Continuing with our 12 Days of Christmas countdown, today I was excited to scratch off the label and see a flavored green tea. So if you are following along and don’t want to be spoiled on what today’s tea is, you might want to stop reading here. You’ve been warned 🙂

The 8th Day of Christmas Tea is. . . ..Buttered Spiced Rum Green Tea. 

Today was a day where I drank a lot of black teas so to see a green tea was such a great change of pace. This tea had all of the aroma of a typical chai with a soft overlaying sweet layer.  Steeped up per the parameters indicated on the back of the pouch, I let the tea cool for the 5 minutes recommended and took my first sip.

As much spice as I picked up from the dry leaf, I was happy to see that the spices weren’t overpowering and the tea itself had an incredibly lovely sweet touch. I’m assuming that is the Buttered Rum part coming to play.  The green tea base just adds to the sweet buttery feel that this tea really exudes.

All in all, a wonderful tea that reminds you of a chai without having those strong chai flavors. Basically a chai for non chai drinkers like myself.  I love the fact that the tea base is green tea too. Just calms those spices down so they don’t smack you in the face at the beginning of every sip.

Here is the official tea description and Mad Musings. I write my review before looking at the official description.

Tea Description: Hot Buttered Rum is a traditional winter drink – something that will help warm you up when it’s cold outside. As I’ve often mentioned, I’m not much of a drinker of alcohol – tea is my drink of choice – but I still enjoy the idea of a warm, soothing cup of hot buttered rum – so I decided to create a tea that brought those flavors to life while still enjoying my favorite drink.

I chose a buttery Chinese Sencha as my base because I felt that the natural buttery tones of the tea would highlight the ‘buttered’ part of the buttered rum. Then I added a few spices: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. The spices aren’t overwhelming because I wanted a gentle, warm spice flavor but not something that would overpower the flavors of creamy butter and rum. A couple of the recipes that I found online for Hot Buttered Spiced Rum called for orange zest – instead, I added some dried orange segments. The orange flavor is delicate here, just a touch of orange to brighten the cup. As I already mentioned, my goal was to highlight the buttered rum flavor so I didn’t want those flavors overwhelmed by other profiles in this blend.

The result is a gentle, warm, soothing beverage. Something that makes me want to curl up next to a crackling fire and read a good book. This one’s really nice!

organic ingredients: green tea, oranges, cinnamon, ginger, clove, allspice, nutmeg and natural flavors.

This one required a little bit of tweaking for me to get it just the way I wanted it. The first time I tested it, I wasn’t getting enough of a buttered rum flavor. Oh, I could taste them, but they seemed to be lurking somewhere in the distance. The second time I tested it, the buttered rum flavor was a little more dominant which made me happy, but I wasn’t getting enough from the spices. So I added a few more spices to the blend before I tested it for the third time.

Now that’s the stuff!

I managed to get a nice balance between butter and rum here – and it ends up tasting a lot more like the candies (you know, the popular candies with the hole in the middle?) – like, imagine if you were to liquefy the candies and add that liquid to a cup of green tea – yeah, that’s the flavor I’m getting here. I haven’t really had a hot buttered rum recently (I seem to remember being offered a sip of the drink once when I was young but it either: a) not memorable, or; b) I was either drunk or well on my way to getting there so I don’t remember what it tasted like. I was a bit more of a drinker in my youth than I am today.

The orange is delicate but it develops as I continue to sip. Now that I’m more than halfway finished with my cup, I’m picking up on just a little more orange. Still not a dominant flavor – it’s still much more there than it was at the start and I also notice a hint of tangy citrus lingering on my palate in the aftertaste.

The spices are not strong – this isn’t meant to taste like a chai – but they’re definitely there.

Overall, I think that this drink comes together really nicely. It’s warm and cozy – like something you might want to sip after coming in from the snow. Something soothing and calming and really pleasant.

To brew: Give the pouch a gentle shake to make sure that the spices are incorporated throughout the blend. I used a rounded teaspoon – with Chinese Sencha, it might be easier to use a regular teaspoon from the cutlery drawer rather than one of those ‘perfect’ teaspoons because the leaves are long and spear-like and they don’t fit very well in that perfect teaspoon measuring spoon. Steep in 12 ounces of hot water (heated to 180°F) and let steep for 2 1/2 minutes. Strain and let cool for about 5 minutes. Enjoy.

I personally think that this tea is better hot rather than cold so don’t let it cool too long! Also, a small dollop of honey will accentuate the spices in a very pleasant way so I highly recommend it!

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Here’s the scoop!

Leaf Type: Flavored Green Tea

Where to Buy: 52Teas

Description

This tea is no longer available but click below to see what is.

Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!