Tag: chocolate in tea

Today’s tea: Adagio Chocolate!

One of their single flavor teas, which, honestly, I think are not their strong suit. In the bag it smells like tootsie rolls, like most chocolate teas do. In the cup, it smells more like chocolate cake, which makes me sad because it mostly just smells like it; it tastes like black tea with just a literal whiff of chocolate.

Leaves are small and compact, and don’t grow or unfold too much while brewing. It’s a decent black tea and would probably go well with milk and sugar, but last time I tried this one (and also the one from Harney & Sons which is similar), it didn’t bring out the chocolate much.

I think I’m learning that three minutes is definitely not long enough for any tea to brew to my tastes! I like a strong brew. This is three minutes, still too hot to drink; it gets much longer if you let it sit until it’s a comfortable drinking temp.

I wonder if chocolate teas might do better with cocoa powder or actual chocolate pieces rather than trying to use artificial chocolate flavor; I think that’s why they smell like tootsie rolls and don’t taste like much. Not much real chocolate.

Final verdict? Eh. Cocoa exists, and tea exists, but I haven’t yet been convinced they need to be combined.

If you wanna give it a try for yourself, you can get yours here!

Adagio Irish Stout

I love me some adagio. They’ve been one of my favorite tea companies for, what, like close to a decade now??*

Right now they’re doing A Thing where if you spend over $45, they include a bag of their seasonal Irish Stout tea! I used a gift certificate and apparently that counts as spending, so I got a bag!

When you open the bag it smells like Baileys. Like straight irish creme. Not stout at all–no hippiness, no bitterness, no malted hints, nothing that would make it smell like a beer, so it makes the name weird. BUT it’s a delicious smell. Super yummy.

There’s cocoa nibs and little shamrock sprinkles in it, and it brews up a nice medium-dark brown. Smells more like chocolate as it brews, less like irish creme, but still smells yummy.

The taste is mostly tea, but a little sort of tootsie-roll chocolatey, and a vague hint of smooth creaminess. Still nothing to justify the name, even after I forgot to remove the teabag and it got over-brewed. And it was still very drinkable even that dark!

This would go excellent with sugar and cream, british style, and if you brew it real strong, would probably make an excellent japanese-style milk tea!

*how is everything ten years ago now??