I feel bad for not having tried this one until today. It’s been waiting hopefully in my desk drawer for a while, but I’ve just never got around to picking it up. Still, better late than never! I used 1 tsp of leaf for today’s cup, and gave it 4 minutes in boiling water. The resulting liquor is a medium golden brown. I’m stuck by how pretty the dry leaf is – a mixture of black, twisty Keemun leaves, red safflowers, and golden-yellow hops.
The first thing to say about the taste is that I’m really impressed. There’s a strong initial hit of fruitiness, which I initially pegged as raspberry rather than rhubarb. Then comes the almost bittersweet, slightly floral complexity of the hops, rounded off beautifully by a smooth vanilla creaminess at the end of the sip. Although I thought raspberry at first, successive sips proved to me that this is actually rhubarb – it tastes sweet and almost stewed to me, like pie filling. Totally yum. It does seem to get a little bitter as it cools, but I can overlook that because it’s just so tasty.
I might try this cold-brewed towards the end of the week.
