Bird & Blend Tea Co. - Butter Brew (Limited Edition)

Butter Brew is a limited edition black tea from Bird & Blend, which is released today and was provided previously as part of the June tea club offering.

Ingredients: Indian Assam black tea, Sri Lankan black tea, calendula petals, natural flavouring

They describe it thus: 

You're going to go PotTEA for our caramel butter brew! We've combined our favourite British book/film series with every British persons favourite drink...A good ol' cuppa! ⚡

So, I’ll be honest, I have never really taken much notice of the Bird&Blend tea club before but the addition of a tea based on my favourite book series was always going to catch my eye, and inevitably was going to be the first tea I tried.

There is already a perfectly good Butterbeer blend produced by Adagio Teas, which I reviewed last year, so I was interested to see how this version would compare to that one. The answer is that I think I actually prefer this one just slightly.

Despite (or maybe because of) the mixture of black teas this doesn’t come across as being as heavy as the other blend, which means I feel I could drink more of this one without getting a headache.

On opening the pack the smell of caramel is quite strong, but this diminishes considerably once the water is added. It is a more subtle blend flavour-wise too, possibly a bit too subtle, although it improves with extended brewing time.

The first time I stuck to the 4 minutes recommended. The second pot was left for nearer 7 minutes and the flavours were far more noticeable but with no increase of feeling that the black tea was overwhelming, and there was little of the bitterness that sometimes occurs when black tea is left to steep for too long.

I tried it plain initially and the caramel is noticeable, so if you’re happy to drink tea without sugar you’ll probably find it sweet enough, but as always I thought the addition of a couple of teaspoons of demerara brought out the sweetness of the caramel and adding a small amount of milk lifted the tea further, making it more like the creamy head of the Butterbeer available at Universal Studios.

Overall I think this is a nice tea, which I would be more than happy to drink again.