Chai Tea

I’M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

Sorry for my 148972238497 year long hiatus, I’ve been busy and tired lately but I am back and needless to say I have quite a few backlogs to do. I don’t know about you guys but I’m going through a phase where I just don’t drink as much tea….. I’m sure you all read that and are now going to unfolllow me because this is of course a tea website, but I find that I often go through phases where tea takes more of a backseat. I frankly hate it, but I hope to get out of this “slump” soon and start enjoying myself again!

Anywho, this one was a sample K-Cup I got from my grandma who doesn’t use her machine for anything other than flavored desert coffees. I’m assuming this one came in the initial starter sampler box thingy ma bob they give you when you buy your Keurig. I need something fast and so I popped this in and brewed it up. I hate brewing tea in a K-Cup because you can’t steep it physically, the water just pours through the leaves like coffee. Regardless, this didn’t taste very weak to me, so something happened right!

The verdict: I definitely don’t hate it, but it isn’t strong and spicy chai like I usually enjoy. I wouldn’t buy a whole box of it because I wouldn’t want tea that I can’t control, but if offered I wouldn’t turn down a cup. This is just a mediocre tea but hey, that’s part of the tea world!

When I first got my Keurig, I couldn’t imagine the day I would be able to live without it. I mean, I still use it to dispense my hot water (because it’s much easier than fussing with kettles and knowing when to stop pouring and such, although that can absolutely be done—I’m just lazy and scared). Anyway, still love the machine overall, and I do enjoy the occasional coffee from it, but I obviously don’t use it for its original purpose as much anymore. But this morning we were in a rush, and i didn’t have time to steep anything properly (and I hate rushing things like that), so I just brewed up a k-cup of this. It’s odd to me that I used to like it, although it’s not entirely a bad tea option given that it brews for like five seconds. I’m definitely getting the cinnamon and some spices, but overall it’s a fairly watery, thin, lackluster option. but will it do in a pinch? it sure will.

Out of morbid curiosity, I decided to try this this morning in place of the bag of Stash chai that I have some mornings. Mediocre at best. You know it’s not fantastic when your first sip tells you to do everything you can to cover up the taste of the tea so that you can drink it. Every bagged chai I’ve ever had is better than this.

Inspired by a review of another K-cup beverage, I decided to open one up to see what it’s made of. There’s a little paper liner on the inside of the cup, like a tiny paper garbage bag. The tea (1tsp!) sits inside, with a gap between the bottom of the liner and the bottom of the cup. The leaves look like granules of coffee, rather than leaves of tea.

Out of even more morbid curiosity, I decided to brew the leaves in my tea pot, to see if I could improve the taste by removing the packaging. I only let it brew for just over a minute, since the K-cup system doesn’t really have long brewing time and it looked very dark quite soon after adding water. The results are, shockingly, better, but not enough that I would go out of my way to open up a K-cup every time I wanted a cup of this.