Mrs. Kelly's Teas 2015

I was watching for the repeat of Mrs. Kelly's Teas annual tasting event this year.  Eryn had a great time last year, so we got up so we could be there when it opened: a good way to score a table and some time before it's too crowded.  After dropping off our foodshelf donation, we found a table in the Mrs. Kelly's building with a hot water dispenser and got to work.  Our goal, to taste 33 teas.  One more than in 2014.  It took me a few teas before I realized I had the 2014 list available, so we had some overlap.  But we tried a lot of new tea.  And then settled right back on the three we liked from last year: Holiday, Minneapple Green, and Vanilla Orange (Roobios).  Although we did add a bag of Green Lemon to the mix.

Here's the warehouse.  You can tell because at the very top of the photo, you can see the word "warehouse".  During the event there's also some cheesecake and chocolate if you bring your credit card and some cash (as well as some jewelry and honey and art).


Mrs. Kelly's is just this room (three little rooms) off the main hall.  Here's Eryn toward the end of the event, thoroughly caffeinated.  She got a compliment on her Dr. Who hat and I was complimented on my Serenity sweatshirt.  There were quite a few folks in Dr. Who gear, including a sweatshirt that was a faux ugly holidays sweater with the Tardis on it, and a handbag with a Tardis.  So, although there were plenty of older women you might mentally associate with tea, there were also a lot of younger women and couples who might be borderline hipster.  It was a fairly mixed crowd.


Although this picture doesn't do anything to prove that.  Perhaps I should have taken a picture of the ladies having a tea party behind us - they were all in their mid to upper twenties.  This is the herbal tea room.  No caffeine to be seen here, just raspberries and peaches and strawberries and the like.


Our list where we started to circle what we drank.  Later we added 2014 next to the 2014 samples.


The tea station with the canisters.  There was another for black/breakfast teas around the corner.  You used the spoons to fill little tea bags (over there in the plastic cup lying on its side).  I'd go find two and report back.  And then Eryn would go find two and report back.  We had an assembly line approach to maximizing our tea tasting.


Here's the setup.  Sometimes we'd write on the sides to make sure we didn't forget what was what.  After enough caffeine it was difficult to focus, even for a few moments.  There was a hot water dispenser at our table - a big one that you pour a few pots of coffee into.  At one point, he had to refill our container.


Me enjoying my tea and still sporting my "long" haircut from Movember (gone as of this moment).


After tea, I let Eryn pick where to eat and we hit The Bad Waitress.  I didn't think we were going to stay because it was full, but while Eryn was in unloading some more tea, two spots at the counter freed up.  I had the matador - hashbrowns and eggs and bacon.  Eryn went hamburger.  We were both happy and neither of us had tea, soda, or coffee.  Go figure.


Teas tried this year (no bananas foster this year!)...ut oh.  That's 32.  Don't tell Eryn I can't count!  Although I think there was one I couldn't find on the list, so that may have been #33.

1. Black Forest
2. Creme Brulee (tasted like Vanilla Orange)
3. Herbal High C 
4. Peach Mango
5. Spiced Orange
6. Sunrise Surprise (Eryn hates it.  We had it in 2014 too).
7. Yerba
8. Coconut
9. Green Lemon
10. Green Mango
11. Pear
12. Pomegrante
13. Strawberry Lemon
14. Kenya Gold Tip
15. Sumby B
16. Apricot Ginger
17. Black Currant
18. Butterscotch
19. Chai (spicy)
20. Creme d Raspberry
21. Equinox
22. French Vanilla
23. Ginger Peach
24. Orange Fruitage
25. Spiced Orange
26. Ceylon
27. English Breakfast
28. Lapsang (smoky)
29. Puerh Loose
30. Yunnan (good breakfast taste)
31. Peaches and Cream (bleah)
32. Iron Goddess (just weird despite smelling like breakfast tea)

Catch Up - Part II - Mrs. Kelly's Teas

In December (December 6 to be precise), I talked Eryn into going to Mrs. Kelly's Tea's annual tea tasting.  M.A. Rosko from Channel 9's morning news had talked about it during the week - Eryn and I watch the news together in the morning and although Fox isn't necessarily in line with my political sentiments, they have a good local morning show here in the Twin Cities - and Eryn is a pretty serious tea drinker.

I think we tried almost 30 teas each.  We got there early enough to lock in a little table and two chairs, so one off us would go off and create three tea bags and bring them back with water, we'd spend a few minutes talking about our first sips, and then the other one of us would go find three different teas.  It was a tea assembly line.



There were several areas to fill your tea bags with a theme to the areas - fruity vs. black vs. oolong vs green.  This was one of several areas.  You just grabbed a few open-topped bags and scooped a plastic spoon of tea into each one to put in a small styrofoam cup.


Water stations were in the hallway so you could refill your cups.  While it might seem very un-eco-friendly to have all those styrofoam cups, it did make for less of a mess and Eryn and I were able to reuse the six we had (our 3/3 rotation cups) for everything we drank and there were collection and recycling spots all over the place (although I'm not sure if you can recycle styrofoam cups yet).


So here's our official set up with our tea list and cups.  We tried:

1. Africa Fruit Bowl
2. Cozy Chamomile
3. Fairy Tisane (smells like grass, the fresh cut outside kind, not the Colorado kind)
4. Tisane (Hibiscus)
5. Peach Mango
6. Spearmint
7. Honeybush
8. Strawberry Fields
9. Sunrise Surprise
10. Vanilla Orange
11. Strawberry Surprise
12. Cherry Green
13. Citrusnap
14. Chamomile (not cozy)
15. Gunpowder (weird)
16. Jasmine Pearls ($40 a bag and looks like little rolled flowers)
17. Jasmine Ginger (ewww...tasted like vasoline)
18. Emon Green (? or something like that)
19. Minneapple Green
20. Pear
21. Butterscotch
22. Creme of Raspberry (tastes like a scratch and sniff from my childhood)
23. Chocolate Mint (ick)
24. Spiced Orange
25. Banana Foster
26. Assam
27. English Breakfast
28. Russian Smoky (tasted like Bacon)
29. Peach Oolong
30. Holiday Decaf
31. Holiday not Decaf
32. Malted Chocolate or something like that

There might have been a few others.  Both Eryn and I were reeling from caffeine overload by the time we left.  Holiday, Vanilla Orange, and Minneapple were the three we took home, in addition to some gourmet chocolate and a bracelet for my wife from a custom jewelry boutique, Azra Jewelry.  We also doubled down on everything but the jewelry for my mother for her Secret Santa gift.



Here's Eryn before the caffeine hangover kicks in.


A few of the teas including Banana Foster which we snapped a picture of for my sister who refuses to talk about how she once made us Bananas Foster as a dessert.


After Mrs. Kelly's we did a neighborhood tour - this is right next to the warehouse Mrs. Kelly's abides in - and found some lunch at Maeve's Cafe and some books at the local used book store.  Eryn picked up a novel based on Halo, the video game, and I just this week found her three others at the library (although she's currently in the middle of Mort(e)), so our tea and book experiences are still front and center 4 months later.


Maeve's was a nice place to slowly unwind over iPad Fluxx and get some food on top of all that liquid.


I particularly liked this painting, although for most of our visit I thought it was a chalkboard you could write on without damaging the picture.  Fortunately, there was no chalk so I was saved from inadvertent vandalism.


Maeve's also had a wall of poetry, some of it an homage to squirrels.  I wonder if there are tulip bulbs in the sun (XKCD)?


And finally, this has NOTHING to do with the trip to Mrs. Kelly's directly, but it's part of Eryn's tea mini-obsession.  When my wife and I went to The Lagoon to see the animation Academy Award nominations recently, we wandered around Kitchen Windows ogling all the shiny coffee makers and toys.  We left with little for ourselves, but picked up this manatee tea steeper for Eryn (she has a thing for manatees after our first trip to Florida, and a stuffed manatee named Sally).