157/365
The fifth of Bluebird’s Tea Election candidates. As an aside, there was something odd about this tea’s profile when I tried to add my note earlier. It looked different, and clicking “review” just took me back to the Steepster home page. I faffed around for a while, since the records for other teas looked fine and seemed to be working. I finally got this far by clicking “edit tea info” and then saving. Not sure what happened there…
Anyway, the tea. I made this one up as a latte using Bluebird’s recipe. It’s the first time I’ve made a green tea latte, so that was kinda exciting! I used 300ml of 80 degree water and 100ml of milk, plus 1/2 tsp each of honey and vanilla essence. I was a little worried about bitterness from brewing at double strength, but it actually turned out fine.
I get the treacle aspect of this one, although it needs to cool a bit before that really comes through. Initially, it’s very smooth, sweet and buttery, but little more than that. Once I found the treacle flavour, though, it was all plain sailing. I should probably say at this point that what I can really taste here is golden syrup; this tea reminds me most of those microwave puddings I had as a child, only minus the sponge. Treacle to me is the black, molasses-y stuff, and that’s not what I can taste here. I don’t think it’s what Bluebird intended me to taste, either, so I think I’m on the right lines.
The sponge is the only aspect that’s slightly lacking. I suppose the buttery flavour approaches that territory, but for me it falls slightly short of actually tasting like sponge. I’m more than happy with the syrup, though; that’s spot-on. I can’t even imagine what’s creating that flavour, because the ingredients seem fairly innocuous in and of themselves. Bluebird magic, clearly!
I like this one, but I still don’t think it’s my favourite of the six. I’ll give it a couple more tries before I make my final decision, though.
Log it in the bug thread, there’s quite a few out there. Something about being stuck in mobile site mode.
Treacle sponge is made with golden treacle rather than black treacle, so probably similar to those microwave puddings you mentioned! (: