Rum Raisin Biscotti

Evidently, I only drink this on holidays…previous review was on Christmas a couple years ago, which tells me that it’s high time to steep it up. (And Happy Thanksgiving, by the way! We’ve already been out and about to find an open grocery store because, ahem, somebody forgot we were out of baking powder.)

This has held up well. The cookie aspect takes the lead today—very almond-y and pleasant. Sadly, Tea Forte has seen fit to discontinue it, so this is a sweet sipdown.

Wherever you are, and even if you’re not in a locale that’s officially celebrating, hope you take a little time to be grateful, even if it’s just for clean socks. I’m thankful for you Steepsters—you are a gracious and truly interesting bunch of people!

As afternoon tea I took this one from their Single Steeps solution. I have it for ages, but it was small foil wrapping with loose leaf – I thought it will be still okay.

And it was – okay.

Expected some weird, bad spicy notes and alcohol, but apparently I did not noticed any of them. I experienced mostly cloves and another spices with chocolate notes. Yep, it was like chai hot chocolate but somehow mild. It was pretty nice. Maybe little notes of biscuits were there as well.

If I take into account that it is really old one (I really have no idea), it was still pretty nice.

Prepared grandpa, 300 ml glass cup; almost boiling water.

Sipdown (691)!

This tea was the entire reason I picked up this Tea Forte sampler; I was just so incredibly stoked about the possibility of a good Rum & Raisin profile – I don’t know why but I’ve been craving Rum & Raisin ice cream so much this summer…

Sadly I did not like the tea. To quickly summarize, it was a bit too much biscotti and not enough rum or raisin. Elaborating, though, it was just a sort of flat tasting black tea with more of a bready/baked goods type of note and a hint of cinnamon – with the barest possible hint of rum; no raisin. Also a little bit drying…

I think what I really wanted was more of a sweeter and creamier rum & raisin that truly matched the ice cream I was craving – and this just wasn’t that.

Oh, I’m rather surprised by all the low ratings for this one.
Not sure why it ended up a bit bitter since I used my family’s temperature controlled kettle and only brewed it a few minutes. After it cooled completely, for some reason, my last few sips were free from bitterness. Weird. Anyway, this one is pretty good. It reminds me a lot of a Teavana tea I used to like, toasted nut brulee. But I feel this one is rather accurately named. The leaf has nice big raisins and flowers in it. The second steep is okay, but most of the flavor is gone except for the black tea. It’s difficult to point to specific flavors I taste in here – black tea, sweetness, and rum maybe, but I’d say it’s a fun desserty flavor that I wouldn’t mind having again occasionally.

Ok, this was a weird one. First time I tried it at home, and thought “omg, this is gross, gross”. I have the single steeps from a sampler, so I just took a couple to work to perhaps try again. At work, I have a tea forte kati cup (that I really love!!) I only need to use half of these “single steeps” for my liking—-ironically, they are made for single use, but I find a whole one way too strong in all I have tried. Also, at work, I use the “hot” water button from the water dispenser, so I have no idea the temp—hot enough to burn your tongue if not careful. This seems to be the perfect temp for these teas because they taste so much better at work in my kati cup—-so experimenting is good. I don’t even add sweetener like I do at home. It does have a strong alcohol and smell overall albeit a pretty good smell., but comes out to a cup of tea I don’t mind to make again, just maybe wouldn’t get again.

This tea tasted absolutely terrible! As others have commented despite the sweet smell, there were terrible notes of chemically alcohol, with an odd smokey note… it was reminiscent to getting a spritz of Pledge wood cleaner to the mouth.

I tried adding cream, I tried it cold- all in all it is just an absolutely terrible tea.

Gah! This one actually smelled rather nice, like almonds and cookies and fruity – sort of a fruitcake scent, now that I think about it. There was even a bit of a floral fragrance. BUT the flavor was horrid! It had the biting sting of alcohol – I’m guessing that’s the “rum” flavoring – and really not much else. I rarely find a tea I cannot drink, but this was one. (NB, I’m only noting alcohol in the scent/taste box, because that flavor was so nasty I don’t really want to give the nice fragrance any credit.)

Holy crap, it reeks of alcohol. Could be sweet and spiced and enjoyable without that, but can’t get over the smell/taste of alcohol. I guess they succeeded at getting that rum flavor across!

Again this was a score from my $8 set from Chapter’s.

So far this is my second out of the box & I find they all have this similar off taste as they cool.
The initial taste is slightly rum like with a hint of raisin. There isn’t any biscotti taste, but it’s a decent tea. Not overly strong in flavour, ideally I would use twice the amount of leaves in these bags, but have been making smaller mugs to accommodate.
I wish that as these cooled that unpleasant taste wouldn’t be there, I’m not sure what’s causing it. I can’t finish the mugs because of it.

I forgot I had a few Tea Forte silken pyramids (I really love these sachets!) left over from Christmas. I decided to have one for my afternoon cup. I’m not terribly impressed iwth this one. It’s not in any way bad, but compared to the What-Cha Georgia Old Gentleman, this is sort of blah. One more thing out of the cabinet!