Latkes & Applesauce

Sipdown (25)! The last serving was full of so much delicious apple, cinnamon, and potato dusty bits; who says tea dust can’t be delicious?

Although this isn’t an original, and I still have the more favoured Potato Pancakes & Applesauce, it’s still hard to let go of yet another Butiki tea. Like so many of Stacy’s blends, this concept was so unique and artfully blended. Now that I’m in the twilight hours of my Butiki stash I wish I’d ordered so much more (except I did; I just drank them right away).

Also, this totally held up to aging, especially when compared with my batch of With Open Eyes which is definitely getting tired.

You are missed.

Busy, exhausting days! My tasting notes have been slipping. Typical of me, I’m taking it down to the wire and writing up all of my remaining tasting notes for the drink-a-thon tomorrow. It’s the first day off I’ve had in a while, so I’ll be able to spend a decent amount of time on them, and I can’t wait. I’ve spent the last few days in a fog of exhaustion, but happy to be working good hours again, and just haven’t had the time I’d like to for tea.

This one I drank the other morning when I had a couple of hours going spare to drink a few cups of tea. I had it plain first, then with a pinch of (smoked) rock salt, and then finally a third time with a pinch of sugar, for good measure. It’s amazing how much it changes! Plain, the starchy potato and sweet apple and cinnamon notes are both equally present, and make for a tasty – if slightly confusing – cup of tea. Potato with sweet things seems very weird to me, as a non-American, but the potato here doesn’t seem overtly savoury so it doesn’t bother me too much. The base tea was hardly noticeable in any of the cups I had, which didn’t really surprise me after seeing that my dry leaf was over 50% potato and apple pieces. It was probably most noticeable here, but I had almost no tea leaves at all in my second cup so that might be why. Overall I find the balance to be intriguing, and would have liked to have tried it with a little salt and sweetener at the same time as per somebody else’s suggestion, but I didn’t have the time nor the patience to have yet another cup of this tea just then. I will probably try it like this eventually. With the rock salt added, only a little and not enough to make the tea actually taste salty, it was just as Stacy suggested – enhanced potato notes, diminished apple and cinnamon notes. The tea had a very brothy feel this time around, which I quite enjoyed. It almost reminded me of chips or ready salted crisps, but the cinnamon was still a quiet lingering note which stopped this from being completely savoury. On the flip side, I had a separate cup with added sugar and the potato note became much less noticeable, and the cinnamon and apple notes were brought out more. Similarly to the savoury cup, the potato was still present enough that the tea wasn’t completely sweet.

Each way I tried it, this tea was quite different. I could still tell that it was the same tea each time, and yet it tasted drastically different so as that three cups in a row wouldn’t seem like three cups of the same tea in a row. None of them were particular stand-outs, though all decently tasty, and the potato chunks really do make strainers a bitch to clean, but I’m still happy to have this tea in my collection for the sheer novelty factor.

I swear I’ve already logged this one. But anyway, yet another sad Butiki sipdown (though by no means the saddest). This is such an odd blend, but it works pretty well. I never tried it with sugar or salt, but straight it’s quite sweet and heavy on the apple and cinnamon. Those flavors don’t entirely go with the green base, which is pretty vegetal, but it’s a decent blend all the same—and certainly a unique one. Only Butiki…

I don’t remember which one of my tea friends did this, but I added a pinch of salt AND a touch of maple syrup to the tea as it was steeping. It smells delicious. Carby and cinnamony and appley. No doubt helped out by the bread I have rising in the oven (I was going to fridge-rise it, but I’m in loads of pain so I’m going to make the bread and THEN go into work. Ha. Comfort food will help, I’m sure.)

It is kind of asparagus-y from the base tea. Not terrible, but not a favourite flavour. So why did I get more of this? Umm, IDK really. Because it’s super neat and I wanted to try it again?

I love the apple and cinnamon and the potato. And adding salt AND sweetener was a good idea. The salt is bringing out the asparagus, but also the potato. The maple syrup is a great accompaniment to everything except possibly the asparagus. :) I didn’t get much of this, so I don’t have many cups left to taste. But I’m really glad I did get more. It’s so unique that it’s fun to drink every once in a while.

(2 steeps)

This was really good today. Just the right amount of spice, apple, and potato. YUM!!!
I do like the first version of this more, it was closer to what I remember of potato pancakes because the ones I know don’t have apple in them.
I did add a sprinkle of sugar to bring out the background notes. It was a little to much on the cinnamon side until I did that. Glad I still have a small tin left

I tried this with a generous sprinkling of sugar last night and a dash of salt….I’m crazy like that, why go for one or the other when you can do both?!

And wow!
So good. Really brought out the apples and potatoes.

I will do it again next time I drink this tea.
That is all. :)

I’ve never had laktes and applesauce so this is another unusual tea. But I like potatoes and I love apples and oh man this is good! I didn’t try it using salt but with honey and first steeping I tasted potato at first with sweet cinnamon apple after

So it’s been a week since I last wrote a tasting note, and man what an INSANE high stress week it’s been. Eventually I’ll get into that as I try to post some tasting notes from my queue over the next few days, but the gist of things is that…

B) Not only do I now NOT work at Dollarama, I have two jobs: a part time job at Calendar Club – they asked me back for the season, and a part time job at a new Sobeys branch opening up in my city. That’ll be expanded upon sometime later, but lets just say I’m really happy to be moving on to another job. Many of you know I’ve had issues with my racist manager before and there’s been a lot of frustration about the lack of respect the company has with its employees, and the high turnover rate. I think this is just better for me overall.

But anyway, the tea…

When Stacy announced she was closing up shop I tried to think of some of the most unique teas she sells out of my favourites and I tried to focus on stocking up on those blends. Obviously Potato Pancakes is one of those teas you just wont find anywhere else, you I made sure to grab a lot of it. Unfortunately, it sold out but to my delight, Stacy put together this batch instead so, trusting her completely, I ordered about 4 oz. of it! That should definitely last me a while, right!? Right.

I’m gonna have to do a side by side comparison sometime since I still have some of the original Potato Pancakes, but just going on smell this one seemed more “apple-y” to me, and maybe fresher but obviously this is a much newer batch compared to the Potato Pancakes I’ve had the last couple of months.

Steeped up, I was actually surprised because I did expect (based on the smell) for this to be a little fruitier than the original, but it was actually much more starchy/savory than apple like, and definitely pretty soft/gentle. That said, I know I got at least four potato cubes in the leaf I measured out so I’m not discounting the fact that could totally have skewed the balance between flavours. Even though there are definitely differences between the two blends and even though some slight fiddling may have to be done, this was very enjoyable and I am, of course, a happy customer!