Caramel Rooibos Latte

Samurai TTB #53

I love caramel, so I had to give this one a try! The dry leaf is VERY finely ground (almost like matcha) but I followed the directions to steep it like a traditional tea and add milk. The aroma was intensely sweet and caramelly, but I didn’t get much of a caramel flavor from the brewed tea…it just came across as a sweet, milky rooibos. Pleasant enough, but not the rich caramel experience I was hoping for.

Samurai Travelling Tea Box – Tea #2

Couldn’t resist trying this one, as I don’t think I’ve had anything under the Sipology brand/Steeped tea umbrella before. I didn’t make it into a latte because I’m still at the office and we don’t have milk right now – but I slightly underleafed from the package directions in an attempt to compensate for that.

It’s very sweet tasting but quite good – impressively accurate to the flavour of real caramel which is very hard to convey in a tea blend, I suppose probably in part because of the sugars in the blend but I don’t really mind that. It’s a little creamy, and coats the mouth pleasantly. Can’t really taste the rooibos at all…

I imagine it would make for an EXCELLENT latte!

No numeric rating because I didn’t make it as intended on the packaging, but might revisit it if I have time among the other samples I set aside. Just have to buy some milk first…

I was excited to see some rooibos in the tea box! Unfortunately, I don’t love this one. The flavor is strong, but kind of harsh and strange. I get the rooibos, but whatever they’re using to make it taste toasty just comes off badly. Maybe it’s the fenugreek I’m not enjoying? Frankly, that’s a really weird choice of ingredient for this blend. With sugar and milk, this makes a tolerable cup of tea, but it’s all just to cover the weirdness.

‘Samurai’ Traveling Teabox – Tea #12
Another interesting one to see in the teabox.  I wasn’t paying attention to the instructions though and made this as a normal tea instead of the latte.  This is the finest ground rooibos I’ve ever seen.  It almost looks like rooibos matcha but they say to put it in a teabag.  The ingredients say rooibos, vanilla bean and fenugreek for some reason.  The resulting brew is surprisingly light.  The flavor is vanilla enough but there is also the tiniest hint of an off flavor, like onion or something? I looked up fenugreek and it says it should have a maple flavor? 
Steep #1  // 1 teaspoon for full mug // 10 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Steep #2  // just boiled // 3 min

Another day: The second steep session, I tried to steep how they say on the bag:  A teaspoon in a teabag in half a mug of water for five minutes (or less), then add milk to it.  I don’t usually adding milk to my teas, but I wanted to try the LATTE brew.  I can’t say I liked it better this way.  It was fine. The milk really brought out that onion flavor though.  If you can ignore that, it DOES really taste like caramel.  But it mostly just seemed like milk.  I’d rather just drink this brewed normally, without any milk.
Edited to add the next day: on the second steep, I brewed for about 30 minutes at boiling (despite the warning of bitterness on the package) and it was very good. No onions this time, which is odd that it disappeared if I brewed it longer. It’s only about the strength that I expected this tiny of rooibos to be. But the cup was tasty anyway. More maple.