Salted Caramel Mate

Sipdown!! (172)

Thank you Roswell Strange (and by extension 221tea) but this is not for me. In fact, I am surprised Roswell liked this because I am finding this tastes similar to movie theatre butter mixed with earthy mate. Caramel is in this cup but it is being overwhelmed by the other, less pleasant flavors. I am grateful for the chance to try something new and this is certainly a tea that would have caught my eye but I am just not enjoying this cup.

Backlog from this morning.

I had other plans for breakfast teas but when I saw that my massive (25 teas! All of which I’ve never tried – and I great mix of straight and flavoured) package from 221tea had arrived I quickly changed my mind and made up the two new Stash teas she sent me because A) I love Stash, B) They were both mate/guayusa blends which makes them perfect for the morning, C) they’d bagged so obviously more convenient, and D) they just sounded so damn good!

The name/“description” for this baffles me. If it’s a black tea then it’s obviously not herbal, so why even bother labeling it as such? I can wrap my head around a mate/black hybrid but the “herbal” in the name really isn’t necessary…

Dry, the bag for this smelled really intensely like caramel and black tea with a touch of earthiness that I’m assuming it being contributed by the mate. No presence of salt to be found. Steeped up this is surprisingly… Smokey!?

What’s in this that is making it so damn smokey? It’s like rich, lightly burnt caramel with an intense wave of campfire smoke (with some raw “earthiness” because of the mate). I actually had to go look up the ingredients to see if they mixed Lapsang Souchong into this; doesn’t specify but apparently there’s Monk Fruit in here. What is a Monk Fruit? Are they smokey? Fruit isn’t supposed to be smokey…

Anyway; the flavour notes here were definitely surprising to say the least – but I actually very much enjoyed the cup and thought it was a nice switch up from the mates I own. I couldn’t resist sending one of the bags to VariaTEA to see her thoughts.

Thanks 221tea!

I have tried another Salted Caramel tea (loose leaf from Teavana) and found that if I add a touch of salt (salt?) to the tea it brings out the caramel a bit more. I tried it that way for this tea and was pleased to have a similar reaction. I couldn’t tell you how much salt. I guess I would say “to taste”. It still is not a great tea but I’ll finish what I received in a swap from 221tea. Thanks for the tea!

This came as a free sample with my latest Stash order.

It tastes like drinking a slightly sweetened soft pretzel. I didn’t even think that was a thing. But my brain and tastebuds got together (after dropping acid apparently) and that is what they came up with.

Is there a fancy tea way of saying this tastes like dough?

I love the loose tea I order from Stash, but I have yet to be impressed with a bagged tea. At least it was free, so no harm done.