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This isn’t actually really a tea. At all. It consists of tiny bits of hazelnut, (very bitter, very dry) chocolate bits and dried black currant. That is all. There’s no leaf what so ever of any kind in sight here. Mrs P told me to brew it up as though it was a chai, which I thought sounded reasonable, but once I actually wanted to do so, I was in doubt.

When she says ‘like a chai’ what does she actually mean? Some people prefer chais without milk, after all, and there are probably several hundred different recipes for brewing it in a saucepan on the hob.

I’m not used to chai at all, so I haven’t even got a preferred method.

What to do, what to do? Improvise. I’ve got a mug and some milk and some water and a kettle and a microwave. Half a mug of milk, nuked in microwave to a suitable temperature. Mixture in a filter bag into milk and topped up with boiling water.

So far so good. Except the paper filter wasn’t really working for me so I tore that up and just dumped the mixture straight out into the cup. After all, it’s made out of three perfectly edible things and there’s no reason to act like a wuss when I could just as well eat the stuff as it was. (Wouldn’t recommend eating it right out of the tin, though.)

Then, because I thought the milk ought to take at least a little colour from the chocolate bits, I added a little more mixture to the cup. Very systematic brewing method this!

I had rather imagined that the chocolate would melt but that seems to not be the case. The milk is still far more white than brown, but I’ve tasted it and it does indeed taste like chocolate and hazelnuts.

For something with such a very dry and bitter chocolate in it, and I know this because I tasted some, it’s ridiculously sweet. I think it must be the hazelnuts that does it. The black currant might as well not be there at all, but they taste awesome when chewed with a bit of the chocolate.

I don’t really know what to make of this. It smells great and it tastes lovely, but… It isn’t tea, and unlike the majority of herbal concoctions out there, doesn’t really feel like something that can be drunk as such. Although she said brew it like a chai, it doesn’t feel chai-y at all either. We’re closer to a hot chocolate category with this, and I do happen to possess a couple of different hot chocolate powders. I’m going to try and use some of this in that and see what happens. I suspect that would be great on an epic scale.