A tea made from coffee!! HELP required
Hi everyone,
So I’m the founder of a successful boutique loose leaf tea company in Sydney, Australia. Besides my love for tea though, I love coffee. Don’t ask me to choose which one I love more :P
For a long time I have wanted to combine my two loves. So I’ve come up with a tea that consists of premium Assam tea, freshly ground single origin coffee beans and infused with an all natural caramel cream flavour. It will also have corn flower petals. Drinking instructions would be to add 1-2 tbs per 250ml of hot milk and steep for 3 minutes.
So, what do you think? Am I crazy? Is this a brilliant idea? I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. Any thoughts are welcome.
To check out the company, head to www.sydneytea.com.au (worldwide shipping available).
Thanks :)
It’s hard to imagine who the consumer audience for it would be. Tea enthusiasts and coffee enthusiasts might both reject it for the obvious reason, that it includes more than the product type that they like. Both could be offended by the flavored theme, even if it is natural.
If it’s a lot better than it sounds there might be some way to get the word out, over time, but it doesn’t sound good. Coffee is a lot stronger flavored than tea, even in the case of Assam; it’s hard to imagine much of the tea showing through. Natural caramel flavor for either could conceivably work but maybe not as well together. Just spitballing, but using coffee leaves as a tisane and doing a tisane blend along with tea might make more sense.
Generally the audience for coffee teas seems to be coffee drinkers looking to “transition” into teas (for a variety of reasons) who need more of a bridge, or people who like the taste of coffee but want less of the caffeine from it – a coffee flavoured tea can sometimes satisfy the taste they like but are on average much lighter in caffeine.
David’s tea does a coffee puer with coffee beans in it. Butiki did a tea blend with coffee flavored tea and lapsang. Wize Monkey makes coffee leaf teas. Combining the two might not be as crazy as you think.
Raw beans would more or less be a tisane, instead of similar to conventional coffee. I wouldn’t expect that to infuse very well, similar to how cacao nibs sort of do, but not well. I’ve tried a few Wize Monkey coffee leaf versions; they’re ok, interesting and pleasant enough.
My original point was more that not so many people would be looking for a coffee and tea blend and it might be a tough sell. It also doesn’t sound good to me, but results would vary based on how it was made.
The beans are roasted, but your point brings up a question for me. I wonder how much of the coffee flavor comes from the addition of the beans vs. the additional coffee flavor. I might pick a bean out and put it in some hot water to test it.
Using a very light roast might offset the concern I expressed earlier, about coffee taking over the flavor of tea. It wouldn’t be a familiar form of coffee but that might actually work better.
I’m also a big tea drinker who enjoys the occasional cup of coffee. I don’t usually drink either of these beverages with milk, though, so I’m probably not your target audience. Other than the novelty factor, is there a reason you want to combine coffee and tea?
If you have a boutique, you could always offer samples to your customers and see how they react.
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