Snow Day

It smells a little weird, but tastes delicious – how can you go wrong with chocolate and mint?

I’ve had this one in my cabinet for quite some time now and only remember drinking it this week. I must have had a cup before though, the package was opened and I can’t imagine anyone else going to the effort of making tea in this house!

We have a lovely spring day here in January and an alleged snow storm on the radar for tomorrow night. This may be another year where my skis go unused. It’s just too warm! I’m ignoring the house cleaning I should be doing and just made a cup of tea to further ignore the cleaning.

This packet is adorable with the little snowflake sprinkles in it. I can easily smell the mint in the packet. 5 minutes of Steeping makes me very impatient today. After steeping, I definitely get a whiff of chocolate off of my mug but not as strong a taste. The mint pushes the chocolate aside on my tongue and makes it’s presence known. I find the mint to be very strong; almost sinus clearing strong. It’s also very sweet.

This is not an every day tea for me but I would definitely drink it occasionally especially in winter. Maybe by having a cup or 2 this week, we’ll actually get some snow storms!

A nice chocolate mint as an after dinner dessert tea.

Hot – Yes
Iced – ?

DTST

Discovery Advent Tea #15
How cute. Snow flakes. I don’t like how it makes the liquid cloudy but the taste is good. Kinda like drinking white chocolate bark. The aftertaste is minty and …not fresh but… minty.

Today I discovered that I have very few non-caffeinated teas in my stash. Even though this one is over three years old, I thought it would be nice on this cold, almost-winter evening. I steeped 2 teaspoons of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 200F for 4, 6, and 10 minutes.

The dry aroma, which reminds me of an After Eight mint, is the best part of this tea and is probably why I bought it in the first place. On opening the tin, I also get a whiff of alcohol, though this could be due to age. The mint is strong in the first steep, and is complemented by slightly oily dark chocolate. I noticed the texture issue when I first bought this tea, so it isn’t age related. The next couple steeps are quite similar and have a pronounced sweetness.

This isn’t a bad tea, but I won’t miss it when it’s gone.

I really quite enjoyed this one… of course chocolate and mint! It’s a different chocolate taste vs. hot chocolate… it must be the cocoa beans or the husks that’s giving it a deeper, stronger, cocoa flavor. I really enjoyed it, the mint is even nice to breath in. Definitely perfect for a cold winters day!

Hmm…. so from looking at it, it looks mostly like peppermint tea, with some cute snowflakes and some chocolate pieces.

After steeping for 5 minutes, this is really quite strong. I’m tasting peppermint, a slight bitter aftertaste, and not much chocolate. I took a look at the tea satchet, and realized not much of the chocolate had actually melted…so I used the side of the spoon to squeeeeeze all that chocolate goodness into the tea cup. My next sip tasted a lot sweeter, and much more chocolatey. A huge improvement.

Problem with this tea is that it’s a bit tricky…you don’t want to oversteep it because the peppermint will get bitter, but if you don’t steep it long enough, the chocolate won’t melt. If you’re using a tea satchet, I recommend squeezing the chocolate out separately after brewing. If you’re using loose leaf, you could try to pick out the chocolate pieces, melt them, and put it in the tea. Although that’s a lot of effort for one cup of “nothing special” tea.

Minty, not chocolatey to me, herbal in a kinda medicinal way.

I don’t get a lot of chocolate from it, but it does make for a very nice peppermint :)

Mediocre mint.

This Herbal tea is supposed to be mint and chocolate! It taste’s solely of mint. If you brew a strong enough cup, there are hints of white chocolate. But really this is a straight up mint tea, with no real other flavors.

Also, the white chocolate can make it a bit greasy, and give it a slightly odd mouth feel (particularly when iced).

I really like mint tea, so I find this tasty, just completely unremarkable.