Trick or Treat! I got this tea quite some time ago in a cupboard sale of tea-sipper’s, so thank you tea-sipper! This is a Ceylon black tea/yerba mate blend with chocolate and coffee beans. I have some other coffee teas (confession: I actually like coffee too!), but the dry leaf for this smells surprisingly chocolately, and my other coffee teas have a very strong coffee flavor. I’m interested to see how this will turn out.
I was careful to pull out the coffee beans when measuring the leaf since they were adding a lot of weight to the measurement, so I got 2.4g of actual dry tea leaf; I think I would’ve ended up with quite a weak cup otherwise! Of course, the coffee beans were added back into the infuser with the leaf and I steeped in 350ml boiling water for four minutes. And the steeped cup is a light brown color and smells very chocolately… again, I’m surprised I’m not really getting much of a coffee note in the aroma like I’ve had with past coffee teas.
The tea is very smooth! I was expecting a bit of bite with Ceylon, coffee, and yerba mate, things I’ve had separately and found to have bitterness and astringency on their own, but… no. I’m not getting any bitterness in this cup, it has a medium body with a subtle earthy taste that reminds me a bit of pu-erh teas, and the dominating flavor is a rich, chocolately/cocoa note. There is a coffee flavor that is left as an aftertaste on my tongue, but it isn’t really distinct during the sip. It’s a sweet tea without being overbearing about it. It’s really nice! It’s a good sweet tooth hit for those times when you also need a caffeine hit, but the high caffeine content doesn’t make it suitable as a bedtime dessert tea.
Flavors: Chocolate, Cocoa, Coffee, Earth, Smooth, Sweet
I was watching the Austin FC inaugural game on TV and was thinking those Crew fans must be so happy that they stayed in Columbus. Hope opener is always a good game, even if they tie :)