Rooby-ohs, roob-uh-bos, rubbis, indeed.

African Skies: rooibos blended with blueberry and cornflower blossoms. And deliciousness.

Tea blog!

It was ROOIBOS MANIA at the tea shop yesterday, which was rather exciting as it included every mispronunciation of the little plant that a tea clerk could possibly hear in a seven hour shift. Every other customer I helped had approximately 594837 about rooibos (pronounced "roy-bus", for whomever might be reading the word without knowing how to say it, which I am rather certain is approximately nobody, what with the BOP blog being less than a week old, but you never know!); I guess it's another one of those things that has been getting a lot of press lately because of its supposed "health benefits". Mostly I told our customers about all of the definite "delicious benefits".

Then, whilst I was making a rooibos chai for a customer, somebody in line behind him told me about how she was recently in California and had experienced rooibos espresso there. I'm pretty much a dunce when it comes to coffee - the first time I tried to use the espresso machine at my internship, it pretty much combusted in a terrifying explosion of coffee grounds and frothy milk - but the idea of rooibos espresso was too intriguing for me not to Google it after my shift. (I also had to Google the lyrics to "Take Your Time (Do it Right)" by S.O.S., and also where exactly on the map Ham Lake, Minnesota is located. Unrelated, I know, but there is only so much tea one can think about whilst one is surrounded by TWENTY FIVE GAJILLION CANISTERS of it.) I came across redespresso.com, a site run by some company that has trademarked "red espresso" - described as "100% pure espresso ground rooibos tea". More interesting, however, was their list of rooibos-based espresso recipes, which included:

• rooibos cappuccino
• rooibos latte
• rooibos "frappe"
• rooibos shake
• long island rooibos

It looks like the coffee industry is getting in on the rooibos love, a love long expressed by tea nerds like we at the BOP, and I've gotta say, I'm kind of excited.


- TALL IHA