Chocolate Puerh

Insteresting letter from Jillian in my letterbox today!

I’ve been trying to figure out what to try first and decided I was more interested in this. When I sent Jillian my ‘wishlist’ of things I’d like to try from her cupboard, this one mostly caught me by being pu-ehr, and I haven’t had any of that in ages, and a flavoured one at that, which I’ve never had. Little difficult for me to imagine flavoured pu-ehr, for some reason. But then, I initially felt the same way about green, white and oolong too and I can’t come up with a logical reason on why it shouldn’t be possible. Anyway, I didn’t pay attention to what else was in it at the time, so it’s not until now that I notice it has rooibos in it. That’s a bit worrisome, since I don’t really care much for that… Oh well, if you don’t try, you can’t win, so here we go!

It’s bagged and the bag smells like christmas biscuits! Do I have to drink it? Can’t I just sit here and sniff the bag? It seems almost a shame to get it wet. On the other hand, if I did just sit around, sniffing the bag, sooner or later I’d forget to pay attention and try to take a bite. Reflex, see.

Luckily, after steeping, it still smells like that. Chocolate and cinnamon are the dominant smells, and underneath it the earthiness of pu-ehr. It seems very dark in colour for a pu-ehr. I can’t really spot that reddish brown colour that it usually gets, but then that might be because the cup I’m using isn’t the best for looking at the colour.

The little satchel the bag was in says that the chocolate might sink to the bottom of the cup, so I’m giving it a little stir before tasting.

It tastes like sweets! Chocolatey and cinnamony like the blend I made yesterday (fate perhaps? Preparation for trying this?), but sweeter. I can pick up pretty much everything they say is in it, except possibly the nutmeg, but then I’m not really entirely certain which flavour I’m supposed to be looking for with that one. It’s not a spice I ever use for anything at all in my kitchen. And to my great relief, although I can defintiely find the rooibos, it’s only there to sort of add a little boost to the other flavours. If I hadn’t known it was there, I wouldn’t have noticed, but knowing that it is, I can tell what it does.

Great choice, me!

I am not sure about this one. It smells like chocolate and…dirt. I know, I know, I’ve read the tasting notes, too. People say pu-erh has a lovely earthy aroma. Well, now that I’ve smelled it for myself, I’m thinking it’s really just a polite way of saying dirt, and I don’t find it lovely. So I guess if I’m going to delve at all into the world of pu-erh, that might be a problem. =)

The brew tastes like chocolate with a bit of cinnamon, maybe. It’s not bad, but I can’t get the smell of dirt out of my nose! Honestly, it is so much like hot chocolate, that I think if I wanted hot chocolate, I would just make hot chocolate, calories be damned.

I reckon I’ll leave the rating off, for now. I’m sure it’s lovely for what it is, and those who like what it is will probably love this. It’s just not my taste. That said, I plan to experiment with a few more bags to see if I can make a concoction that’s more palatable; if not, there’s always the swap bin!

Tea amount: 1 bag
Water amount: 6oz/~175mL
Additives: 1ish tsp Demerara sugar

Well this is my 2nd attempt at Pu Erh. My 1st was adagio’s pu erh dante which was absolutely vile. But ya know… something just dawned on me. It’s almost exactly a year since that experience. I made my 1st online tea purchase, which was w/ Adagio, on Dec. 28th of 2008 and that (along w/ white cucumber which is now one of my faves) was one of them. Although I have to be careful to not analyze this analogy too much cuz then I start thinking about howe my life has changed since then and I get depressed.

Anyway, this is the 1st Numi tea I’ve had so I can’t tell you too much about them beyond what my observations for this particular bag will be. Yes, bag. Now I’m not a fan of bagged tea so bagged pu erh worries me even more. I’m also surpised the front of the bag uses “velvety and vanilla” to describe a chocolate pu erh.

Ingredients: organic Pu Erh, organic cocoa powder, organic vanilla, organic Theo chocolate cocoa nibs, organic rooibos, organic orange peel, organic nutmeg, and cinnamon.

Wow… the ingredients surprise me. This isn’t just a chocolate pu erh, this is more of a chocoalte chai/spice pu erh. Not what I was expecting, but it sounds good! I also love that all of the ingredients except for the cinnamon are organic. I’ve never heard of Theo chocolate before though. As if I couldn’t be more worried, they throw rooibos in here! I’m desperate to learn to love rooibos because it’s so healthy, but I just can’t seem to.

I open the bag and smell it. While I can smell the complexity and depth of the chocolate and pu erh, the only ingredient I can specifiically smell is the nutmeg. Not a bad thing, just interesting.

The odd thing about the steeping directions is they don’t tell you how much water to use. They don’t even use the vague term of a “cup”. So I weigh it. I would have anyway because I’m learning a lot of bagged teas are incredibly light. Wow! 2.5g! I’m impressed! It’s between the weight I prefer for a 6oz cup (2.25oz) and an 8oz cup (3g) so I decide to steep it as an 8oz cup for the higher suggested time of 5 min. (It suggests 3-5). I also steeped it just under boiling (205-210) instead of at boiling because I don’t want to kill the health benefits. I don’t think it’ll make that much of a difference.

The liquor is one of the darkest I’ve seen. Easily mistakable for black coffee. And that’s what it smells like. It smells like a chocolate chai steeped in black coffee. Sweet, spicy, rich, creamy, decedant, and very complex. After a quick stir, I take a sip. I have never been so glad for a tea to taste exactly the way it smells! I LOVE THIS! And pu erh is supposed to help you metabolize fat? this seems like it should add it!

For you to fully grasp what’s going on in my head, you need to understand that not only was I terrified of pu erhs, but aside from chais I don’t care for black teas in general. Normally I say who I think would like a certain tea, but this time I think I’m going to say who I think won’t like this because the list is much shorter. I think the only person that would not like this would be a person who doesn’t like coffee or chocolate.

Serving Suggestion: While this is wonderful on it’s own, this tea would make a wonderful latte steeped in a ratio of 2 parts milk to 1 part water or steeped completely in milk as an adult version of hot chocolate. 1TB of white chocolate creamer instead of milk would also be divine.

Backlog. Last Friday night. 4 days ago.

Even with all the gaps in my tasting notes logging this past year and a half, I really thought I’d logged this tea at least once. But I guess not.

To recap, this is the first puerh I’ve had. I was apprehensive trying it. Would I like it? Would it be completely gross? To my surprise, I liked it very much from the very first sip. And it definitely tasted different from a black tea.

So this particular time, I’d wanted to cup of tea after dinner and I’d been thinking about having this one a few days earlier. It came out a bit stronger than I remembered but I still enjoyed most of the cup until it cooled.

Looking over other reviews, I wonder if I need to use more leaf because overall this felt/tasted rather thin. It did have a nice chocolate taste as well as a dry sweet hay taste that I seem to associate with pu-erh so that was nice. It was definitely better than The Tea Spot’s Bolder Breakfast (another chocolate pu-erh blend) – the chocolate wasn’t so dry tasting – but it wasn’t as good of a chocolate tea as Lupicia’s The Au Chocolat – which still wins as the best chocolate tea I’ve had. But this one was mild, smooth and had a nice depth of flavor (Bolder Breakfast can seem a bit flat) so while the chocolate wasn’t a rich as I might have expected (though there was a nice, almost just-finished-a-milk-chocolate-candy-bar aftertaste going on), the overall experience was enjoyable.

Doulton’s Shakespeare: A Tasting Note in 5 Acts
Act III scene 5

Exit, pursued by the Bear.
Stage direction from A Winter’s Tale, Act III scene 3

When I was initially going through the mighty Shakespeare box and I pulled this bag out I said aloud “Oh God” both as a statement of horror and a supplication. I dislike both chocolate and Puerh: this seemed like the most unholiest of pairings. I needed to be in the right frame of mind to try this one. And today was the day.

I bravely went to my teapot and prepped. The dry leaves actually didn’t make me recoil. As I added the freshly boiled water to the leaves the scent wafted up I did recoil and said “Oh God” yet again. Dirty animal chocolate. As I poured the steeped tea and the smell came at me I started muttering “ohgodohgodohgod…” My composure totally cracked, and yet I tried a sip. I GAGGED! It was my first full-out tea gag. I calmly set the cup down and put my hand over my mouth and tried to decide what to do. It smelled like a zoo. A chocolate sprinkled zoo. Perhaps more like if you took this tea, mixed it with the mocha powder that Starbucks uses, and then stored it in the cave where a bear’s hibernating for the winter. I decided to let it sit in another room while I decided its fate. Either the cooling would be a good thing or it would go down the sink.

The cooling helped it quite a bit. I’ve only had a few Puerhs, but there seems to be a “sweet spot” of time/temp where it becomes this oddly fascinating drink to me. The window on this one was very quick. I could sort of understand why others like this: the chocolate did do a neat “flavor coat” on the roof of my mouth. The tea seemed more like a mineral-filled earth. And then it went back to being blechy. There’s about 1/3 of the cup left and it’s sink-bound.

This tea is Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. It starts off full of vengence, then does this 180 where it’s all about redemption and a statue coming to life. It really isn’t Shakespeare’s best play — the only really good part of this play is the stage direction Exit, persued by the bear. I started off vengeful with this tea, then shifted maybe 10 degrees or so in it’s favor, but that’s as far as I got. No redemption here. If I really enjoyed chocolate or Puerhs, then this would be a completely different note, but alas it is not to be. GA

Well, this is odd stuff. I think I like it. Not sure whether I’m going to buy more when it’s gone, though.

Was that confusing enough?

Yesterday was one of those seriously frustrating days filled with interruptions and tangents and distractions and delays and stubborn people and by the time I hit the grocery store after work I was ready to purchase and eat an entire Key Lime Pie all by myself, washed down with a bottle of cheap bubbly. So I wisely headed for the tea aisle instead.

I decided I would get one, maybe two, boxes of Really Serious Tea. I had in mind some Yorkshire Gold but the only box was badly crushed. Then I thought, maybe some killer Earl Grey. But there were none I hadn’t tried already, and they were all in bags. So I wandered over to the brands I don’t look at too frequently.

I noticed that every single Numi in the store was a pu-erh. I am seriously nervous about pu-erh. That seemed a good reason to take the plunge, so I picked this one because it was the single weirdest-sounding one on the shelf. When I got back home I found it was actually on my shopping list, although I’ve since taken it off.

I am finishing up the second cup. I drank the first one without additives. The dry bag had a whiff of something vaguely fishy, but I plunged on. Surprise! Brewed, it really id taste like tea+chocolate, rougher than Florence but really kind of interesting. And no fishy aroma. On the other hand, I was looking forward to the hint of orange, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and I didn’t get the orange at all. I drank most of it pretty quickly but was not fast enough to get to it all before it went stone cold. Drinking it black and stone cold was not a good option for me. Although, weirdly, I think I got more of the cinnamon and nutmeg then.

Second cup, I added a splash of half-and-half and sampled it. Hmm. Weirder still, I think I liked it better without additives as long as it was hot. So I added some rock sugar, and decide yes, counter-intuitively, the stuff is more interesting to me without anything added.

Now the second cup has cooled off, and I’m getting a lot of chocolate following a rush of sweetness. This is the most changeable, wibbly cup of tea I have tried so far. If it piques your curiosity, go for it. I think you will have a very individual response to it, but I truly cannot say where it’s likely to fall on your personal continuum.

Not going to assign a numerical rating.

btw so totally getting all the dried herbs to make/improve that blend of herbs for a cold. Felt soooo good after that.

So since I can’t really taste I have no idea why I went for this. I just knew I wanted puerh and well this doesn’t seem like a waste on useless taste buds.

First I just have to laugh again at the packaging of this tea. TEMPT your water to a boil. Whatever.

I tempted my water to a boil by subjecting it to heat in a closed container and steeped it for three minutes.

While really this was just hey maybe puerh helps get rid of colds, I was hoping for chocolate. I could taste chocolate. And just a bit of hay, I was worried this was actually going to be terrible and I’d be able to taste fishiness since I didn’t give it a little rinse off first.

I don’t understand puerh in a tea bag but I guess when you want it really conveniently, it works. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go cry because of hockey.

Absolutely delicious. Will brew another cup later to write a proper review!

Thank you to Jillian for this sample. It’s been on my shelf for too long and I’m going through my one off samples today.

The teabag smells like cinnamon with extra spiciness, not exactly what I thought I would smell with it being chocolate flavoured.

Once steeped the tea is dark brown in colour with a very strong cinnamon and fruity orange smell. There is also a slight earthy smell from the pu erh.

If it doesn’t smell like chocolate does it at least taste like it? That’s the question I am asking myself at this moment in time while I count down the remaining steeping time.

Well I can now answer that it has a slight taste of chocolate (or cocoa anyway) but the cinnamon is overpowering it. Now don’t get me wrong I love cinnamon but I was hoping this would be a little more chocolatey than it is. As for this being a pu erh based tea I would have never guessed it by taste alone.

While it’s not what I expected it’s still not bad for a bagged tea and it has it’s own charm. It’s more of a weak fruity chocolate spice cake than just chocolate by itself but perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.

My finacee got an assortment pack of Numi and this was one of the first ones he pulled out. He let me have a couple of sips of it to try it, but he kept most of it to himself.

His review: not as strong, tasted weaker and had less of a dirt taste, not much chocolate. Liked Numi Emperor Pu-Erh better.

My review: not as strong with a good splash of chocolate. I can taste a hint of vanilla and that is bringing the chocolate out of the dark chocolate place and closer to a milk chocolate place. Not quite there though. I liked it because it was a little lighter on the earthy taste. I think if you put a little bit of sugar in it, then it would bring out the chocolate for a more dessert tea. I would be more likely to grab this in the morning than a straight pu-erh right now.

This pretty much fell into the “meh” category – I actually love pu-erhs in all their odd, stinky, earthy, woodsy and dark glory. It’s hard to actually taste any pu-erh in here! This reminds me of a spicy chocolate milk, especially after I added soymilk to it. It isn’t terrible but definitely not what I was hoping for. I will have to try adding two teabags next time around because this was a little weak. Might be an ok dessert drink?

I’ll be glad to get back to my regular tea collection next week. :)

Wow, this stuff is great. I was out yesterday at the NRA show in Chicago helping out at the Adagio booth and took sometime to look around and stopped off at the Numi booth where I tasted this te black and I was blown away at the amount earthy chocolate flavor I got. I took a sample bag home and made it last night with sweetener and milk and it was like a richer slightly cinnamon and hot chocolate. Delicious, I will have to buy some for myself.

On another note. The show was a lot of fun and everyone at Adagio was so very welcoming and kind. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to help out.

Bagged, will restock with loose
Aroma when Dry: orange and chocolate, hints of both vanilla and cinnamon, layered, balanced
After water is first poured: warm orange chocolate, creamy
At end of steep: same notes, mellowed, more vanilla
Tea liquor:
At end of steep: clay brown/red
Staple? Yes, trying loose leaf next
Time of day preferred: evening
Taste:
first notes (without milk): cinnamon, then smooth, dusty, dry, deep like orange baking chocolate
As it cools? Notes deepen, balanced tea gets more velvety, even slightly fuzzy
Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? Not for this tasting
Have used with milk with great success
With Milk: mimics bold cocoa
Lingers? Yes, the velvety notes suggested open up, with a chocolate dusty, creamy, almost buttery nature vanilla note stays longest

This is very good. I must admit, I’m a bit flabbergasted that this was at my local health-food store (next to Yogi tea no less). This tea is a bit of a hybrid since it’s pu-erh, rooibos, and misc spices. I’ve separated this tasting into four parts that include the initial tasting, the apex plateau, the lingering plateau, and the final exhale tasting. I may start doing my notes like this because I think it describes the teas better (if you think otherwise just tell me I suck in my comments).

Initial: The pu-erh itself hits your tastebuds first- very nonchalant and earthy (the same earthy I’d describe mushrooms), but almost immediately the orange zest and rooibos pop up like some sort of surprise party.

Apex: The apex of the tasting reveals cocoa and the vanilla beans (I love that these compliment each other so well). I hate chocolate, but this is very smooth and not over-done.

Lingering taste: The fading of the tasting reveals the cinnamon (which again compliments the apex very well).

Final exhale: A final exhale tasting highlights the miniscule nuances of what tastes like nutmeg and of course the normal lingering chocolate aftertaste.

Overall I think this is a wonderful alternative to hot chocolate. It may not be that chocolatey, but I would consume it when I’d normally consume hot chocolate (because it’s hot and yummy).

This is the first pu-erh tea I’ve tasted, though this has so may extra ingredients added I’m sure any purists out there will cringe. Steeped for just over 4 minutes in boiling water.

Dry the smell of this tea is of nutmeg like whoa! When I added the water the nutmeg scent was still there faintly, but I could also smell cocoa. Neither of which were quite able to disguise a rotting, fermented sort of scent, which is what I’m told straight pu-erh tea generally smells like. It wasn’t too obnoxious and it doesn’t seem to translate to the flavour of the tea.

The brew is slightly cloudy and it’s about the colour of black coffee. I’m rather hoping the similarity ends there and this doesn’t make me violently sick like coffee does.

It tastes slightly bitter but it’s a rich, smoothly-pleasent sort of bitter. The tea tastes ‘dark’ if that makes any sense. At this point I don’t know enough to tell if what I’m tasting is the pu-ehr or the chocolate, spices, etc that were added to it.

This is not a tea for all occaisions but I’m still leaning towards liking it.

Do you remember that chocolate drink – a Yoohoo (do those still exist)?! Anyways, that is what this tastes like… of course I haven’t had a Yoohoo in YEARS, so I may be off, but that is what first pops in my head. Or maybe like Swiss Miss hot chocolate made with only water and no milk, and watered down a bit more. I like this, it’s different though because it is watery and I expected that thicker puerh feel. The water looks like that of black tea, a nice honey color. The taste is smooth and you get more of a sweet coco powder taste than anything else. I am tempted to try this next time with a shot of cream =)~

I like it… but I feel like it is missing that pu-erhness. The mouth feel is actually what is throwing me off because it is so much more watery than the pu-erhs I have been sampling. After reading the box it makes a lot of sense though that it is not as heavy because there is rooibos in this.

The flavor is good… I actually really like it. But if you are looking for a PU-ERH experience this isn’t it.
But if you want a super yummy tea with a dash of tummy settling this is awesome.

A review of Chocolate Pu-erh (Numi Organic Pu-erh) by Numi Organic

Company: Numi Organic Tea
Tea Name: Chocolate Pu-erh
Tea Type/Varietal: Pu-erh
Region:
Steeping Vessel/Amt. Leaf: cup/ tea bag
Plucking Season:
Liquor Color: red
Leaf Characteristics:

1. Steepings

1st Steeping:
Water temperature: 200 Fahrenheit
Time: 5 minutes

I had placed an order for the Numi Tea Sampler pack and received several other Numi tea for sampling as well as several nutritional breakfast bars. It was quite a surprised when I did finally open the package. I had no idea, as this box had arrived several weeks earlier it seems.

I selected to drink this Chocolate Pu-erh as an after dinner drink. I remove the tea bag from its envelope like seal and I am happy to see it is a tea bag with a string and not those sachet pyramid tea bags. I place the tea bag in my cup and add in the boiled water to it and leave it to steep for five minutes. I can see it coloring right away; first seeming dark brown and ending with that russet reddish color and tea’s aroma is that earthy dampness and when I take sip of the tea it is smooth and chocolate tasting. I call it that Cocoa nib chocolate flavor.

I was able to fix two cups of this tea and it truly is decadence and yummy. My palette is drying as I take sip and sip of the tea, as I swoosh it around my mouth it has a drying effect to it and when I do swallow it is smooth and velvety.

Overall this is a robust tea that begins with that damp earthy smell and resulting with hints of Cocoa as top note while intermingling with the Vanilla Bean and Nutmeg and as the teas color is bright red/russet this could be due to the orange peel.

I like this organic chocolate pu-erh by Numi. Thank you for offering the challenge and all of these samples. I don’t eat nutritional bars so I gave them to the hubby for his lunch snacking treats.

Last sample from SimplyJenW… so much fun to trade with others! She threw this one in because she knows that I like chocolate… Well I absolutely loved the smell of this from the bag… it was a deep warm vanilla,chocolate, earthy smell. I almost wanted not to steep it because it smells so delicious.

After steeping the liquor is a really really dark amber color almost coffee color. The smell still has really earthy smell and not quite as sweet smelling now, more of a true dark real unsweetened cocoa smell with bits of cinnamon.

The first taste I was kind of disappointed… the smell is so much better than the taste to me. The earthiness comes out… I have never had a Puerh before, so not sure if this is how all of these teas taste but I feel as if this tea has to many flavors in it. You can smell the vanilla, and cinnamon, can even taste those a bit, but you also taste the unsweetened chocolate and then the earthiness… For me this mixture does not make sense.

After letting it cool a bit the flavors seem to meld a bit more and they are not so bad but I have to say that I think I won’t be buying this tea. I loved trying it though!