It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Chai Tea’

On the Mighty Leaf website this description is given: Bombay Chai with a melange of spicy notes conjures the steamy, aromatic delights of an Indian street market. Black tea leaves with subtle hints of Pepper, Orange, Cinnamon, Cardamom, and Clove make up our chai, the Indian word for tea. Bombay Chai is delicious when brewed fresh and blended with heated milk and sugar to taste.

Having recently given up coffee I drink Chai every day, as I find it is the only tea that has enough of a flavorful kick to get me awake and out the door in the morning.

When I tried Mighty Leaf’s Bombay Chai I found that it was pleasantly smooth and warm. However, generally Chai is distinguished by the bite of its spices, which didn’t seem particularly present here.

When I added milk I found that this overpowered the spices to the point that they were barely even noticeable. To me this tea seems to be suitable as a spiced black tea, but without knowing what it was I wouldn’t identify it as chai.

You can purchase Mighty Leaf Bombay Chai directly from their website.

From Adagio Teas Bengal Green Chai is an eastern fusion blend of green tea from China and a traditional mix of chai spices from India. It is described by Adagio as ” Our smooth China green tea with a chakra warming spice combination. Its natural sweetness and fiery kick will bring you back to center, no matter how polarized you’ve become. OOMMMMM OOMMMMM”

The loose tea presents very well, long leaves of green pekoe tea, lots of cloves, big chunks of cardamom pods, cinnamon bark, ginger root and orange peel; once brewed it makes a cup of tea that is a nice amber color. The aroma of the tea is rich and spicy and stays with the tea even after it is brewed.

I found the flavor of the cloves to be the most pronounced, almost a little too strong, but the ginger, cinnamon and cardamom worked nicely together as an underlying flavor. Overall, I liked the tea but I think that the mildness of the green pekoe was overpowered by the spices. I often add milk and sugar to a traditional black chai blend but I found that this tea isn’t robust enough to hold up to the addition of milk and sugar without losing too much of it’s color and taste.

I followed Adagio’s suggested brewing instructions of two heaping teaspoons per 6 oz cup – 3 min at about 180 degrees. This actually seemed like a lot of tea required to make a cup but I guess it has to do with the loose mix of big leaves and spice pieces – the more tea you use the more likely it is to get a consistent proportion of cloves, ginger, cinnamon and cardamom.

You can purchase Adagio Bengal Green Chai directly from their website.

This is a herbal blend from Tea forte who describe it as “a rich, chocolate reward, nearly as gratifying as a velvety truffle”. Well, I don’t know if it’s all that but it is very good.

Being a chocoholic I prefer the real thing – dark and melting on your fingers. I’ve been disappointed many times by teas that promise a real chocolate taste and deliver only a hint. I was pleasantly surprised by Coco Truffle; not only by the sweet aroma which with eyes shut could make me believe that it was a mug of hot cocoa rather than tea, but the rich almost milky taste had tons of real chocolate flavor.

The ingredients are listed as cacao, cinnamon, fennel, licorice root, cardamom, ginger, cloves, black pepper. The flavor from the cacao beans was the most pronounced. I suspect that the cardamom gave the tea it’s creamy characteristic but the other spices, fennel and licorice root only came through as an aftertaste. I think that either fennel or licorice root and not both would have been sufficient but overall the combination was a success.

I followed Tea forte’s guidelines and brewed it for 5 minutes in water that was just short of boiling. A second cup made with the same tea bag had very little of the coco flavor left but the other ingredients came through and it was almost like a weak chai. Tea forte’s signature pyramidal tea bags are very elegant looking and the design seems to give the tea plenty of room to steep but they are very expensive at $1 per bag so it’s unlikely I would be buying these regularly but perhaps as a special treat or as a gift.

You can purchase Tea Forte Coco Truffle Tea directly from their website, and in various high-end establishments around the world.