Mulled Wine Tea Powder

I’ll admit I wasn’t really looking forward to trying this sample since it got such bad reviews here, and while I do like turmeric powdered spice blends to make Golden Milk, turm in a beetroot powder base did not sound very appealing to me. But this was a decaf “not-matcha” so I figured I’d make it as my nightly cuppa, and if it was terrible, into a breakfast smoothie it would go, along with some real matcha for the pep I need.

I am now out of coconut milk (what I typically use with turm!) but have restocked plain oat milk and vanilla oat milk, and since I would be crazy to blend anything with turm without some balancing sweetness, I used the vanilla oat milk. The crazy part is… it worked?! Because the main flavor I’m getting, against the vanilla sweetness of the milk, is the orange and it tastes like creamsicle… only a more spicy iteration of creamsicle that is leaving a bit of warmth at the back of my throat. That vanilla oat milk must be covering up a lot of sins because it doesn’t taste earthy at all. Strong orange citrus offset with creamy vanilla, and then a hit of spicy warmth at the end of the sip… peppery, in fact.

The only thing really bringing this down as a cuppa is I had the same problem I’ve had with several of the other “not-matcha” tea powders from B&B where the powder won’t blend up nicely into the drink and has left a bit of a gritty/grainy mouthfeel on the sip.

I’ll be finishing this cup tonight, and putting a different matcha into the smoothie. Not something that scratches any itches for my cupboard (especially at the kind of prices B&B charges!) since if I want something spicy, I’ll just make Golden Milk, and if I wanted something orange, their Orange Matcha actually has matcha and whisks up properly. But this was at least a pleasant surprise since I was expecting something way worse than I got.

This smelled weird and Roswell Strange who usually finds the good in teas rated this a 21, so I was a bit hesitant about it. Luckily we had apple juice lying around the house so I used a bit of hot water to dissolve some of the powder and then topped it with the juice.

This tastes fine but it mostly tastes like apple juice. A lot of the powder settled to the bottom and that last sip was a whole lot of earthy turmeric nope. So I guess ultimately I’m a fan of apple juice, not this. Going to put the rest into my swap box.

#adventageddon Day Fifteen – 2/6

Oh… oh no. No no no.

This sounded so nice, but I made myself a matcha bowl worth just hot and straight and it’s bad. The taste is a mix of very earthy beet and a drier, more astringent orange note. There’s zero sweetness, and while I don’t want it to taste sugary there definitely needs to be SOME sweetness or, even, acidity to offset how earthy, bitter and savory this tastes. However, the worst part!? It stings. It definitely left my tongue feeling quite raw.

Big miss, unfortunately.