which one would imagine to be a lot less subtle. 

really more the vacation theme, visiting family

Red pine:  this pine has much thicker, longer needles,  the longest of any local pine types.  Scotch pine is the mid length needle tree recognizable as the standard Christmas tree.  As a child I helped my grandparents run a pine tree farm, clipping the trees in the spring to reinforce that typical shape, but they grew lots of types.

Norway spruce left, red pine right

The red pine tisane (herb tea) is stronger, a bit dryer. It's hard to go further with taste aspect parallels; they taste like pine (or maybe a little like rosemary).  My dad said the spruce tasted like a mild turpentine,  and the spruce like a more robust turpentine, and that's actually not so far off.  Another family member that tried the second batch compared them to the juniper in gin, also a pretty good correlation, but none of them like the effect enough to finish those teas.

A first infusion brewed for a standard four or five minutes, coming out light, even though I'd finely diced the needles to let them brew.  For a second infusion I let them brew out, more like ten minutes.  Differences became pronounced, but still hard to describe. 

I used a brand-new infuser to make it, kind of crazy to do that

The spruce is lighter and sweeter still, but complex and aromatic, not so far from sage.  The red pine almost had a saltiness, not necessarily from salt, possibly the effect of other minerals, a rich taste based around that complexity, with a lot more woodiness.  It's definitely resinous, with a thick, unique feel, based on actual resin.  It is definitely not a good idea to use your normal teaware to make this tisane since cleaning that residue back out might take forever, or extreme measures, like boiling steps and chemical treatments.

All the teas were nice, all different but in the same range.  I liked them, the white pine or Norway spruce best, which were close to each other in effect.  I drink a lot of different teas and a fair number of tisanes, just not quite so frequently, so trying something unusual is standard stuff for me.


I wouldn't give up real tea for drinking versions from pine needles but I'd probably keep those in the rotation if I lived where that grows.  I probably should have harvested an extra couple hundred grams since it was all standing outside growing as part of the natural forest but I didn't get to it.  It might work well in blends, mixing ingredients like herbs, berries, dried fruit, and pine needles to create tisane versions one wouldn't normally even consider, or even local edible roots and bark, if someone really knew what they were up to.  It's probably going a little far to mention a family rumor that I might be part Native American (Americans have trouble keeping track of their own blend of family background), so it's nice to think I might just be getting back to my roots.

playing cards, not so interested in pine needle tea