Bonfire Toffee

Sipdown!! (185)

Thank you Scheherazade for sharing this tea. I am actually really enjoying this cup. The toffee is prominent with both a hint of smoke and a slight apple sweetness. It is very, very nice and I am sad to see it go.

dear MissB, thank you very much for sharing.

i wish i could taste it.

my tongue ignored it because it had the word ‘toffee’…. but i really did try. =0(

i thought i caught a whiff of banana maybe though?

stupid tongue.

unlogged sample sipdown! I’ve got a couple of these to get through this week so that my cupboard will more accurately reflect the true number. Right now i have to add roughly 20 to the cupboard total. BUT thanks to some sipdowns and terri logging a couple of my teas, that number is shrinking fast :) I’d love to be able to just be able to look at the number on steepster and know that’s what was up.

Anyway, on with this tea. I admit i was expecting more caramel and more smoke from this tea. While i’d read the ingredients had apple, in my head bonfire is not equal to apple. That being said, naming aside, this is a lovely apple cinnamon caramel black tea. I like that there’s ALMOST some smoke here, thanks to the black base though i would love to see it be a little stronger. This apple flavouring though is pretty spot on for true apple taste rather than that slightly generic apple taste that a lot of teas have had. Not a bad one bluebird!

Bonfire Toffee. Interesting. A big miss for me, but interesting. It’s too sweet, not smokey enough. I wish it were caramel rather than toffee.
I’m getting A LOT of toffee, but it’s like burnt toffee rather than smokey. I wish it had some lapsang in it. This seems fake somehow, like it’s trying too hard to fulfill it’s name. There is some apple hiding in the background, but it too is sweet, a little tart might actually help this. It’s just sweet on sweet with some burnt notes. Sorry Bluebird, this doesn’t work for me.

I tried to take of a sip of this after eating a bag of frozen blueberries and it was just bitter and awful; I thought I had wrecked this tea sample and would have to dump it. Luckily it was just the contrast of the blueberry sweetness, and rinsing my mouth helped. Yay for half blunders and commonsense! Lesson learned: never eat something sweeter than the thing you are drinking.

Ceylon is a very cutting, bright base as is apparent here. Not my favourite, and I was expecting something smokier, but this cooled off cup does yield a pleasant caramel apple flavour that I enjoy. The Ceylon makes the apple a tart green one but the cinnamon and sweetness rounds it out a bit. It’s actually a little bit like the baked, cinnamon, brown sugar apples my mom would make for dessert every once in a while.

So, not much bonfire from this one, except for a little cinnamon spice. The Toffee caramel is there though, and that’s the important part (for me). Thanks for the sample, Bluebird Tea Co.

Happy Mother’s Day to all moms and would-be moms out there :) It’s my first Mother’s Day (yay!) and my husband made me the sweetest card from my little munchkin. I’m basically spending the day doing nothing of note, as it’s dreary outside and bonus – I woke up with a very sore throat. Sigh.

Anyhow, I brewed up a few teas today, this being one of them, and I just had to write about it right away. I don’t think I got the full flavour of this tea in the sample I had a few years ago, because it’s much tastier than I remember. Kind of like a sweet, mild apple cider (unspiced) type tea but with a strong (but not overwhelming) smokiness. Really unique, and really good. Definitely best to sip and savour, as the smokiness can get a little overwhelming otherwise. It’s good plain, but I feel like a splash of milk could make it a bit more easy-drinking, if one desired that.

Bumping rating from 73 to 83. Not a tea I’d be likely to keep around, but I’ll thoroughly enjoy it while I have it (and would perhaps add it into a future order if it was available).

Additional notes: New batch from a recent Bluebird purchase! Egads, I am in love with this one on this chilly day. It’s just perfect. And I have to give Bluebird credit for their blends being very consistent over the years – this seems almost exact to past batches I’ve had over the years. The black tea seems like a darker brew than the Ceylon they use in other blends, so I love it just for that. The perfect briskness with a heaping teaspoon for a mug with sweet hints of caramel and apple. I’m very glad Bluebird sent me some of those free samples when they first started out.

Wow, first reviewer! So much pressure!! This tea smells amazing! Like a combination of caramel apple and apple pie. yum! The taste, however, was a little too subtle for me. Even though they say you can have it with milk, I think milk kinda ruins it. I added milk to the first steep, and the taste was definitely not as strong as the smell. Tasted okay though, but I wanted more oomph! So, for the second steep, I didn’t add milk, and I think that was better. I definitely get a sweet apple flavor. Not sure if this was a winner for me, but that’s coming from someone who’s not all that into apple teas. Oh, for those wondering about the smokiness, I didn’t really get a smoky flavor, or at least it was very subtle.

Dexter3657 sent me a very generous package of this tea…thank you!

This is a light tasting tea. The flavours are there…but not too much. By that I mean I get the toffee flavour, but it is barely there. I get a hint of the apple…but also barely there. Same with the smoke…there, but not too much. It is a tea of subtle flavours.

This will do when I want a lighter tasting tea.

Thank you Dexter3657 for your generosity!

This is my first sample to try from MissB tonight. I did find the base milder than the other Bluebird teas I have had, but perhaps I instinctively under-brewed this one so it would not be so strong.

The first thing I notice is the apple, and then a subtle sweetness, but I cannot tell if that is my cane sugar added or not. To up the caramel/toffee notes, I added the leftover toffee drizzle from the sticky toffee pudding dessert I had the other night (it was to go, and there was more than enough sauce in the cup for the pudding and then some), and that definitely upped the toffee, but then kinda hid the apple.

I have a few servings of this, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy them.