The way I’ve learned to make chai is a stove top method.  Rather than just simply brewing like tea, you do the following:

For each 2 cups of chai tea:
Take 1 cup water, bring to a boil on the stove in a small saucepan.  Once the water comes to a boil, add 1 tbsp. chai tea, and 1 tbsp. sugar.  Return to a boil, and let boil for 5 minutes.  Turn off the heat, and add one cup milk (the more milk-fat, the more flavorful).  Let rest on the stove for at least 10 minutes, and then strain, and drink.

This method of preparation takes most chai mixes and makes them amazingly flavorful.  I know it’s sacrilege to boil tea, but the spices in chai cover any over-steeped flavor, and it ensures you get the most out of the spices.

So, wanting to get the most out of this chocolate chai (because really, what could be better?  Chocolate *and* chai spice?  YUM), I prepared it in the stovetop method.  It surprised me.  It was a very mellow cup.  Like a mildly spiced chocolate milk.  The chocolate flavor is at the forefront, and there’s a taste of generic spices as an aftertaste.  None of the particular spices stand out, but there’s the sensation of clove, and a tiny burn from possibly a little pepper.

So, it’s very yummy, but a little less spicy than I was hoping.  If it wasn’t caffeinated, I could see drinking this at night as a soother.

I wanted to make sure it wasn’t the stovetop method somehow skewing the flavor of this tea.  So I brewed it like a regular cup of tea as well.  And no, it does MUCH better brewed stove top method.

Prepare for something lovely.  It’s a great cuppa.  Just don’t expect a lot of spice, and revel in the chocolate.

You can purchase the Chocolate Chai directly from the Mark T. Wendall Tea Company website.

Inspection of dried leaf shows tiny bits of ginseng, berries, rosehips, peppermint, and dandelion. Steeping instructions are to steep the tea for 5 minutes in 8oz. of boiling water. Dried leaf smells of ginseng and steeped infusion was a dark brownish-yellow colour with more of a dandelion aroma.

There is a bit of a tang when you first put it in your mouth. I think on account of the berries, rosehips, and peppermint. Then comes the ginseng and dandelion giving a bit of a lemongrass taste, with the mintyness always in the background, and finally a lingering sweetness. I’m not too fond of the sweet and cool feeling left on my tongue after I sip it. I did not like the fruity sweetness aftertaste coupled with the ginseng and out of place peppermint. The peppermint and dandelion seems to interrupt and the ginseng does not go too well with the sweetness.

Just too much going on here. I could not finish my cup. It does have the detox factor going for it. A detox tea can increase your health, energy, and sense of well-being. It does this by removing toxins and contaminants from your body. But then again, I’d probably choose a different detox to drink. Last week’s Hampstead Ginger Green Detox, although not great, is better than this one. I prefer the grassy mellower flavour to this sweet mash-up of numerous strongly flavoured tea components.

You can purchase the White Ginseng Detox directly from the Rishi Tea website.

Smell from the bag is sweet, ripe raspberries.

I followed the directions on the sample packet: empty entire contents of bag into 8 ounces of boiling water and steeped 5 minutes.

Ahh, isn’t that pretty? Pink tea with fruit notes. But where is the green tea? The raspberries seem to overpower the tea base.

This brew is tart and tangy. It makes me feel like I am drinking hot Kool Aid. I don’t understand how Rishi can call this green tea. I taste no tea at all.

I tried for a resteep and was forced to pour out the hot pink mess. All I could taste is hot water and even that was not very good.

This should have been tagged as an herbal tea, then I might have liked it better. But with the mention of green tea on the bag and then not being able to taste the green tea base, I am left to say that this tea is not very good.

You can purchase the Organic Fair Trade Raspberry directly from the Rishi Tea website.

Vanilla to me is a very round, soft taste and mint is sting-y and has a cool sensation. Chai is like an autumn spice. Rishi tea’s combination of these three makes for a beverage with a very minty aroma but not so minty taste. As a matter of fact, the vanilla and chai is somewhat subdued as well. No one element, vanilla, mint, or chai, stood out. It was one meshed up round, soft, confusing combination of tastes with no clear winner. I guess if I had to identify a “feature” taste, it would be the milk used as the base element. If pressed to describe the flavour profile of this tea, I would call it cinnamon milk.

Steeping instructions are to bring 1.5 cups of water and 1 cup of milk to a boil. Reduce heat. Add contents of package. Let simmer 3-5 minutes. Sweeten to taste and strain to drink. I did not add any sugar, but for those of you who like it sweet and prefer a more minty taste maybe we should do what many do with hot chocolate…that is, (add sugar to the tea) and use a candy cane as a stirring stick to add more mintyness. I know it works for hot chocolate, never tried it with tea though…maybe it’ll work! I would use the candy cane to stir rather than dissolve the whole cane in the beverage though as I find it will be too minty if fully dissolved. This may bring the perfect level of mintyness to an otherwise very lightly-minted tea. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer light to heavily minted beverages, but when everything else is so soft, you end up with a very confusing mix of tastes with no real one you can hang on to.

I think I preferred Rishi Tea’s Chocolate Chai to their Vanilla Mint Chai. Both are soft and round beverages but the former had occasional peeks of spice and other tastes (ginger, and pu-erh to be exact) to liven up your taste buds a little bit more.

You can purchase the Vanilla Mint Chai directly from the Rishi Tea website.

As much as I love discovering new teas from lesser known companies, it’s nice to have a company that I’m know will not disappoint. This blend however, isn’t one that I would think of when I thought of Rishi. Just when I thought I knew the company they surprise me with this one! It look and smells delicious and the list of ingredients is certainly enticing. The strongest scent I’m getting is that of orange and cinnamon, also smells like berries to me though there aren’t any listed in the blend.

Steeped it per the website recommendations and waited a couple of minutes to let it cool. The tea has turned a light red color and the and the scent of apple has become more pronounced. The taste is sweet and tangy and a lot heavier than I expected, it’s really satisfying and the scent alone has given me a boost. Have to say that I do feel ‘recharged’ even with just one cup in my system. Thinking this would be better suited as an afternoon pick-me-up rather than a bedtime herbal.

You can purchase the Red Ginseng Recharge directly from the Rishi Tea website.

The dry leaves seemed to be more powder than leaves. The smell reminded me of cut grass.

I poured the contents of the package into my infuser basket, boiled my water and poured 8 ounces of water in my cup/infuser. I waited 5 minutes.

After brewing the smell of the leaves is sweeter. Licorice comes to mind.

In my sample the leaves were more like powder and even with my best fine mesh infuser, the particles found their way into my tea cup.

This tea is not totally undrinkable, but it was a close call on that point for me. With all the particles floating around in my cup and than the taste of valerian root, I did not enjoy this blend at all.

You can purchase the Serene Dream directly from the Rishi Tea website.

I picked out a couple different Rishi herbal blends to try because I’ve discovered that the only non-caffeinated teas in my cupboard were pretty much exclusively rooibos and honeybush. A little variety wouldn’t hurt.

The dry tea smells liked Christmas dinner in a field of peppermint – no really! The scent is a blend of savory sage and mint with very little bergamot apparent to my nose. The taste of the peppermint is quite dominant in the tea itself, but the sage and thyme provide a strong counterpoint to it. There’s not a lot of bergamot really that I can pick up – a faint, sweet citrusiness is all I get from it; so personally I think the tea’s name is a bit of a misnomer.

I find the whole thing to taste a bit medicinal, like the sort of thing I’d drink if I was sick with the flu. All the same it’s a nice alternative to the typical mint tea and I think it would make a nice drink after a big meal to aid digestion as many of the herbs in the blend are supposed to help with that sort of thing.

I gave this tea a Steepster rating of 71/100.

You can purchase the Bergamot Sage directly from the Rishi Tea website.

The first thing I noticed when I went to drink this tea were the directions on the side of the sample package I had. They said to empty the contents of the package into eight ounces of water and steep for three to four minutes. I have to raise issue with this as there is enough leaf in the sample package to satisfy an eight cup teapot at three to four minute steepings. That being said, I chose to not follow the directions and instead used about half a teaspoon of leaf in my small gaiwan (six ounces or so).

Boil water, rinse the leaves, steep for thirty seconds, pour into the fairness cup, serve. Repeat. I was pleasantly surprised by this tea. Based on past experiences with coconut flavoured teas, including other companies’ coconut oolongs, I did not have high expectations. In general, it seems that most companies take a mediocre oolong or black tea and douse it in artificial coconut flavouring. This one, on the other hand, got it right. The initial taste is of oolong. Plain and simple. But then the flavour of coconut kicks in, and it does not taste fake! Rather, it tastes a bit like coconut oil, and provides and delightfully sweet aftertaste.

I enjoyed this tea very much. On my personal enjoyment scale, I give it an 85/100 and would definitely recommend it to lovers of coconut flavoured tea.

You can purchase the Coconut Oolong directly from the Rishi Tea website.

First things first: turmeric is pronounced TUR-mer-ick, and if I’m to believe the claims I’m reading, it’ll cure what ails ya, be it Alzheimer’s, prostate trouble, arthritis, obesity, or skin conditions. It also appears to be useful in zazzing up roast lamb, pickles, and chicken dishes.

Pair that with ginger, legendary for its digestive benefits, and you have a combination that at least by reputation, ought to preserve you well into a ripe old age.

Rishi’s blend looks like something that belongs in your spice cabinet–heavy on the ginger powder visually and in flavor. Just past the ginger is the presence of licorice root–noticeable, but not so cloyingly sweet as to be annoying (I’m biased against licorice on general principles). However, about the time your taste buds settle down for your brain to catch up, BAM! the turmeric hits the back of your throat with the burn of a mild chili powder. Not hot enough to make the eyes water, but warm enough to make the eyes widen.

It’s nice to find a healthful herbal alternative that doesn’t lean toward the lemony. Rishi’s Turmeric Ginger would be a natural choice for chai and spice lovers as well as herbal drinkers looking for a warm and healthy something-to-clear-out-the-esophagus come cold and flu season.

You can purchase the Turmeric Ginger directly from the Rishi Tea website.

From what I can tell of the leaf, it contains cardamon, what looks like yerba mate, pu-erh, and cocoa. The aroma has chocolate, cardamon, and ginger notes.

The steeping instructions call for one cup of boiling water, one cup of boiling milk, to mix in the ingredients and to let it steep for 3 to 5 minutes. Sweeten to taste.

I did not add any sugar; the taste was fine as it is and I think better without it. The chocolate notes rounded out the ginger and spice that peeks through ever so slightly. It has a sort of grounded, chocolate, round, creaminess with a bit of hui gan bitterness at the end after you swallow which I think can be on account of the pu-erh bits mixed with the cocoa. I think adding sugar would ruin the taste as it would give it a sharpness which does not complement the taste of this beverage. The rounded, soft taste without the edge suits the creaminess and milky mouthfeel, with only the peeks of spice and ginger.

I would recommend only letting the ingredients steep in the milk and boiling water for the suggested 3-5 minutes then strain out all the ingredients from the pot. Do not let the ingredients sit in the solution as it will make the beverage taste very gingery and strong hui gan bitterness.

I like this blend. When I first read chai with pu-erh I thought that it would be a catastrophe but it works! If steeped correctly, it’s like a creamy (unsweetened) cocoa, with hui gan bitterness and the occasional peeks of spice and ginger to liven up your taste buds but still overall a soft and round beverage.

You can purchase the Chocolate Chai directly from the Rishi Tea website.