Yu Lu Yan Chai

Wow, I absolutely love the smell of this chai dry and steeping! Thanks to the carby sweet potato quality of the base and the ginger it smells like a pan of freshly baked soft gingerbread. The flavor then surprises you by being quite peppercorn-y. I’m trying this steeped like standard tea, but I am pretty sure this will love being made with honey and milk. Very nice. One of the best chais I’ve tried, I love the spices and the balance.

This is really good and robust. Not an average cup of Chai~oh No!
Please try it with honey to bring
the full complexity of it through fruition.
I taste the Ginger in it first & most predominantly.
Thank God for the Ginger this morning as
my tummy was really hurting when I woke up.
The Cinnamon and the Cardamom
make the Ginger more complex and palatable.
The Sweet Potato and Peppercorn are far more subtle
and the honey…draws it all the way out.
There is not enough vanilla in it for me to taste, but enough
to make it creamy. This is the dark and spicy chai
you are dreaming of folks.
If you are a Chai lover…call Verdant and ask for this…
It might not be available YET,
but with all this fuss…surely it will be in everyone’s fortune cookie <3
I did not mention some of the other ingredients, but that is not that they did not contribute.I believe the making is in the mix ;-)
I steeped for 2 minutes and added 2 tsp honey and
a tablespoon of cream
(vs the 1/3c. of milk listed on the TOMBC sheet)
This is likely something you have to play with yourself as I suspect most people have a peculiar preference
as to how they prefer their Chai.
Try it your way~ you cannot go wrong :-p

And this is another sipdown. (168 – with my Butiki order!)
I don’t know what it is, but I’m not really digging something in this blend. It’s ok, but it’s making my throat scratchy. I wonder if that means I’m allergic to something in the blend? Someone mentioned that earlier – maybe JustJames? in regards to rooibos?

It’s official. I’ve found my perfect chai. It’s the perfect flavor. The Yu Lu Yan Cha base is already fairly spicy and chocolately on its own, so it was a natural choice for a chai. :)

The flavor balance is just perfect. It’s spicy in the ways I really love, more of a cinnamon sweeter spice, but still with a good kick from the ginger, peppercorn and other ingredients. And with just as much potency as the spicy flavor, it’s also sweet like graham crackers, or granola, or like that golden graham cereal.

I need to stock up on this. Like, a lot.

My daughter has been sick for the past two days, and this morning I woke up with a sore throat. Doh! I tried really hard not to catch it! One of the worst things about being sick is not being able to taste tea properly. I had to try this, though. I am thrilled with what came in this month’s blend package- a genmaicha, a chai, and an herbal. More on the genmaicha later (it’s good!!!). It’s not on Steepster yet and it’s hard to add new teas on my iPad. On to this chai though . I am very happy to see that cinnamon and ginger are at the top of the list of ingredients. A good chai must have copious amounts of cinnamon! Plus, I can still taste cinnamon, even with a cold.

I am so frustrated with my cold! If it tastes this good with a cold it must be amazing normally. My first sip I was a little floored- the Yu Lu Yan Cha really shines in the blend. I did 2 tsp for 2 minutes and I wouldn’t go longer on the first steep. It’s really good! That’s all I can say. :/ I will update when I can taste it with no hindrance to my taste buds!

I didn’t really like this when I first got it so it was shoved way back into the cupboard. I’ve recently dug it out in my quest to drink down the old stuff in my cupboard.
This is much better with some age on it. LOL or it much better now that it’s lost some flavor.
It’s not as in your face spice and the spice seem better balance to me. This is good – I now have chai that I can drink….. :)

Thanks so much for a precious sample of this one, MissB! I know how much you love it. It’s all sipped down now. :D There are so many ingredients in this blend – some I have absolutely no clue what they are. But my blend doesn’t look like the picture – my sample looks like it was crushed, or from the bottom of the bag or something. Haha. Tastes good anyway! It’s a brisk brew — I wish I could have tried the Yu Lu Yan Cha on its own to at least have the ability to pick those flavors apart. From what I’m tasting, it isn’t super spicy. It’s more like raisins and savory vegetal flavors (but in a delicious way). I think the vegetal must be the tulsi. I wish I could distinguish this one more! But it’s a solid chai. Hints of sweet with the second cup somehow. It was cooler today (below 70 degrees for the first time in a while) so I must have wanted to bust out the chai. Chai season is upon us!
Steep #1 // 1 tsp // 10 minutes after boiling (deciding on a tea) // 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 4 min

Also, I find that sometimes when I’m craving a tea (today it was 52Teas Strawberry Pie) as I’m looking at the tasting note and I see the date, it was exactly that day from a previous year. For the Strawberry Pie: 8/26!
ETA: Well, for some reason it’s saying that this tasting note is on 8/27 but it’s definitely still 8/26 here.

Darby was nice enough to send me a sample of this one! Glad I got to try it finally! Tastes a lot like the other chai from Verdant that I tried. Except instead of the creaminess that I liked in the other, it kinda tastes like dirt. 0_0
I’ve never had a chai that tastes like dirt. Didn’t over-steep it at all. So no idea what’s with that. xD
Still glad to have tried. Thanks, Darby!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS TEA!

Steeping parameters: 100mL gaiwan, ~3.5g leaf, water temperature increased with steep number from 178-190 F. Would recommend to anyone and this will be my only 100 rating. Well, maybe not only but only for now…

nutty and softly spicy