Double Spice Chai

Disclaimer: this is the bagged variety. But based on the BLECH-ness of the bagged kind, I won’t even consider the loose variety.

Total and utter BLECH! There is too much cardamom and clove and not enough of the sweeter spices – allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon – to round out the very harsh edges of this tea. I do love my chais, but this is a cuppa nastiness. I feel horrid about this because for Christmas this year I gave my sister-in-law and mom both some Stash bagged chais and this was one of them.

I don’t even care for the smell of this – which is appropriate considering this tastes almost as bad as it smells.

I have a couple extra bags if someone else wants to try it… But I don’t recommend it, not one bit! I’m reaching for Pancake Breakfast to get rid of that BLECH flavor…

So back when I wrote a note for regular stash chai, I remember saying how average it was, kinda spicy but not really anything to get excited about. So today I made a bagged of double spiced chai in a nice big cup and wham the flavor hits you full force. I think it’s safe to say that I like cinnamon =] and probably also safe to say that I’ll never buy regular chai again.

However, this isn’t the most flavorful tea I’ve ever had. Compared to the Good Earth cinnamon orange red tea, this is perhaps just up to par with, and this chai actually kinda loses it’s hold on you near the bottom.

I expected and desired a double spiciness, and I always add milk and sugar, so this worked well for me. The bag showed double the amount of spice oil stain as the regular strength Stash black chai, and this is also okay by me. If a blend were to contain enough crushed or ground spices to attain that amount of flavor, then the bag would have to weigh about twice what it does, in order to continue to include enough actual tea for a good cup. As long as quality oils and extracts are used, the flavor can be quite good and the price kept within reach by po’ folk like me. I’d recommend this tea for anyone who wants the convenience of a bag and likes to add lots of milk, because the spiciness really shines through. The only thing I would change would be to add black pepper.

A while ago I had really enjoyed steeping a teabag of Tazo’s “Pumpkin Spice Chai” along with some straight houjicha, finding they complimented each other very well. I finished up the Tazo teabags before the houjicha, but when I went back to my local grocery to restock, they no longer had the Tazo “Pumpkin Spice Chai” so I grabbed a random other chai from what they had available, which was this one. And I found, as I do with most grocery store chai options, that I hated it. It uses waaaaaaaaaaay too much spice oils/flavoring rather than whole spices for my tastes. I sometimes do okay with the cinnamon flavoring used in teas with those sweet “cinnamon candy” sort of blends, but here it just comes off as really artificial… and the clove and cardamom oil tastes really strong. I like clove in tea (I realize it is a polarizing ingredient in chai) but this just punches you in the face with it.

Needing a way to use up the teabags (I hate being wasteful of food I’ve already spent my dollars on), I’ve been using them up making tea pop. My first batch turned out pretty awful because my CO2 canister was at the bottom so it didn’t fizz up properly and made the tea really bitter, so a fresh CO2 canister and a little added sugar syrup later and it’s servicable in pop form. Still a little clove heavy, but it works much better as a fizzy carbonated cold drink and I can use up the teabags four at a time making the base coldbrew. One more liter to go to wash my hands of this chai!

I like to believe that there’s a way to make every tea into something you can enjoy, no matter how unimpressed you are when you steep it as directed. Maybe that’s just because I can’t bear to throw away tea when I know that I’ve spent (mumbles) on the collection.

Anyway, I couldn’t get this to a point where I was enjoying it steeped in a mug, so I made the rest of the bags into a concentrated chai syrup with a little sugar. Delicious chai latte this morning! The dominant flavors are still cinnamon and clove, but the ginger did come through a little more clearly, and the milk helps balance those strong spice flavors.

Look, I love clove, and I love a heavy spice in general, so this is a win for me on all counts. I mostly notice clove followed by cinnamon in this tea, but not in a way that totally erases the black tea flavor itself. Sipsby nailed it for me with this one.

This was one of the teabags packaged as a sample with my Stash order. Should be renamed “clove water”, or maybe “double clove chai”. That’s all you taste and all you smell. Cinnamon? Ginger? Nutmeg? Nope! All clove, all the time.

With sugar it tasted like purple jellybeans, which, admittedly, I like. Not enough however, to ever seek this tea out again. Stay away if you don’t like a lot of clove flavor.

bagged tea in my desk at work, kind of my ‘emergency’ backup tea stash. It is actually pretty good, with cream and sweetener. quite peppery, not as cinnamon-y as other chais I have had, but pretty tasty. I like it.

I won this tea as a door prize! For a bagged Chai, it really wasn’t bad. Not nearly as spicy as the name would suggest, but I found the combination of spices pleasant and it took milk pretty well. Not something I’m going to be purchasing, but I’d drink it again in a pinch.

it’s a decent tea but honestly that’s just it decent no more no less