Madison Bartholemew Send Message

took this to work today and the flavor wasn’t as good… I didn’t think water quality would really influence this one since it is so think but the flavors are so mild them seem to be easily thrown out of balance.

This is the tea that I am using to try to get to know pu-erh… it’s going ok now that I’ve learned to rise the leaves for about 20-30 seconds. That gets rid of the flavors that were creeping me out.
So… I’m still learning about pu-erh but the thing that I find most interesting is how thick the tea is. Physically thick. It’s strange when you aren’t used to tea being… coffee textured.
After the rinsing, the flavor of this tea is coming across very muted. You know when you get really drunk and everything feels fuzzy? That’s what this flavor reminds me of. Soft… and blurry.
Is that normal for pu-erhs?

I like it… but I feel like it is missing that pu-erhness. The mouth feel is actually what is throwing me off because it is so much more watery than the pu-erhs I have been sampling. After reading the box it makes a lot of sense though that it is not as heavy because there is rooibos in this.

The flavor is good… I actually really like it. But if you are looking for a PU-ERH experience this isn’t it.
But if you want a super yummy tea with a dash of tummy settling this is awesome.

There are two equal flavors in this tea and they blend very well together so you don’t have to worry about flavor war in your mouth which is greatly appreciated. One is the pumpkin which is light and sweet when you put it next to the pecan. Here the pecan is very dark, taking on a heavily toasted nut flavor, and it forms the back bone of the flavor along with the after taste.

Apparently there are two different kinds of pecan pies. One is the sweet molasses with pecan to mellow out the flavor and I like this kind best. The other is dark and nutty with only a little sweetness to brighten the pie up a little bit. This tea tastes like the darker toasted nut kind of pie. I wish it was a little bit more like the molasses kind of pie but, it is good the way it is. And my wanting it to be like the sweeter kind of pie is really just a matter of preference.

Bottom line this tea is delicious and the pecan flavor is present which make the difference between this and the similar pumpkin pie tea very apparent. I like it.

umm. well. nope. Don’t like it.
The vanilla isn’t a nice add on flavor as it is absolutely needed to get rid of some of a weird spicy flavor that is in this tea. It almost tastes like they shook powdered artificial spices into the tea bag because it has a weird grittiness to it.
And everything about it tastes a little off. Not like it went bad. But that it is all actually artificial and they are trying to cover it up.
It’s not working because this doesn’t taste like natural chai ingredients. Maybe they put some kinda preservative on to natural ingredients.
Anyways… you get my point. I don’t like it.

When you brew this to Adagio’s specifications it is extremely toasty and much more vegital than I would have imagined. I was expecting it to be a much lighter tea all around. The toast is very strong and holds an almost burnt flavor like dark brown toast before it starts to burn. It seems like Adagio felt that the brighter notes of the green tea would counter so much heavy toast but it really just comes across darkly spinach tasting. Not a bitter spinach because it is sweet but it is not enough to balance out the dark toasty.

If you reduce the leaf amount to about 2/3 and the steep time to between 2 and 2 and a half minutes it lightens up a lot and becomes quite pleasant. The toastiness becomes more of a medium bold flavor and the green tea lightens up on the spinach to become more of a sweet green tea flavor. It is still heavy on the vegital but that really does go nicely with the toasty rice and pop corn. This is the balence point I found for my tastes but everyone should really fool around with leaf amounts and steep times because the differences gained by changing things around is really significant.

this is horrible… thank someone at twining’s for discontinuing it. Although it’s not the worst tea I’ve had from them.
So there ya go. Little tiny plus.

blech… is there actually any tea in there?
and since this is not going to be a nice review and I don’t want to get in trouble on here…
www.mad-tea.com
for my REAL opinion

smells like a banana.
tastes like a banana.
and the banana pretty much masks the other flavors.

THIS IS THE MOST ADDICTING NON-DESCRIPT TEA EVER!

It’s almost infuriating that I don’t have more and I’m craving it like a SOB. It’s smooth and bold and with half and half tastes chocolaty. I’ve never craved a tea like this in my life.
And it’s from CANADA! so I have a nice long wait for it to get here.
INFURIATING!