Badger Breakfast

Sipdown (306)

This is a strong cup of tea. Too strong for my blood and a touch bitter. I can see those who like this sort of thing being pleased but I am just not the target audience here. It was nice to get a sample though.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this breakfast blend – it’s so different and unconventional. That just made me even more determined to try it, though.

I guess I probably should have known better, but I was relatively thrown by the fact that this tea lacks the strong, brisk and full bodied cup that breakfast teas tend to have. Like, to me a solid breakfast tea is one that takes milk and sugar really well but when it comes to this tea I feel like adding milk would totally obscure the flavours.

I definitely got a strong sense of the muscat notes though; so the Darjeeling definitely comes through, and smoothly too I might add. Other than that, there’s quite a bit of underlying fruitness to the tea as well. I’m guessing that’s largely from the hops, but perhaps also a bit from the raspberry leaf. I definitely think those fruit notes lean more towards red fruit flavours than anything else; strawberry/raspberry and maybe even sweet red currants? Pretty yummy.

I think that’s my overall consensus; really yummy and surprisingly nuanced and fruity but I just can’t see this as a “breakfast blend”. I suppose I just have too strong a preconceived notion of what a breakfast blend is.

A little bitter for my tastes, but it’s strong and isn’t flat. Definitely a wake-up tea but didn’t work with my palette well because of the bitterness.