Cha

This is a whole lot better when brewed in a western style. I have quite stuffed nose so I can’t be sure about the smells, but with a teaspoon of sugar, this is not too bad.

Sweet ginger flavoured sencha. A terrible combination if you ask me, and a reminder why I prefer non flavoured teas. The ginger’s “bite” completelly overwhelms the aromas and flavours of sencha. The smell is great, but when tasting it, I can never be sure if the bitternes comes from ginger or from tea. I do not recommend that tea. At all.

1 tablespoon for 375 ml

I’m getting the tomato-y scent from the brewed tea that I sometimes detect in rooibos tisanes. Juiciness. Mild honey sweetness.

Come on Cha, I know you can do better than this!
Maybe it’s just that I’m not a fan of the base, or something in the flavouring, but this just did not do as key lime pie.
Lime is dominant here, along with an odd background note that I think is supposed to be coconut. (only it reminds me more of dirty socks)
With a little milk, it was sour, not as in milk sour but more of a too much lime pucker sour. Oh well, I’m sure their other teas are fantastic!

Sipdown!

Thanks to rarietea for a sample of this one! I’m not sure if herbal infusions is selling this at their store or if its another version of this but I want more. It’s totally like when you make hot chocolate from cocoa powder on the stove top. I’m sure if I added just a bit of sugar it’d be exactly like that. But I don’t want the sugar, I just want the roasty goodness of this. Oh this is super tasty if that’s what you’re looking for.

Also, the sample packaging was super cute. Little glass bottle with a cork top!

Sipdown! 870. Finishing off the last of my sample from Raritea today.

Smells delicious (like hot chocolate), but unfortunately tastes a bit bitter – I’m wondering if it’s because it was the bottom of the jar, and there was a bunch of crushed up stuff in there. Either way, it’s still totally drinkable, and would probably be great with a bit of sugar.

Ok, well I brewed this up for the boy tonight. He didn’t pick up any of the chocolate aromas (which were definitely present!), and thought it tasted like hot flavoured water. Which is it… but still! I was happy that he was willing to try it, but sad that he couldn’t taste anything… and as I’m writing this I’m realizing that I TOTALLY MEANT TO SWEETEN IT! Ack! Of course he didn’t like it! Bleh. Maybe I can get him to try it again someday with sweetener.

Anyways, I told him that if he wasn’t going to enjoy it, I’d prefer to drink it as I would enjoy it (and I didn’t want to force him to drink something he didn’t like). It didn’t taste quite as good today; a bit bark-like, but still chocolatey, so I’d still like some of this to be in my cupboard :)

Thanks so much to Raritea (and Indigobloom?) for grabbing a gift box of this tea for me!

I’m pretty sure that I’ve had roasted cacao shells in tea before, but I haven’t ever had an infusion of JUST roasted cacao shells. I had no idea how this was going to taste (but I had high hopes!)

Anyways, so I was brewing up a bunch of teas, and noticed this intense, delicious chocolate smell wafting over. Like an amazing dark hot chocolate. Sometimes this happens in my kitchen (random smells), so I didn’t think a great deal of it until I went over and noticed that the smell was emanating from this cup! (You’d think I might have figured this out sooner, given what I was infusing!) So yes, cue SUPEREXCITEMENT to try this tea!

So as soon as it was cool enough, I took a sip… and HOLYCRAP! This is so incredibly good! Looking for an authentic chocolate flavour in tea? Well, here ya go! This tastes like unsweetened dark hot chocolate. But it’s not bitter, it still has a sweet edge, making it super drinkable. Seriously, this stuff is amazing! I’d drink this over hot chocolate any day, because it has got to have far fewer calories (I’d assume zero, but it’s way too delicious to be zero… but that would be so awesome…)

I am going to have the boy try some of this sometime this weekend, as he loves hot chocolate. I expect he won’t really like it, because it won’t be sweet/creamy enough, but I still am going to have him try it, haha. I really need to get some more of this delicious stuff…

ETA: Second infusion still has enough flavour to be enjoyable. I still can’t get over this tea (ok, tisane). It’s literally like drinking liquid chocolate. Liquid cocoa powder, I guess, but without any of the nasty powderiness (that said, I wonder if an infusion of cocoa powder would have essentially the same flavour? Would have to infuse it in a VERY fine filter though, to prevent sediment.

0.9 tablespoons for 375 ml of water

Primary flavour is orange. I’m getting a citrus tartness that almost becomes bitter near the end of the sip. The overall flavour is too thin. Sweetness in the background. I’m getting the tingly sensation on my tongue that is typically associated with a citrus fruit.

A wonderful aroma and great taste.

This tea has more greenish than blackish look but the taste is definitely that of a black tea. It has a very soft note to it so it’s not your typical assam tea.

Very tasteful and fruity. Highly recommended!

One of the best sweet black teas I’ve ever tasted.

As the name says – this Earl Grey is superior to others. Really good!

I love coconut so my expectations were big…but this tea unfortunately does not deliver…at all…

Less time, less bitter…less taste too :(

Bitter sweet symphony was named after this…