This tea blend designed by Robert Pirlot came in a sampler. There are six different teas in the box, housed in slide-top tins with each tin holding 1/2 ounce of tea. There are more than six Harry Potter fandom blends available, though, and you can choose your own sampler set. I love that!
Veritaserum is a black tea with raspberry, chocolate, and hazelnut flavors. The black tea base is fairly strong with a light briskness, but it is not astringent or unpleasant at all.
Raspberry is the prominent flavor to me, and the chocolate aspect is of the unsweetened variety, not milky and sweet. It lends an additional bottom note to the tea, emphasizing the briskness, making it great for breakfast – I had it today with an Everything Bagel – or to pair with sweets and “cut through the sugar.”
I don’t add milk or sugar to this, but it could definitely handle it and would be delicious that way. Then it would be very dessert-like on its own!
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Adagio Teas
Description
Veritaserum is clear, colourless, and odourless and is almost indistinguishable from water. The potion must mature for a full lunar phase, and is quite difficult to produce. It can be mixed with any drink, and three drops are a sufficient dose to make the drinker ‘spill out his innermost secrets’. Thus, the potion forces the drinker to tell the complete truth to any question asked to him/her.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Review: Lion’s Blend/Friday Afternoon
This afternoon I felt like getting woke — both energetically and politically — so I chose Lion’s Blend from Friday Afternoon Tea.
This tea is essentially an Earl Grey with added rooibos & orange. The rooibos in Lion’s Blend gives a nice vanilla/sweetness that balances out its citrus/bergamot flavors. (I’m a huge fan of red rooibos, which I think throws in creaminess and joy to any cup.) Despite the rooibos, I still find this blend a little astringent. I like it, but it’s not on my must-have re-buy list.
However, I’m super happy I bought this blend because the proceeds go to an important charity that assists trans people with getting their mental health needs met (https://seattle.eater.com/2020/6/8/21284453/seattle-cafe-friday-afternoon-tea-donates-trans-mental-health-funds-jk-rowling). All of Friday Afternoon’s Harry Potter themed (https://fridaytea.com/collections/j-k-rowling) teas’ proceeds go there.
For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with a children’s book writer from 20 years ago, Jo (J. K.) Rowling has been saying a lot of transphobic things. You can Google it if you want. It’s mean stuff.
Friday Afternoon Tea saw this and decided to use its teas and the fans of her work to show that the fandom is progressive and kind! I love this. It’s a win-win situation.
It’s possible to love someone’s work without loving them. I also feel this way about horror/fantasy author HP Lovecraft. (He was really, REALLY racist. He thought Hitler had some good ideas.) It’s possible for people to be geniuses in one way but very, very behind in others.
That’s where this tea comes in.
Thanks, tea. You always give me balance in a crazy world.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Black/Rooibos
Where to Buy: Friday Afternoon
Description
Lions, tigers, and griffins, oh my! This tea is dedicated to our bold, righteous Gryffindor brethren. They can find courage and happiness in the darkest of places, especially when bolstered by the bright citrus notes in this tea!
Ingredients: Rooibos, Assam black tea, orange peel, marigold, natural flavorings
All of our teas available online are gluten-free and sourced from organically certified farms. Most are vegan, but some may include honey (indicated in ingredients).
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Butter Brew/Bird & Blend. . . .
When I was in Harry Potter World in Universal, I tried “Butter Beer.” The over-hyped, lackluster beverage was $6 for a clear Solo cup’s worth. The flavor was like a cream soda mixed with a root beer. Meh.
After that disappointment, I was on the lookout for a better butter beer — and have found it with Butter Brew from Bird and Blend. (Alliteration, anyone?)
This blend is like an English Breakfast into which someone dumped molasses/sweetness/creamer. A LOT OF CREAMER. The warm dairy sweetness of this is POTENT.
This blend also includes calendula petals. I looked up this plant, because I keep seeing those petals everywhere. What’s their flavor? What’s their reason?
Turns out — in case you were wondering at all — that calendula is a type of flower that includes the marigold. (You may have seen it in gardens. Perhaps your own garden.) The flower has alleged anti-inflammatory properties. MOSTLY, however, calendula is used to give a pop of color to a dish. Which I totally get, because tea is so dull and brown without the flowers. I love a good inclusion. It says “here’s a fancy, pretty treat JUST FOR YOU, on this bitter and sad and cold morning.” The yellow also, I suppose, is the color of butter, now that I think of it.
Depending on who you are, the $6 soda concoction might be for you. But I, personally, prefer the MANY, MUCH BETTER cups of tea you can get for a comparable price at Bird & Blend.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Bird & Blend
Description
This tea is no longer available but click below for teas that are.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Slytherin from The Forest Witch. . . . . .
The Forest Witch’s Slytherin Blend is — to start off — just a really cool name. Both the Forest Witch part and the Harry Potter part. Kudos on the naming. The Witch also carries teas named after Game of Thrones houses, mythological characters, and other magic. I’m a huge sucker for that kind of thing, and this tea definitely knows its niche and caters to it.
The tea itself is a hearty lemon and nut-flavored tea with a dash of cherry. The cherry is secondary, so if that’s your primary focus, I’d recommend hunting down another cup. But if you want a cool blend of unexpected yet harmonious flavors, this might be your jam.
The lemon is zesty; the cherry is like a violin playing; and the nuts form a friendly base. They’re all being embraced by the malty black.
This tea totally works. Sometimes, when I’m trying a tea, I think the creators are putting in a little too much effort. (“Eighty ingredients? Are they OKAY over there?”) But a base + 3 flavors is just right. You get the high, the middle, and the low notes (ideally, in my opinion).
I don’t know if this tea says “Slytherin” to me, necessarily. Lemon is totally a Slytherin thing (kinda spiky in flavor, a little sassy). Cherry, sure. Black tea? Obviously. Slytherins look great in black.
But I feel like nuts are the zone of Hufflepuff. Nuts feel “friendly” to me.
This is, obviously, totally subjective and in my head.
I’ve put a lot of thought into the Potter Houses. For example, of all the Harry Potter houses I could be at present, Slytherin is literally the last. I’m not bragging here that I’m a selfless angel; I’m instead telling you that my “go-getter” drive is dead. I took too many AP classes in high school, and was, frankly, terminally exhausted by the time I was 18. Then I got sucked into a difficult (but rewarding!) major, and I’m now a vortex “meh, not worth it.”
If Hermione Granger just took it easy the rest of her life post-Hogwarts, would anyone really hold it against her? Maybe she could find a reasonably-challenging job she liked, and devote her free time to writing tea reviews or something.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black Tea
Where to Buy: The Forest Witch
Description
Brewing up plans for your path to success and prestige once you leave Hogwarts? Why not enjoy a satisfying cup of tea sure to help fortify you on your way?
Black tea provides a lovely malty and sweet base for pistachios, cherries, and lemongrass. A delicious treat for pistachio pudding lovers, and ambitious witches and wizards alike!
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Harry Potter Fans-Check this out! Pumpkin Juice Green Tea from 52Teas
The thing I was originally going to write about this was “this tastes like the Hogwarts library.” I was going to talk about the vegetal green taste with the rich old spices, like herbology books being read by Neville Longbottom after a long day of academia. I had a variety of very interesting, seemingly novel ideas.
(NOVEL IDEAS? GET IT?)
Then I went to 52Teas’ own description which — I do not jest — literally says: “I’m a huge Harry Potter fan and have been for a lot of years so this year as my Halloween offering, I decided I wanted to celebrate my favorite books with a tribute to one of the wizarding world’s favorite juices: Pumpkin Juice!”
I don’t remember the words “pumpkin juice” being used in the Potterverse, but apparently the association was subliminal, because there I was, browsing the Hogwarts library’s forbidden section and trying not to get bitten by books with the best of them.
The tea itself tastes like pumpkin, pineapple, and spices. It’s a cool mix!
I’ve tried a bunch of Pumpkin Spice beverages this autumn, and this one stands out as the most original. It’s the only one that features green tea (!) and pineapples (!).
I suppose if you are a pumpkin spice classicist, you can drink your black pumpkin tea in your mundane Muggle life.
I, on the other hand, will be sharing this cup with Hagrid and Fang
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green Flavored Tea
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
I’m a huge Harry Potter fan and have been for a lot of years so this year as my Halloween offering, I decided I wanted to celebrate my favorite books with a tribute to one of the wizarding world’s favorite juices: Pumpkin Juice!
Having never actually tasted pumpkin juice, I googled “pumpkin juice” for some ideas on recipes for it. There are a few different recipes online for pumpkin juice and each of them were a little different. Some were a combination of orange juice and pumpkin juice – which sounded interesting! Another included dried apricots instead of the orange juice – also interesting! Others were made with peach or pear juice. But the recipe that appealed to me most was one that combined pumpkin, apple juice, pineapple juice and spices. I thought that the apple would add some pleasant sweetness to the savory quality of the pumpkin and the pineapple juice would add some brightness to the overall flavor.
I started with a base of fair-trade, rainforest alliance certified Satemwa estate green teas (OP1 & Zomba Steamed) and added chunks of dried pumpkin, freeze-dried apples and pineapple, allspice, cinnamon, ginger and touch of freshly shaved nutmeg. The fruits do soften the flavor of the pumpkin somewhat however, the overall flavor is quite autumn-y and delicious.