Chocolate Chai

huge chunks instead of pulverized ingredients…. smells great. lots of chocolate. vanilla seed floating in my tea once steeped. what’s the name of this again? chocolate chai. okay…. where’s my chocolate? how can it be there when it’s dry and NOT be there when it’s steeped?? grrrr.

we are not amused. i need a ‘we are not amused’ button to hit. i will assume operator error and i will try again before i assign numbers, but if i had a big red button in front of me right now it would be hard not to hit it.

This one is just full of surprises.

I thought I saw Yerba Mate in there and I was right! There are other ingredients that seem to jump out at you when you first look at it…like how BIG the Pu-Erh is – and the coconut! When I looked at the ingredients I was surprised that Rishi included dandelion root…hummm…

Well as for the taste it’s not bad. It’s one of the better flavored Pu-Erh’s I have tried and I seem to prefer it to the other Rishi Pu-Erh attempts I have tried, too.

Taste-wise:
It’s velvety and I can mostly taste the coconut and cocoa and vanilla. I can’t taste the pepper, really, and the dandelion root doesn’t really effect the overall taste – at least in my first attempt. The Yerba Mate Flavor is subtle but serves a purpose.

I can taste the cardamom more in the aftertaste, but not overly.

All-in-all this one surprised me and ended up being alright!

Prepared over the stove with traditional Indian manner, cooked with soymilk. My apartment smells great!

This does remind me a lot of hot chocolate and I am finding it tasty enough for my liking. There is lots of cardamom in here and also something slightly pungent (I assume the long pepper). I’m not a huge fan of mate so I’m finding that a bit distracting from the overall blend here. Overall this is very good and it definitely warming the frost from my Saturday morning as well as waking me up. :) I’m not sure I would buy it again but that’s also because I love the more traditional chai flavors.

I got this with a chai sampler awhile back, and it’s been sitting in my cupboard because I liked the vanilla mint one much better. This one I recall being very spicy, yet a bit weak in flavor overall. But now, after the great pu’erh blends I’ve been having from Verdant lately, I thought it might be quite good with a little beefing up. I added about half a teaspoon of Maiden’s Ecstasy – a loose shu pu’er from Samovar – to a couple teaspoons of the chai. MUCH better! Now this has actual body and heft, but I can still taste all the chocolate/coconut/spice from the chai. This is very warming, now, and good for a cold windy day.

http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/2526/tea-review-rishi-tea-chocolate-chai-2/

The way I’ve learned to make chai is a stove top method. Rather than just simply brewing like tea, you do the following:

For each 2 cups of chai tea:
Take 1 cup water, bring to a boil on the stove in a small saucepan. Once the water comes to a boil, add 1 tbsp. chai tea, and 1 tbsp. sugar. Return to a boil, and let boil for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, and add one cup milk (the more milk-fat, the more flavorful). Let rest on the stove for at least 10 minutes, and then strain, and drink.

This method of preparation takes most chai mixes and makes them amazingly flavorful. I know it’s sacrilege to boil tea, but the spices in chai cover any over-steeped flavor, and it ensures you get the most out of the spices.

So, wanting to get the most out of this chocolate chai (because really, what could be better? Chocolate and chai spice? YUM), I prepared it in the stovetop method. It surprised me. It was a very mellow cup. Like a mildly spiced chocolate milk. The chocolate flavor is at the forefront, and there’s a taste of generic spices as an aftertaste. None of the particular spices stand out, but there’s the sensation of clove, and a tiny burn from possibly a little pepper.

So, it’s very yummy, but a little less spicy than I was hoping. If it wasn’t caffeinated, I could see drinking this at night as a soother.

I wanted to make sure it wasn’t the stovetop method somehow skewing the flavor of this tea. So I brewed it like a regular cup of tea as well. And no, it does MUCH better brewed stove top method.

Prepare for something lovely. It’s a great cuppa. Just don’t expect a lot of spice, and revel in the chocolate.

Interesting one to have iced… I work at a vegetarian cafe that carries teas from MEM, Rishi, and a local supplier, Salandrea. We typically feature an iced tea of the day; however, the people opening either have no knowledge of brewing times/temperatures or don’t care for specifics. So unless it’s an herbal tea we’re making, it almost always comes out way too bitter. It’s frustrating, especially when we have some avid tea-drinkers and herbalists that come in disappointed by our preparation, simply because we cannot commit the time…

Still, I find this tea to have a slightly bitter aftertaste on top of a medley of flavors that I sometimes feel is a little overwhelming. I usually like to pick out the different components, but I think I just need to learn to appreciate the way this one just blends.

Not a big fan, but I’m willing to give it another try with better preparation.

Let me just preface this by stating that I love chocolate—the taste and aroma of it both. I liked the fact that this Rishi tea is organic, so I decided to give it a try. Once opened, the tea in the bag smells earthy, and, with some imagination, I can almost smell the chocolate. I followed the directions on the box. I brought the water and the tea combination to boil on the stove top as suggested, added milk (although I rarely drink tea with milk), and brewed for three minutes as instructed. The milk makes this rich, too rich. Unfortunately, I can’t say that the richness is due to the tea’s scent or flavor. The chocolate simply doesn’t come through for me in the cup. The same is true for the vanilla and the spices; they are not distinct. I was even surprised to see vanilla beans listed as an ingredient. I can feel mostly the yerba mate.

I tried it a second time. I started brewing it in the same slow way on the stovetop as suggested on the box, but I didn’t add the milk before it was fully steeped. This time, I only added a drop of vanilla-flavored coconut milk, and I have to say that I enjoyed the tea better this way. The flavors are still extremely soft, barely there, but the vanilla in the coconut milk added another dimension. Frankly, it was the vanilla in the milk that saves the tea for me. I wish I didn’t have to use additional flavors.

UPDATE: I have to say that this tea has grown on me. I would like the company to remove the word “chocolate” from the name because the lack of chocolate scent and flavor cause some serious disappointment. However, if one doesn’t expect the chocolate, it is a nice, smooth combination, which I find comforting.

Yum! Deliciously fragrant, spicy, and chocolate-y. Very flavorful.

Honestly, I’m not sure how I got this, but since I had my first work from home day at my new job, i decided to give something new a whirl (since I’ve been stuck on Teavana Spiced Apple Cider + Rooibos Chai) or bagged tea at work until they determine I’m not a weirdo.

Anyway…

Seriously don’t know how I got this, but I had an ounce of it to begin with in an official Rishi bag. This was on top of my cabinet which also happens to house tea but happened before my tea obsession so I probably stuck it up there since I didn’t know where exactly to put it.

Anyway, is this chocolate chai?

No.

It’s basically ginger chai. So if ginger is your thing, you’ll love this. Me, on the other hand seems to hate ginger in tea (though I do like it on my sushi – the pickled variety though). This to me was barely drinkable. I got about half-way down my mug, before dumping it for the Teavana blend I mentioned above. Also, they recommend 2 Tablespoons on the front (for 12oz of water), I used 3 teaspoons. I cannot imagine how much more I would have hated it if I had followed directions!

Not a fan, but I don’t think I paid for it, so all is not lost.

EDIT
Managed to pawn this off to my husband’s coworkers so yay! Out of my cupboard! =)

Backlog:

A yummy, invigorating chai, although I disagree with the word ‘chai’ for this particular tea, because even though I know that ‘chai’ means ‘tea’ … to me, ‘chai’ means a spiced tea, and usually one with at least three of the four usual suspects: ginger, cinnamon, cloves and cardamom. This only has cardamom.

OK, so it also has other spices/herbs: dandelion root, long pepper, and vanilla. Plus it has cacao nibs. So, even though this isn’t a chai in my own definition of the word chai, I will not be angry with this tea as it has cacao nibs. This is one of those ingredients that when added to a tea, I’m likely to forgive many things. What can I say, I’m a hopeless chocoholic.

I like the way the earthiness of the pu-erh and yerba mate accentuates the earthy qualities of the chocolate here.

A very enjoyable blend. I like the way the coconut, vanilla and chocolate play together here, it’s really yummy.

Here’s my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/01/28/organic-chocolate-chai-tea-blend-rishi-tea/