Peanut Butter and Raspberry Jelly Black Tea

My first sipdown! :D

This is from the most recent advent box, and I keep forgetting that putting milk in it makes it a lot harder to taste the flavors! I did get a sort of sunflower nuttiness, especially as an after taste.

The black base is pretty brisk this time around. Still not tasting any peanut butter, but the raspberry is nice and jammy.

I’ve always loved this tea but haven’t had it in a while so I had somewhat forgotten. The dry leaf has the nutty aroma of sunflower seeds and the steeped tea tastes the same. I don’t taste peanuts or peanut butter, but the nuttiness from the sunflower seeds makes it believable. The jammy raspberry is there too, though less so. Not a PBJ sandwich to me, but more of a sophisticated nut butter and raspberry preserves tart.

Have I actually not reviewed this yet? I’ve had it several times hot, although have yet to try it cold.

Tasty black base tea-thick, malty, neither sweet, nor overly tannic. It goes well with the fruity (and slightly sweet) raspberry flavour. The sunflower seeds somehow taste like peanutbutter. I’m not sure how that sorcery works, but it tastes /just/ like peanut butter. Magic?

Sipdown

I got a sample of this from Kittenna and unfortunately I have not stored it all that wonderfully so this is mostly just black tea and a slightly seedy flavor. Still I am grateful to Kittenna for that chance to try this out.

Additional notes: This is really one of those teas I should have enjoyed at the freshest. This tea is certainly not the same, which I mentioned a few months ago. But I did want to try different parameters: I’ve been having luck with other teas having more flavor peeking out with more leaves, so I used two teaspoons with this steep. A brisk tea to try with two teaspoons, but with the flavor mostly gone, I didn’t feel like I was wasting leaves. I also handpicked the sunflower seeds out of the teaspoons so they didn’t impart more stale flavor than they needed to. The flavor ended up stale anyway, and still not much raspberry. Maybe a tiny bit more than if I used one teaspoon (which was no raspberry flavor at all). So what I once called ‘best raspberry tea’ is now hardly raspberry. I would say the sunflower seeds definitely don’t work, especially for us hoarders, but this tea isn’t THAT old yet. I don’t think the sunflower seeds were an accurate substitute for peanut butter anyway. I WOULD love to see a good flavored peanut butter tea, fake ingredients or not. The original rating was for the ‘raspberry’ aspect, rather than the ‘peanut butter’ aspect. The raspberry was so good I was willing to look over the sunflower seeds. Also, this partly assam base just pairs very well with raspberry.
Steep #1 // 2 teaspoons (with sunflower seeds plucked out) // 20 min after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 10 minutes after boiling // 2-3 min

Took this into work and forgot we had no milk. Dur!
It was ok… but nothing special. Definitely nutty, and just a tiny bit jammy. The consistency was pretty consistent with “pb&j” though, which was nice.
More experimentation needed!

Adventaggedon Day 15 – Tea 2/6

Hello nostalgia my old friend! This is like a double whammy of nostalgia because not only is PB&J a super nostalgic flavour but the tea itself is also nostalgic because I remember the original of tea from years back! I see I only rated it a 70 so maybe I’ll have to go back and reread old tasting notes because I remember liking it a lot more.

There’s obviously some changes – I don’t think Anne works with sunflower seeds anymore. Personally, I’m a bit sad about that because I think they add such a lovely flavour, but I also completely understand the move away from them. The result here is a cup that, while nutty, is more focused on the delicious and jammy raspberry note which actually perfectly captures that “Smuckers Raspberry Jam” flavour that seems ripped right out of my elementary school life. The black tea is plucky and tannic, with a bready/grainy note that adds to the illusion as well!

It was an unexpected tea in this year’s advent, but I enjoyed it a lot!

Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CI1bJQzAPNj/

So Super Starling! and myself had a tea swap a couple of weeks ago, and then I got swept up into some intense work, and then a trip, and so I’m just getting around to logging the teas into my cupboard, and giving them a try!
I love peanut butter. I am a devotee of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So this was an exciting thing to find in the package!
I get nuts, I fully get nuts, but I’m not sure that I get peanuts. It tastes more like cashews and maybe almonds to me. The jam aspect is missing entirely, and the mouthfeel is not as thick or creamy as I was hoping for.
But there is something lurking in there, greatness is possible! I have a little more to tinker around with. and tinker I shall.
But many thanks to Super Starling! for letting me try!

Not a huge fan of this tea; it was definitely nutty (peanuts, I’m not so sure), but the jam aspect was lacking for me. Perhaps I needed to steep longer to let the raspberries impart more flavour, but I was worried about the base. I also wasn’t overly fond of the base here, it wasn’t astringent, but it was a bit rougher than I would want it. I’m not drinking the tea right now, so I can’t come up with a good description, but perhaps it was missing some maltiness?