Irish Cream Cheesecake

Another comforting Butiki tea to get through my snowy snowy day at work :)

This might be my favorite from the new batch of flavored teas just released…they have all been wonderful though!

This one turned out perfectly this morning. The lower temperature really is the key I find. This one has been finicky for me in the past, but when it works out I absolutely love it. I’ll definitely be ordering the reblend, and possibly more of this one before it’s gone. Does anyone know when this blend is on it’s way out?

Also, this is my first tasting note to check out the upgrade and all these options are handy! The amount of tea and water volume are a delight.

I’m home with all my teas! I’ll be honest, that was the first thing I looked at when I walked out the door. I’m not ashamed.

Also, my Breville turned 3 yesterday! I do love my little tea machine. To honor it, I went ahead and steeped a tea I hadn’t had before while watching the Downton Abbey Christmas special. I’d been dreaming about this one for the past few days so I it was the one I went for.

The dry leaf is so pretty! I love the green and the blue. It also has a nice creamy vanilla smell – almost caramel. I steeped it at the below parameters as recommended, with no additives.

I do get the distinct scent of Bailey’s in the steeped tea…Bailey’s in combination with the smell of Taiwanese Assam, so it’s pretty amazing and comforting on a cold night. The first taste was initially kind of disappointing – it was strong and a touch astringent. I think it would have benefitted from milk, if we’d had any, or sugar, if it hadn’t been all the way across the room from me, haha.

But as it cools it actually seems to get a bit smoother. I pick up more on the irish cream though not so much on the cheesecake. It hasn’t stopped me from powering through the cup, and I suspect when I do add some sugar to future cups I will love it that much more.

Ah, so good to be home, just in time for the New Year. Maybe I’ll have time for one last cup in 2013…

Hm. It smelled good dry. But I honestly got nothing but tea taste. No cream, no cheesecake, nada. I tried adding a bit of sugar but that just made it sweet tea. I need to try this at home. I had this at work with filtered water and sometimes I find I like teas better and notice more flavors with my tap water at home, as weird as that sounds. So no rating for now.

And I now have to make a cheesecake this weekend.

I was really excited to try this tea, although I have to admit that I wasn’t exactly sure what to anticipate. I like Baileys and other Irish cream flavoured things, but I don’t know that I can specifically conjure up “Irish cream cheesecake” in my mind. But I love cream, I love Baileys, and I love cheesecake, so why not?

I stuck to the suggested brewing parameters, and when I first inhaled after steeping, it almost smelled like caramel vanilla assam, but not quite. Much more potent, with an almost coffee-like after-sniff. The brewing guide is spot on when it suggests you enjoy this tea hot, because the astringency creeps in really, really quickly, and somehow just takes over. even with cream and sugar added, I wasn’t quite able to finish the cup. I didn’t really get cream or cheesecake from it, although I don’t know that I really had much of an opportunity to detect it because the bitterness took over fairly quickly. I’m going to try it again though, and do a bit of tinkering, but as of now, I’m fairly certain I won’t be reordering (which sort of comes as a relief, as my next Butiki order is already getting expensive!)

Sipdown (191/196)!

I don’t think people understand that when a store closes at 9PM that doesn’t mean the employees go home at 9PM – it means that’s when we get to start closing; and for a big store like Dollarama it takes quite a while to close. Christ.

So, today at 8:55PM we had a lady come in and start shopping – FIVE MINUTES TO CLOSING. That wouldn’t have been such a big deal if she was just quickly grabbing one or two things – but that wasn’t the case; instead she had to do all her grocery shopping and buy all the stuff for her wedding: a few hundred fake white/yellow flowers, all our champagne flutes (which we have to wrap individually), place settings…

And because we weren’t closed yet we had to let her shop and stay open until she was done. Ughh! We didn’t even get to start closing until 9:40! Because of her me and my closing cashier both missed our buses. At least I’m within feasible walking distance: I felt really bad for Ruby though because this late at night the buses only stop by once an hour so she had to wait an extra long time to get home.

Fuck people.

But anyway; I finished this off in my timolino with milk today. Scratch another Butiki blend off the list, as well as one less black tea in my cupboard meaning more space in the closet for black blends! Hooray!

I’m not to sad to see this go; it’s way to hard to get it right. I don’t want to waste more time on it trying to perfect brewing it – so goodbye Irish Cream Cheesecake. It was an experience, at least…

I’ve had this twice before but still don’t know what to make of it. I wholeheartedly agree with keychange that this kind of smells like the Caramel Vanilla Assam. To make that even stranger, CVA (and David’s Buttered Rum) had a powdered cheese kind of smell, so in a way, it makes sense that this smells like that. Maybe it’s the creamy/vanilla notes used in these types of blends which do that to my nose.

I made sure I let the water cool down before steeping, as the tea was a little astringent the last couple times. Cooled down water (probably around 90°C) and no more than three minutes… aaaand it’s still on the astringent side. Quite bold. Nothing wrong with that but I was hoping for some Irish cream and/or cheesecake, and I don’t get either, unfortunately.

Different city, different water too, and the results are the same. Perhaps my taste buds are more sensitive to the base? I’ll keep trying, but for now, I’ll add some biscotti-flavoured Bailey’s and guiltily not do any work.

Huh. To be honest I didn’t expect to like this because I’ve had bad luck with cheesecake flavoured tea, because… how do you do that? It’s a subtle thing to recreate!

But this worked! It was light and fluffy and creamy and tasted a little sweet and a little like irish cream.

I’m happy I was able to snag this from ShadowFall!

backlog from yesterday – after work we went out to the liquor station and out for dinner AND did a bit of browsing at the jewellery store so by the time we got home i was pooped and just wanted to sleep.

I picked this one yesterday because i am DYING to try all the teas i received from stacy (it’s been forever since i had new teas from her!) and this was my flavoured pick. I need to have this again before making a final decision. It was more irish cream than cheesecake, which i think i recall seeing stacy say was what they were going for. The smell is AMAAAAAZING! It’s a smooth tasting tea. I’m just not sure if I like it. I need to sit with it again in a cup. When i’m focusing on drinking my tea, not doing work. It’s for sure not a cup i hate..i’m just not quite sure how i feel about it yet. :)

Dry: This is a very pretty dry leaf with different colored flower petals (I can see cornflower for sure). It smells rich and creamy, with a nutty vanilla fragrance.

Steeped: Medium clear red-brown liquor. Still has that soft and sweet vanilla-nut blended fragrance, except now I also smell Darjeeling muscatel with a buttery background. I can see how this is called Irish Cream because the smell reminds me in a subtle way of Bailey’s.

Taste: This one is nommy and I am enjoying it, but I am not really getting cheesecake or Irish cream on the palate at all. Instead I believe the base is the main feature, which is an excellent Darjeeling as it turns out. Sweet with a hint of sour and astringency, this reminds me dead on of a good quality Darjeeling with the muscatel background. There is also that same nut aroma/flavor and buttery notes, which from the description, sounds more like the base tea than the flavored one, too. I will say that at the end of each sip there is a nice dose of cream to enjoy that is clearly not the stand-alone base. I drank this one straight and I am not sure I would enjoy it as much with sugar as I think the sweetness could somewhat obscure the dessert nuances. Glad I was able to try this- what an interesting blend!