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“(52teas (Anne) 2022: 220) My goodness, this is spicy. Enough so that I can’t finish my cup tonight because spice-related heartburn. However, earlier sips, while spicy, were also a delightfully...” Read full tasting note
“I spent a good part of yesterday at a silent meditation retreat in the city. This is the tea that I picked as the first one of the day to set me in motion. The rest of the day I spent with...” Read full tasting note
Tea of the Week for December 5, 2016!
It’s been a while since I last created something really SPICY so I decided that I should do just that in December. After all, what better way to chase off the chill of the season than with some chili spice in your hot tea?
I started with my organic black tea base of Indian and Chinese teas and added smoked chili peppers, cayenne peppers and even a few habañero peppers and to bring out some of the fruitier elements of those berries (chili peppers are berries!) and add some contrast to the heat, I added some sweet-tart raspberries!
Really tasty – with a wonderfully WARM and SPICY kick, but be warned – this tea packs a wallop!
organic ingredients: black teas, raspberries, smoked chili flakes, cayenne pepper, habanero pepper and natural flavors.
At 52teas.com, you will find unique, hand-blended artisan loose leaf teas: a new limited edition creation every week of the year. We pride ourselves on offering truly unique, one-of-a-kind tea blends that you won’t find anywhere else.
(52teas (Anne) 2022: 220)
My goodness, this is spicy. Enough so that I can’t finish my cup tonight because spice-related heartburn. However, earlier sips, while spicy, were also a delightfully real, bright raspberry flavour. I just wish the spice was a little bit lighter! (I’m hoping it was just a coincidence of ingredients and subsequent cups will be more tolerable).
I spent a good part of yesterday at a silent meditation retreat in the city. This is the tea that I picked as the first one of the day to set me in motion. The rest of the day I spent with various oolongs.
My experience with 52Teas berried black teas has been that there hasn’t been enough berry. 52Teas appears to be remedying this issue here with this tea. Hurray for the tea to berry balance! The raspberry flavour is true and real and comes through with good proportion to the lovely black base.
Even though I had given the bag a good shake to distribute all things, I am not really detecting the piquant element here. Even if I squint.
Maybe the next cup or the one after that will be the spicy one.
I have considered that a bit of cream here would not go amiss. And vanilla cream, even better.
That said, a very enjoyable cup, nonetheless. I am starting this day off with another cup with similar results. Lovely.
Now if the neighbour with the tile cutter machinery would come to his senses and realize that it is Sunday and that construction noise is against the law. People, *&^%!
Flavors: Raspberry
that sounds lovely – where was the retreat?
Downtown. It is a part of this programs. Highly recommend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness-based_stress_reduction
The spice comes from the little bits of chili pepper in it – so you want to be sure to shake the pouch to redistribute the ingredients so that you don’t get a bunch of chili peppers in one measurement. I cut the chili peppers (in this case, there are two types, smoked chilies and cayenne chilies) in to pieces (I don’t use chili powder or pre-cut chili flakes – I get the whole chilies and cut them myself. (I do this to remove a good portion of the seeds so that it’s not TOO spicy.) Anyway – that’s the way I would recommend approaching this (and other teas spiced with chili from me). If you’re still hesitant with the spice – look closely at the tea before you steep it – and remove some of the little slices of chili peppers.
Thanks for the advice! I may remove some of the chili pieces next time – it was just a bit too hot for me but the flavour of the tea was so lovely!
yeah – I often get comments about the opposite – that it’s not spicy enough – so with this one in particular, I remember thinking, if I’m gonna call it “picante” – it better have a good kick of spice. So I cut up more chilies than I typically do. (Example: when I made the Mayan Chocolate Chai – I had several people contact me to tell me that it’s not as spicy as Frank’s version of the same tea – and the reason is that instead of using cayenne powder, I used whole dried cayenne peppers and sliced them up – the cayenne powder is obviously going to be spicier because the powder is intensely spicy – but I didn’t like the idea of using cayenne powder.)
At least with the cut up chili peppers, if someone wants something with less spice, they can see the little pieces of chili and remove some of them. (Just be sure to wash your hands after you handle those chili peppers – don’t touch your eyes!)