Inspiration to do weird things can come from ordinary places. Of course, social media opens the door for lots of strange ideas (and videos of people acting on those ideas—cinnamon challenge, anyone?). As I scrolled through Tumblr one day, I came across this post, and the inspiration for "everything tea" was born. The idea behind "everything tea" is essentially that brewing multiple teas together will cure any ailment, but I really just wanted to see what it would actually taste like.
Inspiration and Method
To make my version of "everything tea," I gathered up as many different types of teas as I could. The teas I used were peach mango, orange pekoe and pekoe, vanilla black, chai, red raspberry hibiscus, lemon ginger, white, fruity green tea, rooibos red, mint green, and Earl Grey.
The Predictions
I enlisted the help of two of my housemates, Piper and Katie, to help me judge this "everything tea." While we waited for our concoction to cool, I asked them what they were predicting the tea would taste like.
Katie was afraid it would taste like wassail, a Christmas drink she thinks is super gross. Piper said that we would be subjected to a "taste suicide," predicting that the flavors we would taste the most would be the fruity notes and chai spice. I agreed with her, thinking that the "everything tea" would taste like fruity black tea. After all, it did look like regular black tea.
The Taste Test
The tea's base flavor was definitely the black tea. Piper described the onset of the flavor as "just a little, then all at once." You know, like that John Green quote. Katie picked up on the chai spice notes the most, but I could definitely taste the mint from the Moroccan mint green tea blend.
The tea had a fairly mild taste, and we were all surprised that it didn't taste fruity. We used multiple fruit-flavored teas, and the brew smelled very fruity, but the tea itself tasted standard.
In Conclusion...
Piper, Katie, and I would not recommend making this tea to fix your all-at-once nausea, headache, cold, etc. It just takes too much work. We didn't see any real benefit to this (we didn't expect a benefit, anyway). While we agreed that it didn't taste bad, I'd still prefer a plain cup of black tea with honey.