Cafe Mocha

1 heaping TB for 500mL water, no milk or sweetener.

Rough time waking up this morning. My yerba mate tisance disappointed, and the caffeine monkey on my back started to jabber. So, a little pot of English Breakfast standing by, but first: this strange hybrid elixir.

If you’re in the mood for straight black tea, don’t drink this.

If you need a good smack upside the head and feel bold, drink this.

This morning’s brew is chewy, sweet, smooth, dark and mysterious, and just a tiny bit chicory-bitter on the aftertaste. The coffee beans feed my caffeine monkey, and the China black tea smooths everything out. I still need a good hit of Assam, but that wll follow.

As I’ve said before, a strange fusion drink, hardly a regular or go-to for me, but always satisfying.

YUMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is part of David’s tea fall collection 2010- it is a yummy mocha tasting tea! I am not a coffee drinker but I still really enjoyed this tea. I could see coffee drinkers would probably really enjoy this (it has coffee beans in it) I had received this as one of 3 free samples when I placed my order. I will be ordering more of this one!

This tea smells great. When you open the bag, there’s a heavy almond presence then roasted coffee. There are huge pieces of each mixed into the tea.

The tea brews to almost black. The initial fragrance was “burnt” and the first sip was extremely bitter. I almost threw the whole cup out. However, I let it sit a minute and it started to behave. None of the almond ever came through, but the coffee and chicory made this pretty bold. So bold, that you could never tell there was any tea in the cup.

As the cup sat, the bitterness returned so there’s a finite window in which this tea is enjoyable.

[Backlog] – Now as much as I love tea, I do enjoy a good cup of coffee. I thought that this tea would be delicious.. coffee & tea – two wonderful creations. Together? Not so tasty. I couldn’t drink more than a few sips of this. It was WAY too bitter and quite frankly, it was a bit gross. For now, I think I’ll keep my tea and coffee in separate cups!

This tea DOES smell great. I’m not a coffee drinker but I received a sample of this tea and THOUGHT I really liked it for those first two cups. I was surpirsed at how tasty and lacking in bitterness it was.

Being a limited-edition tea, I thought I should buy 100g of it. After I received that, I wondered what I had been thinking. I’ve only tried it two or three times since, and it’s not awful but it doesn’t do much for me. It can get kind of bitter and I can’t remember what I liked about it.

I’m thinking the difference could be that with the sample I was using milk as I was at my parents’, and since I have been putting almond milk in it. Perhaps I will get some real milk and try it again.

I have been craving coffee all week, and this tea was amazing. It smells just like coffee and tastes like black tea. I was so excited to >sort of< be drinking coffee that I added creamer and Splenda to it – and it was delicious. It has more caffeine than I normally have in the green and oolong teas that I drink.

This tea smells fantastic, but I’m not a huge fan of the flavour. I’m not a huge coffee drinker, but would prefer a cup of coffee over this tea, which is disappointing.

Edit: I tried this tea again with some milk added and it made it taste much better!

Added a little sugar to this one to cut down on the astringency I noticed the first time I had it. What a difference it makes! No bitterness, though I don’t taste chocolate or coffee. Instead, I’m getting brown sugar. Yum!

Thank you for the sale, Ost! This one is exactly like I wanted it to taste. Plenty of coffee beans and delicious looking almonds in this blend. I don’t like coffee at all, it always smells like something unpleasant to me, but I find that a tea with a coffee beans (and maybe sometimes some sort of coffee flavor? But maybe that’s the chicory?) is the perfect amount of coffee for me. Just one teaspoon filled with coffee beans left a pretty dark cup of tea after only three minutes. The flavor is delicious just enough coffee flavor mingling with the perfect-to-pair-with black tea. I don’t seem to get any sort of almond flavor. I’ll enjoy the rest of this pouch! I’m really never disappointed with David’s Teas… I haven’t tried many I haven’t liked… maybe I’ve just tried the best teas.
Steep #1 // few minutes after boiling // 1 tsp // 3 min
Steep #2 // just boiled // few min steep

Cooking TTB #4

I’m so glad Inkling tossed this in for me to try! I’m going to have to go 2 rounds with it, though. I made the mistake of putting some vanilla almond milk in it before trying it plain because I was really craving a latte sort of thing. After the fact, I can say that I’m pretty sure the almond milk just completely covered all the other flavors. At least I can say that I didn’t taste anything I didn’t like ;) I’ll withhold my rating until I drink it again with nothing added.