Maharaja Chai/Samurai Chai Tea Blend

This one again! It’s not as good now that I’m not as congested but it’s still tasty. NO REGRETS on this one VariaTEA!

(Although I don’t like the tea to flavouring ratio that Teavana has. Once I get through this phase I will likely not get much more.)

Oh thank goodness. This is helping me recover from the trauma of the rot tea previously logged. This smells so nice, and tastes so heavenly.

Of course my standards are pretty low right now! :(

Let’s play good news, bad news.

Good news: I ordered something from Teavana recently and saw that it included 1 oz. sample of this blend. That’s a lot of tea. Thanks, Teavana, you are so generous.

Bad news: 85% of the 1 oz sample is German Rock Sugar, which is waaaaaaay too much sugar for me. So it’s not really a 1 oz. sample of pure tea. It’s really only for 2 cups of tea.

Good news: That’s okay. I can just open the bag and pick out the pieces of rock sugar. This should be easy, right? They’re just really large pieces, and I can tell the difference between tea leaves and chunks of crystal.

Bad news: Yeah… no. There’s way too much stuff in these tea to even tell what’s rock sugar and what’s a candied fruit.

Good news: I pick out whatever I can to best of my ability. I’m getting a good chunk of sugar out, I’m sure.

Bad news: I steep it, go to drink it… and it’s still deathly sweet. All I taste is sweetener and cinnamon. Is there anything else in this tea, because I sure can’t taste it. I can’t even taste the ginger, which is supposedly one of the main ingredients.

Teavana, I get that you love your German Rock Sugar but PLEASE think about us folks that maybe don’t want our tea sweetened to death. Would it have been THAT hard to include just the tea? And if people really needed to, you could include the rock sugar in a separate package for people to add in with the tea. That way both parties are happy and everybody wins.

This was one of the first teas I loved. I thought it was amazing and could not wait to have a cup each morning. But then something happened…I started noticing the cinnamon. Like REALLY noticing it. And it was not a nice cinnamon spice but rather a cloyingly sweet candy cinnamon flavor. After that, I put off drinking it for a while. However, when I sent the majority to Cavocorax, I decided to keep a little to myself (what I thought was enough for a cup but turned out to be a bit more) so I could try it once again and make sure it was not just the single cup that tasted off. After taking my first sip of this tea in months, I immediately regretted not passing it all along because the cinnamon is all I am getting and I am not a fan. This cup is getting dumped and I might just toss the 1 tsp I have left unless keychange wants me to add it to her swap package. I would have added it to the package I sent Cavo had I not already sent that off.

Sipdown, 232.

This time I left in all the sugar they put in this sample. It is not as sweet as I was expecting honestly! It reminds me of red hots candy in scent and a bit in taste. The flavor is very cinnamony and clovey. But there is other stuff going on in the taste that I can’t quite place. Certainly spicy! I think I am also getting some pineapple and papaya notes as well underneath, but they are playing out kind of oddly. I don’t expect fruit in my chai. It is drinkable… But it’s definitely not something I will ever want more of.

Big suprise I know I received this sample with my Christmas order from the big T. I too am one that loved the white tea and Samurai mix. The Samurai is still one of my favorite Mate blends. It gives me warrior like cunningness(ok maybe a little bit of an exageration). This is my after lunch brew at work. For some reason lately I’ve been obsessed with cardamon after having arabic coffee at a middle eastern restaurant. I love the lemony goodness of it. There is plenty in here. This is seriously hitting the spot today! The base oolong looks to be a Ti Kuan Yin…exciting! I wasn’t thrilled about the rock sugar but it’s a welcome change. I get the change in the combo since the the temps for oolong and mate are closer than white and mate. However in sipping I found that I had a phantom apple taste on my palate. Yes, I think this would be perfect for mulled cider!

Sipdown! This sample came with my last order from Teavana. I may not like them, but I do like their tins, and when I can get them inexpensively (i.e. their Cyber Monday deal of free tin, free sample, and free shipping with all orders) I do tend to snap them up.

I already knew I was in for some Red Hots flavor because of previous experience with their chai blends, and the fact that I have had both these teas in my cupboard before. But this? Wow. I have a horrible sweet tooth, but that being said, this too sweet even for me!

This is like drinking hard candy, and while it may be nice and warm on a cold morning, it’s just too artificial and insanely sweet to handle.

I think a lot of people have one ingredient that can ruin chai for them. With so many powerful spices in the mix, it’s no surprise! For some it’s ginger, or black pepper. For me, it’s cinnamon. It’s a spice I am very sensitive to if it’s not cinnamon bark—cinnamon flavoring reminds me of Big Red gum, and I find it way too overwhelming. In fact, it makes me a little nauseous.

Sadly, this blend has a LOT of cinnamon. Funny, because their other chai/chai blend (samurai mate and white whatever) smells much more cinnamon-y but is lighter in flavor. I placed an order at Teavana for just those chais when they were about 40% off and got an ounce of this blend as well. Of course I ended up adoring the other chai/chai and placed a second order for more (and like 7 other teas) during their Heavenly sale and got ANOTHER one ounce sample of this. Meaning I now have 2 ounces pretty much, funny that they are so generous with the samples. I was kind of hoping I’d love this one too, but alas.

At first sip it’s really nice: clove and nutmeg. There’s almost no ginger or cardamom though, which are my favorite chai spices. And while it says there is pineapple in the blend, it’s not really fruity at all like the samurai/white blend which had double fruit. It’s just… a kind of regular chai with too much cinnamon. The oolong/mate mix does add something extra, like a layer of richness, but honestly I can’t get past the cinnamon abuse. It’s drinkable, but I doubt I am ever going to think “man I could go for a cup of this tea.” This one just isn’t for me—which is fine, because I have 8 ounces of the other (better) one to tide me over until the next sale!

T&C Box 17/18

Oh, Teavana. I didn’t have a problem with them until I took a snoop around the Steepster boards and found out about how badly they treat their employees. I’ve been in one in Indianapolis and while the employees did overpour me very slightly they’ve never been pushy or rude in any way. I don’t like companies that treat their employees badly, though, so I’m now underwhelmed by them as a whole.

I told myself I wasn’t going to try this one. I was going to pass it along unopened to Kat_Maria. But then I got curious, which means I opened it and made myself a cup. I’ve never had this without the huge amount of sugar Teavana stores put in their samples; however, unless candied papaya now comes in crystal form I’m pretty sure there’s rock sugar in here, and not in the ingredients list to boot. Sigh. There’s also so many ingredients that I’m hoping I got everything in the teaspoon.

This does smell good to me, but that’s because of the overwhelming cinnamon. I tried to get everything into the teaspoon but I see no evidence of blooming oolong leaves anywhere. In fact I see very little that could be qualified as tea at all. This tastes mostly like cinnamon and fruit, with not much going on other than that. It is also definitely sweetened, as I suspected. Maybe I should have left this one alone.

So this is a sample which I received with a more recent Teavana order. I read through some of the reviews and decided to pull out all the sugar I could find before brewing some. I found 3tsp. of sugar in my 1oz baggie. It seems like a ton to someone like me who never adds sugar to their teas. The amount of oolong in the blend is crushingly low. My blend was about 1/3 sugar, 1/3 mate, and 1/3 everything else. I used 3tsp. of leaf to make 16oz.
Dry and steeping this smelled mainly of cinnamon. Not exactly the same type of cinnamon in the Ayurvedic Chai, which is kind of a sweet cinnamon. Rather, this is a hot cinnamon. There were also so peppery, nutty, and citrus notes as well.
Wow! I left the room and came back and the smell permeated the whole room. It really does smell nice, but very strong. If I was just a bit more sensitive it would probably annoy me. I think I really like this one. It still somehow tastes sweetened. Maybe a few little crystals got in there. If someone blind tasted this with me I’d guess there was only herbs in this and maybe a black base. I really cannot discern the teas because the spices are so overwhelming; but I like my chai that way! I am a huge fan of overtly spicy chai teas and this one is really good. I still think the older samurai/Ayurvedic chai is better.