Butterbeer

It’s been a long time since I’ve read the Harry Potter books or seen the movies, so I don’t remember what butterbeer is supposed to taste like. In my head, it is meant to be a buttery butterscotch drink – warm and thick and creamy. Probably not accurate at all, but that’s what I expected. I was surprised then to see sarsaparilla in the ingredient list, and indeed it does smell like root beer.

This pouch is a couple of years old (I’m guessing here). I just opened it today, so the aroma is quite strong. I’m sending the rest along to Devon Bartholomew, but I thought I should at least give it a try before passing it on. Since sarsaparilla and licorice aren’t favorites of mine, I can say it won’t be missed here. I’m hopeful Devon will enjoy it. Everyone else seems to love this one.

Another ‘butterbeer’ tea which is actually rootbeer flavoured. Sigh. Aside from my hang-ups on the name and the fact that butterbeer would never have rootbeer in it, the tea itself isn’t bad. The chicory adds a nice roasty body to the medicinal rootbeer flavour, which melds better than I expected with the rest of the ingredients. The rootbeer isn’t overpowering, and the black tea base actually shines through with the help of the chicory root. I know there’s supposed to be butter flavouring in this too but I can’t pick it out. Maybe it’s because of the age of the tea though, so I’ll reserve judgement on that. I’m sure Frank had a rootbeer or rootbeer float tea too, so I’m not totally sure why they needed both when I imagine they’d be pretty similar. (Wait, was the rootbeer float one a rooibos base? In which case I am happy to have the black tea version!) I’m never going to be the best judge of a rootbeer flavoured tea, but as far as execution goes this is done well. As a concept, though, I will never understand the association between ‘butterbeer’ and rootbeer. I’m pretty over Harry Potter at this point though, so I’m not sure why I still care, haha.

Thanks MissB for sending me yet another fandom blend I wanted to try!

Still making up my mind about this one.

This reminds me a lot of the white Christmas blend from last year’s 12 days of tea. The wintermint and sarsasparilla flavours are nice, they seem creamy and smooth. I don’t like the base, I find it drying and it doesn’t go with the wintermint/rootbeer flavour. I think this would be amazing sweetened to balance out the base, but it is quite accurate in its name. I have always enjoyed the butterbeer in Universal Studio’s Harry Potter theme parks, and this is quite similar. It tastes a bit like rootbeer and cream soda mixed with cream.

I always imagined butterbeer as tasting something like butterscotch or caramel with lots of cream. This is nothing like that. The epic sarsparilla notes make this hands down a root beer tea, but it’s such a good root beer tea, who could mind? Really happy to have this. I love root beer flavor, but I’ve never been a fan of the carbonation or the sugar rush. Root beer tea is the best of both worlds.

Root beer without the fizz. I have moments of feeling this to be an inspired tea, and it IS an inspired blend, but I am speaking here about personal preference. Must say that I do enjoy the sarsaparilla and the unusual sweetness, yum. And I like the base a lot. I like this blend and I appreciate the craft of it, but it is not one of my super favourites.

And it’s a sipdown (of this particular taster packet)!

Sipdown 73
(13 of 2019)

I thought I wouldn’t order any more tea until after New Year, but I had to make an exception for this. I had only gotten a taster but I loved it, so I went back and got a few more from what was left. It was that and the fact that we’ve put a big dent in our Chocolate Marshmallow Chai already. My husband has been drinking it almost every day.

The flavor of this is pretty much exactly what I hoped it would be. Root beer with smooth, sweet butterscotch. I love butterscotch. Those bright yellow ones Grandma always has in a dish? That’s exactly what this tastes like, except blended with sarsaparilla. I am really savoring that butter flavor.

I should probably mention that I made this over ice. It was great that way, but I’m also really looking forward to trying it hot.

This week’s tea of the week (Retro Monday Reblend!)

I had a couple of cups of this earlier today but I was without internet connection for a few hours today – fortunately things are up and running now and I’m able to print out my mailing labels so that I can send subscription boxes out today! Yay!

This is really good – I think I liked today’s cup even better than I enjoyed the tea when I conducted the taste test: http://52teas.com/blog/tea-of-the-week-for-october-31-2016-retro-monday-butter-beer-black-tea/

Today’s cup was smooth and butterscotch-y with a nice background of root beer. I recently discovered a butterscotch beer soft drink from ‘flying cauldron’ – which seems to be an obvious take on the Harry Potter beverage that inspired this tea as well – and this afternoon’s cuppa reminded me a lot of the soda that I tasted about two month’s ago. Really yummy.

Warning: I have no clue how old the sample of this I had was. That being said, the bit that I tried was pretty good. I had the first cup hot where it had a mild root beer flavour. The rest I cold brewed in my fridge for about 48 hours or so. It became quite dark so I feared for bitterness. Luckily I received none and was treated to a nice Sarsaparilla taste. Sadly though I didn’t have any buttery /butterscotch like flavour to make it special. It was just a nice sarsaparilla.

Sipdown, with half and half. Thanks again, Lala, for giving me the opportunity to try this! Perhaps, with the new management, I’ll reorder from them again someday after all.