LiberTEAS on Chocolate Covered Bacon LIVE!

What another great show! We had Anne from LiberTEAS with us tonight. She hand blends teas to meet the highest quality and taste standards. I must say they are a piece of art in and of themselves. I hope that you didn’t miss our show, but if you did, I will give you some insight as to what you missed. I will also give you a little extra peak to let you know a little more about the artist behind LiberTEAS. So sit back and relax as I take you though the tour.

Anne was gracious enough to join us live on Chocolate Covered Bacon, which airs live Thursdays at 6PM EST on Blockhead Radio. She started by describing how she blends each new batch of tea, to meet the highest of standards. Anne test brews each batch to ensure that it will come out just right and will not disappoint. Her teas are unique blends using herbal, black, green and white teas; she comes up with some amazing flavors.

Anne got her start in hand blending tea when a local shop stopped making her favorite chocolate tea blend. She had switched from coffee to tea, due to the spike in caffeine from the coffee, unlike the gradual release from the tea. So she searched and searched for a replacement she was never happy. Anne made her first attempts back in 1999, though she was never was happy with those attempts. After taking several years off, in 2002 she decided to give it another try. This time she used all the resources she could, to get as much knowledge as she could. After a couple years of blending and producing teas that she was “quite pleased with” she decided to take her business to the Internet. When asked what her favorite blend is she responds, “The product that started it all for me is my Chocolate Rose Romance, so it will always have a special place in my heart, however, I’m quite fond of all my teas!” With such an amazing assortment, anyone would be fond of her teas!

Some very unique teas that, available in the Artfire shop, are called the Allergi-Teas. They are specially blended with the help of a herb specialist friend. Anne decided to blend these while dealing with her own allergies and not willing to take it anymore. While searching for a tea to help, but that would also taste great, she was disappointed time and time again. So Anne teamed up with a friend and came up with not only a functional herbal tea, but also one that made a great tea. Anne drinks daily in the morning to help combat her Allergy symptoms. Anne and her herb specialist also team up to make her Meadow Nocturne teas, which are also functional herbal teas for relaxation.

One of the most difficult things in dealing with any food products is finding the right balance in ingredients. Things are no different for Anne, “There are so many different teas out there that it can be a bit overwhelming. Determining which would be the best tea to use for a new tea blend becomes a taste testing frenzy in itself. After that, it’s finding the right balance of ingredients to capture the best flavor.”

As with most hand crafted businesses marketing is also difficult in the Foodie world too, “I really need to work on enhancing my marketing and advertising approach. I’m creative when it comes to tea… but not so much when it comes to advertising my product.” I personally think she did a great job talking about her product live on the air. So we may have found her a way around that! Anne is very passionate about tea, and you can tell in everything that she says, and how she describes her teas. Off the air we compared tea tasting to cheese tasting. If you get a national brand commercial tea, and brew that, it’s the same as going and getting some Kraft cheese off the shelf. You might like it, heck you might love it, but it’s not the same as going a cheese shop and getting a great block of imported Gruyere. Drinking hand blended tea is far superior to getting a boxed tea. With the added preservation power of the tin, or the specially designed bags that she sells for the refill, you are getting top notch tea with every purchase.



If you interested in finding out more about Anne or LiberTeas you can follow her on Plurk or Twitter as LiberTEAS. You can visit her shops on Artfire, 1000Markets, MadeItMyself or her Tea blog. Interested in seeing Anne’s other art? Stop by her Etsy shop and her Art Blog. If you visit The Tea Review Blog, you can occasionally find one of her reviews as she is one of the contributing reviewers there.

Thank you for joining us for Chocolate Covered Bacon-The best in independent food finds! You can catch us live Thursdays at 6PM EST on Blockhead Radio. Listen live and join us in chat, where you can ask questions of the Foodies we have on for each show. Next week we have Emmy’s Organics joining us, with some great organic and gluten free sweets to satisfy your cravings!

--James ~ ClosetCreature, you host for Chocolate Covered Bacon