Decaf Hot Cinnamon Spice

This is so extraordinary from the moment I opened the container. I actually got this for my husband, who loves the Spiced Ethiopian tea we normally drink. It’s such a pain to clear the basket of the leftover leaves, so I bought this in sachets. It arrived today and I decided it was a good night to try it. Wow! Am I ever glad I did. It’s fabulous.

205/6min – It smells of cinnamon and oranges and the taste is the same. The real magic, however, occurs as this tea cools and an entirely new flavor profile emerges. It becomes sweeter and sweeter as the temperature drops. My favorite point is when it’s just lukewarm and tastes like a sweet and spicy cinnamon delight. It’s really a great tea!

My Harney order was on my porch when I arrived home! Hurrah! Boy that was fast – I just ordered on Tuesday! This was one of the samples I ordered.

It’s not half bad, but maybe because this is the kind of tea you don’t add milk and sugar to, the flat decaf tea part is much more prevalent than in Vanilla Comoro. There is a heavy dry cardboardy taste to it. It’s definitely not crazy delicious like regular Hot Cinnamon Spice (which I got a tin of in this order!)! In short, I am so very glad that this is just a sample with perhaps another pot’s worth of leaves. I will stick to having fully leaded Hot Cinnamon Spice in the afternoons when I need a sweet, spicy treat.

Had a cup of this after getting home from work tonight. Had a good second full time day but I am tired!!!! It is a hard adjustment going back full time after working for the past year and a half a very reduced part time. But I love my job and am thankful for it! Just have to get used to getting my butt moving earlier in the morning and working a full day.

I wish that I could give QuiltGuppy a HUGE hug for sending me this tea! Her generosity has put to rest a long running tea mystery involving an unmarked grey clay urn, the most incredible cinnamon tea I’ve ever tasted, and my crazy friend Rachel.

First, you shall have a story. I once had a friend named Rachel who was a sane(ish) individual. Rachel was from NY and she would go back home for the holidays every year. We would exchange gifts after the holidays, and one year she gave me an unmarked grey clay urn with the most fantastic cinnamon loose leaf tea inside. I asked where she purchased the tea and she said, “An Asian place in NY”. What?! That’s not an answer! But, I let it go and I figured that I’d ask again another day.

I did ask again. Rachel became more and more vague until she eventually began to deny that she’d given me the tea at all. Now, that’s just crazy! I eventually gave up asking and I resigned myself to parceling the tea out as if it were gold. I kept the tea in a special “safe” place in the cupboard. Safe until one day it fell over, rolled out, and smashed on the kitchen floor. Destroyed! My favorite tea ever was gone and crazy Rachel wouldn’t tell me where she’d bought it. I was so upset!

Decaf Hot Cinnamon Spice is my beloved anonymous cinnamon tea reincarnated. Its wonderful sweet spicy flavor fills my heart with joy. This tea has a name and I can buy more! I can’t thank you enough QuiltGuppy :)

This was lovely!! bravo Harney, bravo!
Thank you to QuiltGuppy for sending me a sample (ages ago, but I’ve been neglectful of my sample pile)
I was worried that the cinnamon would be too much but it isn’t at all. Just right in fact! The orange and spice mix easily together, creating such a seamless transition that I can’t find where the citrus part begins.
If I didn’t already have cinnamon heart, I’d be pining for this one to be sure! but practicality has me by the neck little sigh (If I use the star, it will bold half my msg because I used that feature above!)
The second steep brought out the plastic again, so I won’t comment on that. Argh!
Now I wish I’d saved it to try with milk. Mmmm…

I love love love cinnamon and spiced teas… so after reading some reviews on the Harney & Sons Hot Cinnamon, I went for it in the decaf version to try and avoid a little caffeine in my day.

The smell in the tin is amazing! Sweet and cinnamon.. Yum! My first attempt at drinking this blend left a little disappointment. I was expecting something near red hots in a cup.. as some had expressed in their reviews. I get more black tea in smell and flavor after it’s brewed. I usually like black teas, but the flavor of this one carried through all the cinnamon and I was hoping the tea to be an undertone. It’s a good cup… just not amazing. The black tea flavor did mellow a bit as it cooled, but still very present.

Maybe I need to mix up the contents of the tin a little to make sure all the goodies haven’t settled to the bottom. Then we’ll see if I’ll change my impression after I’ve tried that… Hoping so.. I was so excited about this tea.

I’m tempted to try the herbal version and the regular version sometime to see if they are more of what I was envisioning.

This stuff is fantastic! I’d have to agree that the decaf version is missing a bit of the sparkle of the original, which just has a little extra something, but it’s just as sweet and deliciously spicy, and not too fiery to be approachable. It has so much cinnamon that there’s constantly a fine dust on the tin (that also happens to taste AMAZING >.>) It’s naturally very sweet, too much sugar actually takes away from it. I’ve drunk the regular version unsweetened and it was delicious, but the decaf is good with just a tiny spoon of sugar.

Barely drinkable. The overpowering taste of artificial cinnamon makes this taste like red hot candies. Very unbalanced flavor profile.

Dealing with migraine today and craving cinnamon, which apparently is an anti-inflammatory that can help reduce the severity of migraine attacks. This is my second cinnamon tea of the day – I’ve also been drinking apple cinnamon water, yum – and this one is by far my favorite of the two. It had been a while since having teaktruthi’s cinnamon chai and I had forgotten how light in flavor it was. This one has more of the punch of cinnamon I was craving. Also, yay for decaf teas!

Winding down my last evening with Mom over a cup and a final match of Gin Rummy.

Mom thinks it tastes like cinnamon bears and I agree. It’s more than that, though. When the tea is hot, the spicy-sweet cinnamon oil flavor is at the forefront. As it cools, the sparkling-thick sweetness really shines. The flavors round out allowing clove to come out more and also the impression of an orange hard candy melted into a very diluted brown sugar simple syrup. I notice a little bit of sandpapery texture from the cloves.

For a similar profile, I think I like Bigelow’s Constant Comment more because of the pronounced black tea taste and lack of overt sweetness. Then again, that one is also caffeinated, so this doesn’t exactly compare. Decaf Hot Cinnamon Spice is one of those things that reminds me of Mom since the caffeinated version is her favorite tea, so it wins some feelies there :)