"customize" news and stories

Are you looking to get into making loose leaf tea blends, but don't want to spend the money buying large quantities of numerous teas and then blending everything on your own? There are a few companies these days that are willing to do the work for you.

Adagio.com and Design a Tea currently have the most well-know options for creating your own custom blends online. They arrive at your door already blended, labeled, and ready to steep, but you should keep in mind that while you're getting a custom blend without all of the work a custom tea blender has to do, you're sacrificing some of the advantages. These companies will offer a limited number of teas to choose from, you can only blend a certain number of teas, and you won't know until you've paid for and received the tea if it's a success or not (and tweaking the blend will involve an additional purchase each time a change is made).

Keeping those things in mind, making your own custom blends can be a lot of fun. The differences between the two companies I've mentioned would be quantity, price, and options. Adagio allows you create a unique tea tin label with your own image, they award Adagio points if anyone else buys your custom blend (redeemable for a certain dollar amount toward tea!), they allow up to three teas in each blend (allowing you to choose the proportions), and you receive a 4 oz. tin of your tea. Design a Tea allows one choice of tea with up to two added flavorings, there is an option for customized label text, and they provide more options in terms of size and quantity (they will also package your blend in tea bags for you).

If tea isn't your thing, I also stumbled across JL Hufford Build-Your-Own Espresso. Looks like fun for coffee drinkers!