Tiger Chai

Backlog: I started my day with this chai. Rich and smooth and even creamy – even without milk. Spicy too, but, not super spicy-hot. The spices have a good balance to them, peppery but, not so much that I felt as though my mouth was on fire as I sipped it.

The black tea base is robust enough to stand on its own with the strong flavor of the spices, the ginger and pepper are the strongest notes, followed by cinnamon, with cloves and cardamom filling in the background. The vanilla seems to even everything out and give the flavor a smooth, creamy taste that I really enjoyed.

A really enjoyable chai.

Smells amazing in dry leaf. Not sure I taste the black pepper very strongly. I get the cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and vanilla unsweetened but they really pop after adding a bit of sweetener. This seems somewhat weighted towards cinnamon since there are cinnamon chips as well as cinnamon listed in the ingredients. Without milk, I get a huge hit of cinnamon and cloves. Something in here makes my tongue a tiny bit numb as I get to my second cup – hm… pepper maybe? There are a LOT of spices, but the vanilla does mellow them somewhat and the tea base seems suited to carry them.

I didn’t steep this with 2/3 milk to 1/3 water this time. I just added a splash of milk after steeping in water (Tea Club had a pretty heavy lunch outing today and most of us didn’t feel the need for more in the afternoon).

This is very rich. I think it might make my tummy hurt a bit if I did it with my normal ratio.