Chocolate Puerh

For some 15 (or more) years of my life, my wonderful neighbor went to Germany to visit her children for the spring months. While she was gone, we watched her home, brought in the mail and other things for her. She would always return with a box of Lebkuchen as a note of gratitude. What is Lebkuchen you ask? A wonderful German gingerbread cookie, rich and moist in texture with notes of cinnamon, nutmeg and orange.

This tea mirrors those cookies. Brewed hot with no additives. It is rich, full-bodied, earthy and sweet. It blends the same ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, citrus flavors of the cookie, though they may not be present in the tea, it is wonderful. The spices blend in perfect harmony with a note of chocolate to deliver a naturally sweet and truly delicious treat.

Well this is my 2nd attempt at Pu Erh. My 1st was adagio’s pu erh dante which was absolutely vile. But ya know… something just dawned on me. It’s almost exactly a year since that experience. I made my 1st online tea purchase, which was w/ Adagio, on Dec. 28th of 2008 and that (along w/ white cucumber which is now one of my faves) was one of them. Although I have to be careful to not analyze this analogy too much cuz then I start thinking about howe my life has changed since then and I get depressed.

Anyway, this is the 1st Numi tea I’ve had so I can’t tell you too much about them beyond what my observations for this particular bag will be. Yes, bag. Now I’m not a fan of bagged tea so bagged pu erh worries me even more. I’m also surpised the front of the bag uses “velvety and vanilla” to describe a chocolate pu erh.

Ingredients: organic Pu Erh, organic cocoa powder, organic vanilla, organic Theo chocolate cocoa nibs, organic rooibos, organic orange peel, organic nutmeg, and cinnamon.

Wow… the ingredients surprise me. This isn’t just a chocolate pu erh, this is more of a chocoalte chai/spice pu erh. Not what I was expecting, but it sounds good! I also love that all of the ingredients except for the cinnamon are organic. I’ve never heard of Theo chocolate before though. As if I couldn’t be more worried, they throw rooibos in here! I’m desperate to learn to love rooibos because it’s so healthy, but I just can’t seem to.

I open the bag and smell it. While I can smell the complexity and depth of the chocolate and pu erh, the only ingredient I can specifiically smell is the nutmeg. Not a bad thing, just interesting.

The odd thing about the steeping directions is they don’t tell you how much water to use. They don’t even use the vague term of a “cup”. So I weigh it. I would have anyway because I’m learning a lot of bagged teas are incredibly light. Wow! 2.5g! I’m impressed! It’s between the weight I prefer for a 6oz cup (2.25oz) and an 8oz cup (3g) so I decide to steep it as an 8oz cup for the higher suggested time of 5 min. (It suggests 3-5). I also steeped it just under boiling (205-210) instead of at boiling because I don’t want to kill the health benefits. I don’t think it’ll make that much of a difference.

The liquor is one of the darkest I’ve seen. Easily mistakable for black coffee. And that’s what it smells like. It smells like a chocolate chai steeped in black coffee. Sweet, spicy, rich, creamy, decedant, and very complex. After a quick stir, I take a sip. I have never been so glad for a tea to taste exactly the way it smells! I LOVE THIS! And pu erh is supposed to help you metabolize fat? this seems like it should add it!

For you to fully grasp what’s going on in my head, you need to understand that not only was I terrified of pu erhs, but aside from chais I don’t care for black teas in general. Normally I say who I think would like a certain tea, but this time I think I’m going to say who I think won’t like this because the list is much shorter. I think the only person that would not like this would be a person who doesn’t like coffee or chocolate.

Serving Suggestion: While this is wonderful on it’s own, this tea would make a wonderful latte steeped in a ratio of 2 parts milk to 1 part water or steeped completely in milk as an adult version of hot chocolate. 1TB of white chocolate creamer instead of milk would also be divine.

Insteresting letter from Jillian in my letterbox today!

I’ve been trying to figure out what to try first and decided I was more interested in this. When I sent Jillian my ‘wishlist’ of things I’d like to try from her cupboard, this one mostly caught me by being pu-ehr, and I haven’t had any of that in ages, and a flavoured one at that, which I’ve never had. Little difficult for me to imagine flavoured pu-ehr, for some reason. But then, I initially felt the same way about green, white and oolong too and I can’t come up with a logical reason on why it shouldn’t be possible. Anyway, I didn’t pay attention to what else was in it at the time, so it’s not until now that I notice it has rooibos in it. That’s a bit worrisome, since I don’t really care much for that… Oh well, if you don’t try, you can’t win, so here we go!

It’s bagged and the bag smells like christmas biscuits! Do I have to drink it? Can’t I just sit here and sniff the bag? It seems almost a shame to get it wet. On the other hand, if I did just sit around, sniffing the bag, sooner or later I’d forget to pay attention and try to take a bite. Reflex, see.

Luckily, after steeping, it still smells like that. Chocolate and cinnamon are the dominant smells, and underneath it the earthiness of pu-ehr. It seems very dark in colour for a pu-ehr. I can’t really spot that reddish brown colour that it usually gets, but then that might be because the cup I’m using isn’t the best for looking at the colour.

The little satchel the bag was in says that the chocolate might sink to the bottom of the cup, so I’m giving it a little stir before tasting.

It tastes like sweets! Chocolatey and cinnamony like the blend I made yesterday (fate perhaps? Preparation for trying this?), but sweeter. I can pick up pretty much everything they say is in it, except possibly the nutmeg, but then I’m not really entirely certain which flavour I’m supposed to be looking for with that one. It’s not a spice I ever use for anything at all in my kitchen. And to my great relief, although I can defintiely find the rooibos, it’s only there to sort of add a little boost to the other flavours. If I hadn’t known it was there, I wouldn’t have noticed, but knowing that it is, I can tell what it does.

Great choice, me!

This was the tea I was craving yesterday after Harney & Sons’ Peaches & Ginger black tea. To be fair, I was wanting it the day before too.

This tea, I crave at times. It tastes like dark rich chocolate and earth and I like it so! If I didn’t have only 4 bags left, I think I’d drink it more often. But I tend to do that hoarding thing when I get low on teas I like. I’ve told myself that I can buy it loose leaf once I’m out though. So I don’t know why I’m hoarding and I’m sure the loose leaf is even better. If I didn’t have so much tea, I’d prolly start trying other flavored (gateway) puerhs. I did not expect to like this one at all, let alone so much.

This one is getting bumped up to a 74 (great bagged tea range 70-80).

I’ve found that due to The Great Unlogged Period I have a bunch of teas that I’ve either finished or drank more of and haven’t changed the ratings accordingly to align with how I ended up truly feeling about the day. So I’ve been changing them as I drink them again. I keep meaning to just go through my cupboard and do them all at once but never seem to have the time and sit down and do it.

This isn’t a tea for someone who wants a sweet, milk chocolate flavoured drink. This tea is pure, earthy essence of raw cocoa.

And I love that way. ;)

I have solved the problem of my tea getting cold whilst I’m talking on the phone/away from my desk: a candle warmer. I feel so smart right now.

Restocked the office stash…and I love this stuff. Even gave it to a non-tea drinker, and she went and bought a box of it! Absolutely fell in love with it. It’s a great beginner’s puerh…unless you don’t like chocolate.

It looks like I’m on a flavored pu’erh kick… I threw this in my backpack earlier today and it happened to come in handy before my class tonight. I went to Starbucks and just got a cup of hot water to steep this in. I should remember this strategy since a cup of hot water is free and I have a lot of teabags =)

As you can probably tell from the rating this is not really a favorite of mine. I think it tastes more like cinnamon than chocolate and for a pu’erh it seems kind of watery. If I have any more left of this I might just toss it in the compost. I don’t mind Numi’s cardamom pu’erh, however.

This was a surprise form OMGSrsly!
And yay! Numi Teas! Yes, they’re bagged, but they seem to pack a lot of flavour in each bag. This one delivers exactly what was promised – dark chocolatey notes mixed with earthen wonder. I like it!

Also, I missed removing an earlier sipdown so I’m actually at 159 now! WOO. I won’t hit 150 by February though. I could push it, but I won’t.

I am not sure about this one. It smells like chocolate and…dirt. I know, I know, I’ve read the tasting notes, too. People say pu-erh has a lovely earthy aroma. Well, now that I’ve smelled it for myself, I’m thinking it’s really just a polite way of saying dirt, and I don’t find it lovely. So I guess if I’m going to delve at all into the world of pu-erh, that might be a problem. =)

The brew tastes like chocolate with a bit of cinnamon, maybe. It’s not bad, but I can’t get the smell of dirt out of my nose! Honestly, it is so much like hot chocolate, that I think if I wanted hot chocolate, I would just make hot chocolate, calories be damned.

I reckon I’ll leave the rating off, for now. I’m sure it’s lovely for what it is, and those who like what it is will probably love this. It’s just not my taste. That said, I plan to experiment with a few more bags to see if I can make a concoction that’s more palatable; if not, there’s always the swap bin!

Tea amount: 1 bag
Water amount: 6oz/~175mL
Additives: 1ish tsp Demerara sugar

SIL! I’m pretty positive that I sent this tea to YOU a year ago! :p
Silly!
oh well, this is Sipdown # 57, bringing me to 359 teas.
I think this tea was my first actual experience with Puerh, although it hardly counts, as it’s blended with lots of other stuff: cocoa powder, vanilla, rooibos, cinnamon, orange peel, nutmeg. Now that I’ve been actually drinking puerh for awhile, the Shu that is in this is something I can actually pick out, but not a lot of it. Regardless, this is not a bad cup of tea.