Brioche Organic Tea

I’ll try to edit and update this more later but i just wanted to track that i DID try this today. Thanks to tastybrew for sending some my way. I got home and i’m apparently sick as i’ve spent the last 4 hours in bed and don’t want to drink any tea. :( but this is good. delicious and i’m glad i have more + the resteeps once i get better. ugh.

Edit: Resteeped this today and it was still delicious. Soooo tempted to pick up a full 2oz of this with the sale.

2013-05-11
OMG Tastybrew my mystery swap box arrived and it’s a smorgasbord of tea! like whoa!

i immediately picked two teas. and this was the first.
the scent is pretty damn decadent. heavy butter, or like a fresh cheese danish. bam!
the base is a pretty mild black so it would be nice when i don’t want a mega caffeine hit or a heavy mouth experience. a mellow dessert tea!

thanks so much TastyBrew, this whole box is gonna be a wild experience.

2013-06-07
this tea is. so. good.
like sogood!

i’m listening to spoon on repeat too. this song is also so very good.
Paper Tiger – Spoon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA7uEW56rCE
it’s all too bittersweet.

and it’s raining out too. super raining. i keep getting emergency flood warnings on my phone.
it’s a dramatic day.

This one is another one from the massive pile that Auggy shared with me. I understand that the name refers to some sort of cake or something, and when I read the description of it I was pretty excited to try it. This post is actually a backlog based on hand scribbled notes which I hope to be able to decipher, so this was one of the first of her lot that I tried.

The aroma of the leaves is awesome. It smells like fresh pastry, straight out of the oven. It’s nutty and sweet and warm and slightly spicy, and I was pleased to find that this goes for both the dry leaf and the steeped cup. Almost exactly the same aroma, actually.

In the flavour the picture was almost the same as before, with the same elements to it. It was still quite nutty and a bit spicy, but the pastry note was really the by far largest one of them all where before they had seemed more equal to one another. On the swallow and in the long aftertaste it turned all sugary sweet.

It was a very nice cup, but it’s not something that I think I could have more than one cup of at the time. One was good, but I think more than one, it would just become too much. It’s extremely richly flavoured, this.

I got this as a surprise sample in my swap with the awesome Will Work For Tea! It’s been on my shopping list for a long time, and I’m honestly not quite sure why I didn’t order it before now—I think I just don’t like to pay for shipping unless it’s a big order, and ATR is a bit pricey so I wanted to know I’d love their stuff before committing to a purchase.

The smell of the dry leaves is amazing, like a Parisian bakery. I went to Paris with my mom when I was 15, and I remember how absolutely amazing the pastries were. Soft, buttery, flakey, sweet… just thinking about it makes me hungry. This tea smells like an almond croissant, but it tastes even better. There’s soft, gentle cinnamon, plump raisins, slivers of roasted almonds, and buttery warm bread in every sip, even a hint of pastry cream at the end. How they got tea to taste like a fresh from the oven baked good is beyond me, but it’s heavenly. This is a tea I could drink every day and be happy with!

Well, me drinking this tea got madly interrupted by a huge thunderstorm. I was on my patio taking a video because it had started hailing and there was rain blowing in two directions so I freaked out and went inside. I was enjoying this tea up until then (and the power was only out for like 5 minutes so that’s cool).

It smells like those cinnamon candied nuts you find at any sort of event that requires a generic set of vendors. Except that these are the best thing ever, and it made me wish I had some.

The tea does not taste like them, though. The tea tastes like a Parisian breakfast. Buttery almond croissants, fluffy brioche, oranges, sweet cinnamon bread, I want to go back.

Fun story: one morning while we were eating our morning croissants at a bakery in the 15th arrondissement, this little sparrow came right up to our table and started chirping. My mom dropped her a little piece of croissant. She took it and flew off, and returned several times for more. She was feeding her babies! And she had no fear at all to fly right up to us and get some more. (Meanwhile here I can’t even get a sparrow to take a piece of tortilla chip from a far distance on a Chipotle patio.) This tea reminds me of all those good pastries.

I decided to place an order with the American Tea Room late Sunday night; on Friday they’ve delivered. I have quite a few of their teas now. I went for “Brioche” first. Their descriptive copy is not an exaggeration. The aroma as I opened the bag was magnificent. It was like entering a “snobby” (i.e. good) bakery and zoning in on the almond croissants.

The brewed tea is very bakey-cakey and the flavors of almond, cinnamon, and vanilla dance about in a nice solid black suspension. I think that it probably has a medium amount of caffeine—perhaps not the strongest brew for first thing in the morning, but great for the rest of the day.

As I near the end of the cup, I long for more already. I feel as if I’ve actually consumed a nice chunk of almond croissant. So far I’m loving the American Tea Room with their wide variety of teas and their speedy delivery service.

In my reviews, you must always keep in mind that I’ve got a sweet tooth and a love of novelty. I love almonds, vanilla, and cinnamon flavors a lot. Indeed, my second son was cursed with the nickname of “Almond Stick” because his older brother called slivered almonds “almond sticks”. It seemed clever at the time.

It is delightful to get great carbohydrate satisfaction without reaching for an actual pastry.

I knew there was a reason I wanted to try this tea. It is so delicious. All the black teas I’ve had today have been near perfection. What an excellent tea day!

This has a lovely black base with a mixture of flavours that complement each other nicely. Like a cinnamon bun without the overwhelming sweetness – pretty much exactly like brioche. Yum!

I may have to look into ordering from American Tea Room.

Thanks jessiwrites :)

TastyBrew sent me a super cute little sample of this one with our swap, included as a surprise for me. Thank you so much!

It tastes very bread-y, in a way that reminds me of Fat Tire beer. There is also a lovely blend of cinnamon and nuts. It definitely feels like I’m eating a delicious pastry, it’s so bizarre that it’s actually tea and I’m really not eating anything unhealthy.

I have enough to try this one again, but I am definitely going to resteep these leaves and see what it’s like the second time around.

So I’m sitting here with a second steep of this tea sitting about two feet away on the table next to me and I have to say: THIS SMELLS SO FANTASTIC! The scent keeps wafting towards me and it smells like a bakery has opened up in our kitchen.

When I first started drinking tea, I loved anything flavored. Flavored teas meshed especially well with my habit of taking a sugared-and-milked tumbler of tea on my morning commute, too. But since getting more into tea and having no more morning commute, I’ve become super-picky about my teas, especially the flavored ones. So it is with my picky hat on that I say: THIS TEA IS DELICIOUS.

It smells like one of those little square flaky pastries, the ones with the cutting across the top and a light icing drizzled over them? I have no idea what they are called but that’s what this tea smells like. Yum. Even the second steep, while smelling more bread-y, smells like fresh sweet pastry.

The taste isn’t as sweet as the smell but it definitely has a lovely almond-paste-ish flavor and some notes of faint, light bready in the first steep. The second steep is leaning more towards a nutty-ish cinnamon & sugar toast but is equally desserty and delicious.

For a flavored tea, this has a nice, full flavor. It’s not a single note tea. Nope, there’s almond and light cinnamon and bread-y and the flavors kind of tumble over each other, making this taste really nuanced and interesting, especially for a flavored tea.

So yeah, even holding this to my extra-critical-of-flavored-teas standard, I must give this a very enthusiastic thumbs up.

Unimpressed with this tea tonight. I was craving this as a strong dessert tea but it tasted watered down tonight. Maybe it needed some sugar, maybe it got too much air and light. I gave it to my hubby to drink. At least he enjoyed the cinnamon spice in it. Off to brew another cup.

More geek pride teas to come in the near future. Life has been hectic and I haven’t been logging my teas.

Got this in a swap with TastyBrew. Thanks, TastyBrew!! I was so excited to try this. I mean, pastry? Sign me up!! It smells amazing, like almonds and sugar…like…..Forever Nuts from DavidsTea! Oh no, not Forever Nuts! I’m not a big fan of that tea. At least here there is a proper black tea base. ;) I can also get almond croissant and butter flavors from this, which is nice, but I had a really hard time not associating this tea with Forever Nuts. I wonder if I had never tried Forever Nuts what I would have thought of this tea.

What a tea to wake to this morning! It’s lovely. I could smell the cinnamon and sweetness when I opened the packet and it was so nice that I actually pulled it back to my nose to sniff it again. Wonderful!

195/2 min. As usual, I steeped lightly having learned my lesson with several other strong black teas. It turns out that this was perfect for me. I haven’t been really into blacks lately as I don’t enjoy astringent or, even worse, bitter black teas. This isn’t one of them. It’s so nice. It smells sweetly of cinnamon and apples. Kind of like a pie. The taste, however, is just like a croissant aux amandes from my days in Paris. I feel transported. It’s amazing. Sweet and nutty, with a depth that fills your mouth and your senses. It’s really wonderful. I can’t pick out much of the black tea taste, which surprises me. If I didn’t know it was a black tea, I would say it’s an herbal. It’s just really, really nice.

Another sample courtesy of Doulton!!

I thought this tea tasted like french toast with cinnamon, maple syrup and a pat of butter! I brewed it for one minute longer than recommended so I could put in a little sugar and half and half for a dessert tea, and there was no bitterness or astringency. I also liked that the flavorings tasted very natural and were not cloying or heavy handed. Very comforting and indulgent. What a treat!

This looks and smells like Almond Cookie(s) from The Spice and Tea Exchange and SpecialTeas…oh yea! I’m excited!!!! Another sample from Doulton! Thanks!!!!

I can taste the nuts and pastry and cinnamon and croissant comparison and even a little marmalade!

I think the difference between this and the other too is it’s seems to be smoother all-around. The almond doesn’t jump out as much and it might be a little more sweet than nutty. Regardless I really like it! REALLY like it! YUM!

This is from the Here’s Hoping Traveling Teabox

THIS IS SO YUMMY. I very clearly get the light baked good flavor. Oh, Yum! I wish I had more of this to try. I am so glad I got to try this sample!

Once brewed the tea has a beautiful amber color. Wonderful.

Thank you for setting up the teabox Tea Sipper!

This is a delicious tea. The scent when you open the pouch is intoxicating. It smells like a bakery. The flavor is like a lightly spiced bread or coffee cake on top of black tea. Some flavored teas are just too sweet or artificial-tasting, but Brioche is different. It really brings to mind biting into a flaky pastry or croissant. The flavors are well balanced; this tea contains almonds and cinnamon, but neither of those flavors overpowers the rest.

I really like this tea and plan to keep it on hand as a low-calorie indulgence — a way to handle my cravings for croissants, cookies, baked goods and other things I need to avoid, if I don’t want to put on weight!

thank you to Will Work For Tea on the stash reduction and including this one! This looked VERY similar to Teavana’s Almond Biscotti, and after tasting it, I’m convinced! It has the exact same ingredients. The almonds definitely look the same. And both have those same cinnamon chunks that you can’t actually taste at all, unless they are making the almonds tastier. This IS a delicious tea. And the petals are great. And the almonds are tastier than many other almond teas. I guess you can look up my review for the Teavana Almond Biscotti for other notes! I don’t mind have a little of both teas though, since they are both a few cups worth! It’s interesting, since this ended up being my favorite Teavana tea from the few I’ve tried, but I’m not sure if it was actually a Teavana blend, so it may not even count. It sure is a big mystery where teas are supplied from.

Thank you QuiltGuppy for this trial! It is lighly cinnamon and almond with a rich tea base. It reminds me of Almond Cookie from Butiki and My Boss Sucks from Praise Tea. I am not sure I would be able to tell the difference even in a side by side.

24 oz teapot, 4 actual tsp tea, freshly boiled water, 4 minutes. Lightly sweetened.

Got this as a sample from a tea swap! It’s really delicious and complicated. It’s exciting to drink each time I brew a cup. Reminds me of cinnamon rolls, but there are lovely almond flakes as well…sigh. I’d love a cup right now!

Wow. This tea is great.

I bought a sample of this tea after reading others saying it was not exactly the same as SpecialTeas Almond Cookie. I didn’t like that tea and didn’t think it had much flavor, except bitterness. It looks the same in the pics, so I wouldn’t have ordered this if I hadn’t read the reviews.

This tea has lots of flavor. It tastes like fresh challah bread with raisins with a touch of cinnamon. Amazing. I don’t know how they do that! I don’t like many flavored black teas because I feel like they just taste like black tea. The flavors really come through in this tea.

The smell in the bag is just as great. Bready, raisiny.

The shipping on this tea was amazingly fast. I ordered this and Choco*Late on Monday morning (after having some intense chocolate cravings on Sunday). Package arrived today (Weds).