Birthday Tea

I finally got the chance to try this one thanks to Ricky!

I took this with milk and sugar. I can mostly taste the awful Ceylon base that Adagio uses, but I’ll put that aside and concentrate on other things. I can taste a lot of caramel and some vanilla. The aftertaste is really nice caramel. Also, I’m noticing that it reminds me of a cappuccino.

There’s some weird oil-like stuff floating on the surface of this tea. Maybe it’s from the sprinkles, which were a really nice, really cute touch.

I really like the idea of this tea, but honestly, the Ceylon ruins it. C’mon Adagio! Get your act together!

EDIT: Now that it’s starting to cool off, I can taste more of the vanilla. I’m liking this more now; it’s not as bitter.

The first sample I received of this was a nice little add on from Adagio, and I ended up giving the whole thing to a friend. My next order I actually received another sample and it has just been hanging out. I prepared this as a cold brew (about 12hrs) Unsweetened you can really smell the vanilla. Being a dessert tea aficionado I sweetened it up with some simple syrup I made, and it being a nice enjoyable sweet tea. I could taste more caramel flavor after I added sweetener, probably because I made my syrup with sugar in the raw.

I probably won’t make any of this hot. I’ve been on a mission to figure out cold brewing lol. Hopefully the fiance will enjoy a large pitcher of this.

Adagio sent me a free sample tin of Birthday tea when I made a purchase last month (my birthday is May 22nd) and it was a complete surprise. I opened up the tea and was amused by the rainbow-colored sprinkles nestled amongst the black leaves. It is described on Adagio’s website as a blend of “vanilla, cream and a hint of caramel”; if it tasted anything like cake or frosting, I would be hooked.

It took me a few weeks to get around to trying it, but I have to say I’m disappointed. It doesn’t taste like vanilla frosting. It doesn’t taste like sweet, sugary cake. It has the slightest hint of vanilla…and that’s it. It’s practically a plain black tea. If steeped over 5 minutes, it goes bitter really fast.

The lack of flavor makes me wonder if I got an old batch or something. I mean, it just doesn’t taste all that sweet to me! But hey, it’s not like I paid for it. It’s definitely a better birthday present than socks or granny underwear. ;-D

I was given this tea for free from Adagio for my birthday. It smells like maple syrup and tastes about the same. It was not really to my liking, but hey! It has sprinkles in it!

I got this as a belated free birthday sample (I made an order near my birthday, didn’t get it as I thought I might, and emailed Adagio to find out that my birthday wasn’t added to my account! It became a free black friday sample.)

Adagio’s flavored blacks are pretty hit and miss for me, and this one is pretty middle of the road. It smells nice, both the dry leaf and the liquor — reminiscent of cake, or at least a cheap cake you could buy at a grocery store. I sweetened it almost instantly as it’s a double whammy of dessert tea and flavored Adagio black, which both tend to need sweetener in my mind. Once it cools down a bit… pretty nice. It’s just what it says on the tin: generic black tea with sweet vanilla and caramel with no real frills or complexities beyond the faint taste of sprinkles. Add a splash of milk, and the caramel stands out much more… but the tea taste is covered up, which might appeal to a tea newbie but is only a con to me.

Not recommended, but I’ll drink the rest of this sample.

Got this in a swap and the sprinkles made my Monday. Tried it over the weekend and, like many others, I was a bit disappointed. Not to say the tea was bad, or even not good, but if you promise me cake, I better taste cake. I liken this to those yogurts that promise to be full of desserty goodness and just taste like yogurt (for the last time yoplait, if you say the yogurt is cake or pie flavored, put a few pieces in there!). Sure they’re good and all, but it’s not like you’re going to fool yourself into thinking you’re having the real thing.

A sample of this tea arrived as part of a tea order which was in fact placed as a birthday gift so it was a nice and thoughtful extra for Adagio to throw in. The first few sips of the tea straight came off as a bit bland which was not a surprise considering that it is based off of a mix of vanilla, cream and caramel flavored teas mixed with cake sprinkles so I was forced to add sugar to balance the flavors with the needed sweetness that they demanded. Adding sugar to my tea is something that I very rarely do and due to a lack of white sugar I added brown sugar. In the end it took around 3-4 spoons worth of brown sugar for the tea to end up tasting right, or at least as right as a birthday cake flavored tea can. I’m sure that even with all the sugar that I added that it has less calories than a slice of cake has, but in my opinion it sort of defeats the purpose of tea as an enjoyable calorie free beverage to take one’s mind off things with calories.

After watching TeaV videos with Zack, I decided to blend my own version of this right down to the sprinkles. On the video, ratios were 60% Vanilla, 30% Cream, 10% Caramel. I went by weight rather than volume measure. Just added some sprinkles for color, and it works. I keep some amount of this on hand as long as I have the components to make it. The last batch I mixed had an excess of red sprinkles which can make the brewed tea color a little weird. If you blend your own, I recommend the pastel jimmies.

This does smell like a vanilla cupcake, and it makes a great dessert type tea with milk and sweetener. Great if you want to have your cake and avoid the calories.

A sample from Ricky—The rainbow sprinkles are fun. The teas itself has a caramel/vanilla flavor but with “sharpness” which does not quite jive with the birthday theme. It was, however, a fun tea to try on a gloomy, rainy un-birthday.

This one is just fun, with birthday-cake taste and sprinkles mixed right in with the leaves. Makes me feel special.