Tea Emperor

One could say that we have a tea collection, but to say so would be incorrect. We merely buy more loose tea than what we consume. Poor is the faith of some of our purchases as tempting tea packages lay in some forgotten cupboard corner only to be tossed to the trash.

MAINLY LOOSE TEA

As you can see from the photo below there are mainly loose teas in our collection, but we have made some room for daily quick fixes and few specialties. With quick fix I refer to the morning bulk bag tea, which is fast, black, cheap and easy. Come to think of it that is almost how I like my women, but don’t tell that to the Empress…

Our collection of loose teas.

FEW SPECIALTIES

These we get from our travels to Asia and Northern Europe. Let’s face it, in Asia they know how to make a good cup of tea and in Northern Europe they have pristine nature with all sorts of wild plants just dying to be dried and labeled as X tea. So you want an example? Birch leaf tea, Bilberry leaf tea, Bilberry berry tea, Buckthorn tea, Cloudberry tea and then there are all those meadow herbs… I’d like to see them grow those in the Orient.

THE TEA COLLECTION

The good thing about having more than one tea brand in your slate is that you can offer more variety for the visitors, and more importantly, you can add some taste into your life just the way you need it. For some people tea collection might be a source for little competitive spirit. There’s nothing wrong in real tea collections, but remember that very few teas age well.

Bilberry belongs to the same berry family as lingon berries, bog bilberries and cranberries. Usually we call it blueberry, and even a toddler knows why. Go and watch how kids swiftly combine clean clothes with blueberry pie. Blueberries can be and are used in many different ways for example in blueberry teas.

WHERE DO BLUEBERRIES GROW?
Just like youngsters’ pranks, bilberry doesn’t thrive in excess sunlight. Young and lush forests are best areas to find these fresh and vitamin packed treats. Nutritious bilberry is valued food source for many animals like bears and various birds, which in exchange spread it efficiently.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN BLUEBERRY FLOWERS?
Bilberries flower during late spring or early summer with the help of insects. Nighttime frosts can damage these delicate, red and sometimes white flowers. If this happens, well, it means fewer blueberry pies in the autumn.

WHEN CAN YOU PICK BLUEBERRIES?
When it is a good time to go pick bilberries then? Surprisingly early, the first month for bilberries to ripe is July and season lasts until late September.

Days in front of the screen take toll on your eyes. Organic wild forest blueberry has fantastic nutritional values, which are not diluted by production processes that are associated with common blueberry pills.

WHERE THEY GROW?

Forest blueberry grows wild in the land of thousands of lakes under the midnight sun. Sparsely populated Finland has vast forests and pure nature. It is safe to pick blueberries here, in fact they are so tasty that picking takes time – delicious blueberries quickly find their way to berry picker’s mouth and not only to the basket.

HOW BLUEBERRIES BECOME TEA?

It takes a long process for us to have some fine blueberry tea in our cupboard. Collecting them from forest is the time consuming part as nature enthusiasts crowd Finnish forests and hand-pick the blueberries from the ground while avoiding wolves, bears, wolverines and mooses. At times it can be pretty scary inside thick woods. After getting the raw material collected the real transformation from a berry to a tea powder starts.

WASHING AND DRYING

First the blueberries are washed and after that they must go through natural drying. As a process, the drying is the best method what comes to preserving important nutrition of the berries. Throughout the drying process, temperature never rises over 40 degrees of Celsius therefore even the most delicate nutritions are undamaged.

GRINDING

Dried berries are grind into fine blueberry powder and then vacuum packed for optimal preservation. Mechanical grinding doesn’t lower the nutritional contents of the blueberries actually grinding helps in getting the most out of the blueberries as seeds and skin are both broken so that nutrition is more easily digestible.

HOW DOES IT TASTE?

It tastes like blueberries do – really.