Caramel Popcorn

Sipdown! One of the shared teas between Kittenna, Raritea and I. I figure since they were easy sipdowns, i should at least try to get those down tonight since i haven’t managed very many sipdowns, and word on the street is that there will be a package here soonish. This one smelled pretty darn good when we were looking at it. Sadly, upon brewing it, it’s sort of a weirdly black, sort of caramel ISH kinda tea that doesn’t really make me think of popcorn OR caramel. How sad…

Thank you Roswell Strange for sharing this with me! Today I paired it with tiny donuts from a shop called Darling Donuts in Hamilton. They’re cute and come in fun flavoured like salted caramel popcorn. Alas they’re cake donuts and not my favourite. I don’t think I’ll be revisiting it.

Unfortunately the same can be said for this tea. It’s not my favourite. It smelled so strongly of caramel but was basically just nut and a meh black base. In fairness to the tea, I’ve been holding onto it for over a year so it could be age. I just found it disappointing since the smell made promises that taste didn’t deliver on.

This tea is getting to be on the older side and you can smell it in the dry leaf. The different types of nuts in the blend are ever so slightly taking on that kind of Play Doh aroma. However, it steeped out fine! Smooth and consistent medium bodied black tea base with a non distinct nuttiness that had a low level sweet undertone. It doesn’t taste like caramel popcorn and, truthfully, it really never has. However, when you breathe out/exhale after a big sip there is more of a distinct caramel taste that the palate quickly catches. Sort of like how sometimes you only really taste cotton candy after you’ve just eaten it…

Hot, this does really well in a travel mug! I had it in a regular mug awhile back and it was just ok.
No need to add sugar. I wanted to experiment and with a dollop of milk it just gets more buttery. Damn. If the remaining cups are like this I may consider grabbing more one day

Also today was a very long day. I was in the office before 7am. We had a work event. But because there was maybe a third of the people around, the place was cold. I spent most of my day drinking coffee and tea in a lame attempt to stay warm. It didn’t work very well. I’m still cold. Brrrr.

Anyhow. I’m feeling pretty antisocial. The introvert in me is hissing at everyone for no reason

Brewed aroma has a sticky sweet note- reminiscent of caramel popcorn.

The black tea base is very weak and has bitter notes. I enjoy the flavouring but it would be better paired with a higher quality black tea or, as Kittenna mentioned, an oolong. The sticky sweet aroma translates to the flavour as a caramel. Unplesant aftertaste, likely from the “flavour” ingredient.

This tea I actually enjoy enough to try and drink up my share before it’s passed on to Raritea. A bit sweet and popcorny, it’s decent enough. Nothing much else to say!