Organic Chocolate "O"

Chocolate Tea #2 on my Chocolate Tea Day!

So, this is one that I really liked when I sipped it before.
How does it compare to the Spice and Tea Exchange Dark Chocolate Tea that I had for breakfast? It’s not a bitter sweet chocolate taste or as thick tasting, but it definitely tastes like one of my favorite candies of all time…(drum roll)

MALT BALLS!

Ooooooooohhhhhh!
I love to eat Malt Ball candies at the movies. I mean, they are the best yummy cocoa sweeties to eat slowly while watching all the action taking place on the big screen. (I know you can taste them)

Anyway, this is the best tea I’ve had from The Tea Spot! (I did put cream in my cup and sweetened the brew!)

SIPDOWN! I would totally purchase this one again! Thank you so much for sharing this with me terri! So i WAS well on my way to getting to 200 but 3 of my swaps arrived today and now i am back at 258! (with 6 more swaps on their way eventually, plus teas sitting with people) So now, my mini goal is just to try and NOT hit 300 lol. i still have every intention of getting to 200 before the end of may so that i can place an order in June but right now I’m just super happy about swaps.

Seriously? Total shout out to all my swap friends who have shared teas they love and dislike since i’ve been on steepster (not even a year). It’s pretty amazing how wonderful it is to share in our mutual excitement of tea. I love not only finding better homes for teas i don’t like, but getting to share old favourites with new friends :) Totally not really a tea posting note but oh well. this? This tea is good. Chocolatey and delicious!

…and for all those out there that i haven’t swapped with yet, looking forward to sharing teas with you!

Well, I spent this morning doing what everyone hopes to do on their birthday, which is waiting at the DMV to get my drivers liscence renewed. Actually it went relatively smoothly for the DMV.

Now I need some tasty birthday tea, plus it needed to be a black tea for the morning, so I reached for this one. Love this tea so much! Like a gongfu black tea with a bit of extra chocolate flavor, which is I think essentially what it is. Very subtle flavoring here.

This tea came up in the comments on another tea by The Tea Spot, which of course made me crave it this morning. I was glancing through the tasting notes on this tea and someone mentioned a chocolate rose tea, and suddenly I wanted my fabulous chocolatey tea to be rosey as well. I had already portioned out my leaf but hadn’t poured my water, so I was considering just removing a small amount of the leaf and replacing it with a little rose black tea from my rapidly dwindling stash of that sort of tea, but I didn’t want to taint the high quality base on this with a lesser black tea. Then I remembered my rose buds from China… a package of potent, magenta buds I picked up at a tea shop in Beijing, and used to add rose flavor to oolongs and such while I was there. I dropped in a generous helping of buds and steeped as usual.

The steeped tea smells deliciously chocolatey as usual, with a hint of rose. That’s how the flavor plays out as well; I could have used some more rose, but I think the buds were a little overwhelmed by a black tea. What’s there is lovely, though… it is rose in an earthy, rough, whole-plant way, not a frilly perfumy way, and it works really well with the chocolate.

Later in the day of unpacking I found my stash of black teas. Yay! I still hadn’t found my teaspoon so I guesstimated the amount of tea on this cup too, but with much better success. This was a delicious, lovely, chocolatey cup. Love this tea!

Today is an exam day for the class I am teaching, which means being busy preparing it and giving it all day. Fortunately we got done a little bit early this morning so I was able to come back to my office and have a nice cup of tea. For some reason I was craving this one and all its chocolately glory.

Oh yes, this is delicious. This is by far my favorite chocolate flavored tea, and that is partly due to the great flavoring but I think majorly to do with the quality of the base tea, which has caramelly, honeyed, chocolatey notes on its own. Yum.

The first time I tried this tea I thought the dry leaf smelled like molasses covered grains. This time when I stuck my nose in, I got the impression of chocolate extract or a chocolate liqueur… basically the distilled essence of chocolate. I love that the leaf on this tea is so long and twisted and way more whole leaf than you usually see in a flavored tea.

Mmm, this blend is sooo delicious. The blend of the chocolate and the base tea is just fantastic. The chocolate flavor is intense but in no way does it steamroll over the tea base; no, it just brings out the chocolatey notes in it, and caramel and honey notes definitely come out to support the chocolate flavor. It reminds me of eating a chocolate caramel, kind of. Or the scent of being in a city with a chocolate factory. It’s different enough from a hot cocoa or chocolate bar that it doesn’t seem like watery cocoa. This is probably my favorite straight chocolate tea so far, and it’s definitely going on my must have list!

I just walked around outside for maybe five minutes without a hat on and now my entire head feels frozen. Ugh. I need some tea.

I wanted something that I knew would be delicious, wasn’t feeling the fruity just now, and I remembered this one this morning when thinking about chocolate-rose blends. Mm, so chocolatey and amazing. And my head is thawing, too.

On a side note, I think I’m going to have to bring a filter in here for the water. Something about it is not qutie right. it doesn’t taste bad out of the faucet, so I figured it would be ok, but all of my teas are flat and not as flavorful as I remember. The water seems pretty hard/minerally here, so maybe that’s it.

After that last tea I wanted a black tea with a really, truly excellent base, and this is one of I think two that I have that fit that description (the other being Verdant’s Golden Earl). Not just a tasty base, but a base that would or is considered to be a high quality tea on its own. This base really reminds me of a Bailin Gongfu black. With tons MORE CHOCOLATE of course. Yum.

This is another tea that I just can’t seem to get enough of these days. The balance between the awesome tea base and deft flavoring is just delicious.

In trying to look up some information about this tea base (Hong Maojian), I discovered that Mao Jian tea is usually produced as a green tea, and there aren’t many places that sell Hong Mao Jian, that is to say black Mao Jian. Tea Palace, in the UK, is the only source for an unflavored one that I’ve found online. In any case, I’m really glad I just put in an order for 3 ounces of this tea because I have a feeling I’ll be craving it more and my sample is just about out.

I’ve spent the whole day drinking ‘grown up’ tea, & while we were taking a break from re-stringing another harp, and reading Indigo Bloom’s post, little Terri started begging for a chocolate tea. And this one is awesome! First of all, the tea base is real full leaf tea, not chopped up stuff, & it’s a nice malty robust base! Then the chocolate! It reminds me of melted chocolate chips, the semi sweet kind. It has a thick feeling to it. I added stevia & coconut creamer, & I’m drinking hot cocoa! YUMMM!!

Heaven, that’s what I’m experiencing right now!

After an all day affair of savory teas, starting with the last of my Butiki English Breakfast (very tart!), then Butiki Organic Assam (potent!), then the Sheng (which I’m still drinking, LOL) and Matcha I’ve already documented, I wanted something sweet.

This really hits the spot. I didn’t even bother to try it plain, just dumped in some stevia, and YUM! I don’t really need any extra caffeine, but I plan to write on my novel until it’s finished tonight (if possible, I’m at 44,356 words, only 5,644 words to go), so maybe a little caffeine is in order?

I think this is the best Chocolate flavored tea I’ve ever had, it really is good! The tea base they use at the Tea Spot is also good.
Yeah, I think I want another cup…

OK…looks like I’m gonna stay up & try to finish these damn taxes, plus I’m really craving chocolate right now, so this was needed.
mmMMMMmmm

I wanted something sweet to savor & sip on during my gig, & this was the one. It has a decent tea base, & a decent chocolate flavor, with creamy undertones. I add a little Stevia, and it’s a grown up’s dessert in a cup, & little Terri likes it too!

And here is my 2nd bubble bath tea!

IMO this is awesome, plain & simple.

Steep #2: 5minutes….I can definitely tell the intensity of the chocolate has gone down. However, the amount of chocolate left kind of intensifies the cocoa notes that are in the black tea base.

Steep #3: 7 minutes….This one is still pretty good. The color is still ambery brown and there is still the faint hint of cocoa. Three good steeps makes this a good value in my book. I am not sure this would have worked well on a lower quality base. It is nice that once the cocolate dissipates, you are left with a good quality black tea.

Steep #4: 9 minutes….I am not sure this one was worth it. I did add milk just to see if there was anything left as far as tea, and I think that was a mistake. Since this is a black that does not really need milk (except for maybe that first steep…in a yummy kind of way, and not the bitterness cutting kind of way), I think it would hold up fine without milk on a 4th steep.

Note to self: The next time you do a 4 steep test, use a smaller cup. Your jumbo mug is too big for this many steeps….

My afternoon cuppa for the day….

This one is really pretty good. It tastes like a good Fujian black where the cocoa notes are in overdrive. Very yummy and rich tasting.

My afternoon cuppa post workout. I tried the first steap with milk. That did not work at all. The tea base is a little too delicate to stand up to milk. Drank it down and resteaped….and the resteap actually tasted more of chocolate than the first because I did not ruin it with milk. Both cups were lightly sweetened.

This tea is chocolatey and delicate. The black base is a good quality black kind of along the lines of a mid range China black. The chocolate flavor really amplifies the cocoa notes in the tea. Think a China black with cocoa notes on steriods. I am trying to decide if it is going on the rebuy list along with my Vitality Herbal from the Tea Spot.