52teas

Taken with milk and sugar.
Wow CHOCOLATE!
And only 3 components that usually go into chai which are cardamom, cinnamon and ginger.
This is pretty fantastic. sip
I tried this without milk first and found that the cardamom over powers a little bit when the milk isn’t there to chill it out. With milk though it has the same after taste as that Indian dessert that is a frozen yogurt and cardamom mixture which is kinda similar to egg nog without that weird nog texture. And the fact that the Indian dessert is frozen solid. sip
About half way through the glass you get “used” to the chocolate taste so the flavoring spices and the tea start to show up a little more. The tea flavor is a good base but there is absolutely nothing stand out about that at all.
Spice wise… at first I thought that the blend might have been a little cardamom heavy but the ginger and chocolate are evening the flavor out quite well.
My only wish would be to have a little more cinnamon in the mix cause I do like that little kick but if that’s my only complaint with a chai they are doing pretty good. And I can put that in myself. :)

I’m still avoiding the Dashboard. I don’t know when I can look at it again safe from spoilers, so in the meantime if you post about something that might interest me and IS NOT from 52teas, could you link me please? I don’t want to know what’s in that christmas box until I can look for myself (and even if it’s something that ISN’T from the christmas box I’ll know it’s not in there. I don’t want to know what’s not in it either!)

Anyway, this one has been lying around in my kitchen for quite a long time. Black Satin was one of the first things I tried from 52teas ever, and I rather fell for it. So I ordered another pouch when it was gone. And then that second one has been lying around in the Bits’n’Bops Basket more or less since while I tried to remember why it was that I liked it so much.

For some unknown reason suddenly the idea of the blend seemed violently unpleasant to me and I had no wish to drink it again ever.

Tonight however it just sort of popped into my head that it was the natural tea to have this evening. And no, I don’t know why that was either.

It tastes like old times. I remember my first ever order from 52teas. I remember badgering Frank into sorting out taxes and customs involved in shipping to Denmark, and the glee when he agreed. I remember the crushing disappointment when I got the first package and realised that it’s seriously stupid to buy a blend with dates when you don’t like dates. At all. And then it just got worse when I realised that I don’t care for pumpkin either. Thankfully I managed to get rid of the mistakes and didn’t give up on 52teas.

That was the metaphorical flavour. The actual real flavour has less licorice in it than I remember and not as much cinnamon. And yet the black tea isn’t dominating the flavour. This really is well balanced, and if you like licorice it’s a one to try.

Why was it that it suddenly seemed so unappealing to me?

I experienced a sudden craving. And to my delight (because I had given the last I had away in a swap) I had actually ordered another round of this in my forgotten 52teas order at the beginning of the year.

Lovely. Just a shame I haven’t got any milk. I’ve found that this is rather nice with a bit of milk.

Also, it is steeped to perfection with this awesome tea timer site that James Deville found.
http://steep.it

In order to try and prevent myself from yumming up this whole entire big bag of licorice of the peculiar scandinavian kind containing ammonium chloride that the majority of you lot would likely find completely inedible, I have made me a pot of this tea. It’s probably much less likely of making me sick as I certainly would be if I ate all that licorice. Big bag! Also, I have realised that not drinking it because I don’t want to run out is stupid, because they I’m not getting any of it anyway.

Aaaaahhhh!!!

Yes, this is much better, both for my health, my teeth, and my appetite when dinnertime comes. :)

On a scale from Yum to YumYumYumYumYum, I’ll give it four Yums.

This is the first decent cup of tea I’ve had AAAAAALL DAY! First there was the bagged stuff in the travel mug, then there was the taste of Ceylon Pekoe which had been forgotten and steeped for some 2½ *cough*hours*cough*. Yuck oh yuck oh double yuck! Made a new pot of that, nearly forgot that too so it got ten minutes, but it was somewhat drinkable and I made do with it.

Now I’m home, I’ve had dinner and I’ve had dessert. Now I want tea. I saw the label on the tin among the many tins on the table and thought, “Yes!”

The more I have of this, the more the liquorice root is coming out. I think I’ll give the rating an itty bitty push upwards.

I gave up on the pumpkin thing. It was no use, I’d ruined it. Obviously it didn’t handle oversteeping very well.

So we’re taking this one. The one that I know what’s like and is a known like. I think I’ll try it with a touch of milk for the liquorice this time because it’s a known fact that a handful of liquorice and a glass of milk goes hand in hand. We shall see if this is also true for liquorice root.

It feels a bit wrong though. Like… I’m girling up an otherwise fairly masculine tea…

Girling it up or not, though, it works very well with the milk and it really brought out the liquorice root. Yummy.

YAY! I received my tea from 52teas today! It was an awesome day for it too because I’ve been feeling kind of odd all day, like the head I currently inhabit doesn’t really belong to me, and finding this package in my letterbox when I came home from work helped the mood considerably.

I got this one and two others and I’ve spent a good half hour just trying to decide which one to try first. I’ve even been sniffing at all the bags, but they’re packed in a smell-proof pouch, which for some reason smells like curry. Maybe the postman had Indian food for lunch, I don’t know.

Finally I decided that this one was shouting the loudest in the chorus of “TRY ME! TRY ME!”

The leaves look nice. Not the hugest leaf size in the world, but there are plenty of liquorice root bits and cinnamon bark bits and the whole thing smells sweet and sort of a bit like cough medicine. I had a nasty throat infection a few years ago and the doctor prescribed me this absolutely vile cough medicine to help me with the cough. It smells a bit like that, so at this point I’m a leeeettle bit worried.

Those who have tried steeping a bit of liquorice root all by itself will now that it results in a very yellow liquid. The colour of this tea is hard to describe. It’s sort of a normal sort of dark sort of goldeny tea colour, with a sort of liquorice rooty yellow sort of edge to it. Sort of.

The aroma is not reminding me nearly as much of cough medicine now that it’s been steeped. Now it’s more like a set of individual smells. I can pick up the cinnamon and the liquorice root easily enough and if I concentrate a bit, I can pick up the tea underneath as well. Cinnamon and liquorice root are both really sweet things and the tea is sort of binding it together and preventing it from getting too sweet and cloying. It lends a bit of strength to it. I keep sniffing at it, trying to figure out how to describe it and if I’m not careful, it’ll just go cold, so let’s just leave the aroma and appearence bits at this.

It’s the taste that matters, anyway. At first go, I’m thinking it’s a bit watery. I don’t know, maybe I should have used just a few more leaves. It felt a bit thin. I’m not getting any of the sweetness from the cinnamon and liquorice root. I can find both, but they don’t taste sweet. The cinnamon is reminding me a bit of chai, and it’s making me wonder if a spot of milk might not suit this tea nicely. On the other hand the thought of liquorice root and milk together just doesn’t really work in my head at all.

Mostly, I’m just picking up the tea, and while it doesn’t say anything about the origins of it other than it being Indian, it definitely feels Indian too. It’s got a full sort of flavour and the liquorice root and the cinnamon is just sort of undertones rather than taking over the flavour.

It’s not really what I was expecting (I don’t even KNOW what I was expecting), but I definitely like it. I think I’ll have to experiment a bit with milk and cane sugar, because I think it might work with either of those two. But not both, I think. Not at the same time, anyway.

Do you ever have one of those experiences when you come face to face with your prejudices and discover that you have been wrong? When this tea showed up at my house, I undoubtedly shot it a prim frown of disapproval and put it away thinking I might be able to use it in a swap. No rice krispies in green tea for this woman!

So today I decided to give it a try….I’ve liked the 52teas of the week very much and thought that I owed them a courtesy taste—-before I gave this tea away to some unsuspecting victim.

HELLO! I love this tea! No rice krispie taste; but there is a toasty sort of crispness. It’s not overwhemingly sweet at all. A layer of smoke, a nuttiness, and a tinge of malt all add up to a fully tasty experience. As I try more teas, I notice that I really respond to those which give me a big and unique tasteful. This tea is excellent for afternoons. It steeps swiftly to pot to mouth time is speedy.

I just tried this as a hot tea latte here at our shop. O M G! It was like pure liquid chocolate. The malt flavoring really amped up the chocolate. Our organic cacao nibs and natural dark chocolate flavoring can make our chocolate teas a tiny bit on the bitter side. A good, chocolatey bitter, like really dark chocolate, but a bit bitter nonetheless. But with the malted milk flavor (also all natural) added to it, the chocolate just comes to life.

I’m thinking of the chocolate river in the Willy Wonka movie and thinking it couldn’t taste much better than this tea with a little cream and sugar. Absolutely amazing!

This is simply a delightful, festive, holiday tea that works well on any cold evening.
Gingerbread Rooibos was the first in my “tea of the week” orders and I was thrilled. In addition to the very attractive packaging (such things do matter to me a little bit), they produced a dreamy and delightful tea. There’s the snap of ginger but also the sweetness and soothingness of a complexly flavored gingerbread.

I was thrilled with this selection—the odor, the taste, the experience were comforting in a way that is exciting. I felt returned to the age of innocence when Christmas meant spice and sugar and all things nice. Great tea! Different and versatile.

Having a big icy glass of this now. It’s such a nice bold black tea with plenty of citrus and spice notes. I really enjoy this one hot or iced.

This tea is amazing. Just had a bit hot and then tried it iced too! I’m not a big Genmaicha fan, to be honest, but the sweet malt flavor really adds a new dimension to this tea. It’s positively delicious! One of my new favorites!

This is one of our bestsellers of all time. In our brick and mortar shop in Wichita, KS, we are constantly having to re-blend this tea. Mandy, one of our regular customers, once told me that she really thought we should rename the tea “Mandy’s crack”. After a moment of consideration, she decided maybe that wasn’t such an appetizing name.

The tea is surprisingly delicious. The flavor is definitely unique from the first sip. I drink this tea when I’m in the mood for something a little different!

This is very mild green tea with light, subtle flavors. Overall, I’m not a huge drinker of green teas, but this is one of my favorites.