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Giddy ‘cause I made this today for afternoon tea with R, bothering with the whole stovetop fuss ’cause it’s Valentine’s Day and a Friday, and finally I have made some chai at home as good as the one at my favorite local Indian restaurant’s! It’s subtler per the bread pudding focus than traditional Indian chai, but delicious. The smell is wonderful. Yes!

4 teaspoons Breading Pudding Chai
16 oz milk (I think part of the secret is to make sure the milk’s got some fat…you’re already going to the trouble and adding sweetener too, so!)
1 Tablespoon honey

On the stove top at the lowest setting for about 15 to 20 minutes, never letting it really simmer. I went by feel for when to stop, based on color, thickness, and taste testing. Strained and voila. So good!

Fitting considering I spent last night watching, among other things, a documentary on tigers (while my little black cat snuggled on my blanketed stomach no less) and today’s Valentine’s Day (also Lupercalia and the full moon, woot). Just like the other Devotea blends I’ve tried, smooth as all get out while still full of deep black tea flavor. No trace of bitterness here. Agree with some other reviews about there being an earthy minerality, but it’s never funky because much like Finbarr’s Revenge everything stays very clean tasting as well. I get the smoothness and depth of the Chinese tea at the front, and the Indian qualities come out at the back, as it cools. Surprisingly friendly brew, probably a lot more pleasant going down than actually encountering two tigers, one from China and one from India, ambushing you! It did get me wired though, more than the others for some reason.

Now to go prepare for Valentine’s Day festivities. Dorkily enough we’re going to the museum a couple blocks from our house to participate in the Internet Cat Video Festival, ha.

Ohmahgosh little hand-held wand milk frother, where have you been all my life?! I resisted buying you because if Amazon is to be believed you break at the drop of a hat, but let’s be real here: the roundabout methods for frothed milk (heating a half empty mason jar in the microwave then shaking carefully while praying glass doesn’t explode everywhere from stress + thermal shock, fun times), while not terribly complicated, were enough extra steps I pretty much never bothered. Plus the froth from those methods while nice was never mindblowingly special. But you! I just fish you out of a drawer like a fork, don’t even have to plug you in, push a button to let you do your thing for 30 seconds and voila, magical, really tightly bubbly, tickly joyous milk froth for anything. Rinse you off with a dab of soap under the faucet, push you again to spin dry, and that’s it. I am in love. Even if you DO break in 3 months you’ll be worth the $7, egads.

It feels wrong to even review the tea here, because the froth discovery has me all twitterpated, ha. But it’s good. As I suspected, much like the plain Chocolate from Harney, which I like (it keeps lingering in the back of my mind, that dreamy Thin Mint aroma). I could have either of these made double strength with frothy milk plunked in my big 16 oz cup and call it a night on the couch (much healthier than devouring half a box of Thin Mints, no?). Tea and finding all sorts of new ways to enjoy it has truly kept me sane while holed up this winter.

For a chocolate-and-nothing-else flavored tea this is pretty good! The smell is excellent dry, steeping, and finished. But as is true with most chocolate teas, it leaves one a little wanting not because it’s a bad specimen but it’s just…it’s not just good ol’ straight up chocolate. You know? (And then you’re like well, duh.) Still, nice cup. While it has a slight raspiness to let you know there’s tea in there, the tea is certainly not the star, just a ho-hum backdrop for lots of milk chocolate aroma. I have a feeling the chocolate mint’s going to be an improvement, as I can practically hallucinate peppermint right into this cup with a lovely tingle on the tongue, yum. Smells like a thin mint.

ETA I resteeped this for 5 minutes and it was quite good, smoother and still very chocolate-y. I’m digging it! Nice caffeinated option when I don’t want the intense richness of cacao tisanes or saltysugarbombed packet-y Choco-Late. The first tea that tastes like the liquified coating of yeah, Thin Mints. Not quite gourmet truly intense cacao drink nor fake sugary wax either, but the coating on mainstream bon bons. Nice.

This one feels even stronger in some ways than the other two breakfast blends I’ve tried so far from The Devotea. It’s smooth though, just like they were; the body feels less like a coat but there’s a welcome slight leaf bitterness that works with the smoothness. I might like 1910 a skosh more for the surprising flavors at the end of its sip, but this is nice too. The color in the cup is gorgeous, clear but deep, a warm brown smoothly burnished with a bit of ruby. Breakfast blends! Along with after dinner Assams you are getting me through this endless winter and for that, many thanks.

As I was hoping, this does indeed get better when you way overleaf it (I tripled my standard amount!), provided you like the bittersweetness of dark chocolate. It still feels a little thin bodied though the flavor is for sure amped up. Next time I’ll try making it super strong and then cutting it with cream. Right now, and as it cools upon resteep, it’s like taking an 80%+ cacao bar of chocolate, melting it down, adding milk or cream but not sweetener (it’s silky, rich, and intense but not terribly sweet), and drinking it in liquid form.

Even getting the prep just right I can tell this isn’t going to replace American Tea Room’s Choco-Late for me. That one’s very “cheap packet hot chocolate for little kids, complete with the intense granular salt-sugariness” nostalgic junky comfort food while this one, worked out to its best prep, is going to be more grown up, richer and more solid, well, cacao beany. There’s a place for both sorts of course, but the dirty truth is I probably will appreciate the former more when I reach for it because it’s, I dunno, an instant trip down memory lane without having to keep actual crappy packets of Swiss Miss around indefinitely going stale for just those moments. This kind of thing just makes me want to go back to Asheville and drink a mug of modern day Xocolatl from French Broad or something, or whip up some liquid Dagoba Xocolatl. Plus, that stuff’s intense no matter how you shake it; a little gourmet thimble’s worth and your taste buds and belly both feel stuffed to the brim.

I’m not conveying myself clearly; ugh it’s late. I guess what I mean is, when prepped right this does a bang up job at being that rich, thick, intense cacao bean drink one imagines in tiny cups. But part of me is more grateful that the cheap Swiss Missy substitute version of cacao husk tea exists. That both do is pretty great though, of course.

Generalized chai rant/rambling: I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is about me and chai. I should like it, I always want to like it, I love the spices involved…but it never quite clicks into place. I sense I’m just not doing it right, whether prepared like a standard tea, done with all the effort on the stovetop with milk, or simply cut with creamy sweet additions. Like I’m expecting some magical extra quality like the kind in Indian restaurants, something buttery smooth AND magically warming beyond usual tea, and it never comes or it comes in mere hints or mangled with gross aftertastes or other effects. Hm.

This comes really close though, close enough I think if I can prep it just right I’ll have found my peace. I’ve noticed perplexingly enough while I favor strong spicing in cooking and cocktails in chai I seem to like when things are a little gentler. Herbal Infusions’ Creme Brulee Chai is quite gently spiced as these things go, more on the creamy sweet end of the spectrum as opposed to hotly spiced, and this is also on that end, for the better in my opinion. The smell is fantastic, possibly the best aroma of a chai I’ve tried so far. It really does evoke bread pudding, that rich creamy slightly boozed up haze of baked cinnamon and nutmeg. And it is good made like a standard tea. Then I go mucking things up adding some raw sugar and dairy and it loses its punch and a sticky sickly aftertaste shows up I’m pretty sure wouldn’t otherwise. Eurgh. I’m going to try giving it the latte treatment next time, no added sweetener, and see if that works well. Definitely among my favorite chais tried so far, but I just feel like I could hit perfection if I keep tweaking prep somehow…so close…

This one’s lighter and more floral, a teensy bit Darj-y in some ways. I liked it, and it resteeped ok just like all the other Assams from Capital I’ve tried. But I prefer the darker, heavier, more intense ones like the Borsapori and Duflating. Definitely a case of individual affections defining how worthwhile this cup feels, and how that’s personal and varies, though. Lovely for what it is. Would make a solid afternoon tea.

Oooh. This is silky slick as oil (without actually being oily, phew!), easy going down but nice and strong too. I love when you get that strength but without the usual corresponding tannic roughness. And I’m getting that mysterious lurking marine quality Terri describes (and loving it).

I had this first thing with cold leftover cashew chicken (not the most traditional, but still the breakfast of champions). Really nice. Thinking of hanging with the Queen shortly (“rain outside so a book and the Queen, peachy keen” popped in my head and well, who am I to argue?).

This one’s good too, but I was surprised checking now to see it’s Capital Teas’ second priciest Assam because to me it reads as great in the ways the others are—namely the fantastic smoothness—but much more straightforward, with a less complex network of flavors (maybe I just can’t detect them though…I am a subtaster and all that). The flavor is tasty, there just aren’t as many notes, less transformative interplay. This is a softer tea, but don’t get me wrong, it still has a deep sweet flavor. It would make a good first thing cup because of its relative simplicity and first rate smoothness; instead of a harsh tannic pucker you’d greet the day with the palate equivalent of warm soft fuzzy blankets.