Elora Tea
Pistols at Dawn - English Breakfast
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High in anti-oxidants, this traditional tea is a mainstay of British culture. It has good body and full tea flavour notes, with a coppery, bright liquor. It is traditionally served with milk or lemon, and can be enjoyed unsweetened, or sweetened to taste. Versions of "English Breakfast" are often marketed under the generic term "orange pekoe", which is actually a grade of tea leaf, and not a type of tea. Our Pistols at Dawn is produced using a blend of "flowery orange pekoe" black teas, which is a higher grade of tea than that used in mass-market teabag production.
HEALTH PROPERTIES: High in anti-oxidants
ETHICS: Ethical Tea Partnership & GMO Free
CAFFEINE LEVELS: Medium
TEA SOURCING: Blended from black teas from the Nuwara Eliya, Dimbula and Uva regions in Sri-Lanka, the Nandi Highlands in Kenya, and the Nilgiri moutain region in India. Small batch blended by Metropolitan Tea in Canada.
THE STORY OF ENGLISH BREAKFAST TEA
Today the habit of tea drinking is inexorably linked to England despite the fact that the British were fairly late on the tea scene in historical terms. Tea was far more popular in other European countries, before the British caught on to the habit. Tea was first brought to England via Holland on Dutch ships. As tea grew to become an 'in' beverage, the British government became quite incensed that a nation as tiny as the Netherlands could control the shipment of tea to the UK. In 1651 the British government passed the Navigation Acts, which forbade the importation of any products on non-British ships. Traders and Dutchmen, being resourceful, continued the trade in the usual manner but for one little wrinkle - the tea was transshipped in Holland onto British ships!
Early in British life tea was known as a health beverage and claimed all sorts of curative powers. In the 1650's, Garway's Coffee House proclaimed that:
"Tea makes the body active and lusty. Tea is declared to be the most wholesome;
preserving perfect health until extreme Old Age"
Afternoon tea was the invention of Anna, wife of the seventh Duke of Bedford in England. At the time custom dictated only two planned meals per day: a hearty breakfast and a late evening dinner. Anna in an effort to ease the mid-day "sinking feeling", began instructing her servants to prepare tea and cakes in the late afternoon. Thus began a fashionable habit, which still exists today.
Britain is steeped in tea history. Think of: High Tea, the Brown Betty, American War of Independence, Opium Wars, The Boxer Rebellion, Clipper Ship races from Fuzhou, China to Portsmouth UK, the Earl of Grey, and English Breakfast blends.
BREWING INSTRUCTIONS
BREWING INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOT TEA: Infuse one slightly heaping teaspoon for each 8 ounce cup with boiling water for 3-7 minutes.
Infuse 6 slightly heaping teaspoons of tea with 1 1/4 cups of boiling water for 5 minutes. Quarter fill a serving pitcher with cold water, and add the infused tea, straining the leaves, to the pitcher. Add ice and top-up the pitcher with cold water. Add lemon and sweeten to taste. A rule of thumb when preparing fresh brewed iced tea is to increase the strength of hot tea since it will be poured over ice and diluted with cold water.
Infuse 1 slightly heaping teaspoon of loose tea with 6 ounces of boiling water for 5 minutes. Add the tea to a 12 ounce glass, filled with ice, straining the leaves. Add hot tea to a 12oz/375ml acrylic glass filled with ice, straining the tea or removing the bags. Add lemon and sweeten to taste.
NUMBER OF CUPS: 15-20 cups from each 50 grams of tea, with a single use of the leaves. Loose leaf tea is traditionally infused 3 times, with a different flavor profile following each infusion. Accordingly, each 50 gram bag can make up to 60 cups of tea.
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