Tag: iowa

Experimenting with Coffee Cherry Tea
Since it arrived, everyone in the shop has been dreaming up new ways to use Coffee Cherry Tea. Of course all the usual tea steeping ways. Iced tea with an elder flower syrup is phenomenal and definitely a favorite.

Coffee Cherry Iced Tea
- 7g coffee cherry tea (heaping teaspoon)
- 4oz just boiled water
- Steep 5 minutes
- Strain into mason jar filled with ice and shake
- Pour over ice
- shot of botanical syrup (optional)
Then Jason went and made it into a syrup. Whole. New. World.

At the shop we have an old timey spritzer bottle, so making Italian Sodas and Creamosas was an easy first step.

One of the fun things about Ames is the ISU Surplus Sale — where you can pick up all kinds of old lab equipment. We love using them to measure for our drinks and quantify our blends.

Coffee Cherry Tea Italian Soda (Creamosa)
- 1oz shot Coffee Cherry Tea syrup
- Seltzer Water
- Ice
- Cream on top (optional)
Making the coffee cherry tea into a syrup also lead to a most delicious steamer — milk and syrup steamed together.

Coffee Cherry Tea Steamer
1. 1oz shot of coffee cherry tea simple syrup
2. 8oz milk
3. Put together in pitcher, steam, dash of cardamon powder
And then someone was like – let’s pull shots!

Coffee Cherry Tea Espresso Shot
- 10g coffee cherry tea, tea cut
- Red Espresso restricted flow porta filter
- 30 sec pre-infusion
So now, the entirety of our TeaEspresso menu that we developed with RedEspresso and yerba mate can be used with Coffee Cherry Tea. I over packed the porta filter, but still had good results. It’s more flexible than white espresso or rooibos. It bulks A LOT. One of the things that’s easy to forget about Coffee Cherry Tea is how fibrous it is.

Coffee Cherry Tea Latte
- 2oz shot coffee cherry teaspresso
- 6oz whole milk, steamed
- shot simple syrup (cardamom is pretty delish)
- dash apple pie spice on top
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Tg8ew0eB0]

At Little Woods we do a lot of careful development of our menu… but sometimes inspiration strikes I drop something on the menu and get super lucky and it works out great… Thus the Tea Spritzer. I had fresh lemon balm from the garden. A new ol’ timey Water Seltzer bottle and we were debuting our new Tea Espresso menu. I wanted to put them all together. Thus the Tea Spritzer is born.

Coffee Cherry Tea Spritzer
1. A shot of Elder Flower Syrup.
2. A Double Shot of Rooibos or coffee cherry tea.
3. Shaken with ice.
4. Seltzer water.
5. Sprig of fresh aromatics like lemon balm or chocolate mint…. holy basil is also great.
Coffee Cherry Tea (tea cut) we use in our espresso machine

Rooibos we use in our espresso machine

Elder flowers we made our simple syrup with

Last week Andrea was a guest teacher at Cook’s Emporium and co-taught a class on simple syrups. During the prep for the class we took a ton of photos of how we make our simple syrup for Little Woods, so we’ll be sharing the recipe for that here on the blog soon.

Up next, our blends! Andrea knocked it out of the park with Oasis, debuting in our brick and mortar this afternoon.

Until Next Time.
August 10, 2018
Brewing: Coffee Cherry Tea (aka Cascara)

This is some exciting news. We’ve partnered with Coffee Flour™ to bring their new Coffee Cherry Tea to the US online retail market place. In addition to selling Coffee Cherry Tea online, we are developing a new line of herbal tea blends featuring this unique ingredient. Our first two are debuting this Friday.

We’ve decided to show you everything we’ve learned about Coffee Cherry Tea this week. How to brew it, what it is, why it’s awesome. And of course, have a sale. Coffee Cherry Tea is 20% off now through the weekend.

So first things first. What is it?

Coffee Cherry Tea is tea cut cascara, the fruit and skin of the coffee cherry, but no bean. Unlike all the other cascara we’ve sampled (thanks to our neighbor Morning Bell Coffee Roaster), Coffee Cherry Tea is handled with care during the entire process. No funk. No mold. No, ummm, floor sweepings. Completely food safe. It’s bright and tart. Notes of cherry. A touch of coffee on the finish. It’s flavor straddles coffee and a rooibos with a touch of hibiscus. There’s a little caffeine, less than roasted coffee by the brewed cup.

Brewing Coffee Cherry Tea

Immediately we started experimenting with it. We found it does better brewed like tea than coffee. Thursday we’ll be showing you all our experiments – like pulling shots, pour over, aeropress brewing, and making it into simple syrups.

We wanted to figure out the best steeping ratio, tea:water:heat:time. We sampled it around to a few regulars and our staff. It was a fun impromptu tasting and we captured the final round for the timing.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghjINbqLK4k?rel=0]

For at home, we found the french press is best… but we always say that. It’s our favorite type of brewing vessel! Completely bias.

In a french press: 8-9g for a 12oz french press = 1 heaping Tablespoon

In a tea ball: 5-6g (1 heaping teaspoon) for a 8-10oz mug

In a tea pot: 1 heaping teaspoon per person and 1 for the pot

Steep Time: 4-6 minutes

Water Temperature: 205 – 212F

It holds up to cream well and is divine with a little honey.

Up next, why we love it — other than just it’s flavor — a sneak peek into the ethics behind this new brew!

Until Next Time

August 7, 2018
Wildcrafting: Elder Flowers

Historical lore abounds in regards to the lovely elder tree. Plentiful across Iowa both wild and cultivated it’s been featured in fairy tales, magic making, and herbal remedies going back to the stone age. Sweetly scented and pleasant with honey, it’s considered an herbal ally for children and adults alike. Elder flowers make a delicious country wine, champagne (yum!) or mead style brew, while I’ve usually made elder berries into a cordial (honey and brandy infusion). An elder flower simple syrup is a delicious addition to spritzers, cocktails, and teaspresso (or coffee espresso) drinks. And is our featured homestyle syrup this week.

Of no gardening prowess of my own, I have a lovely little grove of Elders growing in my backyard… aka the “Little Woods” and the space in my life to which our shop owes its name. They are perfectly in season this week and on the cusp of making that transition into elder berries.

Elder berries are something I’ve never been able to successfully harvest. Their ideal ripe time is fleeting and I always seem to catch them right before the lovely cluster droops, or shortly after the birds and raccoons strip them.

So this year, I decided not to try and capture the berries, but instead harvested about 50% of the elder flowers and assumed the rest will be for the wildlife and maybe just maybe me too.

An interesting thing about our lovely herbal ally the Elder, it’s considered toxic. All the roots, bark, twigs and even the uncooked berries, green berries will give you a nice dose of throwing up and then some. Don’t eat the twigs. That being the case, before drying, I removed the smaller flower clusters from the larger stems.

I used my dehydrator to dry them as it’s pretty humid in Iowa right now. It took about 8 hours at 90°F.

After then hand plucking the tiny dried flowers from the remaining twigs, I was left with yet another little pile of twigs.

I’ve already used the dried flowers quite often in teas for myself and Lucy and happily have a little jar tucked into the cupboard to pull out and use this winter. One of my favorite things about preserving my harvest is with each jar in my pantry there are memories of summer. I pull out those jars to make a tea and am immediately standing in the sun, dewy sweat across my brow and dirt under my nails from weeding.

Elder flowers are this week’s feature in the Little Woods shop. In addition to today’s post about harvesting and preserving them, I’ll be posting a recipe for making an elder flower simple syrup this weekend. If you’ve already missed the harvest where you are, or you don’t have a nice shrub growing near by, you can get them dried and ready to use for 10% off their usual price now thru Sunday in our online store or our apothecary on Main street in Ames, Iowa.

August 2, 2018