Thank you Zen Tea for this sample! I followed the instructions on the description here to make this chai on the stove with milk and water. I did enjoy preparing this one. Sometimes it’s fun to do something a little different with tea. It smelt very good cooking. Definitely spicy like chai, but also chocolately. It reminded me of making hot chocolate on the stove. The color is even a nice chocolate brown. Watching all the different bits swiriling about in the simmering water is fun too. It’s like some chocolate chai tea soup!
I’m so anxious waiting for it to cool it looks so creamy and delicious!! When I was a big coffee drinker, I used to order chai lattes a lot, but this completely blows those out of the water just on appearance/smell alone.
It tastes good, but it’s not as strong as I’d hoped it would be. I like my chais to be very spicy and distinctive. This tastes more chocolatey than chai to me. I shouldn’t be too surprised because the description does say mellow, but since I used 2 TBSP per 2 cups of liquid (which boiled down to about 1 1/2 cups) the mellow flavor is a little disappointing. That’s not to say it’s bad, I just want a little more spice.
The chocolate is very plesant though and I do like that this chai has mate in it. Okay whoa, I added a little sugar halfway through the cup and it completely changed the flavor! I’m actually getting more of that spice I was looking for now. If you aren’t enjoying this cup as much as you’d hoped, I recommend adding a little sugar even if you’re like me and don’t usually take any in your tea. Mmmm…there’s that spice I was looking for =)
I’m getting more coconut and vanilla now too..this could be an interesting hot cocoa replacement in the winter. I have just enough to make this tea the usual way so we’ll see how the flavor changes then. For now, this is pretty good.
