Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

I made this one up on Saturday, and I drank it with my family over the bank holiday weekend. My mum, naturally, didn’t like it. She’s funny about iced tea anyway, so it wasn’t really a surprise. My dad and I enjoyed it, though – it’s not too sweet, and the chocolate isn’t overpoweringly cloying or sickly. It’s a little artificial tasting, but I can overlook that because it’s not too strong. The mint helps to move it back towards refreshing, adding a clean, cooling taste that’s pretty well suited to the hot days we’ve been having lately. My one complaint is that there’s no “ice cream” element – no creaminess to speak of, anyway – but it’s definitely mint chocolate chip. Ice cream was maybe just a descriptor too far.

This one got the usual SBT treatment (3 minutes in boiling water, topped up to 2 litres with cold, and into the fridge overnight). I don’t have another in my cupboard, but if I did I’d happily drink it again. It’s not my favourite SBT, but it’s pretty solid all the same.

My brother came over for his birthday dinner tonight and he requested a mint tea to go with the grilled fish we were having. He’s not usually a fan of mint, but we had some really phenomenal mint iced tea at a local restaurant the other day and he was wanting to see if we could replicate it at home. I also just bought a new pitcher from Samovar and have been wanting to use it so this seemed like a perfect idea. In the end, we weren’t able to use the new pitcher since it wasn’t nearly large enough for this tea, but we found a larger replacement and were still able to make it work.

The dry tea in this rather large teabag smells of chocolate and mint. I steeped it for three minutes as the package suggested and then mixed it together with sugar and water just as I normally would for iced tea. It’s very refreshing and tastes lightly of chocolate and mint. The chocolate is the more prominent flavor here, both in the scent and in the taste. It’s not a very strong tea, but I’m sure that’s because it is still warm. It will be much better once it’s had a chance to chill in the fridge.

This is one that I’m really enjoying so I would say that I would definitely consider purchasing this flavor in the future. Thank you, thank you to Nichole for sending me a couple of bags of this! I’ve been wanting to try one of the 52Teas blends for a while and this was a great first impression.

Backlog:

A good balance of chocolate, mint and black tea flavors. I find the chocolate notes to be a tad fake tasting. This was remedied with the addition of a little sugar. Without the sweetener, it tastes alright but the chocolate is off. The sugar helps.

But the tea is already on the sweet side so you want to sweeten cautiously.

It isn’t a bad tea, the chocolate is a wee bit off but it’s not enough to make me toss it out. I liked it, but this wasn’t my favorite from SBT.

I made a gallon of this from 2 steepings, and it tastes like…mint chocolate chip ice cream! I think it is refreshing, but not cloyingly sweet. I did add some liquid stevia (because I just don’t like unsweetened tea), and it was perfect.