Addendum: Tea Pods

So I wrote before about how to make your own coffee pods. I also had briefly mentioned about making tea pods. We’ll I’ve worked on it, and here are the results.

I have a lovely tin of jasmine tea. I’d be making it all time, except that it’s loose jasmine tea and I have no decent tea strainer. So it’s been sitting in the cupboard for a while. Now that I have the Senseo, this will all change. I woke up this morning wanting tea instead of coffee and immediately got to work on trying tea pods out.



Experiment One

Following the method written about in a pervious post, I used the loose tea, as is. I hit the two cup button and the magic happen.

Results

The tea was on the light side, but it produced some foam. Immediately I was overcome with foam giddiness. The taste, I’m afraid was weak. I think it was because the tea was dry when the water hit it, so I decided to hit the one cup button for round two. Not as strong as I like, but it was much better than the first cup.

Experiment Two

For this test, I ground up the loose tea, so that it would resembled the ideal coffee grounds. Followed the coffee pod method. I also wet the pod before using, just to release the tea goodness.

Results

Almost there! I used the two cup button and I found that grinding the tea helps tremendously. It was darker than the straight loose tea, and there was no foam on the top, but then again, why would you want “creamy” tea… unless it’s chai? I wanted to see how much good tea would come out of the pod so I hit the one cup button. The tea that came out even darker than the first cup. And the taste? Just what I like.

Conclusion

Grind up that loose tea! You don’t have to deal with that tea bag in your way while you’re drinking… plus, if you’re one of those people you use your tea bag more than once, all you have to do is press a button. I think it gets better after the first cup. But remember to moisten the pod before you brew! It helps ready the tea for that burst of water that quickly pumps through.

And while I’m at it…

The websites say it’s a no-no to use tea bags in the machine. If it’s an ordinary tea bag, sure, I guess that makes sense. But what if you have round tea bags, like I do? I was feeling invincible, so I gave it a whirl.

I hit the button, grabbed my cat, and ran out of the kitchen.

It worked fine. There was no explosion, just the normal purring of the machine. To that end, any tea bag will work. The two important things to remember when brewing are:

GET RID OF ANY LOOSE GROUNDS

and

MOISTEN BEFORE USING

Happy brewing!