It seems nearly all tea drinking culture has some sort of way to flavor their tea. The Japanese have some fruit flavored teas along with genmaicha which is flavored with toasted rice particles. The Chinese have lapsang souchong, a black tea infused with smoke. In the west there seem to be dozens of flavored teas available, you can have anything from bits of fruit to chocolate chips to spices and flower petals in your tea to flavor it.

Now un-doctored tea generally has fewer calories as you don’t run the risk of picking any more up from sugars in the fruit, or anything else inside your tea. It seems people in the west often start with loose leaf teas on the blended flavored concoctions, but most of them progress to straight tea from a desire to understand what exactly lies at the base of their tea. They then decide for themselves if the change will stick or if they will move back to the realm of tea blends.

So what do you do if you have plain loose leaf teas and you wish to add flavor? It’s actually easier than you think to create your own tea blends. I’ve listed my all-time favorite tea blend below:

Blueberry Dragonwell

• 8 oz teacup filled with 175 degree Fahrenheit water
• Teaspoon to teaspoon and a half of Dragonwell tea
• 6-10 slightly crushed dried blueberries
• Steep like you would any green tea

- If you want to make it iced double the amount of tea leaves, and for show you can throw a few dried blueberries in the glass with ice.

Basically get creative with your blends, most dried fruits will work, sometimes they may need to be crushed slightly to release more flavor. The limits are defined by your kitchen and daring. So have fun, and if you have a tea you don’t quite like, doctor it up, and see if you can find a mixture that works for you!

–Adam Yusko