LV-426 (7-311) (Organic Lapsang and Genmai)

A small white bowl full of lapsang souchong tea and genmai. The image was taken close enough that the texture of tea and rice can be seen.

The story of this tea is a relatively short one.

In my quest for decaffeinated versions of the teas, I realized that I could make my own decaffeinated genmaicha. This was a staggeringly cool concept as I need to cut back on the amount of caffeine I intake 1 and one of the teas that I absolutely love is Believe Impossible Things – which uses genmaicha as the base.

It was more difficult than I expected to find an organic genmai, but I eventually succeeded in that side quest, and added the ingredient to the toolbox2

Once I’d finished making the decaffeinated green with genmai to match the caffeinated genmaicha that I use, I had another realization.

If genmai plus green tea is awesome, there was a good chance that other types of tea would also be awesome with the addition of genmai.

My unending fixation on Lapsang meant that it was the first test cup I made.

It was good. It was really good. It was the kind of good that meant tea ideas utilizing it started to spill out all over the place inside my head.

Which meant it needed to be kept.

Somewhere down the line I was drinking a cup of it when a bit loopy from pain and fatigue and for some reason the look of the tea made me think of the original Alien movie.3

This reminded me of a reply to one of my tweets where I showed off the ridiculously full Teas-In-Progress shelf that had suggested a number of names for those teas.

The top is an image of a three tiered wood shelf full of tea tins, notes and numbers scrawled on them in black marker. Underneath is a tweet by @MockRamblings that reads "I'm kind of thinking you could lean into (what I can see of) this numbering/notes convention you've got going already. Like, top left is THX-1138. Next to it is LV-426. Just below it is a tin of SDF-1. Next to that is a lovely spot of V-Ger.

One of the suggested names was LV-426.4

Initially, I thought that it might be a terrible name for a tea. I even ran a Twitter poll to check, and there were a few votes for “Dear (insert your choice of word here) no! So cursed.” – but they were outvoted by every other choice.

The winner of that poll was actually “Reference?” which made me wonder if I should feel very old. Grapirr said it was more likely that the designation for the planet was something that would have been missed unless you were either a) in possession of a brain5 that likes to capture All The Random Details and Information or b.) a solid fan of the franchise.

The suggestion got stuck in my head for this tea. I kept arguing with myself. “But… alien eggs wouldn’t be tasty!” (Would they?)

But it stuck hard enough that I caught myself regularly referencing the tea as LV-426. When it got to the point where I’d made a tea using it, I gave in, and kept the name. Despite the fact that the tin it had been living in since its inception said “should not be called LV-426.”

A glow in the dark Alien figure nestled up against a bag with a label reading "LV-426" and listing the ingredients as "Lapsang Souchong, Genmai"

Now for the basics:

Organic Ingredients: Lapsang Souchong, Genmai

Batch Size: 3.6 oz, 102g

Options:

Loose Tea: (5 serving Sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag or Tin), LatchTin)

Teabags: (Single, 5 serving Sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag), LatchTin)

For the time being, this tea can only be found in the store on this website.

 

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  1. At least, so sayeth most doctors who have asked me the “how much caffeine do you drink?” question. One suggested that I might be using it to self-regulate some aspects of the way in which my brain works.
  2. Technically I could make my own, and I did consider it, but for a foundational tea the additional time and cost seemed like a bad idea.
  3. It is a franchise that is quite dear to me. I’ve watched the movies, read many of the books, collected the comics back when I had the space… Some of the ways in which people extrapolated from the base concept were really cool. I tend to like things where one of the core seeds within the story is “Corporate greed is BAD.”
  4. The other suggestions are still rattling around in my head and may land somewhere eventually.
  5. Possessed by?

2 Replies to “LV-426 (7-311) (Organic Lapsang and Genmai)”

  1. Pingback: The Monthly Brew (May Recap) – Desert Sage Natural

  2. Pingback: Sorry I Stabbed You (3-150) (Organic Lapsang, Hibiscus, Lavender Tea) – Desert Sage Natural

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