Abstract:
Various spices have been used in the preparation of various teas in traditional medicine for centuries. However, it is
still a new product and not much popular in Sri Lanka due to excessive stringent flavor and the high price. Therefore,
the present study was focused on developing herbal tea bags containing spices. The pre-selected powdered spices
(ginger, cardamom, cinnamon and clove) and unflavored tea were mixed at different ratios and a preliminary trial was
conducted to determine the best composition of the spice mixture. Then the sensory properties of the selected spicy
tea mixture were evaluated with other ingredients of tea. The developed product was analyzed for proximate
composition, moisture content and microbiological properties. The spice mixture obtained a significantly high
acceptance (P<0.05) for all sensory attributes was selected to produce the spicy tea by blending with black tea at
60:40 weight ratio. According to the nutrient analysis, the developed product contained 6.8% ash, 19.21% fiber,
8.58% protein, 35% fat and 25.29% carbohydrates. The tea cup which contained unflavored tea, sugar, milk powder
and developed spicy mixture gained the highest mean ranks (P<0.05) over the other samples for all the sensory
attributes The initial moisture content was 4.82% . The total plate count of the selected mixture was 5.45 x 101 and
yeast and mold count was 1.36x 10\ According to the sensory evaluation spicy mixture containing 40% cinnamon,
20% cardamom, 20% clove and 20% ginger was selected as it gave the significantly highest acceptance (P<0.0 for
preparation of the spicy tea mixture.
