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Bird & Blend Sticky Chai is unlike anything I’ve heard before. It is – and this may surprise you – sticky. (Although, come to think of it, there was quite a large spoiler in its name.)
This is because the second item in the ingredients list is honey. I would never add honey to my drinks, but apparently when a tea comes pre-honeyed, I’m all for it. Excitingly, this isn’t just any honey. It’s Bird & Blend wildflower honey, which suggests that the Birdnblend family have beehives on their teablending estate. (I am, for some reason, choosing to believe that Bird & Blend are a family business, where everyone’s surname is Birdnblend. They’re descended from Lord Birdnblend of Brighton and Hove you know.)
In addition to honey, Sticky Chai contains Assam black tea, fresh ginger, cardamom, star anise, cinnamon, ground ginger, fennel, cloves, coriander seeds and black peppercorns. Normally when it comes to tea preparation. I shun all teamongers’ wild and wacky suggestions of making cold brews or cocktails or gravy or whatever out of their blends. I want my tea hot, in a mug, and with a splash of milk where appropriate. However with Sticky Chai, chai latte was presented as the primary method of preparation and making it with hot water was very much given as a “or you could do it this way” afterthought.
So intrepidly, I boiled up my Chai with some coconut milk-emulating-product and had at it latte-style. It was nice, don’t get me wrong. In fact it was bloody delicious, but it wasn’t very tea. I felt like I would have achieved a similar result with just hot milk, honey and cinnamon. The tea part of this tea got a bit lost in the process.
It was when I went with Plan B – boil the kettle and make a regular pot of tea – that this tea really shone, as far as I was concerned. The Assam tea is the superhero here with milk, honey and spices as the supportive sidekicks. They make a formidable super team.
The sweetness level seemed lower with this method compared to the all-milk version which was a good thing. It meant that I could properly appreciate the contribution made by all the spices, and not just the Showy-Offy ones like cinnamon and ginger.
The sticky consistency of the pre-brewed product is rather interesting. It has the consistency of chocolate cornflake cakes before they’ve set. Bird & Blend rather glibly instructs the tea consumer to use two heaped teaspoonfuls, which is more of a challenge than you might think. This is not a product which lends itself to spooning. It’s like trying to take a spoonful of candy floss or feathers.
Not that the consistency of Sticky Chai is actually like either of those things, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to think of things that you can’t spoon. Analogies considered and rejected included: snow, tobacco, marbles and people. (I reckon you could have a spoonful of people if you had a large enough spoon.)
Once you navigate its unspoonability, the resulting tea is entirely worth it and utterly delicious. I just hope I haven’t disappointed the BirdnBlend dynasty, with my unadventurous non-latte drinking habits.
Today’s featured book is East of the Sun by Julia Gregson.
