Dark Forest Chai

Wow! OK… so as I was pouring this from my teapot to my mug, I could swear I was smelling cinnamon and sugar donuts! YES … donuts. That is what this smells like fresh from the teapot.

And it does have elements to it that give it a sort of cake-y, donut-ish flavor. It is cinnamon-y and sweet, and the chicory gives it a deep, roasted flavor and together with the honeybush it creates a savory, freshly baked cake kind of taste. It’s very satisfying … my sweet tooth approves!

This smells so yummy steeping. It’s a tad finicky for late night (I am so lazy about heating milk for some reason, always have been…my husband can’t drink normal hot chocolate and the kind I buy him, Dagoba’s Xocolatl, is really good but best with hot milk so we only have it when it’s snowing out ha) and I’ve never made chai before that used both hot water and hot milk, just one or the other, so it’s new to me but man. LiberTEAS is right that it smells a whole lot like a cinnamon sugar cake donut. It tastes delicious too. I have a couple more no-caf chais to try from my sample stash before I come to a decision about which will be this winter’s bedtime treat, but right now I have serious doubts any will smell this good. The convenience factor’s a bit ehhh but I haven’t bothered to see if the others need hot milk too so that point might be moot anyway. And besides, something that smells this good can definitely motivate me to heat some milk. Oh so good. Decadent! To be honest after some ok-but-not-astounding samples of their Earls months ago I was kind of hoping to be able to write off Townshend’s as a fond memory of my first trip to Portland (including the story of how a customer another table over tipped me off all friendly-like about Naked Bike Night, whee) but not amazeballs enough to reorder from (I’m trying to whittle my vendors list, it cuts down on shipping and all that) but this could well be Very Necessary (Salt n Pepa reference, har), which means I can get more Soaring Crane (a nice tasty undemanding green) in the process.

A delicious choice for an evening (decaf) chai. It does really need sweetener to cut a particular taste in the blend, I think it’s the carob, that comes off a bit too thick and claylike for me unadulterated.

Like all of Townshend’s chais, it benefits hugely from their recommended preparation, including steeping the tea directly in a hot water/hot milk mixture rather than adding milk at the end. This is also a beautiful and calming thing to watch in my IngenuiTEA brewer: the broad variety of shapes of herbs and teas working their way through the progressively more caramel-colored milky bliss. It’s hard not to feel relaxed before even the first sip!

1 Tb tea, steeped in 8 oz. hot water + 4 oz. hot milk together for 6 minutes. I added a Stevia sweetener equal to 2 tsp sugar.

This. More of it. Every day, dammit.