Grandma's Caramel Butterscotch Black Tea

Sip Down

It took me too long to sip this tea down. I had purchased it at a local shop roughly a year ago and tried it several times since grabbing 2oz. I disregarded it since I had noted that it was underwhelming. Jump to this morning and I had decided to make one last cup on the account there was hardly any leftover. Again, it wasn’t anything special. I tasted the maltiness of the black tea and the nuttiness (?) from the red rooibos, but the caramel and butterscotch weren’t present. Purely meh.

I definitely get the butterscotch in this one. It’s much better with milk. Other than the butterscotch, I taste some rooibos, but there’s not much else going on. It’s decently fun and desserty. The resteep is still full of butterscotch. I feel like this one is missing a little complexity, but it does a good job otherwise.

Sipdown (261)

J is not for…Grandma’s Caramel Butterscotch

I actually finished all the “J” teas I own so I moved on to non-J teas.

This tea caught my eyes a bunch of times for a latte but it has sneaky rose hips so that never happened. Don’t know why they do that. Also it’s a black rooibos blend and that makes it less appealing as well. That aside, the flavor sounds awesome.

It’s not my favorite. It’s a mediocre artificial caramel flavor to me. And the base teas both come through and take over. The rooibos is at the forefront and the black tea sort of leaves a lingering touch of smoke. It’s not working for me.

I liked this one. It had a nice creamy, buttery flavor that appealed to me. I’m not going to orer any, because I have other teas in the stash that have this sort of flavor profile, and I am absolutely buying NO MORE tea for a while! But I was glad to try it.

One of the nice things about a tea advent clendar is you get to try some teas that you might not have ever thought you’d like and you turn out to enjoy them. And vice versa.

Plum Deluxe Advent Day 2

This smells like pure butterscotch. I didn’t add any sweetener, and I feel like it needed just a bit too bring out the flavors. It tastes a bit like butterscotch and caramel, but neither are quite strong enough for me. The rooibos is mildly apparent, and I would’ve preferred a straight black tea.

After deciding that my sample last night probably would’ve been slightly better if I had done in it 350ml instead of 500ml, that is how I decided to brew this cup. The brewed tea has a very thick, sticky-sweet toffee aroma that is quite appealing. But this day has been hectic and I had to (quickly!) brew it on my lunch break and dump it into a travel mug to take back to work with me, so now I’m (very impatiently) stuck waiting for it to be cool enough in the mug to drink without severely burning my tongue…

Later. I can finally drink this, and it’s nice. A deep burnt sugar/toffee sort of flavor. It’s just a smidgeon brisk, so it probably would’ve been fine with a touch more water, but it is fine since the sweeter flavor of the tea sort of balances out the bit of astringency I’m getting off the base. When I’m not in such a terrible rush, I’ll weigh the leaf properly to get a good leaf-to-water ratio going forward. Today, I’m lucky I managed to brew anything at lunch at all.

This has been one of those days, and at least this should make the afternoon a little more pleasant.

Advent Day 2

I have a bird on my shoulder who isn’t happy about me using my hands to type this instead of give her head rubs!
After going through loving rooibos blends to hating them, I’m starting to come around to the idea that they are okay in certain circumstances. I’ve seen it used acceptably in blends with black tea and green rooibos isn’t bad. It’s okay in this cup. There is more flavor in here than I expected which may be due in perspective to the weaker T2 cup I had earlier and I purposefully used the entire packet, overleafing slightly from my usual. I get a caramel butterscotch flavor for sure, but it isn’t as bold as other butterscotch teas I’ve had. It says there are apple pieces, but I don’t taste them and am chalking them up more to decoration. It’s an okay cup overall.

Plum Deluxe Advent Calendar – Day 2

I hope everyone is having a good morning! I think the matcha earlier made me a bit chipper… XD

So this is a black tea and rooibos mix with caramel and butterscotch flavors. This sort of thing always sounds yummy to me, but manages to disappoint. (Luckily I have some Caramel & Rum from Lupicia now and I know that one is yummy!)

Anyway! This is okay. The flavoring is actually lighter than I expected, yet still manages to come off as artificial. I definitely get butterscotch, and it reminds me of those butterscotch disc candies wrapped in the golden cellophane. But it does taste a bit more artificial than those. The rooibos here does help with the caramel flavor as it can taste a tad caramel-y on its own. It also adds a light woodiness which makes me think of vanilla. I don’t taste the black tea, but it adds a little astringency and I suppose some body.

Overall, it’s fine but not something I would consider ordering. And I question the purpose of the black tea here.

(today’s advent teas: https://www.instagram.com/p/CITQgxTAHBz/)