Black Tea Number One

BrutaliTeas Advent Day 1

After a lot of black tea I wasn’t terribly excited for this one, but I was pleasantly surprised. The coffee is a strong flavor over the black tea, though you can taste the tea as well. Not sure if the extra 5 degrees above recommended is what made it so bitter or if it’s just inclined toward bitterness (sort of feel like the latter seems more likely, but who knows). I think I generally prefer to keep my tea and coffee separate. Still, it was fun.

I pulled this out a week ago when my friend Todd was visiting for the weekend; I have chronic migraine and kept waking up with my head being uncooperative, so I was hitting it with all the things first thing in the morning, including a stronger-than-usual hit of caffeine. I think this was the only “coffee tea” in my current cupboard that wasn’t an herbal substitute to coffee and would actually have the caffeine I needed.

It’s pretty good! I have been brewing it a bit stronger than I would typically brew blacks or mates, so that combined with the coffee beans does make it a little bitter, but that bitterness also just sells the coffee flavor, which is pretty prominent. I can taste a bit of vanilla on the backend, but mostly I taste the really sharp notes of coffee bean and the roastiness of the roasted yerba mate. Very nice for a kick-in-the-pants morning, or a drizzly rainy afternoon at work.

I guess it’s official that one of my favorite tea pots is somehow leaking when I pour. It’s a triangle small brown one and I had assumed last night was a coincidence spill, but today some tea ends on the counter with both cup pours. Oh no. :(

With work tea break today chopped up a roma tomato with some seasoning and some more Havarti cheese. All I ate before sipping the tea while it brewed.

This tea is perfectly servicable but not memorable. I would think, considering Brutalitea’s usual strength and that I went a bit over five minutes, and with the espresso beans, that it would have more oomph. It does not. It is fine and not bad but not a favorite. I have a tin to drink so will see on future thoughts with future steepings.

There are more beans and I only grabbed one in this particular tea bag, so that could have made the coffee more of a backround. I will try to steep longer later.

I enjoyed the rich, strong taste of this and if I am able to get this again I will be trying it with chocolate oat milk. But a decent wake up in the morning tea

I was happy to see more Brutaliteas in the TTB! This tea is pretty expertly blended so you can taste the coffee beans, black tea, and mate individually, and they all work really well together. This has more of a straight coffee flavor than DavidsTea’s coffee puerh, which I had recently and found pleasantly desserty. The coffee here could almost become too strong for me, but it’s just right. I don’t usually love mate, but it adds the perfect roasted flavor here to give this tea depth. This is definitely one of the better Brutaliteas blends I’ve tried. It’s really satisfying with sugar and milk. I don’t necessarily notice the added chocolate and vanilla flavorings, but I don’t mind.