Pancake Breakfast Black Tea

dry – smells like butter and syrup
while brewing – that bready note comes in and really does remind me of pancakes on the griddle :-)
steeped – gorgeous color like dark maple syrup, and still smells like pancakes! Can smell the black tea base too. Surprisingly, I’m getting a bit of bitterness like it’s overbrewed at only 3 min :( It does remind me a bit of the crispy edges of a slightly overdone pancake. I added 1/4 tsp pure maple syrup, which toned down the bitter note, but overshadowed the flavors a bit. Then I added 1tsp milk which seemed to smooth things out.
I will have to try less time/lower temp and see what that does. Overall it’s not a bad morning cuppa and I think I’ll grow to love it.

So happy that Frank decided to reblend this one. Super excited to get my hands on a pack of this tea.

The dry tea is very strongly maple syrup. I did get a bit of an alcohol smell, like alcohol swab. But I had previously read some posts and comments on this and other 52 teas blends, and this seems to be the norm. Alcohol is used to help perfuse flavours in the blends.

After brewing, the tea mostly just smelled like a black tea. But as is started to cool I got a delicious pankcake and maple syrup smell.

The tea tastes like black tea with a base of sweet, slightly buttery maple syrup. There may be notes of a pastry or cake type base. I would definitely say it does taste like a pancake breakfast, but overall the taste is very light.

It tastes more and more pancake as it cools.

I only brewed this for 2 minutes, as is my norm for most black teas. I see that many other people brewed for 3 minutes or longer. I will try that next time to see if it brings out more flavour.

Alysha was kind enough to send me some of this tea.

Dry, it smelled mostly of black tea, with hints of a mapley nature. Once brewed the maple notes stand out more, as does a buttery aspect.

Taste-wise, I pick up a stronger black tea aspect than the smell would point to, which is interesting. Luckily it isn’t bitter! That combined with the subtle buttery flavors as well as the light maple notes makes for a pretty good breakfast tea. I don’t think I’m getting a big pancake vibe, as the aspects are a little too subtle to combine that way, but it is tasty. It’s slightly sweet and surprisingly smooth.

Overall, I’m glad I got to try this one. I’m also glad I still have enough for two more cups! Might have some for “breakfast” tomorrow.

NOTE: I like this one better cooled off a bit – the buttery aspects come through a bit stronger that way. When it’s too hot, all I get is black tea.

One more on this day, because were had missed a day earlier.

I knew this one would be in here. It has been so popular and so raved about that there was just no way it could not be in here. Welcome to Bizarroland.

In spite of all the ravings about it, I have only had a small fleeting interest in it myself, and I’ve always got over it fairly quickly again. I just prefer fruit blends, and while I think it’s all sorts of fun that these blends are being made, I’m not really that interested in purchasing them. Whenever I’ve seen someone post about this blend, it has always inspired me to want pancakes, but only as a food, not as a beverage.

Now I get a chance to try it anyway, though, so here we go.

In our house we always have pancakes on saturday mornings, so it feels really weird for me to try this one on a wednesday evening… I tried to make the boyfriend guess what it could be, but when I told him that he wasn’t think bizarre enough with his guesses of caramel (although he’s close to something there), he got too bizarre. Frank, please don’t ever make a blend flavoured with iguana steak and electrocuted marshmallows.

He was right about it smelling caramel-y. Knowing that it’s maple syrup, I can recognise it as such, but if I hadn’t known, caramel would have been my guess as well. I can also pick up some notes of warm butter, but not really the actual pancake.

The flavour has an initial burst of warm butter as well, followed by tea and something batter-y side by side. The batter-y note has that sort of flour-y texture to it like real batter, so while I wouldn’t say I’m finding it spot on pancake, it’s definitely something in that direction. The maple syrup shows up on the swallow and in the aftertaste and while it tastes more like regular caramel than maple syrup to me, it does leave that same sort of feeling in the mouth afterwards that maple syrup does. A bit like it’s opening the palate a little bit. Regular caramel doesn’t give me that sensation.

I’m finding it a quite pleasant blend. It’s still not one where I will join the hordes in singing its praises, the horde is doing that quite well without me, but I am rather surprised to find myself enjoying the cup. It’s very well done, but me, I prefer something fruity and I still prefer to have my pancakes as solid food.

(Had I had more than just for one pot, I would probably have tried mixing it with my apple flavoured black, since we prefer our pancakes with apple chunks in. I can’t test that, though.)

Aw man, another let down. Obviously I’m in the minority here, but I didn’t really dig this one. It’s my second tea from 52teas and the first one was rather disappointing too (caramel pumpkin cheesecake). There could be a few reasons for this:

1) I expect miracles. With dessert teas I mean. I expect it is both realistic and possible for someone to bottle up the pure essence of pancakes and syrup (or cookies, pie, brownies, cake, etc) and make a tea out of it.
2) I love sweets so much that no pale liquid imitation will ever satisfy me.
3) I had high hopes for this therefore I set myself up for disappointment.
4) I’m such a tea newb that I still can’t properly pinpoint different tasting notes in a cup of tea.

I really thought it would be more mapley. I can’t taste any maple at all!!
It doesn’t taste like anything to me, just a slightly sweet blend of black tea with a flavour I cannot put my finger on. I find Oh Canada by Davidstea tastes more like pancakes and syrup to me and I don’t even love that one on account of the rooibos.

I did find this more flavourful as it cooled down, but who wants to drink lukewarm tea for breakfast??

I am glad I got to try it, I still have some for a couple more cups so perhaps as my tea tastes mature I will be able to appreciate the subtlety in this. Thanks to Jackie T for the swap!!

EDIT March 30/13

So I had about 3 big spoonfuls of this left, decided just to throw it all in the strainer of one of my Davidstea Perfect Mugs and just go all the way. I figured if I don’t get any pancake flavour out of this massive quantity of tea then I’m not crazy. It was strong. I left it like 5 minutes and it was a lot of tea. Honestly I was just trying to get rid of it, so I guess that makes this a sipdown.

If I concentrate really hard, tongue out, nose wrinkled, eyes squinched shut I can ALMOST taste something vaguely resembling a pancake. But if you put that tea in front of me, even perfectly brewed and said “tell me what flavour this is”, I wouldn’t be able to. I’m still really just getting some sort of unrecognizable flavoured black tea.

I still have some left for a second (less strong) steep later, and will do so, but it wasn’t even worth drinking to me, I’m going out and I thought to myself “Self, do you want to finish drinking this potent tea that you don’t even enjoy right before you leave the house and then have to pee the whole time you’re gone??” (TMI perhaps)… the answer, anyway, was no.

I don’t even notice any maple in this, maybe it if were super mapley I’d be more on board. Ah well, that’s what swaps are for, right!? I have to lower my rating, because I feel I’ve tried enough delicious and spot-on flavoured teas since originally drinking this almost a month ago to fairly rate it lower, based on my own tastes.

A Steepster regular, I’ve long been exposed to rave reviews of 52teas blends. I’m just getting to taste some of them myself. To be honest, I prefer Della Terra blends, so far, but I’m keeping an open mind and giving each new-to-me blend a blank slate. I know everyone’s tastes are different, but it’s so, so, so hard not to feel at least a little disappointed when I can’t share in everyone’s enthusiasm. This, I feel, is the curse of reading tasting notes and buying into the hype. Not that I’ll stop doing either, of course, so I’m just resigning myself to it. =)

Here, the dry leaf smells very sweet. Blindfolded, I likely would have guessed maple syrup, but not pancakes. It is instinct for me to stick my nose in the packet, and I really have to stop doing this. It creates a false notion of how the tea is supposed to smell and taste. For example, when I put a teaspoon into my infuser and smelled that, the maple fragrance was there but a lot less prominent—more modest and more realistic. Had I stuck with that, I would’ve been better prepared for what, in the end, was not a very bold flavour. The brewed tea muted the maple fragrance even further, and smelled mostly like black tea to me.

The flavour is quite accurate, just not very strong. There is a good balance of black tea, maple, and pancakes here (like others, I’ve no idea how 52teas managed to capture that, but there you have it). Perhaps I didn’t use enough leaf? I can try some more next time, I just wanted to avoid the 52teas black tea blend curse of bitterness (at which I was successful, by the way). I have also read, several times, that 52teas blends need to be left alone for a bit and are much more flavourful after some time. The only thing is that I don’t know how long I am supposed to wait. It has been about two months, is that enough?

I do love the tea, but I was expecting to be in love with it. Perhaps that’ll come, in time, but it’s okay if it doesn’t. I am looking forward to playing with the preparation in the future; maybe there’s another way that I will find yummier.

Tea amount: 1 tsp/~4.75g
Water amount: 6oz/~175mL
Additives: 1 tsp maple syrup

Aside: I got to use my new spill-proof, smaller-than-16oz mug! It’s this one, in case you’re interested: http://oxo.com/p-1133-single-serve-liquiseal-travel-mug.aspx. I am a little bit annoyed with myself: I was so excited to find a mug close in size to what I wanted (6-8oz) that I didn’t consider anything else, like how frustrating that lid will be to clean when the tea has milk in it. Oh well, I’ll just have to make sure I don’t get lazy and at least soak it in hot water straightaway. Other than that little niggle, it’s pretty much perfect.

Wow! This is so interesting! I’ve never tasted anything like it before (and yes, I have had and love pancakes).

I definitely get the correlation to pancakes. There’s a buttery bread taste to the tea, which I guess is what I find so interesting. It’s strange to drink tea and taste buttered bread. And as Jenn mentioned in her review, this tea is much more complex than expected. It’s really amazing!

The aroma of the dry leaves has a very strong maple scent, but unfortunately this doesn’t translate into the brewed tea as much as I would like. It’s also quite tannic, so I added some milk.

Other tea drinkers here on Steepster seem to have no problem picking out the maple notes, so maybe it’s just me. Also, I tend to think of maple syrup as the sugar-loaded Aunt Jemima kind. Perhaps others are more accustomed to pure maple syrups, which this blend might be more representative of. I’ll add a little sweetener the next time I brew it and see if that helps me recognize the maple notes better.

It’s definitely a very good tea, and I’m sure no one else but 52teas could create such a unique, dare I say magical, blend! It’s early, so please excuse my criticism. Overall, I think this tea is fantastic! I will happily add it to my morning routine.

With over 50 tasting notes, fantastic reviews, and most ratings in the high 90s with quite a few 100s, I really hope this makes it into the permanent collection!

Backlog from this morning
Jackie T very generously gave a sample of this. I’ve been wanting to try it, but didnt want to buy it as I don’t like pancakes in general. But for some reason the tea sounds very appealing.
Unfortunately, I didn’t like it much. I couldn’t really taste anything out of it. But I do have a bit of a cold, so maybe that’s the culprit. I still have a bit left of my sample so I’ll try the rest when I’m cold free.

Someone make me pancakes. #patheticface