Caramel Dipped Apple

Another man’s trash is another man’s treasure! Zeitfliesst doesn’t care for this so he passed it on to me. I love both carameled and sour apples so I’m on an endless quest for teas flavored as such. The trick; however, is that I don’t care for black based flavored teas and they are more common than green or white based flavored teas. I definitely realize that everyone’s taste in tea is different, but there are a few (like Ricky’s cocomint/nail polish comparison LOL) that I just can’t fathom or understand… someone not liking this is another. Oh well, maybe I’ll understand by the end of my cuppa.

As soon as I opened the tin I can smell both the caramel and the apple… infact mom said she could smell it steeping from the other end of our house. Because of the flavorings I decided to measure this by volume (1 heaping tsp) instead of weight. Infact, it smells so good I decide to skip the steeping all together and just grab a spoon… lol! Kidding. It’s tempting, but I decide to steep it anyway. I didn’t have any steeping suggestions, so I just used the general “here, this is a green tea” suggestion. I’m further questioning what could possibly be wrong w/ this tea…

The liquor is kinda cloudy due to the flavorings and the aroma is almost as strong as the raw leaf.

Craaappp… So this is what he was talking about! Have you ever been so excited to try a tea that when it failed to meet your expectations you were almost brought to tears? This is one of them. This tea is bitter. But, and this is a 1st for me, it’s bitter and weak. Weird. Don’t get me wrong, the flavor ratio of green tea/apple/caramel is pretty decent, but it’s just very weak across the board. And bitter. I feel bad giving this tea such a low rating because, except for a little bitterness, the flavor that is there isn’t bad… there’s just not much there to be bad… Now what to make to cheer myself up?

I got a sample of this when I ordered the Carrot Cake. My first attempt with this one was much like Cofftea’s experience. Bitter and disappointing.

On a second try, I’ve been able to get rid of most of the bitter in the tea by using less tea (1 tsp and not very rounded at that) and by steeping for no more than a minute. In fact, I think 45 seconds might be even better and will try that next time. It’s still not great, but it’s not quite the red yucky face this way.

However, there’s a secondary problem which is that the caramel seems to be coming across as bitter also. A weird mix of bitter and sweet, which is not very pleasant going down. (The apple seems to be fine, a green-apple type flavor.) That said, it improves with age on the palate; it sweetens up a bit in the aftertaste. But it’s still not working for me, unfortunately.

Whoa. An incredibly sweet smelling delight. Taste is more subtle than the fragrance but still produces a lot of crisp sweetness. Very good.

This tea is not so good.
The tea leaves in the tin smelt very strong, but it wasn’t a pleasant one as it reminded me of cough syrup or some kind of medicine. When I steeped it, the scent remained the same but turned out a bit weaker, now reminding me of bubble gum. Well, I thought I could get pass the weird smell and at least enjoy what’s most important, the taste. It turned out that the flavor of the tea was overall very weak and I couldn’t really taste the caramel nor the apple. I might have expected too much, but this tea just didn’t work for me.