Huh. It would appear that I’m currently following 70 Steepster accounts. 70! Looking at my dashboard page I think we can reach the conclusion that some of those must be inactive and I probably ought to clean it up a bit.
Anyway, I chose this tea during my little ‘accident’ yesterday because ever since last sunday when my boyfriend was here and we had this awesome caramel ice cream that totally tasted like childhood, I’ve been slightly obsessed with all things caramel.
The dry leaves smell heavily of caramel and it has tiny cubes of actual caramel in it. There is a very big risk that I’m going to offset the entire balance of this by uhm eating them. (I tasted one, they’re yummy!)
Strangely enough, where I found the two other black teas I bought lighter in colour than I had expected, this is just the opposite. It’s darker than I expected. A little darker than maple syrup. Granted it’s slightly oversteeped, but still.
The smell is not as sickly sweet as you might have expected. Or at least I did. It smells like caramel and not so much of tea, but still not completely overwhemingly sweet.
Strangely enough, this tastes more like tea than it does of caramel. I was expecting something sweet and smooth and instead I got something lightly astringent and with a rough sort of flavour that makes me wonder what it’s based on. It just say chinese and ceylon tea, so it could be anything. The caramel is there, but it’s like it’s caramel without sugar. It’s good enough, but it’s not really what I was expecting. I’m thinking a bit of sugar might bring out the caramel more but even as I’m missing the sweetness, I’m strangely reluctant to test it.
As mentioned, though, it was a bit oversteeped, so not doing that might make a difference. I’ll try that the next time and possibly adjust my rating accordingly
