Blume

TTB tea! This didn’t blend smoothly, so it’s still a bit gritty. The flavor tastes sort of off or spoiled. I taste fruitiness and strangeness. Due to the color, I’d guess this has butterfly pea flower, which definitely brings a savory weirdness. Yeah, I hoped to enjoy this, but it’s really not good. Whipped cream helped a little.

Another Strange VariaTea TTB powdered herbal, but this one isn’t purely herbs – coconut milk powder and coconut sugar are the first two ingredients. But then also the instructions want me to add more non-dairy milk on top of that? Like, what is happening here?

I did prep it per instructions, using oat milk, but I don’t love this. The texture is a bit chalky, for starters, and I’m also just not in love with the flavor. I’ve enjoyed other floral lattes before, but for some reason this one just isn’t working for me. Part of me wants to play around with it to figure out why I don’t like it, but I’m choking it down as it is and it would be better loved by someone else.

Oat Milk Latte!

Blume’s “newest” flavour is Gingerbread which, umm, yum! Especially looking forward to trying this one as an eggnog latte once the grocery stores straight bringing in eggnog for the year. I put newest in quotations because they actually did have it last year too, but it was exclusive to Chapters/Indigo. Now it’s on a ton of different channels.

It reminds me a lot of their Oat Milk Chai powder, but honestly I liked this better. It’s got some spice overlap like the cinnamon and clove but this is more allspice forward and very, very molasses-y and densely sweet. Which, y’know, makes sense because there’s molasses powder in the blend as well as other more heavy/dense natural sweeteners like date and lucuma powder – both of which have this almost “brown/maple” fruity sweetness to them. It works super well together!

Iced Oat Milk Latte!

So, this is the newest limited edition addition to Blume’s Superfood Latte line up. Of course, the idea of a superfood/functional Birthday Cake blend was intriguing to me but it was the ingredients list that really caught my attention. It’s got a lot of ingredients that are arguably just weird for the profile they’re aiming for… the spices especially.

I will say, this whisks up to be just the most adorable pastel pink colour. I mean, it just looks cute and yummy! It smelled great too – kind of a baked good vibe though with undertones that made me think of, like, almond extract.

My snap impression which, upon reflection, I’m standing by is that this is delicious and vaguely baked good flavoured but definitely not the typical Birthday Cake flavour. It’s pleasantly sweet in a pretty natural way and has a hint of warmth from the inclusion of ingredients like cinnamon and cardamom powder. I would say the tasting notes that come to mind for me are vanilla, almond, and cherry – and especially with the colour of the drink this is more the type of cake that it made me think of:

https://www.bettycrocker.com/products/betty-crocker-baking-and-cake-mixes/cherry-chip

Like I said, though, still very delicious. My favourite Blume powder is still 100% the salted caramel one, but this might now be a close second. If I were to bet on it, I bet this will end up getting added to Blume’s permanent assortment. It’s very well balanced.

#SVTTB Round Two – Tea 14/???

Iced Latte!

One of my coworkers and I are obsessed with mystery flavoured things so a few days ago, when she saw it at a hockey game, she bought a couple bottles of Milk 2 Go’s new “Mystery Milk” for us to taste test. I’m personally convinced that it’s blueberry flavoured.

I mention it because after our initial taste test I took the rest of the milk in the bottle and used it to make myself an iced latte with this Blume powder. Basically, it was a blueberry lavender latte and it was delicious. I really enjoy the almost “pure play” lavender notes of this powder blend. They’re fresh and intense but not, like, intense in a soapy way. My only main criticism is the same one I have with many Blume powders and that’s with the texture. The grind isn’t super fine and that results in a little bit of a mealy kind of thing. The milk helped mask that a lot, though!

Also, it’s just the most GORGEOUS rich blue colour and who doesn’t love a blue latte? Especially a blueberry lavender blue latte.

Iced oat milk latte!

Added just a touch of agave to this and it really tied it all together. It’s definitely a rich, smooth cocoa flavour with a cooling, sweet mint undertone. Very fresh but also decadent and nostalgic. I think I’d rate it higher, but the finish does have quite a raw green/vegetal peppermint leaf note that’s hard to ignore. It reminds you in a not totally good but not totally bad way that you’re drinking a ‘healthful’ latte made with real microground ingredients. Not gross, but noticeable.

It’s a pro, however, that as a latte there are zero noticeable texture issues with this powder!

Geek Steep S2E27 – Riverdale

This is what I picked to drink during the episode recording – at the time I had just gotten an order in from Blume so the teas were definitely top of mind for me. A note, that this was before Blume had reformulated this powder. Ultimately I picked this because it was so quick and easy to whisk up as an iced latte, and it felt like with this fandom quick and easy was the most appropriate choice.

Enjoyed this as an oat milk latte. Definitely smooth, creamy and nutty – but the predominant flavour I was picking up was actually cinnamon. Ever so slightly made think of horchata. I did enjoy it a lot, though!

Side note – I still can’t find eggnog at the grocery store and it’s making me very sad.

The latest addition to Blume’s powder line.

I cannot express how much I hate the phrase “Nut Nog” though, I suppose, if you were hearing the phrase “Egg Nog” for the very first time you’d probably have a similar reaction. Basically, it’s a cashew powder based vegan version of an eggnog with some adaptogenic ingredients like ashwagandha to boost the flavour. Honestly, it smelled pretty dang good when I cracked the package open – though heavier on the cinnamon than expected.

I decided to try this one out as an iced latte today and to be honest at first I found it a little underwhelming, but over the course of my tumbler it slowly grew on me. It’s less overtly nutty than I’d expected it to be, but the cashew powder base does add a thickness to the mouthfeel and sort of creaminess that is sort of “eggnog adjacent”. It lacks the really rich custard notes eggnog has, but of course a vegan equivalent can only come so close in the first place. It’s never the same as the real thing. The cinnamon is the most dominant note and it’s not that it’s necessarily strong or the wrong type of cinnamon or anything like that – but because it’s so forward compared to the rest of the powder it does a little bit make this feel more like drinking Cinnamon Toast Crunch milk (delicious in its own right!) than eggnog. At times it also made me think of horchata, as well…

I think more vanilla would help set this apart, but regardless it was nice. One of the better Blume powders, in my opinion and I think it’s pretty accurate to the name/intention.

Iced!

Didn’t know what to expect from this powder other than the very beautiful purple colour that’s been so apparent in all of the marketing for this blend. It was, definitely, a very beautiful shade of purple – the result of a perfect balance of butterfly pea flower, hibiscus powder, and different kinds of berries including black currant and maqui.

What I didn’t expect what that, with how much berry actually is included, that the flavour would be so muted. I almost want to call it flat, though it wasn’t exactly flat/stale so much as it was just veeeerrrrrryyyy soft and generic tasting. Like, definitely a berry flavour. However there’s no way in the world I would have called it either currant or maqui or anything else that was included. I think next time I make this I definitely have to up the amount of powder because in my mind I just can’t believe that a drink with this much black currant powder could be so mild tasting….

This blend is definitely cementing itself as my favourite Blume product.

I ended up making this on Monday as an iced latte, using some oat milk. At first I found it a bit weak with the amount of powder I’d used, so I did end up doubling my initial 2tsp amount and whisking that into my already made latte. It wasn’t as easy to whisk it when it already had milk and ice, so it was a touch clumpier than ideal but fuck did it taste good. Such a nice caramel flavour with the thickness of the oatmilk really complimenting it and the perfect pop of salnity. I finsihed this so fast and I spent most of the morning mentally debating making another…

So this is definitely becoming my favourite Blume powder!

I made it up into a coconut milk latte to drink while cooking supper and I definitely finished it off so fast. Very rich with a superb caramel flavour that almost has a slight savory quality. Not just from the salinity of the pink salt, but more like if you added miso to it. That might sound weird, but miso caramel is absolutely PHENOMENAL. The juxtaposition of the umami with the rich sweetness makes the flavour pop so much. There’s no miso in this powder, but something in it is definitely giving me that same flavour experience and I’m not mad about it.

Iced Latte!

My experience with the Blume powders has been very hit or miss, but when I saw this one I knew I would have to try it. It’s probably the closest thing that Blume has done to a straight decadent profile, though it does still have some functional/wellness ingredients like the maca and schisandra. Not gonna lie, the schisandra weirded me out a little bit because it often has such as sour taste and I didn’t think that would work with salted caramel – but I wanted to try it anyway.

When I opened up the bag of this I practically started drooling right away. It smells super rich and intense with a very gooey golden caramel note – and, like, true caramel. Not just generic sweet. There’s almost a savory kind of undertone to the aroma, and a little bit of an oat-y quality that gives off some slight baked good vibes. All in all, it smells divine though…

I will eventually taste this straight but every part of me today just wanted an iced latte to cool down and indulge with. There’s definitely a distinct salinity to the cup so I definitely wouldn’t recommend this for someone who doesn’t really want salt when they see a salted caramel profile – you’re not gonna miss it when you sip. However, it’s balanced by a nice golden and rich true caramel flavour with a lovely depth and density to it. I get a little bit of thick starchy quality of the oat milk powder which helps with richness/texture and giving the caramel the body it definitely needs and deserves, and the date and carob really support the sweetness without coming off cloying.

All in all, I am deeply impressed by this one! To me, a sign of a really good tea is immediately wanting another cup right after finishing and that’s a feeling I’ve been fighting all day. My favourite Blume flavour yet!

Iced Oat Milk Latte!

This powdered Chai blend really shines with this type of preparation – but that, of course, makes sense given you’re taking a blend with oat milk in it already and just doubling down on that. It’s a nice balance of creaminess (taste and body) and spice though with a natural sweetness from the very prominent cinnamon in the blend. Secondary spices, like clove, follow. I feel like sometimes people are scared to add clove to Chai blends in a noticeable way (like with anise), but I think it just adds so much more depth to the profile here.

Iced Latte!

So I made this iced latte using oat milk and then I only realized afterwards that adding oat milk to an oat milk based blend makes it really challenging to figure out exactly how distinct the taste of the oat is in the powder itself versus the milk. Like, it tasted a lot like oat milk which I think is ultimately a good thing but I just don’t know how much of that came from me.

As for the spice part of this Chai powder…

I definitely got a lot of cinnamon, ginger, and clove which is of course a really classic combination. However, I also got a lot of nutmeg and that’s certainly less common and honestly much more interesting to me. It gives this a more cozy or Autumnal feel but I know that’s just conditioning from various seasonal flavour marketing across food/bev companies. I also really liked the molasses-y undertone. Quite yummy and adds a nice depth of flavour to this profile.

Steeped as an oat milk latte and, let me just say, Blume is not playing around when they called this a Chili Turmeric Blend! It is very spicy, y’all! At first it really just tasted like a pretty standard Golden Milk style turmeric latte, and I thought it was alright – not too earthy/bitter so even though I don’t much like turmeric I found it nice. Then that heat hit and it was a lot. I’m a spice baby, so it was very rough for me – but if you are not a spice baby then I think this would probably actually be really good.

(And, not gonna lie, a little masochistic part of me did want to finish the whole latte.)

Alright, a few pros with this blend and a few more cons – but before that I just need to describe the jarring way this “latte mix” looks when you open a bag! It is very, very clumpy and there are visible white chunks strewn throughout. This is the coconut milk powder, but at a glance it looks like little bits of butter or lard, and it reminded me of making pastry dough. Well, if the flour was green. It’s very weird looking, though!

So, the big pro that I’ll give this blend is that is has moringa in it but not only can you not taste it at all (it is HARD to mask the taste of moringa – it is strong and unpleasant) but you also can’t tell texturally. I was very impressed by that. However, it goes a bit awry after that. The coconut in this is creamy and fatty, but too fatty! I made this as an oatmilk latte, but in all honestly it felt like I was drinking a mug of melted butter. A little buttery taste or a creamy mouthfeel can all be nice things, but a straight mug of fatty and greasy feeling matcha latte?? It’s unpleasantly rich and buttery.

So just… a weird drink, and a weird experience.