Caramel Baked Apple Oolong

Oh dear. I drank this and didn’t make notes :(

Sipdown!

I really love the roasted oolong base on this. Super toasty, thick, rich mouthfeel, and it gives the brew a baked apple taste. The caramel is more like brown sugar or molasses, but still tasty. I don’t get much apple, but |I much prefer it that way. Some dry apple flavour is there, but the smooth oolong base really demands your attention, and it deserves it too. This is a damn fine blend.

This was so good! I am wishing there was a little more caramel. Sorry, that’s all I remember about it. I had this awhile ago but life had been crazy.

Shana tova! In the spirit of Rosh Hashana, I opted for an apple tea. Two, actually. Time for a caramel apple blend showdown! I’m pitting A Quarter to Tea’s Caramel Baked Apple Oolong against Butiki’s Caramel Apple (also an oolong). Who shall emerge victorious?! I am posting this note under both teas, so apologies for clogging your dashboards.

QTT Caramel Baked Apple
The scent of this leaf is sweet cinnamon, but there’s no cinnamon flavor in the sip. Instead, it’s all soft, sweet baked apple. No caramel flavor either, even after adding brown rock sugar. There is a sort of rocky note here which reminded me of Butiki’s Caramel Apple. That’s what inspired this taste test in the first place.

Butiki Caramel Apple
The scent of rich caramel wafts out of the mug as soon as the hot water hits the leaf. The caramel apple flavor here is spot on. It’s sweet, crisp, perfectly candy apple. The flavoring also melds nicely with the rockiness of the base tea. I actually find that rockiness off-putting on its own but the sweetness rounds it out and makes it pleasant. No need for sweetener here!

Both of these teas are quite tasty. The Butiki has a stronger caramel flavor and tastes more crisp. By contrast, the QTT tastes more like a baked apple pastry (which, to be fair, is implied in the title). Each tea hits the spot in a different way. I’m glad to have both!

I was not as impressed as most are with this tea. I found it primarily tasted of roasted oolong with a slight mineral tone blended with hojicha. I had only a faint apple taste at the front of the sip, and no caramel flavour what so ever. Oh well. I drank a few cups of this and will be adding the rest of this into the Here’s Hoping Traveling Tea Box. It appears most people really enjoy it so hopefully it was be appreciated by someone else. :)

I used the entire sampler bag and did one of my odd Gong Fu/Western combo brews.
At 30 seconds:
Roastiness of hojicka and oolong with a apple aftertaste. Still more tea base, overall made me think of a Dan Cong with a fruity apple note mixed into the heavily roasted, smokey taste.
3 minutes:
I get the apple and the caramel with the base still strong. The cinnamon is starting to sneak up…
And the rest is a flux of the apple and the roasty teas getting a little bit spicier with the cinnamon. I changed the times and relied on smell and color to brew the tea.

It was warming and was more of a winter/fall tea for sure. It felt especially good on my soar throat. I might have to try it again because I did enjoy it.

I do prefer the cherry chocolate latte slightly because I love those things, but the apple was a little bit more natural with the hojicka for me. It is crispy which a baked apple should be. The caramel is the main thing that meanders in and out of the cup.

I would recommend a try of it, and specifically recommend it for those who especially like toasty teas.

This is nice! Smooth, roasty oolong, a very fresh sweet-tart apple flavor and the lightest hint of sweet caramel. I wish the caramel were a bit stronger, but it’s still a lovely tea!

Happy customer! Sweet apple notes match very well with the oolong base. I don’t think I’ve had houjicha on its own so I can’t really quite say how it affects the flavor, but this tea is really damn good.

Another sample from my sampler. This uses the same two bases as the Chocolate Cherry Latte, though maybe with different proportions: the dark oolong and hojicha. A caramel apple tea sounded amazing. I tried to steep it the same way that resulted in magic with the Chocolate Cherry. The base tastes the same as that, but the apple and caramel isn’t as magical of a combination. But that is tough to beat. I made sure to get a big chunk of apple in my infuser. There were only slight hints of apple, caramel and cinnamon in the blend. I mostly tasted hojicha in the base. A nice roasted flavor that would pair nicely with a caramel apple. But sipping this just made me crave the Chocolate Cherry Latte more. Maybe tomorrow! The Black Friday sale for A Quarter to Tea looks AMAZING.
Steep #1 // 2 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug// 17 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // 10 minutes after boiling // 4 minute steep
Steep #3 // couple minutes after boiling // 8 minute steep
http://www.etsy.com/shop/AQuarterToTea

Sipdown (120)!

My final Quarter To Tea sample, for now…

I think my mistake with this one was drinking it cold brewed: I thought it would be a nice apple flavour with caramel sweetness which would translate well into a cold brewed dessert type tea but when I actually tried it I realized that the flavour was a little more subtle than expected and perhaps better suited for hot preparation.

That said; while I feel I didn’t get the most out of my leaf I did enjoy the cold brew! I thought that the oolong base was probably the strongest flavour but had a kind of sharp, semi-sweet “apple” flavour near the tail of the sip and the finish. Like a Granny Smith apple, but a lot less tart. If that makes sense. The start of the sip was softer; I definitely picked up on cinnamon notes but the caramel didn’t translate well into any part of the sip. I think I just wanted that flavour to be much richer and apparent, and not just a “sweetened the whole sip” kind of generic flavour?

But overall this was still good! I’d drink it again (hot) but probably wouldn’t order it again because I think unless the hot version is just mind blowing, this mostly just feels a little average to me? It’s probably exactly what some people want out of a Caramel Apple type oolong: subtle hints of flavour over a nice oolong base. I was just, personally, craving something a little more rich and ‘in your face’ like the Cherry Chocolate Latte Oolong was. Of my three samples, that one is absolutely my favourite.

NON TEA RELATED:

I’m such a proud Canadian citizen today!

Today Justin Trudeau was sworn in as our Prime Minister officially, and that in itself would be enough to put me in a good mood because to me it signifies the end of an era that was suffocating Canada and brings with it new hope. However, I was moved to tears when I saw the list of his cabinet members! For the first time in Canada’s history, like he promised, there’s proportional representation. Not only did he select more woman as MPs than ever before, but a true ‘half’ (15 of 31) are woman!

Not only that, but we have the first ever Aboriginal justice minister in the history of Canada (Jody Wilson-Raybould). Our minister of Democratic Institutions is now Maryam Monsef, who came to Canada from Afghanistan as a refugee fleeing the Taliban in 1996. Her place in our cabinet is incredibly moving! Our minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities is a legally blind paralympian!

And the rest of the cabinet… Incredibly well appointed.

Our new minister of National Defense is Harjit Sajjan a retired colonol who was the first Sikh to command a Canadian army regiment and who also served in Afghanistan (not to mention Punjabi is now the third most spoken language in Canada and we have proportional representation of that on our cabinet now too; four elected MPs speak Punjabi with the majority of the others being split between English and French, the two national languages). We have a cabinet filled with immigrants, refugees, woman, people of colour, multiple faiths, scientists, astronauts, teachers, people with disabilities! Truly representative of our country.

Today is a good day to be a Canadian.