Cococaramel Sea Salt Herbal Tea

I tried this again as a latte and decided that it’s just too cloyingly sweet for me. Something to avoid in the future. I feel like the more tea I drink the less I like presweetened teas, and I didn’t like them very much to begin with.

As someone new to tea, this is the first one I tried. I got this in the Holiday Sampler pack from Teavana, the Perfect Tea Maker, and an electric digital kettle from Target. I followed the steep time and temperature directions from the bag and added an extra teaspoon of tea and a teaspoon and a half of sugar before pouring the tea in my mug. The smell and taste is just like a caramel chocolate bar. Love!

It tasted good, don’t get me wrong. But it was kind of weird to see the oily film on the top after it steeped. I think it was from the chunks of coconut in the dry leaf, but it was still a bit unsettling.

The cocoa nibs make it rich and sweet, almost like hot chocolate. You really don’t need to add sweetener. As for the sea salt, I got a hint of it in the smell. It definitely doesn’t taste salty to me.

The longer you steep it, the better it tastes.

Still not worth the trip and the money, in my opinion. Just glad I got it out of my system for the foreseeable future.

I had high expectations given the name of the tea and how much I love sea salt caramel and chocolate separately, nevermind when they are combined! I was disappointed, though, because I didn’t taste either in this tea. It wasn’t bad but didn’t live up to the description.

This tea is “OMG” Amazing! Smooth chocolate caramel flavors. I don’t always feel that chocolate flavor comes out in teas, but this one really does. I add 1 tsp. rock sugar. On it’s own, it’s wonderful. Right now I’m sipping it blended with Toasted Nut Brulee, which adds even more richness.

I did try a resteeping of the tea (just cococaramel sea salt), and found that didn’t go well…. weak, but that is probably expected for an herbal tea.

Picked this up yesterday while at Teavana. I’ve been curious to try it for a while and, when the salesgirl mentioned that this tea tastes really strongly of chocolate, I was sold. The last time I was in a Teavana, I’d tried their Chocolate Chai, was impressed by how chocolatey and rich it was, and was so hoping for the same thing here.

Tangent: I brought my kettle over to a friend’s house yesterday and forgot the base there. So my kettle is home and totally useless without a way to get power to it. I don’t know if I should be embarrassed to admit that I contemplated buying a temporary kettle to tide me over until I can get my base back. It’s only a day, right? That’s not so bad. A little tea made with microwaved water never hurt anybody. Hell, that’s how I was heating my water when I first got into tea and that turned out okay… (I miss my kettle!!!)

I brewed this up using microwaved water, steeped for 5 minutes. Without sugar, it’s brothy? I want to say this is the salt dominating things. Not bad, but unexpected from a tea with caramel and coco in the name. I added sugar to the second steep and found that the salt and coco were both missing, but the aftertaste was scratchy/sweet like after you eat a chewy, gooey caramel candy. Mmmm.

It’s not what I was expecting – don’t say a tea is chocolatey if it’s not! – but it’s not bad. I really want to try it again with actually boiling water and see if that helps things. In any case, it’s another off the “To Try” list … progress?

This looked really pretty in the bag and is strong-smelling. I was hoping to fall in love with this one for a night-time tea but…alas…it was not meant to be. While I think it’s good, it’s ONLY good. I taste sweet chocolate. That’s about it. I couldn’t really identify the sweet as being caramel, either. And definitely no salt. I think I also expected it to feel a little thicker. I won’t repurchase this and will keep looking for something that tastes the way I had hoped this would, but I’ll enjoy what I have of it. Thanks for letting me buy this off of you, Ost!

I want this so badly to be good. How could you go wrong with cocoa, caramel and sea salt? That should be the best flavour combination ever! But this… is not very good.

The dry leaf smells great. Lots of rich chocolate and caramel.

Steeped, the chocolate is there, and a bit of caramel, but the whole thing just tastes watery, when it should be rich and thick. There’s also an unpleasant fruity artificial sweetener kind of flavour on the back of the tongue and throat, which is quite unpleasant and just doesn’t fit at all.

I had this with sugar and milk, which helped it out a little bit, but I still didn’t really enjoy my cup.

Sipdown!

But not alone. I’ve been drinking this mixed with the Teavana Spiced Apple Cider and a teaspoon of Tealux Vanilla Rooibos which I am almost finished with (yay!). This adds a creamy, almost caramel apple taste to the normal cinnamon apple of the spiced apple cider, which I love. I don’t think I ever drank it alone, but I only had about an ounce of it (came in the gift set last year that I got for a ridiculously good price during the heavenly sale). Not sure I’d repurchase, but it definitely adds a nice flavor to my favorite fall-time tea ever.

I was very disappointed in this one. Somehow, it has a good cocoa taste but is still pretty tasteless and bland- definitely didn’t taste any caramel. The chocolate flavor was nice, fresh, prominent…there was a hint of coconut and hazelnut…but somehow the whole cup was too watery/mild despite the heavy taste of cocoa. I tried it more than once (I use an infuser), doubled my tea leaves, used less water, but it didn’t get any better.

I wasn’t expecting hot chocolate, but this was pretty dang bland. Pretty pissed, actually- I was expecting much better than this so, obviously, I wouldn’t recommend it- if you’re looking for a caramel/desert-type herbal tea, I’d eagerly refer you to “Bengal Spice” by Celestial Seasonings- and “Celestial” isn’t a brand I tend to recommend, but this one here is soooo good, like a cup of cinnamon caramel!
- Loose leaf, with infuser
- 3-4 sugar cubes