This is another one I was hoping would be in the box. Caramel! Vanilla! Those are words to get me interested in many things indeed. But then the chai bit… I’m not a chai fan. Actually I’m beginning to wonder if it’s starting to look like I don’t like anything at all. I do like plenty of stuff, I swear! It just seems like I have a tendency to dislike many things that others like.
So yeah, chai. Not a huge fan of that, but due to the whole caramel or vanilla business, I was dithering about giving it a go anyway. As is quite normal for me, by the time I decided I was brave enough, it was gone.
Second chance, though. Now to see if I’m missing out hugely or if I had a lucky escape.
The leaves were teensy tiny. The pot will be easy to clean out because most of them landed in the strainer anyway and can be tipped straight in the bin.
As it is a chai, I thought it would be suitable to serve it with milk, and because it was harder than expected to pour equal amounts of milk in the two cups (sharing this with the boyfriend), it turned into rather a lot of milk. Since it’s chai, though, and these often seem to get steeped in warm milk, I didn’t think it mattered.
It smells sweet, but spicy. Very ginger-y to my nose. We’ve been around the ginger-issue before, haven’t we? Apart from some generic sweetness, I can’t really tell whether it’s caramel or vanilla or both or neither. It’s just sweet and it’s not sugar.
Due to the milk, it’s quite lukewarm, and I have to say that the primary flavour I’m getting here is that prickly ginger again. Oh and milk. It may be because I used too much milk and it got too cold really, but I can’t really find much of other flavours. A bit of cinnamon at the bottom maybe, but I’m unable to spot anything else.
As chais go, though, I’ve definitely had worse. I don’t find it super-spicy-offensive, apart from the ginger, which I could have lived without, but it’s drinkable. I wonder if the fact that I can’t find very many spice flavours in it is actually to my advantage.
Yeah, now that I’ve tried it, it’s probably for the best that I took so long to gather up the courage.
