Chocolate Chai

Big thanks to the lovely Darby for this – since Adagio’s international shipping costs are ludicrous, a swap was the only way for me to try their stuff.
I seem to be in the minority, but I really like this, and this is surprising for me seeing as I don’t like chocolate.

RANT BEGINS
You would NOT believe the kind of abuse I get for saying that I don’t like chocolate. Good lord. ‘Oh my god that can’t be true/you’re lying/How is that possible?/Do you mean, ever?/That’s because you haven’t tried the RIGHT one yet!/Are you sure/You’ll change your mind/More for me!/I’m not speaking to you again/We can’t be friends anymore/So, what do you eat then?/But, do you go out and stuff?/Oh my god do you watch TV?

I wish I were joking. I don’t like chocolate. Do you like oysters? I could live on them. There’s no accounting for taste. Now leave me alone.
RANT OVER

This is great because the chocolate is really there to smell more so than to taste. It makes the chai a little bit more bitter than what I’m used to but it’s not a bad thing at all. The base isn’t the strongest and frankly isn’t spicy at all, it’s a mellow chai with just a hint of a woody feel because of the chocolate. I’m really enjoying my cup.

sipdown thanks for sharing this with me terri! the last little bit of your tea. Sadly i don’t get much in the way of chocolate from this but it’s not a bad little chai.

A little something to savor in my Bubble Bath this morning.
Don’t tell Ms. Theresa…

It’s an average chai, nothing special. I prefer the chais from Upton Teas.

One problem I’ve had with all of Adagio’s flavored teas has been that I get a splitting headache after drinking them. I didn’t want to blame the tea, but so far this has happened every single time I’ve tried an Adagio flavored tea and not at all with their non-flavored teas. (It also hasn’t happened with the Golden Moon or Upton Teas flavored blends.) I tried a number of them on my Chicago trip but didn’t log them because I didn’t want to be unfair to the tea. However it seems that I am probably sensitive to the base they use for their flavors. So, I will not be trying any other flavored teas from Adagio.

Dry Smell: Coffee

Wet Smell: Chocolate Coffee.

There is a muted chocolate flavor and very little spice to this. It’s a little weak all around actually, which is a little sad. I would like to try it in maybe some milk or something since it would be possibly nice as a hot chocolate type things. I don’t know though.

Trying to get through some of my older teas before they go bad (especially since I just ordered some holiday samples from Adagio, and another blend).
This isn’t bad, but I don’t think I’d restock it. I get more of a cocoa flavor than chocolate, but I like that. Ginger and cloves, this would be really good in cookie form! I’ll have to make this as a latte.

I decided to get daring today and try something interesting with this. I did about 3/4 tea, 1/4 milk and a bit of Bailey’s coffee creamer. This turned out absolutely delicious.

My last bit of this one. Yay for decupboarding! I do wish there was more chocolate in this. When made with creamer and sugar, it ends up being a gently spicy, nicely creamy tea with a hint of chocolate. And for something with chocolate in the name, I want more than just a hint of chocolate. Still, anything made with lots of sugar and creamer is never going to be bad.

Neither the best chai I’ve ever had, nor the best chocolate-flavored tea. With those statements in mind, it’s not terrible as either one of those things, though I confess that I spent a good deal of time with my face practically inside of the pot as it sat on the stove, just trying to find and lock down any smell of chocolate whatsoever. Adding milk helped.

The flavor is pretty subtle, though. What you’re going to get, mostly, is cinnamon. As chais go this is a pretty mild one; I wouldn’t mind keeping it on-hand to blend, but I’ve had too many good stand-alone chais to be particularly excited by this one…it makes me feel as though it’s missing whatever it would need to give me a good kick (and I feel as though chai has to be able to do that, if the hot milk from the latte isn’t going to put me to sleep instead).

Yeah. The more I sip on it, the more I sort of wish I’d picked something else instead…it’s drinkable but not even remotely special. Boo. I’m laughing a little about the tasting note someone else posted about the tea being like cocoa-dusted pencil wood…that’s pretty accurate, actually.

The loose tea smells incredibly like chocolate on first whiff.
After that, it smells very strongly of cinnamon – I don’t have a lot of fondness for cinnamon to begin with but this smelled more like a christmas candle. I wasn’t sure how that would bode for the drink.
I mixed up a combination of milk and water 50/50 and brought it just to a boil. I added two heaping teaspoons and set the stovetop on low. I let it simmer for 3 minutes and then strained it.
It still smelled pretty strongly of cinnamon.
The taste was pretty good. I just really don’t like how strongly this smells of cinnamon (I’m just going to keep harping on this), but the flavor was surprisingly light on cinnamon. The milk being brought to the high temps is really sweet and mellow. There isn’t any bad aftertaste at all. It’s fairly pleasant but nothing like the Thai Chai which I really enjoyed. And it really has no chocolate taste to speak of.

I got this in the flat rate box I bought from emilie
I brewed this up as a latte on the stove, my home smells fantastic. On first sip I got a soapy taste but after that I could taste all the spices but not the chocolate. The spices really linger on the tongue when the tea is hot.
There was a familiar taste to this tea but I just couldn’t place it and then it came to me, Ginger snaps! Oh how I miss those little round Ginger snaps, I think I’m going to have to buy some now. If without the milk and touch of honey this still tastes like Ginger snaps I’m going to have to add this to my cupboard.

I enjoyed this chai very much. The aroma of the dry leaves is slightly spicy with a chocolate scent. When brewed, the aroma of the tea is enhanced: stronger spiced scent with the hint of chocolate. I tried this in my usual array of chai teas: hot with no additives then sugar and milk one at a time.

Brewed hot without sugar or milk it is enjoyable. There is a spice flavor with a sweet undertone. When sugar is added, it enhances the very slight chocolate flavor that was the undertone and makes it more prevalent. When sugar and milk are added it makes for a delicious creamy, spicy tea, with a suggestion of chocolate.

What makes this tea stand out from the rest of the Adagio Chai teas is not the chocolate, or the natural sweetness along with the spice; it is the fact that the tea is still delicious once it cools. This is a true rarity for me, as I do not like when chai tea cools, I feel the spices become overwhelming and you lose all flavor of the tea. This is not the case with Chocolate Chai, the spices are stronger when cooled, but they are still mellowed by the underlying sweetness of chocolate, which allows the true flavor of the tea to still shine through.

Overall, this is my favorite chai tea. Highly recommended. Definitely going to need to get more.

Cinnamon and spice chocolate taste. Not a very smooth chocolate tho. The steeped aroma isn’t too bad but I’m just not sure about this taste. It reminds me when I was in grade school and used to chew on my pencil…that aftertaste you had…ek…with Cocoa Powder on it…yeah…that’s it…Cocoa Powder flavored pencil wood.

I decided to do something different this morning and try making Tea Oatmeal! ya! So not my typical tea review.

I used this tea as I had just enough to make the oatmeal with a cup for myself. The cup of tea I got out of it I found fell flat. Not much of a chocolate taste and only a little bit of spice to it. I can taste a little bit of ginger and thats it. Looking at the ingredients they only added “chocolate flavoring” booo! Add some real chocolate to it!
I love my chais to be STRONG, this one is not despite doing a strong steeping. With that said, I’m glad I don’t have any of this tea left.

To make the oatmeal, I steeped enough tea to replace the water and boiled the oatmeal in it. As oatmeal it also fell flat too and just tasted slightly bitter. I had to add some cocoa powder and a dash of cinnamon to help it out. I’m not sure if it was the tea that wasn’t good enough or the method. But I guess like cooking with wine, you should cook with a wine you like to drink!

I tried this today with milk and sugar… brewing the western method. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t get over the ‘artificial’-like scent of the chocolate. I really love chocolate, but this scent doesn’t seem right. It usually doesn’t when it is mixed in tea. It is probably the mix of spices and black tea. It tasted good on my tongue. My boyfriend loved it a lot more.

The chocolate note is… interesting. I’m glad I made it with milk and sugar on the stovetop because otherwise I think the tannins would have been overpowering. I think I like it, but I’ll have to have more to be sure.

I am not a fan of this chai. The bitter aroma carries over to the taste. Very little chocolate to speak of. Mostly it consists of cinnamon and mild spices. But not a great blend as you would expect in a chai. I am willing to trade this if anyone is interested.

I had a cup of this at a baby shower over the weekend. It was less chocolatey than I would have expected, given the name, but still quite good. I bet with creamer and sugar it’d be even better!

I’m drinking this mixed with Adagio’s caramel, cream, and honeybush vanilla. They were all sample sizes and I mixed the sample sizes together to get more distance out of each one.

The reason I’m drinking this is because I have the flu, and my taste buds don’t work, so I figured it’s a perfect time to sip through the teas I’m not super fond of or just simply don’t drink that often. This is my tea of choice for this right after a nice steaming cup of Theraflu, which is the only thing that got me to my desk at work today.

Drank this last night around 11pm (oddly enough slept like a baby after). Not as chocolaty as I thought it would be with a name like Chocolate Chai. I could smell the cinnamon spice and that was the taste the carried through from first to last drop. It wasn’t bad, but it was also nothing to write home about.