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Coffee and tea
All Containers›Shop by use case›Coffee and tea›Tea and tisanes›Blending tea, and keeping it the sameShop all coffee and tea →
Tea and tisanes

Blending tea, and keeping it the same

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page7
A tea blend is a product you promise to keep making, out of components that change every harvest.

Blend by weight, always

Leaf varies enormously in density and volume, so a recipe in scoops is not a recipe. Weights are reproducible by somebody else on a different day, which is the actual requirement once you are not the only one blending.

Keep a reference sample

A sealed sample of the blend as it should be, tasted against each new batch. Without it you are matching to memory, and memory drifts in the same direction as the product, so the blend can move a long way without anybody noticing a step.

Components change and you adjust

A new lot of a base tea will not be identical, and holding the blend constant means changing the proportions rather than keeping them. That is the opposite of how makers instinctively think about a recipe, and it is what a house blend actually is.

Added ingredients bring their own problems

Dried fruit carries moisture and can go sticky or mold in a blend that would otherwise be stable. Flavorings migrate into the leaf and into everything stored nearby. Both are reasons a flavored blend is harder to keep than a plain tea.

Smells travel

Tea absorbs aroma readily, which is why a strongly scented blend stored next to a plain one damages the plain one. Separate storage for scented products is not fussiness; it is the only thing that stops the whole range tasting faintly of bergamot.

Record the lots in the blend

Which base teas, which lots, in what proportion, and when. That record is what lets you reproduce a blend that worked and diagnose one that did not, and it is the only part of this that is genuinely administrative.

References

21 CFR 101, Food Labeling, which carries the general requirements that apply here in the absence of a standard of identity: the statement of identity, net quantity, ingredient list and the name and place of business of the responsible party. law.cornell.edu
Federal Tea Tasters Repeal Act of 1996, Public Law 104-128, April 9, 1996, which eliminated the Board of Tea Experts by repealing the Tea Importation Act of 1897. Imported tea remains subject to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. congress.gov
Written from federal regulation and from the published physics and chemistry of staling, not from a laboratory. There is no standard of identity for coffee or tea, so most of what governs a product here is the general requirement that labels be truthful and claims be substantiated. Anything here is a starting point for a conversation with your state department of agriculture, not a determination that you comply.