Cinnamon Swirl Bread

Thank you Janet for this sample of your new tea creation!

Everybody knows that I’m a Puerh Nerd and proud of it!
A Puerh Nerd is a Tea Nerd that smells like dirt! (That’s a joke!)

It was another Georgeous Morning on the Frontrange today! Birds singing and traffic reports to beware of SUN GLARE (which I think is amusing since my home in California wasn’t as close to the sun as living in the Rocky Mountains!).

Cinnamon Swirl Bread sounded like a festive and fresh beginning to my day.
Right when I was setting up my teapot, I almost missed the first ingredient ‘2008 loose Puerh’, thinking the tea had a black tea base. (Good thing I read the label more carefully!)

Janet ‘only’ uses organic, fair-trade ingredients, listing them on the package. The label explained timing, how to do multiple steeps and suggested 5 (or more) making this a great tea value.

Could the flavor really deliver though? I’ve tried so many blended Puerh’s that get it wrong!

A lot of thought went into the ingredients. I was confident that the puerh, cocoa nibs and cinnamon would do well through multiple steeping, but the black tea was also hearty and didn’t become weak through 40 ounces of testing.

Taste:
Janet created a delicious cinnamon bakery bread tea, no doubt about it!

The cinnamon isn’t sour or overdone! The tea doesn’t taste like chai or cinnamon tea, it’s what it says…bread! KUDO’s!

(I added some more sweetener and milk to make my tea even richer but you wouldn’t have to…)

Would order this tea? Absolutely! It’s one that I’d play around with even, adding a little ginger now and then, or orange. It’s what I do.

The body is smooth, rich and substantial because of the puerh.

Ah that word came up didn’t it, Puerh! What about that?

If you’re a puerh lover and want a punch of puerh flavor, forget it. You can’t really taste the puerh. It’s lending body and richness to this blend. It’s one of those wheat-bread puerh’s.

Anyone fearful of puerh, who might have pulled back from trying this blend anticipating an earthy or fishy taste is safe!

You can’t taste the Puerh, but you get all the health benefits!

This tea is a winner from sTEApShoppe!

Thank you so much Allie for being so stealth and checking my shopping list to send this extra in our swap. :D

I’ve been wanting to try this one for a little while, after I saw a few awesome reviews and someone mentioning the similarity to Brioche. Yum!

The scent was amazing dry and still pretty awesome steeped. There is an unfamiliar scent there which I can only assume is the pu’erh (which actually kind of smells like when you’ve just burned the bottom of still baking cinnamon buns). I’ve been wanting to explore pu’erhs but I’m a little wary after the disaster that was Aloha Pu’erh. Perhaps this will be a good way to break into that territory. Some pu’erh and some black here, yes, but baby steps.

This really does taste just like a cinnamon bun, with that little bit of burnt edge on the bottom. I am quite enjoying this one. Thanks Allie!

Finally got my Steap Shoppe order sorted, turns out my package was sent out over 2 weeks ago 2-day Priority and USPS really dropped the ball (it’d been sitting in a sorting facility right here in town all this time, forgotten somehow despite SS springing for tracking and insurance!). Within 15 hours of contacting USPS about it it was delivered to my door, indicating it really was just sort of forgotten and languishing. Glad it’s resolved and I must say Steap Shoppe’s customer service when I asked them about it was excellent and helped me resolve the matter immediately.

This is quite an indulgence, which I guess is to be expected given all the sweet treat stuff in it—chocolate nibs, agave, maple crystals, vanilla, cinnamon—but it goes beyond the sweetness. Along with a wonderful subtly earthy aroma dry, there is (as many Steepsters have already enthused!) an uncanny bread-y quality, perhaps from the pu erh, in everything from the dry scent to the end of the swallow. It really does take the place of one’s morning cinnamon swirl toast like that. Not hard at all to see why it’s such a favorite. In the colder months especially I could definitely see making this a regular breakfast tea.

Thanks to Dexter3657 for a sample of this!

So far I’m on my 3rd steep (dare I try a 4th?), and it’s nearly as flavorful as the first, it’s actually bit creamier. I was a bit worried, this being a Pu Erh, but it’s actually really nice! I don’t think it would make me get a brick or plain Pu Erh or anything, but tasty cinnamon tea with all the benefits of Pu Erh? Yes, please.

A lot of the reviews say this is bready and I’m not sure I’m going “bread” but it definitely evokes a cinnamon pastry.

I’ll definitely need to restock this when I’m out.

BrewTEAlly Sweet kindly sent some of this along as a bonus when I bought a few teas during her stash sale. It’s been on my shopping list for a while, so I was pretty excited to try it a few days ago.

I stuck to package directions (1.5 tsp at 200F for 5 mins) at first and ended up with a nice cinnamon brew reminiscent of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or maybe just cinnamon toast. It really lacked the body that I was expecting from a bready tea that has so often been compared to American Tea Room’s Brioche. It held up to a second steep, but still felt thin.

I must say that the dry leaf of this tea would definitely not win in a beauty contest. It reminds me a bit of pine needles and dirt that have been stuck together by tree sap… but it seems so promising that I don’t really care. The tea smells like sweet cinnamon bread, but with a fishy background. Ugh, I wish puerh wouldn’t smell like this!

Sipping… I’m happy to not be tasting a whole lot of puerh, but a lovely & sweet cinnamon bread instead! The cinnamon is not overwhelming, thankfully, but adds such a nice layer of sweetness. There is definitely a bread character to the tea that I really enjoy. There is almost a yeasty/sourdough-like quality to the bread and it seems like it comes out at the end of the sip. I’m very impressed that such flavors can come from a tea blend! Really the only thing that I’m not too crazy about is the fishy scent that lasts throughout the whole cup.

I haven’t yet decided if I’d like to buy more of this tea, but this is the best blend I’ve tried from sTEAp Shoppe yet!

This tea is wonderful. Cinnamon + sweet + pu-erh – who could not love this hearty tea? Real cinnamon flavor – not artificial at all. A great introductory tea for anyone new to Pu-erhs.

This tea has a proud spot in my tea cupboard and it will soon be time for me to reorder.

I had this tea this morning…trying to remember which bag this came from, who the sample was from. Eeek. I didn’t put it away afterward…I left it out to remind me to write a note. So, I think this is from OMGsrlsy.

I love pu erhs, especially in combination with sweet things. Cinnamon is a nice enhancer for such a war and earthy tea. The fact that this tea has pu erh with golden yunnan buds for that bread/malty/grainy feel, I feel the blend really does justice to this tea.

It’s just a delicious combination, and I can see why this one is so popular. I intially thought it was a bit like Almond Indulgence, fro Butiki, but this is richer because of the pu erh in the base, and I think it is unfair to compare one to the other, even though they share some characteristics.

I’m very grateful for the sample. It’s really yummy, and is a great morning tea.

1.5 tablespoons for 375 ml

Thanks to Sil for sharing with me!

I have been making a lot of tea lattes lately and thought this one might hold up well being in a latte form. I was correct! It is absolutely delicious. I used unsweetened almond milk and a touch of sweetener and it is perfect. I only have a small amount left, so I need to make it last. This is still one of my favorite pu’erh blends. :-)