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Second steep. Longer steep time, plus milk and agave. Verdict?

Aroma: The steeped tea has a much fuller, mellower fragrance with the addition of (vanilla soy) milk. It’s still mostly pumpkin pie spice, but now I think I might be able to guess that it’s supposed to be pumpkin pie, if I didn’t already know.

Flavour: Milk + sweetener definitely made a huge difference for me. The improvements in the fragrance translated to the flavour, as well: the end result was a much creamier concoction. Surprising to me was the fact that agave somehow worked much better than sugar. I added it on a whim because the box of agave straw things was getting in my way and I wanted to (start to) finish them.

Aftertaste: Out of nowhere, coconut. There’s no coconut anywhere. I don’t have coconut milk, there’s no coconut in the tea, but there you have it. Coconut. So weird! Good weird, but weird.

It’s a pretty weak second steep, so I’m glad I took the time to play around with it. Now that I know milk and sweetener improve the blend, I’ll give it a proper go with fresh leaves next time. In the meantime, I’m increasing the rating a bit to account for the improvements I was able to discover during this experiment.

Tea amount: 1 level tsp
Water amount: 6oz/~175mL
Additives: 2 agave straw thingies and some vanilla soy milk
Dry mouth factor: 0/10 (because milk)