Trying this today using the Samovar stovetop method with Kusmi Chocolate as the extra black tea.
This is a creamy, chocolatey, spicy, comforting drink. The spice is just enough to make it known this is chai, and I’m getting a lot of chocolate taste (the use of the Kusmi as the extra black tea with chocolate chais has been extremely successful, and I heartily recommend using a chocolate flavored black tea for the extra black if you’re following the Samovar method with a chocolate chai).
Cheesecake, not so much, and I would have thought perhaps that was because I’d added the Kusmi, but then I read the notes here and it seems to be a common observation about this tea. There is a sort of creaminess to the flavor that accentuates the normal milky creaminess with chais prepared this way, and I’m taking that to be the cheesecake flavor. There’s not a piquancy to it that actual cheesecake has. It’s more creamy than cheesy.
I have one more 52 teas chocolate chai in my stash and I’ll be interested to see what the difference is in flavor between that one and this. I can say now that I prefer the spicy yet not blisteringly spiciness of this mixture to the Mayan Chocolate Chai for most purposes, though there are times when the Mayan seems like it would be the only thing that would hit the spot.
