Frosted Carrot Cake Genmaicha

Well.

I thought it’d be nice to finish up the last of my milk in a chai, perhaps drizzled with a bit of honey. Could not find any chai tea, though I am certain there’s plenty. Somewhere.

This ancient one turned up and though green tea with milk is sacrilege, I thought it might be worth a try. Previous efforts yielded a far too spiced brew, so it might be chai-enough with milk. Emptied the packet, three heaping spoons worth, steeped the tea. And the milk had gone off.

Had no hopes for this cup and the resteep. Age. Far too much leaf. Far too much spice in the leaf if memory serves. I was expecting disaster.

Surprise! Black and unsweetened, this cup is better than I ever remember it being. There were a few white snowflake things in the leaf which add a bit of frosting to the roastiness, hint of spice, and green of the cup. Quite pleasant. Quite tasty.

One just never knows.

And I still have celebratory treats to gobble.

And it’s a sipdown!

I’m home sick from work today…

I got home last night, from closing the store, at about 10:30PM. I hadn’t felt great all day but I figured it was just ‘cause the last few weeks I’ve been doing the opening shift so my body just wasn’t used to starting work at 2PM when lately I’ve been getting off work by 4PM. Not the case though – shortly before midnight last night I threw up, and I haven’t really stopped since. So, definitely not just a break in work habit kind of thing.

I don’t really know what my tea drinking day is gonna look like today; my sense of taste is fine but I’m still DEFINITELY having some tummy issues and nothing is really sitting well. I picked this one ‘cause I thought the cinnamon/ginger notes and the soft roasty notes might sit well enough. I mean, taste wise it’s been great – very brown rice and spice cake. Not so much carrot cake today though; just spice cake. I think it’s too early to tell if I’ll be able to keep it down, but fingers crossed!

Didn’t love it, although it wasn’t bad. Tasted better than it smelled. More specific notes will have to come later. I don’t think genmaicha blends are working for me anymore :/

Sample from Evol Ving Ness This is not so much carrot cake for me. Instead it’s like a carrot cake spice genmaicha. Spicey in the sense of having all the various spices that go in to carrot cake versus hot/spicey. I don’t really feel “carrot cake”. It’s a decent enough cup, so i’m enjoying it. but it’s not quite carrot cake. thanks evol!

I’m not getting carrot in my first sips, just a slightly earthy flavor in the background. Adding sugar brings out the spice, cinnamon and nutmeg? I can smell frosting when sniffing and I think I may be able to pick out carrot now. The aftertaste has a light but perfect frosted carrot flavor that sneaks in. As it cools, the flavors come out a bit more. I would like to try some of this cold steeped, but I have run out of this sample.

I tried this with about 95c water and about 90 seconds, which resulted in a generically spicy cup, and some background roasted rice notes. I didn’t catch any notes of frosting, other than the odd feeling moment during occasional sips. Next time I’ll try with some milk and sugar as recommended on the package, and at a lower temp/longer steep time.
I’ve not decided anything about this one yet, so this note is more for my reference than anything else!

This has a little too much nutmeg in it for my liking and I’m not getting much of a carrot flavor… Not something I’ll be drinking again so if anyone would like my left over leaf let me know, I’d be happy to share it with someone who may enjoy it more than I did.

After disliking a genmaicha a few weeks ago, I decided to try again, and I’m glad I did.

At first sip, this tea smelled really strongly of the toasted rice (still not 100% my thing). But then I got the other flavors, a cream and a round fruit/veggie taste (the carrot).

As it cools, it gets sweeter.

I am really glad that I tried this. It’s not my soul mate, but it is enjoyable.

It’s good not to have to hide from genmaicha like a recent ex-boyfriend.

(OH GOD. GENMAICHA. OF COURSE I’M WEARING SWEATPANTS RIGHT NOW. I’M GOING TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY AND PRETEND TO BE REALLY INTERESTED IN THIS OTHER THING AND HOPE HE DOESN’T APPROACH. SH*TSH*T.)

(I don’t know how to be cool in any situation, much less an emotionally-charged one).

High-five to Quarter to Tea. I look forward to the rest of these samples.

Very strong flavours of genmaicha, toasted rice, and popcorn. I can taste spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg. There are flavours of bread, cream, and brown sugar. This is definitely the best carrot cake tea I have tried thus far.

Another sipdown! Carrot cake seems to be a particularly tough flavor to reproduce. I’ve never had a carrot cake blend that was completely spot on. Alas, I still haven’t. I only had a sample size of this blend so I was not able to play around with it too much. Using the suggested parameters of 1-2 tsp/6oz, steeped for 60 sec at 200F, I mostly got burnt rice and a bitter note. Some rice milk and vanilla sugar smoothed out the bitterness. It did nothing to bring out any carrot, spice, or bread/cake notes. I tried doing the second steep at 180F for about 3 min with some brown sugar. The brown sugar brought out some carrot flavor and the faintest hint of ginger, but I suspect most of the flavor was imparted in the first steep and overwhelmed by the bitterness and burnt rice. I am not completely writing this off – mostly because Quarter to Tea’s blends are generally pretty solid – but I was not able to get it to taste anything like its namesake.