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So I wanted to try a less complicated chai after trying the spiced apple chai. This tea bag smelled like a carrot cake. One of the really nice ones with lots of yummy spices. I put one tea bag in a cup and microwaved for two minutes then steeped for three.

The taste was more bitter than spicy. Milk definitely made it better, but when I added honey, it was kind of like drinking spice cake.

I kind of forgot to time this for green tea. So, what I have is very raspberry like. I like it.

So I tried this with milk and honey. I started off with just milk, say a tablespoon or so. I could still smell the vanilla, but the woody taste was still there. Adding the honey seemed to overpower the vanilla smell again, but it also completely covered the woodsy flavor. With both the milk and the honey, the entire taste mellowed into this slightly unsweetened caramel flavor with just a hint of vanilla in the aftertaste. I think I finally found how I want to drink this tea. I was also thinking I might try blending this will the blood orange, but that is for another day.

This never starts getting old. Yummy!

I used two tsps as suggested. The smell of the raw tea is something like dark chocolate. So imagine my surprise when I taste it for the first time. It was kind of like bitter, raw cabbage. Some honey helped, but this is nothing like any bagged chamomile I’ve ever drank. I tried milk as well, but the milk and the taste of green vegetation turned my stomach.

I really want to like this, and I suppose I need to try it with less chamomile, or maybe blend it with something else.

The experiment continues.

The smell of the raw (is that appropriate?) tea is very lemon but in a sweet sort of way. I used the boil the water then wait 2 minutes to approximate 180F, and then steeped for three minutes for 1 tsp of tea. The tea really unfurled, but I wasn’t seeing much of a color to the tea itself.

The tea smells less lemony and a little more like cut grass. While not unpleasant, it is not a very strong smell. At first, the taste is lemon, then just hot water at the end. Nice, but not really what I’m looking for. There is this ephemeral taste on the back end that get maybe every other sip that I guess is the green tea.

That taste is getting stronger the deeper into the cup I go and the lemon is lingering more in the aftertaste. I’m still not sure I completely like this tea. It’s good, but I think I should try this iced. I bet it’s really quite refreshing iced.

Oh, wow, I think I finally hit the green tea. That’s interesting. Slightly bitter but without the astringency I normally associate with bitter tea. Not sure if I like this flavor. It isn’t bad or horrifying. I certainly like it fine, just not sure if I want to pay for “like it fine.”

Decided to brew this in my three cup pot. Not really liking the mesh strainer in this thing. It’s kind of hard to clean. But, 4 tsp. of tea made for a wonderful pot. My sinus headache is almost gone, and I feel so much better. Definitely going to have to get the bigger ingenuitea and put this on my must have list.

I like this so much I decided to try it in my larger, three cup pot. So three heaping tsps, boiling water, and a five minutes steep (Hoping to get another infusion if I steep this for less time). Lovely red color. Lovely taste as swell. This is definitely going to stay on the shelve, unless I find something better.

So I tried brewing this with 1 heaping tsp instead of 2 like the directions suggest. Much milder. I didn’t taste the apple this particular time, and there was a bitterness that went away after I added some milk, but it tasted much better than last time. I don’t think this is going to be my favorite. I still need to do some experimenting :D.

Even with milk and honey I am having a problem with this tea. There is an underlying bitterness that I find distasteful. I don’t usually have a problem with bitter citrus flavors, but this time I do. I’m going to adjust my steeping time to see if that helps.