Violin in C Sharp

  FINALLY!  A break from all those herbals! And to top it off - a chai!  My favorite!  Of course... a good chai is FABULOUS, but a bad chai is.... beyond heartbreaking. Ok... warming spices... the write up sounds promising... Ohhh... good dark color.... and I can smell the spices in the aroma.... this bodes well! First sip is mainly the taste of the black tea with a bit of cardamom and ginger on the end note.  The ginger, as usual, builds with each sip and made its way to the mid note on the second sip.  The cardamom stayed on the end note but the star anise and pepper showed up to the party in the end note as well.  Sip three had the ginger on the top note, the cardamom, star anise, and cinnamon dominating the mid note with the pepper and clove starting in the mid note and carrying into the end note.  The aftertaste was mostly on the back of the tongue and was weak tannin, pepper and ginger with clove hints traveling up the back of the throat to ...

 I was at the emergency pet hospital recently to support a friend, and the lobby had this very strange coffee/ tea machine with these pouches that you insert into almost a little credit card slot.  I've had other instant coffee single serve tea offerings, but had never tried this one.  Squishing the packet between my fingers, it felt like there was liquid inside - like a chai concentrate that the machine adds hot water to in order to dilute it. As far as instant single serve chais go, this had a more complex spice profile, but it had the bitter aftertaste that so many chai concentrates leave on my palate on the end note and after taste.  Adding cream or creamer can often lessen the bitterness of that lingering note, and that was true in this case as well - but it was still there. Final verdict:  Better than bad coffee to sit in an emergency waiting room with - but not by a very large margin.  Not something I would buy for myself.

 I am SOOOO glad that I did not drink this yesterday before the festival. #1, because I did not need a reason to loose my spot near the front to use a nasty port-a-potty and #2, because this is an AMAZING festival hangover blend.  It is EXACTLY what I needed today. Alright, back to the start - I was so happy when I opened this chai and could both see and smell the cloves and black pepper! This is a lot like their India's Original Masala Chai from day 2 - but with added vanilla.  It is delicious - even when I overbrewed it on the first steep.  (yes, a sin, I realize that).  Even over steeped, the astringency was not overpowering (like so many types of chai can go when over steeped).  The mistake of over steeping DOES hide the vanilla a bit.  However, adding a touch of sweet condensed milk into the mug brought the vanilla right to the forefront of the flavour where it had a lovely party with the clove, pepper, cinnamon, and cardamom.    Of note...

  After Day 2's AMAZING Masala Chai, I was beyond excited to try this blend. After all, the Masala Chai was stunning and I love a good Cinnamon tea as well.  I anticipated that the combination of the two would be divine. When I opened to tin to give a sniff of the pre-steeped leaf.... I got my first hint that the combination might not be as magical as I hoped.  While the blend smells lovely and spicy.... there is something.... off balance about the fragrance.  Looking at the leaf I saw the cardamom, and the cinnamon...... and not a hint of clove or pepper.  Hrm....   I tasted this straight off the steep expecting that it would need milk, as most good chai does.  Straight off the steep it tasted far more like a pure cinnamon black tea than any sort of blend that I have come to think of as a spiced chai.  I added a bit of it and some milk to a tasting glass.... and still found it lacking.  It felt.... thin, and flat.  I added Italian Sweet...

  So, I'm still absolutely in love with the little tins these tea portions come in.  They are so satisfying to open and hold. Today's tea is one that I was excited for when I first opened the box to see the tin, but even MORE excited for once I took a whiff of the blend inside.  The clove, cardamom, black pepper, and cinnamon hit my nose like a seduction with no one spice being more overpowering than another.  The balance in itself smelled appealing. As you can see from the scoop, this Masala is Assam based (nothing looks quite like Assam). As such, I went in expecting a full bodied tea that would balance the heavy spice inclusion.  In that respect, I was not disappointed. With a 5 minute steep, I got this beautiful dark color and took my first sip.  The flavor was muddled, tight, busy, dry and .... unpleasant.  Not at all what the nose had promised.  But then I remembered - traditional Indian Masala is meant to be served with milk!  (Well, a...

 I admit it, I opened this one on the evening of the 21st and decided to save it for the morning of the 22nd when I would be able to make myself an entire pot so that I could enjoy it while working on my early day at work.  It was absolutely the right call. I couldn't tell under the spices what kind of black tea they used as the base of the blend, but it was tasty.  I was wary when the ingredients listed fennel, because often times when fennel is used in a chai spice mix the blenders can be too heavy handed with the fennel and it sours the blend for me.  Thankfully, that was not the case here. While I admit that I prefer my Chai to hit my palate with a hotter spice, this blend was a very festive winter holiday spice appropriate chai and I enjoyed that.  The cinnamon was delicious and present without being so strong as to dry out my mouth; the star anise gave some bite without turning the tea to licorice; the cloves gave some smoke to the flavor again without dry...

 Owl's Brew is a company that I'm familiar with because I've been using their tea mixers for years now.  Hard Ginger Beer mixed with Owl's Brew The Classic cocktail mixer has been a favorite drink of mine for quite a while now.  As such, I was quite eager to taste their take on a hard tea seltzer.  So, I bought myself a variety pack of Owl's Brew seltzers at Trader Joe's.  Before I had gotten around to trying any of them, Sean brought THIS flavour home for me to try. I was hoping for an autumnal cranberry blast of flavour with a tea aftertaste, but that's not what I got.  This is more seltzer than tea on the palate and the cranberry isn't all that strong on the top or mid notes.  Actually, I didn't taste the cranberry at all in the top note, and it was weak in the midnote.  On the finish is where the cranberry really takes center stage.  The spices from the chai, however, are present in both the top and mid notes.  The tea part of the ch...

 This was in the refrigerated section of Trader Joe's, and well, I love me a good chai.  Loving a good chai means that I am eternally on the hunt for good chai blends, which means I pretty much have to try nearly every chai that I come across because you never know when it is that you're going to find THE chai blend that is perfect for YOUR palate.  As such, I picked this up for a taste test. Now, the large print advertises this as a chai - but if you keep reading the bottle, the smaller print bills this as a protein smoothie, and honestly that's far more accurate.  "Protein smoothie with chai tea, almond, coconut cream, and an exotic spice blend" is how the entire label reads.  Texture wise, this is DEFINITLY a protein smoothie.  It's thick in that nearly melted milk shake sort of way, and it has a coarseness to the texture that utterly betrays the presence of the chopped up almonds.  There is also the not quite dissolved powder sensation that you get...

  This isn't like other any other chai I've had before and that may be partly due to the Kenyan Black Tea that serves as the base of the blend.  It's a bold flavored tea, without being astringent or too in your face.  Actually.... it's quite lovely. Beyond the tea base, the spice blend is also unique.  Most of my chai blends don't have rose or fennel.  The combination of the fennel with the licorice root does interesting things that.... I can't actually describe.  Though, one of the things the licorice does is give the blend an intriguing sweetness without the addition of any sugar.  The rose is lovely on the nose, but isn't on the overnote and mainly sits on the sides of the middle of my tongue on the end note, but without perfuming the aftertaste. If you're looking for a SPICY chai, this isn't it.  Even though it has black pepper, it's well spiced but not spicy (as in with heat).  If you prefer your chai to be spiced at the level of a mild ...

 Today I decided to try out the second blend in the Republic of Tea gift sample box - the Chai. Now, those who know me know that I have rather high and specific standards when it comes to chai.  For me, the spicier and pepperier the better.  This particular blend is not peppery, but I can taste the spice blend. On the nose, before steeping, what I smell most is actually the orange peel.  After steeping, the nose is mostly the chinese star anise and the cardamom seeds. Flavor wise, the orange peel and cardamom make up the bulk of the flavor and I actually taste them more than I taste the actual tea.  It's a nice mellow tea - but I enjoyed it much more after I stopped thinking of it as an actual chai. I was surprised by the lack of color that came in after the full 5 minute steep - but I was also surprised at how much I enjoyed the mellow spicing and the not too strong black tea flavor. Final thoughts - it's nice and pleasant.

 One of my Christmas gifts this last year was a massive sample box of Twinings tea blends containing all sorts of flavors that I have never tried - well, you KNOW that means I have to review them all as I drink them! To start off, I knew that this wasn't going to be my favorite blend since the basic Twinings chai is not a chai I enjoy.  It's not... BAD - I just prefer my chai blends to have WAAAAAAAY more spice than Twinings uses.  I was curious to see what vanilla would bring to the chai party though, because it's not a flavor that I usually have in my chai.   So, what DOES the french vanilla bring to the chai party?  The answer is - nothing much.  In point of fact, what little spicing is in the Twinings chai is utterly masked by the addition of the vanilla and the cup tasted like regular black tea with a bit of vanilla creamer added.... sans cream. Final thoughts:  Not a Twinings blend that works for my tastes.

In case you hadn't figured it out - NEWS FLASH - I love tea.      Like several other tea aficionados in my extended friend group, I have managed to make my love of tea more than a simple appreciation of a beverage - I've developed my love of tea into a full blown hobby.  I collect different blends, I follow different tea companies and their blend collections the way some hobbyists follow card sets.  I have multiple drawers and shelves full of tea related paraphernalia, I have an electric water kettle that has multiple temperature settings specifically for different types of tea.... tea is a part of my daily life.  When I take a vacation someplace special, I try to find a tea cup to bring home for my collection.  For Mother's Day last year, I took my mother out to a fancy tea house to treat her to a Mother Daughter afternoon tea as a way to mark the celebration of the day. I LOVE tea.      With this in mind, it should come as no surprise ...