Buttered Popcorn

Okie dokie, well, given my penchant for unusual tea flavors (with the exception of peanut butter flavored teas… sorry, still not going for it), you know I had to order this one.

And … OMG it is so good. I added some agave nectar which make the popcorn taste more like kettle corn but that’s OK because I LOVE KETTLE CORN!

It tastes popcorn-y and buttery and the black tea is robust and a little astringent. I really like this one a lot!

When I first brewed this up, I definitely got quite a buttery aroma from it. Unfortunately, I didn’t try it at all hot; I am drinking it cold because I accidentally took a rather long nap. Either way, I’m not finding it to taste at all like buttered popcorn, but it does taste like a decent black tea; a bit malty and flavourful. As in, one I’d drink straight, although it does have some astringency. I’m having a tough time locating the flavouring at all, really. Perhaps I’ll have better luck when I try the second cup of it. Not too worried though – this was just a tea I wanted to try out of curiousity (add another tick in that 52teas column!), so thanks CHAroma for indulging me!

Well, I guess the first day of the 2012 12 Teas of Christmas is as good a day as any to finish up the last of my samples from the 2011 batch! I must admit, I would prefer to drink the cotton candy with the rest of you – this one scares the pants off me. Steeped, this smells BITTER. Aggressively so, like all the tannins in the world have joined together in my cup to attack my taste buds and make me frown. I am coaching myself that it is okay to try it..just take a sip..it’s only tea, it can’t hurt you!

Underneath the bitter malty death smell, I get a hint of something sweet and cinnamon-y, almost like snickerdoodles. Weiiiird. First sips are surprising yet again. I’m not getting any bitterness at all, but I still get the sweetness I was briefly smelling earlier. There is a bit of an oil slick on the top of my cup that’s freaking me out and I can feel the bitterness accumulating as the cup cools and as I continue sipping, but there is no popcorn or butter anywhere to be found.

For this one, I’ll definitely chalk it up to being an old sample and leave off the rating. There’s not really any flavour here to rate anyway, other than (not my fave kind of) black tea. I might toss the last bit of my sample and just call it a day on this one. The 12 Teas were a heck of a ride. While 52Teas are rarely my favourite blends, a few of them were absolutely spectacular and made up for the rest. Who knows, maybe next year I’ll join in again? :)

First of all, let me just say what a totally weird concept this is for me. In Denmark, popcorn are served with salt. The end. No butter, no cheese, no caramel, no chocolate, no spinach, no coffee, no fruit, no curry, no fairy wing dust or whatever else whacky popcorn additions you lot can think up. No nothing. Just salt. Therefore, because it’s so utterly bizarre to me, I admit I’m wary.

I’m glad the pouches are so small here. They are just the right size for the small pot, and that means a small cup for me and a small cup for the boyfriend. So if I strongly dislike it, I don’t have a lot to go through.

Right, be positive, me.

In spite of the fact that I find this fairly bizarre, I do actually think it smells quite nice. It definitely smells like butter, but I’m not sure about the popcorn. I don’t really know how buttered popcorn actually smells, do I, so I don’t know exactly how drowned in grease you get them. But yeah, butter and also something sweet. I’m reminded more of jelly beans than of popcorn actually. (Oh wait a minute… I know there’s a buttered popcorn flavoured jelly bean. I wonder if I’ve ever tasted that one or if I avoided it based on bizarreness…)

Okay, the tea definitely tastes like popcorn. Slightly singed popcorn perhaps, but defintiely popcorn. How… odd. I get butter in the aftertaste too, not really a flavour of butter, but more the way the mouth feels having just eaten something with real butter on it.

This is erm… Well, to be completely honest, it’s exactly as weird and bizarre as I had expected it to be, but not as unpleasant as I had feared. It’s not really something for me, this, but it could also be a lot worse.

Day 1 of the 12 teas of Christmas…

SURPRISE! Wasn’t expecting this! And then I looked up the date it was made and realized it was from November 2010 (but after the 2010 12 Teas of Christmas had already been finalized) I was hoping Frank would do it this way (why yes, I have given this too much thought) because otherwise a lot of teas could be excluded from the final list, if you only include teas from January – October.

Anyway, on to the tea! I’m trying to identify what the tea is before I look at the label, just to see if I can. When I first opened this pouch I could smell…fruity. But it also smelled familiar somehow. I eventually gave up and pulled the label out, and realized I was likely smelling the butter smell from other blends (Pancake breakfast, etc). Don’t know why the fruit essence came to mind, but it didn’t show up in the smell of the steeped tea.

I steeped up about 2 tsp. of this in my Breville (500 ml water) at the below parameters. The smell of the steeped liquor was BUTTER. Like in your face, without a doubt butter. During the sip the butter predominates, and in the aftertaste the popcorn makes itself known. I’m drinking this without additives (although I did try salt and some honey to bring out the flavors to the previous cup, but it hurt rather than helped in the end) and I think the taste is really accurate. It’s definitely a black tea, and the flavoring is in perfect balance with it.

I also have to admit I’m a little surprised at myself – I mean, I like savory teas, but I’ve never really gone for the idea of a savory flavored blend. I just assumed it would be not to my tastes. But it’s really, really good! And I came on to Steepster after it was produced last year so I would have never gotten a chance to taste this if I hadn’t gotten the sampler – so yay for new experiences!

This is crazy, it actually tastes buttery. The dry leaves smell absolutely AMAZING! The finished product tastes great as well. I found this one to be disturbingly similar to the real deal. Very cool!

Backlogging from the first day of Christmas of 52teas…

So, after a few incredibly stressful days of trying to make sure my dog and the new puppy played nice, came the time to open my first of the 12 Christmas teas! I was a wreck, a bundle of nerves, stress and worries making sure that the doggy situation would work out OK for my Sencha and new little Mona.

I was really excited when I saw that it was buttered popcorn. I had always been really curious about this blend. I love kettle corn, and figured that sweetened it must taste just like it!

When I first opened it and sniffed it, I had no idea what it was. It smelled sweet and almost fruity. I am glad to see that I am not the only one who got this from this tea. When I finally looked at the label it suddenly smelled just like popcorn! Interesting indeed.

While I brewed it, the smell continued to be popcorn. I was excited to try it! So, first sip, no sweetener, very popcorn. It tasted just like unsalted movie theater popcorn, or rather it tasted like movie theaters smell! My boyfriend works in the administrative department of a movie theater so this smell is very familiar to me. I liked it, not loved it.

Then I sweetened it. Surely enough, it resembled Kettle Corn. Strangely, this wasn’t a good thing for me. It was this that made me realize that popcorn is definitely meant to be eaten, not drunk. I believe that it is the saltiness factor of popcorn that makes this not a good tea flavor for me.

To sum it up, this really does taste like popcorn, but I don’t like flavors that should be salty (in my opinion) in my tea. Many people really like it, and I can understand why! I am really happy I got to try it, but I will definitely not be ordering it! It was a fun little adventure! : )

Now, most people wouldn’t think of popcorn as either a tea flavoring or as a Thanksgiving thing. Luckily, Frank thought of it as the first, and I’ve always had popcorn at some point over the Thanksgiving hols, ever since watching Charlie Brown and Snoopy making their Thanksgiving feast.

The smell reminds me of the Buttered Cinnamon Raisin Toast tea…rich and buttery. The taste is also rich and buttery…the movie popcorn butter type of buttery. Almost like you’ve got a big mouthful of movie popcorn in your mouth and wash it down with hot tea (though the actual popcorn taste is more of an aftertaste to me). The black tea base is bold and stands up well to the flavorings.

And if you like kettle corn, add agave nectar like LiberTEAS did. NOM!!! The flavors aren’t masked at all by the nectar, and that touch of sweetness gives it this amazing kettle corn taste. I must get some caramel syrup to try with it…caramel corn!!

YUMMY…thanks Liberteas!
I have been wanting to try this one for a while and I am so thankful for my Sororitea Sister!!!!

This is reminiscent of Frank’s “toast” tea that I adore. This has a nice sturdy base with a bit of buttery smoothness! I’m really enjoying it! I really like the toasted notes on the popcorn :)

This is the last tea from the 12 teas of Christmas that I hadn’t tried.

I didn’t think I was going to like this, because I cannot stand that popcorn flavored jelly bean. But it is so very different because the butter here is not disgusting.

It is a savory tea, that’s for sure. It’s a lot like pancake breakfast, but I think even more buttery. The popcorn taste isn’t nasty at all. It’s like a salty aftertaste, with more of a savory taste from the grain. I like it.

We’ll see if it’s enough of a like to spring for some more.

Another tea out of the 12 Days of X-mas sampler (I’ve given up trying them in any sort of order). I was expecting something a little more salty and buttery with this tea, but the result tasted more like kettle corn – which is fine by me although it feels a bit like false advertizing. ;) The black tea tea base comes across as rather astringent in this blend for some reason (which is a bit odd as I’m pretty sure Frank uses the same base for all his black teas, and it’s never really bothered me before) and I found it sort of distracts for the popcorn flavours.

Hmm, not bad, but not my fav either.

Vegan friendly :)
this is the tea equivalent of the Jelly Belly Jelly Bean World of Buttered popcorn-just in Tea ;)
it nicely combines a smooth black tea with buttery popcorn. Not too weird and nice to drink. It’s more subtle, which is good, because then the flavors might get weird…maybe it’s like the black tea equivalent of genmai cha ?..but without the history behind it…and that slight seaweed taste. It’s nice having the buttery-toasty aroma come at you while you are sipping. fun, different
Anyway, I like it….
ok, headed to Times Square on a Christmas Eve to work :/

This tea is pretty good but I have to remind myself of this because I sometimes can’t get myself past the idea of this tea. It is very close to actual buttered popcorn and is quite good with a bit of cane sugar.

Holy crap. 6 pouches of tea from Frank came yesterday (didn’t get the mail in til this morning). And I still have one more coming! Luckily 1 is for a friend… wait. Who am I kidding? 6 pouches is not much better than 7 lol.

I was so excited when Frank made a 3rd of my ideas come to fruition even though I was thinking using a Chinese sencha for a flavored and Chinese ode to gen mai cha. But I can definitely see this as a black tea so it’s all good.

When I open the package I can definitely tell there are at least 2 different black teas in the base. I just wish I knew what the were. But it smells… almost fruity?

Based on the steeping parameters I would have thought this would have been darker than dark, but it’s almost caramely… it even has that milky quality to it. The taste is oddly caramely too… I’m not going to rate this til I figure out what went wrong. I do know the base needs a bit of lapsang souchong and it needs salt. Several of Frank’s teas need salt. I wish he’d put it in for us.

I think the appeal of this lies quite simply on how much you want to taste popcorn in tea form. The popcorn taste is impressively spot-on and tasty (and becomes kettle corn if you sweeten it, yum!) but personally I think I’d rather just eat popcorn. Nonetheless, these odd tea flavors from 52teas are a lot of fun to sample, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of tea!

Well after reading all the reviews I am glad to see that I wasn’t the only one who thought this tea smelled fruity which is kinda of weird… I sweetened this because that is what I do with all my teas, I was not sure how it was going to turn out but it was pretty pleasant. This is one of the teas that I wanted to try but not buy such a large amount. It does taste like popcorn a bit smokey almost. I get just a hint of butter at the end. I think I may have steeped a bit to long though because the black tea is pretty astringent. I am really glad to try it but it wouldn’t have been something that I would keep around. Nice job though Frank for getting the flavors correct.

Another old blend that’s lost its added flavor. Buttery movie theatre popcorn is my favorite food, so I know its taste well. But at least the black tea base is still yummy!

First Try! (with salt and cooler brew temp)

How I got my brew on…
Brew amount: 1 level teaspoon to approx. 8 oz. of water
Brew temp: 200°f (definitely getting a new kettle after the holidays have passed)
Brew length: Approx. 5 minutes (forgot to set the timer but kept an eye on the clock)
Added: A pinch of salt, after first sip

Smells like…
In the bag: Nothing at all. I opened the bag, sniffed, and smelled nada. Very strange.
In the cup: A faint buttery note but no popcorn :(

Tastes like:
Without salt: Black tea with a far-away whisper of butter.
With salt: Holy cow. Butter galore. A little too much butter for my taste. Slightly fruity black tea base.
Aftertaste: Faint (in this case I mean almost non-existent) popcorn

Second Try! (with sugar, hotter brew temp)

How I got my brew on…
Brew amount: 1 heaping teaspoon to 8 oz. water
Brew temp: 210°f (took a lot of work to get my poor kettle to boil water to this temp!)
Brew length: 5 minutes
Added: Sugar and a pinch of salt.

Smells like…
Corn pops cereal! Yummy.

Tastes like…
With sugar: Black tea with a hint of butter. No popcorn to be found.
With sugar and a pinch of salt: Black tea with a hint of salty butter.
Aftertaste: Salt and butter, with a hint of popcorn. Wow. Finally! :D

Note:
The color was light and somewhat yellow for a black tea. Does this have something to do with flavorings? Or perhaps the blend of black teas used?

Overall…
A nice novelty but not one that I would drink on a regular basis and I’m not sure I’ll keep this one around.