Christina / BooksandTea Send Message

GCTTB5 backlog:

This one is a very very twiggy oolong with some fruit flavouring added. I’m having a hard time isolating the flavours on this one, but I’m getting a similar sort of blackberry/blackcurrant note as I found in the Blackberry Sage Keemun above. I can also taste the base tea underneath, which I think is a lightly roasted Tie Guan Yin. As the tea cools, the fruit flavour fades and the base comes out more.

GCTTB5 backlog:

This one is definitely a more successful blend of flavours than Fauchon’s Peche et Thyme, as I could taste the fruit plus a savoury undertone, but the former was stronger than the latter. There was a really jammy, rich quality to the fruit flavouring that reminded me more of blackcurrant rather than blackberry. I saw a chunk of dried fruit in the dry leaf, but unfortunately I didn’t get a closer look at it.

One of the neat things about this blend is that it has fresh ginger and honey mixed in with the black tea, resulting in a kind of thick, crumbly mix. I think the honey is here both to add sweetness and to prevent the tea and spices from spoiling when in contact with the moistness of the fresh ginger.

And oh my god, there are a LOT of spices in this mix. In addition to the black tea and honey, there’s ginger, orange peel, cardamom, fennel, nutmeg, bay leaf, and a whole lot more. You can see how much spice is in this mix when you actually measure it out for brewing. It looks a bit like vegetable slaw, I think.

Chaiwalah’s chai smelled bracingly strong, spicy and pungent: so strong, in fact, that I had trouble picking out individual flavours. However, I’m pretty sure that I was able to sense cloves, fennel, bay leaf, nutmeg, and cinnamon. I will say it again: yowza, this tea smelled strong.

The instructions on the Chaiwala package said to mix 8 ounces of milk (preferably soy milk) with 8 grams of chai and then heat the milk on the stove on medium until it just reaches a boil. For all that effort, I decided to measure out about 16 grams of leaf for 16 ounces of milk and then make myself an extra big cup. I don’t buy soy milk, so I used plain old 1% cow’s milk instead.

This tea was super strong. However, I couldn’t taste much in the way of black tea at all: the strongest flavours were of ginger, fennel, cloves, and bay leaf. (For some reason, the bay leaf was particularly prominent in my cup.) Part of me wonders if this is because I used cow milk instead of soy, or because I let the tea sit in the milk for several minutes before putting it on the boil. There’s plenty of room to experiment, however: I’ve used only about 1/4 of the package from Chaiwala, and because of the way it’s mixed (tea, honey, and fresh spices), I need to use it up quickly before it goes bad.

Full review at http://booksandtea.ca/2016/02/valentines-day-with-chaiwala-chai/

GCTTB5

While the dry leaf smells peachy, the thyme definitely comes out more to play in the brewed tea.

However, as it got colder in my cup (I let it sit for too long), the thyme flavour became all wonky. It paired up with the peach flavour in a weird way to taste musty and artificial. I’ve never had Fauchon teas, but I’ve heard very good things about them, so I’m just going to assume that I’m some sort of uncultured boor who can’t grok the delicacy of refined French things.

GCTTB5

I tried some this morning before heading to work. Since it’s a tea similar to Darjeeling, I used lower temperature water (85C) to baby it. I didn’t get much flavour beyond black tea, though. It had that sweet/sour haylike quality I’ve seen in some Nepalese teas.

I really like this! There’s a good mix of mint with licorice and fruit flavours, and it really helps that the whole thing is non caffeinated.

I can also really smell the mango flavouring they added, and it really rounds out the flavour, gives it some vivacity and green-ness.

Oh. My. God.

I opened up the package that Sil sent me (which came with the GCTTB5) this morning, and it smelled LIKE BOOZE. CHOCOLATE AND BOOZE AT A QUARTER TO 7 IN THE MORNING.

Since I don’t drink a lot of alcohol I couldn’t name exactly what kind of booze I was smelling. Rum? Brandy? Nevertheless, it smelled amazing. Like chocolate covered cherries.

The flavour was more subtle, but very enjoyable. I super wish I had this tea on Valentine’s Day, it would have been so perfect.

You know, I keep on saying “ok, I have enough tea, I shouldn’t buy anymore” and then I pass by a David’s Tea and I get sucked in.

This is what happened yesterday. My husband and I, along with one of our closest friends, were downtown and we passed by the David’s Tea in Yonge/Dundas Square. I had been thinking for a while about getting their “In Case of Stomachache” set of teas. Then hubby pointed out that 1) they had Xmas teas on sale, and 2) there was a store special today where if you bought $35 worth of merchandise, you’d get another 50g of tea for free.

I am very weak willed. I went for it.

So I bought the “stomachache” package of teas (Le Digestif, Fabulous Fennel, and Mango Turmeric), a set of 3 Xmas teas (Cardamom French Toast, Banana Nut Bread and Santa’s Secret), some hot tea to go, and a package of cookies to reach the limit.

And then I got 50g of Super Ginger for free.

A few reasons for this:
- I’ve had a lot of stomach trouble on and off for the past 2 years. This was partly why I bought the 3-tea set. Since ginger is supposed to help upset stomachs, it seemed like a good addition.
- I’ve wanted to try this for a while

Anyways, I had some last night once I got home. I was expecting the stevia to be more in-your-face, but it was mild. And franky, it wasn’t as ridiculously gingery as I was expecting.

It was decent. The true test remains, though – I need to see how it will combat a stomachache.

The last few days at work have been busy. My own fault, really – I procrastinated on a project and so the final stages trying to get this thing ready got all jammed up.

Wednesday and onwards have felt like I’m a spring under compression. Now that it’s Friday evening (and a long weekend to boot!), I can feel things relaxing and loosening.

Part of that is because of this tea. I didn’t do the whole “boil it in boiling water for 10 minutes or so” that the instructions say. I just steeped it in freshly boiled water instead and let it sit.

The result was a less pungent version of this tea. But it’s cold out, and it’s been a busy week, and I just want to give my brain room to expand, so less pungent is fine with me.

The taste is somewhat mild, but the smell of this is SUPER jammy. I bet this would taste amazing with some agave nectar added.