Every Day Adventures With Katie: Making Tea Lattes

Today I want to share with you an adventure in domesticity! I have so so many of those types of adventures and I don’t share them with you nearly enough. So look forward to more of those in the future 🙂

For a while now, I have been into making and enjoying tea lattes.

What is a tea latte you ask? Well, its a lot like a coffee latte, in that you make a hot drink, then you add milk that is warmed with a steam wand to 140-160 degrees F, which is measured with a thermometer while preparing. The steam wand creates bubbles of various sizes. I am not always that exact with the proportions of my steamed milk to tea ratio but I try to keep it about half tea, half steamed milk.

If you are into making or enjoying coffee drinks this chart shows you the differences in the ratio of milk to espresso in various drinks.

My love affair with tea lattes started about twenty years ago when I was first introduced to Chai Tea lattes. I first enjoyed them when I lived in a remote-ish area of New York State. My days-off from work usually consisted of driving a pretty good distance away to see civilization again and I would get one when I was out as a treat.

During that time, a friend introduced to the London Fog latte (a latte made with Earl Grey tea). It became my new favorite thing. I loved the way the name invoked images of London in the rain on a foggy day. I still have never been to London but after enjoying this drink, I have decided that London must taste like Bergamot. Fifteen years later, they are still one of my favorite drinks to order when I am at a coffee joint. Up until that point, I didn’t know of any other tea lattes besides Chai so learning about this other option made me so happy.

As the years progressed, I tried tea lattes made from powder, concentrate, and tea bags. I gave Matcha lattes a whorl at Starbucks. The same friend who taught me about London Fog lattes also introduced me to pre-made tea lattes that came in a carton, just add milk. Thank you, tea-guru friend! These days santa often brings me one of those cartons in my Christmas stocking. Thanks you Santa!

I care so much about fancy tea drinks because I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker until recently. However, I did drink a big mug of black tea every day. So eleven years ago, when we received an espresso maker as a wedding gift, Mr. Katie became the primary barista. Let’s be real, not just primary barista, solo barista. I didn’t try to learn how to use it at all. I was completely dependent on him so my occasional weekend espresso based drink.

But things change and now we have two boys who were little babies once. Necessity breeds coffee drinkers. So now I am so much more interested in coffee craft than I used to me and in the past few years, I learned how to use our espresso machine and its attached steam wand.

I started developing preferences about coffee grinds and a palate for coffee flavors. I heard myself tell my younger sister’s friend that an Americano, a coffee made from espresso and hot water, “is so much more than just a cup of coffee because delicious buttery fats and different flavonoids are released in espresso than in drip coffee because of the pressure and heat being released over a shorter period of time.” Who is this person I wondered?

But then I started going in a different direction.

It started about a year ago when I was enticed to sample a Hot Cinnamon Spice tea latte at the café at Barnes & Noble. With its sweet and spicy flavor, it was love at first taste. On that cold, March morning when I first tried it, it warmed me through and through. The older woman barista, who I have since found myself quite found of, wisely directed me to the sale rack of tea tins located behind me. She, an woman old enough to be my mother, let me know that my new favorite cinnamon tea, made by Harney & Sons, was currently priced at Buy One Get One 50% off.

I had never heard of Harney & Sons and I don’t usually buy tea at Barnes & Noble, but I loved my drink and not a whole lot of exciting stuff was going on during that boring time between winter and spring, so I purchased it. I also bought the tin of the Blueberry Green Tea sachets, which was the flavor of latte that Mr. Man sampled that morning.

Before I left that day, I asked the barista for some tips for making the drink at home and she told me that I should use two sachets of the Hot Cinnamon Spice when I make lattes and keep the tea sachets in the drink even after it is done steeping for a richer flavor. She also told me that oat milk is a great substitute for cow’s milk in lattes and goes well with the Blueberry Green tea that Mr. Man was enjoying.

Later that day, I told Mr. Katie about my purchases and made him a the first tea latte that I ever made using the new tea sachets and the milk frother appendage, er I mean steam wand, of our espresso machine. Since that day, I have been going on tea latte making jags.

This past winter, Mr. Katie and I have developed a new appreciation for tea. I sort of forgot about Harney & Sons after we used up the tea sachets that I bought last March. Then this past January, I read a New York Time article about Tea and noticed that Harney & Sons teas where mentioned right in the article. I remembered about how tea goes great with winter. So on a whim, I ordered some Harney & Sons tea from their website because shipping is free on all orders in the US.

I ordered the Hot Cinnamon Spice that I enjoyed so much last time and Paris, a black tea blend that I learned about in the New York Times article. We ended up using up that shipment in short order and have ordered more of both kinds since then. For our second shipment we ended up ordering Paris as both a loose tea and in bags.

Mr. Katie and I both like to enjoy a cup of tea in the afternoon and in the evening before bed. The afternoon tea can almost be a deterrent against drinking more coffee. Enjoying a cup of tea is a nice way to relax without taking in all the caffeine that coffee contains (though there is some caffeine in most teas).

I don’t always drink my tea in latte form, but I enjoy the extra preparations when I do.

With summer coming, I imagine I won’t be drinking quite as many hot drinks but maybe I will make Paris as an iced tea. I haven’t traditionally been that much of an iced tea drinker because I like sweetened iced tea but I don’t like artificial sweetener so that means I either have to sweeten the tea before it cools or make a simple syrup. So perhaps I will make a simple syrup to keep around for when I have made iced tea.

Do you enjoy coffee or tea lattes? If so, do you enjoy making them for yourself? What is your favorite thing about enjoying coffee or tea drinks out?

One thing I enjoy about enjoying tea lattes made by other people is that baristas usually make tea lattes slightly better than I do. I am still perfecting the craft, so I like to enjoy tea lattes made by other people to try and figure out what I could do in my future drinks. They seem to make the tea stronger than I do. Also places like Starbucks seems to have access to a different Earl Grey blend than I do, it seems like it has more citrus notes and I like that.

When I order coffee lattes out, I am sometimes dismayed because I like my coffee pretty hot and sometimes I find that the lattes aren’t as hot as I would make them. So if the coffee isn’t as hot as I would like, I just ask nicely if the barista won’t mind warming it a little with the steam wand.

I don’t order drinks out all that often but I enjoy it when I do because I like to see what I can learn to do at home. I think it would be fun to work at a coffee shop to learn the finer points of drink craft. Maybe that is something that I will do someday.

Do you have a dream job that that?