Premium Chai

Time to finally use try my sample of this. Dry, this is heavy on the cinnamon, like whiffing a bag of cinnamon bark. I also detect the clove and a bit of the ginger but no cardamom?

By the way, I am SUPER picky about chai. There’s a chai bar back at home that makes the best chai ever. They make their blends with 30+ spices imported from India so it’s mighty hard to beat.

This is one of the better chais that I have tasted considering. The cinnamon is the prominent note, followed by a hint of ginger. The cloves are faint, and the cardamom is practically non-existant. No pepper.

With vanilla soy and brown sugar it’s smooth. I would definitely consider buying this whenever I’m craving chai at home, especially since I can’t go to my beloved chai bar.

I feel for those of you sweltering in the heat! Must be awful!
Up here in the clouds all is calm, all is bright…(wrong time of year..oops). The weather is nice and cool. Gentle rain expected tomorrow maybe. All weather in Northern Colorado is MAYBE. The Rocky Mountains can change the weather and like a Giant Magician laying down on his back…they wave a Magic Wand and Prest-o Chang-o the rain is gone.

Therefore, I can drink Chai! It’s not too hot!

My evening brew created by Stacy at Butiki is straightforward. I wanted a Chai that was upfront, bold but uncomplicated, without a twist of some exotic addition. Just a good quality, spicy Chai. I saw a special deal on this Chai when I was ordering the Blue Nettle Green Tea and Puerh…(love good deals) and added it to my order. Glad I did!

This Chai has cinnamon and clove…cardamon…pepper and a nice black tea base. The spices are just right and not overdone. I hate a spice level that becomes bitter when heated…so blechy! This is good! This is a strong brew though…made for sweetening and milk, soy, coconut, moon juice or whatever you put in to make it good…RUM!

I like this…Chai…um…good!

So, happily, I lied on my last review. I did have one more tea that was untested. :)

Smells strongly of allspice to me. I have only recently gotten into chai. Many of them that I have tried in the past are very weak. This is not. Very good stuff. Heavy on the allspice, as I have noted, but tasty. I brewed in the Indian method, by steeping in hot milk (half-and-half for the added creaminess). I used 2/3 milk to 1/3 water. Not a bit of bitterness in this and I can still taste the black tea.

Good stuff. This is a keeper. A close tie between this and Harney & Sons black chai blend. H&S has more cardamom, which puts it a nose ahead for now. :)

I love chai but am pretty picky about it. I like them very spicy, but not heavily cloved, and I want to be able to taste the tea. This is a great chai. It’s not as spicy as I normally like them (I love hot spicy chais). But it’s a got a great mix of spices and none of them crowd out the others. Yum!

Tying to get quick logs in before if forget. The next four days at work are going to be crazy so expect less than usual from me. I owe Stacy a proper review of this tea as well, though it was a decent chai for this morning. I promise ill do up a proper one soon! Ill rate it then as well

I got a sample of this one a long long time ago and finally had the presence of mind to steep it up today. There is enough there for two cuppas so I have half of it in a filter bag as that stuff looks too fine for my filter. I hate when floaties escape into my tea!

The aroma is fairly strong with cinnamon dominating. Cinnamon isn’t my favourite part of a chai but I do appreciate the necessity, so on we forge. I went through a mega chai phase about two years ago but really lost my taste for it somewhere since then. I am not sure what happened, though I suspect I put too much milk in it at some point and it was ruined by association. I am not a milk drinker and never have been. Blech.

Steeped, I get cinnamon in taste and burn, with some gingery/nutmeggy baking type flavours. There is a bit of heat, but I am not really getting the cardamom which sometimes balances chai out for me. The black tea base is also pretty assertive. I know it is blasphemous, but I don’t really like assams and the ilk. Their strength of flavour is interpreted by my tongue as bitterness, even with the most careful treatment. Then it needs milk, which I don’t like. Hmm, I guess I just figured out why I don’t like chai. :)

Anyway, this is a perfectly respectable chai and if you are a chai fan it will likely impress you. This might make a good latte (which interestingly I do enjoy, if it isn’t too milk heavy) but that is beyond my skills. I’ll just keep sipping.

I got this sample with my order from Stacy and it smells awesome! I got impatient so I added some milk to cool it down. It tastes really good! :D

My first experience with this tea company and it’s a good one. This is a pleasant chai blend that is strong and boldly spiced, but not overly spicy. The black tea base has a good strength that stands up well to the addition of milk (this one is definitely better as a latte!) Smooth and rich, this has a really nice flavor to it.

Thank you LiberTEAs!!!!! I received your package today!!!!

This was the first one I tried and I have to say I LOVE IT!!!! The spices are well rounded and blend well together – there isn’t one spice that overpowers the others and I like that. The spice is very nice and not too much to handle. There is a surprising sweetness to this that lies underneath the spices and black tea…it’s lovely!

Hooray! My big box of Butiki arrived today! :) My sister asked me “How was your shift?” as I came into the door, already tearing into the box. My response was, “Who cares, look what I’ve got! :D” as I started pulling out the almost embarrassing amount of pouches of tea from the box and onto the counter.
(I did have a good shift though, mind you. But even if I didn’t, it’d be forgotten at this point anyway)

The only sad thing though is that by the time I had a quick shower, and a quick dinner, this’ll probably be the only tea I get to drink. It’s 7:50PM right now, and I have to get up at 4:30AM tomorrow for my early shift, so … yeah. Technically I probably shouldn’t be having any caffeinated ones at all, but … How can you tell yourself that when a huge beautiful box that contains 98% black tea that you have to wait until after 12:00PM tomorrow? You can’t.
(By the way Stacy, thanks for the little present! Such a nice surprise, and very pretty. :D)

Anyway, so here we are with the tea. This is one of the samples I requested with my order. At the scent of the dry leaves, I’m getting pretty excited. See I’m crazy picky with chai. In the sense that I have yet to find my ideal perfect chai. This smells pretty close to that. Mostly cinnamony+cardamomy, but still with a good kick.

I’m drinking it now with milk, and then added a bit of brown sugar. Afterall, what is a chai without milk and brown sugar? Anyway, this is very good! It’s mostly cinnamon which is fantastic, as I have a bit of a fixation on cinnamon… (it goes on oatmeal, red river cereal, pancakes, French toast, hot chocolate, cheerios, blueberry bagels, raisin toast, buttered toast, vanilla ice cream, apple crisp/crumble/pie … and I’m sure I’m forgetting something)

While it is mostly cinnamon, it’s more complex than say DavidsTea’s Pure Chai (which it should be, the whole point of that DT one was to be simple) I get a bit of cardamom taste and it has a pleasant burning spiciness, but in a the cranked up cinnamon way, rather than pepper and ginger that brings roast beef to mind.

I’m curious to see what this would taste like blended with Butiki’s Pumpkin Crème Brulee… I’ll be sure to pick up a bit of that along with this sometime in the future. That’s a combo worth exploring. :)

All in all, this is excellent! As of this note, so far this chai is the closest to my ideal, so I’m quite thrilled. Thanks for the chance to try this, Stacy! :)

I added this tea, but I wonder if it’s a duplicate… anyway, thanks to the wonderful Stacy for this sample. I’m a chai fiend and very picky, so she took a risk sending this to me. ;) However, it paid off. I let it steep for over 10 mins (work meeting) and the spicy concoction I was awarded with was worth it. In this delicious medley, I taste cinnamon, clove, ginger, allspice and even pepper. I won’t say it’s as good as my fave blend, but it’s a close second. More like 1a. ;) I love the spicy flavoring, plus the black tea base is bold and hearty. YUMS!

Tea of the morning backlog. I was looking for a chai, and we’re running ghastly low on my favorite chai, and plus, this chai had been on my shelf for a while. Apparently, it had been there too long, and I, having not stored it properly slaps self on wrist didn’t help.

So, long story short, it didn’t really end up tasting like chai. It didn’t even really taste like a decent quality black tea, sad to say. I noticed, as I was putting it in the infuser, that it was a CTC type black, so that probably had something to do with it. I more than half blame myself for this bad experience, firstly because I didn’t drink it as quickly as I probably should have, and secondly because I didn’t take care to store it properly. However, some small part of me thinks that it should still have tasted more like chai than it did. Like, the piece of king cake that I had this morning as part of my breakfast tasted more like cinnamon than this tea did. Anyway, meh. It served its function to a certain degree, in that it did keep me warm on the drive to school this morning. :)

num num! Chai is my favorite! And wow this is good. A nice strong black tea with spices. I could be wrong, but it seems there is some of the other Butiki tea I’ve tried in this one – their roasted yerba mate? It tastes like it a bit anyway. I loved that one too. And I must say that the pre-steeped leaves of this looked like the most delicious tea I’ve ever seen! I’ve tried a bunch of Butiki teas and all of them have been fantastic. You really can’t go wrong with Butiki! I really am thankful I’ve been able to try these.

Alas! This is my last sample from the lovely Butiki teas. This is one dark brew! It smells strongly of cinnamon. The flavor is quite nice. It reminds me vaguely of cinnamon and apple sauce. In a very nice, spicy way. I really enjoyed this sample and wish I had more! I drank this without milk and I think that it would make a great latte type drink.