The Good: Good ingredients, Nicely caffeinated
The Bad: Weak, Generic tea flavor, Comparatively expensive
The Basics: Trading Phrases Chocolate Toffee tea is momentarily intriguing, but the execution of the idea is not borne out by the flavor.
When my wife picked up some Trading Phrases Chocolate Toffee Tea, we both thought that it would be a slam-dunk for me. I love chocolate and I've had some good chocolate flavored teas. So, when I brewed up some of the new Chocolate Toffee Tea, I was pretty psyched. Unfortunately, the Trading Phrases attempt at the flavors does not live up in a satisfying way to its promise.
Basics
Chocolate Toffee Tea is a black tea from Trading Phrases. This is a tea blend that is a black tea with a bunch of additives to it, though it is mostly natural. The Trading Phrases Chocolate Toffee is a loose-leaf tea.
Ease Of Preparation
As a tea, Chocolate Toffee is fairly easy to prepare. One and a half teaspoons of the loose leaf tea will make a full 8 oz. mug full of tea. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well, though the tea leaves cannot be reused for a second brewing.
To prepare Chocolate Toffee tea, bring a pot of water to 212 degrees (Fahrenheit) and pour it over the tea leaves (once they are in the steeping chamber). This tea takes three minutes to steep according to the directions. In my experience, it gets no stronger after three minutes, which is a little disappointing because this was a fairly weak-flavored tea.
Taste
The Trading Phrases Chocolate Toffee tea has a fairly mild and sweet aroma to it. The smell of sweet, buttery toffee blends nicely with the aroma of black tea. There is nothing in the scent that even hints at chocolate.
On the tongue, the Chocolate Toffee tea tastes dry and slightly sweet. The flavor is mostly black tea, though it has a dry sweetness to it, reminiscent of sweetened chocolate. The flavor has no real taste of toffee to it - there is nothing buttery in its flavor - the chocolate barely holds its own against the black tea. As a result, this is a mostly tea-flavored tea with hints of dry cocoa to it.
The Trading Phrases Chocolate Toffee tea has a temporarily dry aftertaste to it.
Nutrition
The ingredients to this tea are more diverse than many other teas, but the dominant ingredients are: black tea, cocoa beans, and toffee bits. There is nothing that cannot be pronounced in this tea.
In terms of nutrition, this tea is devoid of it. One 8 oz. mug of this tea provides nothing of nutritional value to the drinker. There are no calories (save what one adds from sugar, if one adds it), no fat, sodium, or protein. This is, however, a caffeinated tea and it packs a bit of a caffeine kick to it!
Storage/Clean-up
Chocolate Toffee tea is very easy to clean up, provided the brewed tea does not get on fabric. The tea leaves themselves may be disposed of in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. The tea itself will stain a mug a faint brown if it is left there for days on end, but otherwise may be cleaned up easily by rinsing out whatever it is brewed in.
Chocolate Toffee is a fairly dark brown tea and as a result, it will stain any light fabrics it comes in contact with. As a result, it is highly recommended that one not let it linger on anything they wish to protect and not have stained. It may be cleaned off if the spill is caught quickly, but if it lingers, it is not at all easy to wash out of clothes, linens or other fabrics.
Overall
Trading Phrases Chocolate Toffee is a mediocre tea that is not rich in a true, promised, flavor, but it is not a bad flavored tea, making it a tougher sell than it ought to have been.
For other tea reviews, please check out:
Celestial Seasonings Jammin’ Lemon Ginger Tea
Stash Christmas Eve tea
Oregon Chai Dreamscape Herbal Chai Tea
4/10
For other tea reviews, please visit my Food And Drink Index Page for a complete list!
© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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