Crème Caramel Rooibos by DavidsTea
Rooibos Tea / Flavoured
$7.98 for 50g
First Impressions
Officially into the second half of the 24 Days of Tea advent calendar, and day 13 is Crème Caramel Rooibos. My initial reaction in seeing that it was a rooibos tea was “poop”. I don’t like a lot of rooibos teas, I’m quite particular (although I love Birthday Cake by DavidsTea). Rooibos to me often has an almost medicinal quality to the smell and flavour, and that is generally something that I don’t want to have in my cup because it’s not pleasant to me.
Crème Caramel Rooibos has a slight caramel smell to it, but more heavy on the rooibos side. Crème Caramel Rooibos consists of: rooibos, caramel pieces, natural and artificial flavouring. For those who are lactose intolerant, it does contain milk. As you can tell from my photo above, my tin didn’t have a lot of caramel pieces in it (this may have played a role in my overall experience).
Preparation
The recommendation for preparing Crème Caramel Rooibos is to use near-boiling water (90-95°C/194-203°F) and to steep for 4 to 7 minutes. When I use my Breville IQ Kettle, I opt to use the French Press option (200°F) to get the water to the right temperature. I steeped my cup of Crème Caramel Rooibos for 5 minutes.
First Taste
Crème Caramel Rooibos steeps to have a very strong rooibos smell, very medicinal and not enough caramel in the steam that wafts up from the cup as it steeps. It does have a beautiful red colour that it steeps to, which I always like. There is a slight sweetness to this rooibos blend that I like, but it does get overpowered by the rooibos base. The medicinal quality in the smell is followed by a medicinal quality in the flavour. It lacks a creaminess that I was anticipating with a name like Crème Caramel Rooibos, and found that it benefits from a splash of evaporated milk. The cream content of the evaporated milk helps boost the caramel flavours, but doesn’t cut through the medicinal rooibos flavour as much as I would like.
A Second Cup?
I did not resteep Crème Caramel Rooibos.
My Overall Impression
I didn’t like DavidsTea’s Crème Caramel Rooibos. I really wanted to like this one, especially with a name like Crème Caramel Rooibos because I am all about the sweets (especially in the holiday season!). I found the amount of caramel in the steeped tea to be lacking, although it did improve a bit with the addition of evaporated milk. I’m just not overly fond of rooibos as a tea base, as I’m not a fan of medicinal flavours in my tea mugs.
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