gurdymonkey | Today's tea: "Colonial Bohea" from Williamsburg (Reply)

I found a surprise on my doorstep this morning in a USPS Priority Mail box from my friends Joshua and Ellen Badgley (aka Ii Saburou Katsumori and Abe Akirakeiko). So of course I fired up the kettle.

According to the label, this bohea (pronounced boo hee) is "a distinctive black tea blend with a light smoky flavor. It was so popular in colonial times that bohea became the common word for tea. It was imported in larger quantities than all other teas combined, and it was the majority of tea destroyed during tea tax protests in revolutionary America."

Good smoky aroma on opening the tin and the leaf is very black. Suggested brew time on the tin was 5 minutes at 195 F. My kettle settings allow for 190 or 200 and since I was not going to be drinking this with milk or sugar, I brewed for 2 minutes at 190. Flavor was nicely smoky, light and not at all astringent.

That made me sufficiently curious to see if it became bitter on a longer steep, so I did a second cup at 200F for a full 5 minute steep. When the timer went off and I went back in the kitchen, I could smell the smoke aroma wafting out of the spout of the kyusu.

I can understand how this could be a nice everyday cuppa for our colonial forebears.

Available along with a number of other varieties from Colonial Williamsburg's shops.

Tea trivia: Say "boo hee." Now say "woo yee." Bohea is from the Wuyi mountains of Fujian Province, a place renowned for such teas as Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe) oolong. Black teas such as Jin Jun Mei are also from that region. During the 17th - 18th centures as tea exports to the West really began to take off, new names for various grades of tea came into use. Bohea came to be associated with the cheapest grade of black tea. Cheap is not necessarily bad. In this case it meant more people could afford it and drink it, which is why the blurb on the tin about its use in the Colonies makes sense. Modern price at Colonial Williamsburg is $16.99 for 3 ounces or 85 grams, or about $ .20/gram, which jives with the least expensive black varieties at oldwaystea.com. Their cheapest smoked black tea is $0.38/gram.

I was sufficiently curious to see if the bohea would become bitter on the longer steep, so I did a second cup for a full 5 minutes at 200F to see what would happen. The timer went off, I rounded the corner into the kitchen and immediately got a faceful of smoke aroma, but that might be because I'd left the top off the teapot. Color in the cup is slightly darker than the shorter first steep, but not by much. And no, it didn't get bitter!

So a hat tip to Colonial Williamsburg for quite a nice smoked tea. If you're a milk and sugar tea person, it's robust enough to handle it. If you want it plain and a little lighter, simply reduce the steep time. Good stuff.

EDIT: I threw the steeped leaves into a tall glass with some water and cold brewed it overnight. The color was a bit weaker than the first two steeps, but the flavor was still nice. So if you like smoky flavors, this works well as an iced tea.