I suppose I must have eaten coffee cake at some time, though I can’t remember doing so, but the dry tea really does smell as I imagine a coffee cake would – a combination of instant coffee granules and digestive biscuits. There is also a slight piquancy there, perhaps some citrus but I can’t pin it down any closer than that. There are actually some small beans in it. They look very lightly roasted.
I used a well-heaped teaspoon and brewed for two and a half minutes, boiling water.
It made a slightly yellowish, brown brew, clear but almost opaque in its intensity.
It did smell like an instant coffee. My references to ‘instant’ are not meant to be complimentary; I’m a ‘buy-good-quality-beans-and-grind-them-myself-man’ (yes, I’m a coffee nut too, but I tend not to mention that around here). Again there’s that slight piquancy to the aroma – it lifts it a little from being just an instant coffee smell.
It really does taste like a mix between coffee and tea. That’s okay as far as it goes – though I’d say they were not particularly special tea and coffee, but there is also that same astringency I mentioned for the Walnut Layer Cake Sencha. It’s something more bitter than the citrus piquancy I got in the nose from the dry and the brew, but it’s not as strong as with the Walnut Layer Cake and is not strong enough to spoil the brew. Having said that, the overall brew is nothing special.
As I said for the Walnut Layer Cake, the smell I get when sipping is more enjoyable than what I get in the mouth. The brew is okay but uninteresting.
