This is an excellent chai!
Obviously, as others have said, the base makes a huge difference.
At first, the dry leaf smelled quite strongly of ginger…while I like it a lot, my wife and I were a little concerned it would be overpowering.
The aroma of the leaves after the first steep (when I focused away from the spices) was just like chocolate, and also some kind of grain… I think barley or buckwheat.
But with the whole combination, it really smelled just like Lebkuchen. If you haven’t had Lebkuchen, you are missing out. My wife is from Germany, and she thought of this too… she thought it smelled like some kind of Christmas candy she would eat every year.
Contrary to our concern about the ginger being overpowering, this was not the case at all. It was a very delicious, balanced chai, and remained strong for 2-3 steepings.
The leaves were beautifully long, dark, and continued to look nice after every steep… they invited me to just keep steeping (all western style brewing) several cups after the tea started being weak. (We probably steeped it 5-6 times, even though the last three weren’t as good, I just couldn’t bring myself to dump the leaves out, which is unusual for me).
