Maple Pecan Tea

Received this one from Darby in round 2 of the secret pumpkin swap.

This was in tea bag form. It smells super delicious. Like sweet pecan pie. You can definitely smell the maple.

This tea is so, so, so creamy without adding any type of creamer or milk. It tastes like maple butter. This tea reminds me of pecan pie or a pecan pastry. There is definitely a pastry type flavour. It is a heavy pastry, made of lard. Delicious. Ha ha. There is a pecan flavour as well as a definite maple syrup sweetness.

Got this one from Darby in the Secret Turkey Swap. I may have steeped it too long. The black base is a little bitter. The flavor is actually pretty good though. It just tastes like a buttered pecan ice cream. Nice creamy nut flavor :] Thanks again!

I love the smell of the bags (all maply syrup and pecan), but the smell of the brewed tea has a slight burnt taste to it, which reminds me of Stash’s decaf caramel creme that I could never enjoy.

The taste, though, is really nice. The black tea in this one is much stronger than the Pumpkin Ginger. There’s a definite pecan taste, and the sip finishes with strong, thick, maple notes. There’s a hint of caramel there, but it’s rather fleeting and I’m not sure if I’m imagining it or not. I don’t think I’ll try this one at 5 minutes; I think it could easily turn bitter.

It’s a very gloomy and rainy day today. And it’s cold! Well, LA cold anyway. I have the fireplace on and I’m craving a rich delicious comforting black tea for a bit of an afternoon pick-me-up.

I purchased this tea in November of last year and my tin is still nearly full. I couldn’t remember if there was some reason that I hadn’t been drinking this tea all winter long. This tea has two of my favorite flavor components, maple and nutty goodness.

Unfortunately, this tea isn’t great because there’s no real flavor to it at all. It’s a reasonably tasty black tea with a slight (very slight) touch of maple. Disappointing! I mixed a heaping tsp. of maple butter and lots of almond milk into the tea, and that made it taste okay. In reality, I’m really just drinking a warm cup of sweetened almond milk. Humph.

So, I’ve been somewhat underwhelmed by the maple-y flavor of this tea before, so I decided to up the ante today and do a double-strength steep. I used a rather larger than normal size mug, just to be on the safe side. My plan was to steep it for as short a time as possible, but I ended up steeping it a teensy bit longer than my gut told me to… and the result was VERY astringent, even with sugar. I attribute this to the fact that there’s basically tea dust in the bag, instead of distinguishable leaves… a quality issue that RoT teas frequently have. :/
Anyway, the tea was WORLDS better after I added about a tablespoon or two of milk to my cup. Mmm, maple-y goodness! I didn’t even really have to sweeten it all that much (been trying to do less of that anyway). The pecan flavor isn’t all THAT strong, but it’s there. So, the moral of the story is that milk makes this tea quite delicious, but without it, it’s almost not worth drinking.

This is another instance of me trying to like flavored black tea and failing. When perfectly brewed there are only the very faintest hints of maple and pecan; mostly it’s just black tea, black tea, black tea. Sometimes I add maple sugar to it, but even that can’t do much to help. Bummer.

Overboard TTB #12

Ok so today, since all I’m doing is starting to pack and organize for my trip home and running the errands I need to do to by presents and pick up all the special requests my family wants me to bring back to Oz with me from the US (tide pens, bourbon, Lego, mac cosmetics… It’s a little eclectic) I’m promising myself that I’m going to finish with this box today.

I don’t know why I’m always surprised when I like ROT offerings but this, similar to others I’ve tasted, is full of flavor! I’m getting a nice balance of maple and pecan however there is a slightly chemical taste that unfortunately lingers on the back of my pallet after each sip which is ruining this tea for me a little. Not something I’d purchase but I could see it being enjoyable around thanksgiving.

Overboard TTB #2

So apparently I was in a maple mood this week! This one wasn’t bad, but it didn’t hold a candle to the one from David’s Tea that I tried yesterday. It did have a pleasant maple flavor along with a hint of nuttiness, but I mostly tasted the strong black base. It was also a bit astringent. If I had this tea again, I would try it with milk…but I think for now I’ll just stick to Oh Canada! when I want a maple tea.

Overboard TTB

The tea box arrived today, and after a quick look through I have twenty-something teas I’d like to try. Looks like I’d better start sippin’!

The name of this tea sounds so good, but I remembered that both rosebudmelissa and jewledthumb said it was bitter. I decided to lower the water temp to 200°F to see if that would help. The good news, I’m not getting any bitterness. The bad news, I’m not getting any maple either. There is a nice pecan flavor that I find rather enjoyable. I added a little sugar to see if I could coax some maple flavor from the tea, but sadly no. Ooh, but I do have maple leaf cream cookies. Let’s forget for a moment that it’s not even noon yet. The tea and cookies actually go together very well. The sweetness of the cookie really highlights the nutty flavor in the tea.

As a nutty tea this is good. If the maple flavor was present it’d definitely up the rating.

Overboard Traveling tea box

I am so glad I didn’t pick a tin of this up. It’s bitter and almost has a cardboard note (can cardboard be a note?). Anyway, I steeped for 3 minutes, tasted a bit and added sweetener. With sweetener, I’m still getting the cardboard note, but at least it’s only 6oz since I used 1 bag.