Violin in C Sharp

  My cousin g ave this to me ages ago to try. Frankly, I’ve been dragging my heels because the only black licorice flavored anything that hasn’t made me gag is Absinthe. So, I just haven’t wanted to risk it. On its own, it’s like the hot tea version of absinthe! It’s quite a tasty little tinsane. A nice selection to sip late at night while winding down. Paired with a ginger snap spice cookie it is AMAZING. The cookie spices heightened the tea spice and vice versa and I had this lovely spice symphony happening in my mouth. I am now sad that I only have 1 more bag of this left and will need to acquire more.

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 ...

STASH is one of my trusty, go-to, easy to find, off the shelf brands. So you can see in the ingredient list that instead of whole cloves in the mix, this blend uses clove oil. So yes, that makes the flavor come out stronger without the astringency that whole clove can add- HOWEVER, it makes cleaning up after a cup of this more like cleaning up after a cup of Earl Grey. What I mean by that is that the oil leaves a residue on your cup/ pot that can be hard to get off if you don’t wash it while fresh AND the oil can make the tea staining worse on your ceramics if you don’t clean it promptly. A water soak won’t fully help as it will just draw the oil to the surface and create a ring/line of the stain. With the flash here, you can somewhat see the oil on the surface of the tea that makes it more difficult to clean up. All that having been said, this IS one of my favorite easy to find everyday bagged chai blends. It can take sugar and cream well, but is also quite tasty on its own. I do...

As far as Earl Greys go, this one is pretty light on the bergamot and you can see from the photo that even after a full 5 min steep, it doesn’t get very dark at all. It’s a bit of a let down for me honestly since I enjoy the STASH chai so much so I was expecting more from this blend. As it is, I would consider this an acceptable substitute for one of my everyday builders when I was wanting something lighter. Verdict: better than Lipton, but I’d rather you pass me the PG Tips