Mayan Chocolate Chai

On the strength of my experiment with Bluebird’s Dark Choc Chilli Chai, I decided to risk another cup of this. My first cup was ALL cayenne pepper, and it was not pleasant. This time, I’ve brewed it at half strength, and added plenty of warmed milk.

Tentative first sip.

It’s STILL cayenne pepper, and there can hardly be any tea in this cup. Given that it’s almost white from the milk, I would have thought hardly any flavour could come through, but it has. It’s more bearable than the first cup, but it’s still creating an unpleasant burn at the back of my throat, and I’m not really getting any chocolate or spice. Just cayenne pepper.

sigh

I really did want to like this one, but perhaps we’re just not meant to be friends.

This is the end of my little sample and I had it plain with a bit of honey added to it which turned out to be really good. The sweetness mellowed out the bite of the hot pepper a little bit, but it didn’t sacrifice the other flavours to do so. It also brought out the flavour of the cocoa nibs a little bit – and if there’s one thing you need to know about me it’s that more chocolate is always appreciated. ;)

I’m still not sure if I’d buy a whole bag of this tea – like I said in a previous entry I’d have to be a specific mood to want to drink this tea. It’s a good novelty tea (or may that’s novel-tea) and I enjoyed having the chance to expand my horizons a bit.

Bumped this up a few points. This time I used less tea and after it was steeped I used a little sweetener and some almond milk. It tamed the cayenne right down but left enough to give you a bite, it was delicious!

Discovered recently that a coworker is discovering tea … we cackle and brood over samples and swaps; she’s more kitcheny than I am and has been doing a little blending alchemy of her own. Most of the rest of the office just thinks we’re nuts.

At any rate, I turned her onto 52 Teas, and this was in her christening order, and she kindly shared. Whooie, this does have a kick! Was warm enough that I dumped some vanilla creamer into it—all I had at my desk—and I think in doing so, I messed up the flavor enough I can’t accurately analyze it. All I’m getting is sweet and hot.

Thankfully, there’s enough for another cup. I’ll take it home and try to do it justice.

The first thing that came out of my cupboard when I woke up this morning was this. When I say came, I mean literally it flew at me as I opened the tea cupboard. This is good, because I love this fiery, chocolate chai tea.

In other news – I’m back, or at least back home, after a week of work and vacation time. It feels like a lot longer, and I’m already missing my alone time, so I’ve decided to book myself off for a night/weekend once a month to have some solo catchup relaxation time with myself. I’m already looking forward to whenever I can do this in March! :)

I’ve got a huge backlog of teas to note, and I doubt I’ll get to them, so I’m just going to try and move forward, and as I remember, I’ll add them here.

1.5 tsp in 12 oz.

Chocolaaaate!!! (picture me saying braaaaains, but chocolate instead)
YUM! Thanks for the sample Kristaleyn, it was just what I needed yesterday! uhh, yes this is a backlog, the page wouldn’t load yesterday. Hmph.
Anyhow, I love how this looks like chocolate when dry, and then steeped? I definitely get some “tea”-ness. But… It was much lighter than I expected, a little thin for my liking.
Then I added some milk and agave. WELL. That brought it to a very tasty place!
Separating the cocoa and malty notes was a little confusing as the transition between them was seamless. I could barely tell where one ended and the other began!
Oh, and the spicy note? perfect! not too much, it was just the right amount of kick.
This will be on my list to order one day for sure!!

OK, I thought I’d just top off my caffeination before heading out (while waiting for my beloved to slowly ready himself) and try this new tea at the same time. It’s not for me. I couldn’t finish it. The spices are too strong and hurt my throat and the ginger smell is too strong for me to enjoy the fragrance of the tea.

I’ve put it in my “Give to a Good Home” box.

Sipdown (78)

This is the most deceptive dry leaf ever — it smells a litte sweet and cocoa-y with just a touch of spice. And then you drink it and it slams you right in the back of the throat. This is one that absolutely needs milk and sugar, but once it’s there it’s probably one of my favorite chai blends ever.

I am learning to like spicy food. I used to hate it. Wouldn’t touch it. My brother, on the other hand, would put tabasco sauce on baklava if given the opportunity. I distinctly remember a dinner with family friends at a pizza place where he and the son of my parents’ friends drank some of the stuff out of the jar. Disgusting, but I digress.

I still consider myself to be towards the bottom of the curve in terms of appreciating spicy food. I still can’t eat most Indian food without spending the rest of the night in an…unfortunate situation. And anything super spicy will upset my stomach. However, I enjoy stuff with a little kick and the Chai Agni that Carolyn had sent me took me to a very happy place, so I was excited to give this a try.

If you took the heat out of kimchi and put it in a chocolate chai, that is what my experience with this was like. It was hot. Now your definition of hot might differ from my definition of hot, but this was hot enough to drown out any hope for me of getting much else out of it. I could barely taste the chocolate aspect of it, and the spices from the chai were completely gone.

It could be that I happened to get a particularly large proportion of pepper in it, and I really hope that’s what happened, but that experience has scared me off of trying this again for a while. I mean, it was so spicy I knew it was going to make my stomach very, very angry if I didn’t stop drinking it so I had to dump the lot. If you want to make yourself sad, spend a good 20 minutes making chai and then make yourself pour most of it down the sink. I’ll give it another try once the scar of the spice has cooled down significantly enough. For now, I can only recommend this to someone who finds the idea of chocolate kimchi appealing.

I finally made this today. I wanted to brew and evaluate the tea a few times before writing anything so that I could give it justice. Here goes:

The dried leaves smell chocolatey and spiced, but not too spiced, you are not getting hit in the face with chai spices here, it just smells spiced. Like all chais, the tea is a jumble of leaves and pieces of tea that are assorted and pretty. I used 1 scoop (it is the wooden bamboo spoon from teavana, I have no idea how much tea it holds, but it is my usual tea serving size) of dried tea and was able to get three solid infusions out of it.

The first infusion was hot with no additives, brewed three minutes. LOVED it! good level of spice here, not overpowering, it is not the only thing you are tasting, here you can actually taste some of the chocolate but then there is spice, and varied spices, I am picking up cardamom mostly, but there is a hint of pepper with it. The spices actually come in waves or layers, however you want to interpret it. There is an upfront spiced flavor (not spicy, spiced), then chocolatey flavor with a hint of almond, then pepper spice (which is more of a spicy spice).

The second infusion was hot with sugar added, brewed three minutes. Still loved it, was ecstatic to get a second steep out of the same leaves. The spice seemed a little stronger here, so immediately after brewing (based on aroma) I added some rock sugar. Definitely did not hurt the batch at all. Still a good level of spice and the cocoa/almond flavors are a little more prevalent.

The third infusion was hot with a tiny amount of the sugar upfront into the brew basket. I do not think this changed anything, I feel the level of spice was about the same as the last two brews. The cocoa and almonds were not hurt and the pepper and cardamom were still well balanced. The reason I mention this one is because I got distracted (by shiny things) and forgot about my cup of tea, I left it about an hour. It is cold now, but still delicious and this has never happened to me before! Normally, I cannot handle a chai that is cold, the spice becomes overwhelming and I can no longer drink it. This is NOT the case here, it is still delicious. The spices are still there, they are upfront, then comes the chocolatey flavor and the hint of almond, then as you swallow, BAM! pepper! Fantastic!

I will keep brewing this, in varied methods, Cofftea has given me a ton of ideas about how to keep drinking this, thank you :)