I am feeling indulgent tonight, so I had a big mug of this while eating cherry cheesecake bread pudding. Take that, heat wave! This is from my swap with Will Work For Tea and the reason we swapped in the first place: she had a bunch to unload, and I love peppery chais so it was a match made in heaven!
I’ve had a few coconut chais before, but this one is quite different. First off, it doesn’t have any other “Asian” flavor components (lemongrass, galangal, etc) but a more classic Indian spice base. The spices are strong, as you can tell just by looking at the tea: whole cloves, big chunks of pepper and other spices. Yum! It brews up quite bold and peppery, with lots of different spice “layers.” There’s warmth from the cinnamon and ginger, heat from the pepper, a spicy quality from the nutmeg, and that distinctive tongue-tingling flavor that comes from cloves and cardamom. The coconut here is mostly flavoring (no actual coconut pieces) and it’s an odd result: it kind of tastes like it was steeped in coconut water! It’s not overpoweringly coconutty or tropical, more homey and comforting like coconut cream pie. A nice departure from my usual chais, but bold enough that this could be a regular in my cupboard!
