Awkward Soul

While my family came to visit from Canada, they all brought DAVIDsTea goodies (in 20g sizes) for me to sample, after hearing too much of my rantings of missing having a DT store. Interestingly, I got all blacks and herbals. Weird. This one came from my sis in Victoria!

DRY: smells sweet and nutty. Good combo! Annoyingly, my first scoop of tea gave me 70% raisins. I counted 6 squashed raisins. I unstuck them and got a better mix for this steeping.

STEEPED: Amber brown tea, bit of clear residue on the top. Smells very smooth nutty.

TASTE: Nutty, rich brazil nut flavor, rounded out by smooth coconut. Slightly sweet. The black tea hums along with the flavors, no astringency or bitterness.
Sweetened, the raisin and coconut taste pops out more with a nutty aftertaste.

COMMENTS: I can see why back around Father’s Day they marketed this as a gift, unsweetened I can see this tea as “manly” with the rich nutty taste. Sweetened however, it’s a desserty flavor.
I see others comment this tastes like “Toasted Walnut”, I find this tea is a more nutty, rich alternative for “Checkmate”. Either way, all those teas are nutty.

Overall, pretty good. I love the brazil nut flavor – I think there should be more teas out there using brazil nuts. I may buy more of this, but I have other DT blacks I like more.

EDIT, pics with this review at my blog http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/brazillionaire-from-davidstea-tea-review/

Thank you out to NaturesTeaLeaf for a sample of this for review! Very generous amount too, so I made a pot’s worth for this tasting!

Silver Needle white tea, hmmm. I don’t drink too many unflavored white teas, but I have a couple in my tea stash. Ones I do have I find kinda flat with not much flavor. Let’s see how this tea does.

DRY LEAF: Fresh earthy smell. Very light weight tea. The leaves were kinda fuzzy /petpet

STEEPED: Smells slightly sweet and fruity with a hint of earthyness. Nice pale yellow gold tea.

TASTE: Sweet and rich! The sweetness flavoring reminds me of golden raisins almost as it has a warm, fruity, gold sweetness to it. This tea is full of flavor but light. Very refreshing and pure tasting.

COMMENTS: Very good, I enjoyed how much flavor is in this tea – I didn’t know white tea packed this much taste on its own! I should really explore into the unflavored white teas some more.

I bought this tea back in Canada as it came in a nice tin and it was on sale.

This tea comes in those meshy clear triangle tea bags.

Flavor wise, fairly light and mostly floral. I get a hit of jasmine and a little earl grey essence as an aftertaste. The green tea base is fair, but really background to the floral.

Okay tea for bagged stuff from a grocery store – more excited for the tin once I’m done this tea! LOL

Hey Pekko Teas, TY for a generous sample of this tea! My dad stole the stamps off the package btw. Pretty cool this came all the way from London!

DRY: Fruity? Smells familiar to me though. After awhile sniffing, I realized this tea smells just like my favorite blueberry jam! Hmmm.. weird.

STEEPED: Peachy coppery brown tea – I love this colour! Still smells like blueberries. Annoying to me, I could not find steeping instructions. I did a 200f for 3 minutes, hopefully that is good enough.

TASTE: Bright and light black tea, bit of citrus tossed in. Very clean taste. The aroma of fruityness is lovely. At the end of my sip, a light astringency lightly sweeps in and quickly passes as the tea is gone.

WHO SHOULD TRY IT: Someone looking for a light black tea.

COMMENTS: Very nice ceylon tea, I haven’t had this kind of tea in awhile – probably the last time was in a coffee shop. This tea has a very sophisticated experience of good smells, pretty colour and nice light flavor. The astringency isn’t bad here as it’s a quick experience.

Maybe blueberry jam smells like black tea? I dunno.

I do like dates. Back in my vegan days I got into snacking on mejool dates, which I still do today, when they are on sale. I do like baked date goods, but not over the top sweet.

This sample comes from Kittena, ty!

DRY: oooh, a hunk of date in here!

STEEPED: sweet datey smell. Reddy brown tea.

TASTE: sweet dried fruit taste, a little walnutty skin taste and buttery flavoring up front. The buttery taste is quite different from other buttery tastes I’ve had, it’s not like a buttery green tea, but a butteryness that hits the whole mouth and top of the mouth. I dunno, it tastes like flavoring, but not awful fake popcorn flavoring.
The rooibos is pretty backburner here and I can enjoy the date muffiness with rooibos being complimentary. I’m thinking dates and rooibos = good mix.

Sweetened, it’s much closer to date taste as dates are pretty sweet. However, I like this tea unsweetened to enjoy the nutty flavor.

COMMENTS: I love the butteryness in this tea – I’m one of those awful eaters that add butter to my muffins. This is pretty good, but I’d love MOAR walnut! I like this tea, but thinking of it having more walnuts makes me disappointed, if that makes sense.

Say WHHHAT, no rating on this tea yet? Where’s the love? With that said, TY out to Stacy @ Butiki for OHMF, this is the last tea I haven’t tried out of my unflavored giveaway package. I put this tea in the wrong tin and it got lost in the shuffle.

DRY: Very spacious light green tangles of leaves. Kinda of PITA to get 2 teaspoons of because the leaves are long, light and take up so much space. I’m not sure if I used enough leaf or went overboard. And I didn’t want to smash the leaves to fit nice in the measuring spoon.

STEEPED: Very very light green tea. Could be mistaken for tap water, lol! Maybe I didn’t use enough leaf, doh! Hmm, well the pic looks close to mine, maybe it’s the lighting. Smells like artichokes. Man, I love artichokes but I hate the effort it takes to eat them.

TASTE: POW this tea is full of flavor, despite the weak colour appearance! I taste an explosion of raw sweet white corn flavor, like chomping into raw corn and pops oozing with milky buttery taste. Also with that bite getting a bit of the green corn stalk, getting a little veg taste. Quite sweet and refreshing taste that hangs out in my mouth for awhile after each sip. No bitterness.

COMMENTS: Seriously. I poured the tea into my cup and looked at it and thought I messed up. I took a sip and went “What the?” in surprise with the full flavor of this tea.

Arrrgg, I gave 95/100 for Dragon Feelers, Spring Twist – all Butiki greens. Darn it, I’m giving this one a 95 too. They are all very good and different and I can’t choose which one I like more. DURRRRRRR. I dunno. I’m just going to drink more tea.

I believe this tea came from Rachel Sincere, TY!

Still in PU’REH MODE! GO GO GO PU’REH!

While I was doing a rinse on this tea my roommate ran out of the room saying it was smelling fishy. Pfffft!

First steeping: super bold earthy – very harsh on the first sip, so I might of oversteeped it. There’s a a hum of another flavor making me think back to drinking tea in Vancouver Canada Chinatown as a little girl in a noodle house. I recall they had the best shrimp wonton soup, and the chefs worked in a teeny glass booth tossing noodles around with a cigarette hanging out of their mouth. The dark tea was served in regular water glasses and would burn my hands but was very good. The flavor hum I can’t explain, like sweet woodsy and smells of chinatown.

Second steeping. Much better and mellower. That sweet woodsy flavor is still there! Soft and delicious as the tea cools! Best steeping!

Third steeping. Interestingly this tea got a rosy pink each pour, but sits in my cup a dark brown. Second best steeping! Very close to the second steeping but milder.

And I ran out of time for more steepings. Maybe later.

I know I’m totally weird, but I dreamt of drinking pu’reh all night last night. It was great. Must of been from randon tea videos I was watching on youtube yesterday. With that said, when I woke up and dying for some pu’reh!

DRY: Very pretty tea, colourful rose bits, fruit and adorable little pearly sugar balls. I hate those balls in cookies, always hurt my teeth, but I’m thinking that they would be better in tea!

STEEPED: Dark brown peachy coloured tea, smells almost chocolatey with a hint of peach.

TASTE: Smokey deep pu’reh hit first, with mango and peach flavors slowly spreading through. Slight sweetness at the end of my sip.
Sweetened, MOP peachy mango steps up with the pu’reh being an earthy smokey background. I prefer this tea sweetened.

COMMENTS: Hmmm, I’m thinking you really gotta like pu’reh for this tea, the smokeyness is quite strong unless you sweeten it.

I recently had Della Terra’s Mellow Mango Peach – very different tea because of the different bases. I like MOP a little more for its complexity.

WARRAGGHGHHGGHHH! Back from brazilian jiu jitsu friday class, aka get beaten up class. Very tired out, I’ve been staring at Knitpicks.com and dream of knitting pretty socks, a low injury hobby. What the.. last time I drank this tea, it was after a friday jiu jitsu class of getting beaten up. Interesting.

DRY: citrusy mango, yum! Very strong scented with some nice thin slices of fruit.

STEEPED: Light rooibos scent, but nice and fruity coming from a reddy brown tea.

TASTE: Hint of spice with natural mango flavor sweeping my mouth. A little creamy as well. The mango is pretty nice here, great flavor without the mango pit strings in your teeth. The roobios works on the same vibe as the mango, which is great for a non rooibos lover like me.

COMMENTS: There’s cardamon in this? My flavor ENEMY! I’m too tired to fight back, but the cardamon is used very well and lightly here, horrible awful. (I had a horrible experience with cardamon and try and avoid it).

Is this going to be my official post jiu jitsu recovery tea? I’m going back to sipping tea and dreaming of purple sock knitting. Maybe knee highs. Lots of lace.

I didn’t jump on the acai fruity craze, but I see quite a few of my other brazilian jiu jitsu peeps always drinking something with either acai or just coconut water. I’m the only one who runs around with matcha looking weird. Pffff, they need to learn from me. Either way, I decided to give this matcha a shot, show up those others at class.

Specs on this matcha:

Brazilian Acai matcha
From http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/acai-matcha.html
Matcha Quality: Classic Basic Grade
Flavor: Distinctive

Out of the gold foil package, this matcha smells amazingly fruity. Super fruit amazing! The smell reminds me of really tarty berry yogurt. Brazilian Acai matcha appears slightly darker in powder form.

I prepared this as a traditional hot cup, getting me pumped up before my brazilian jiu jitsu practice (I seriously need the energy for class today)! This matcha didn’t froth up very well nor maintain froth, but I didn’t really care. Interestingly, this matcha prepared has a different colour than normal, a dark forest green, probably from the acai berry powder. By the way, I used 1/4tsp plus 175f water.

The taste of Brazilian Acai matcha is quite fruity. A mix between a tropical flavor and blackberries or blueberries. There is also a natural sweetness to this matcha – adding any additional sweetener would be overkill I think. With the fruityness and natural sweetness, this hot cup is very refreshing! There is no tart or bitterness to this matcha! I honestly was expected this to taste tart or puckery.

In the end, this was surprisingly good! I’m thinking this would be great iced, in my waterbottle, nearby to me while I do jiu jitsu. Or is that totally cheating getting a doubly whammy of heathly energizing matcha and acai? Don’t pass up this matcha – I’m thinking this is up there on being one of my fav flavors from Red Leaf Teas!

I love crème brulee. My all time favorite dessert! My now husband made this for me before he proposed! (he makes the Alton Brown recipe btw). I also bought my husband a crème brulee ramekin kit and blow torch (from the hardware store) as a house warming gift for me to enjoy. I saw Red Leaf Teas had this in matcha form, oh totally getting it!

Specs on the matcha I’m drinking:
Crème Brulee Matcha
http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/creme-brulee-matcha.html
Matcha Quality: Classic (basic grade)
Flavor: Robust (because I love crème brulee!)

Out of the package, the first smell reminded me of that spun sugar smell like on Croquembouche, weird that I thought of that first instead of the blow torched topping on creme brulee! The smell of the matcha powder is very strong, caramel sugary.

I felt I should just go straight to making an iced latte, my favorite way to make a flavored matcha. 1/4tsp of creme brulee matcha and a bit of sugar whisked in some soy milk. The result, a very custardy matcha! The matcha also leaves an extra creamy feeling after my sip. The creme brulee latte tastes slightly eggy, not as eggy as Red Leaf’s “eggnog matcha” but more custardy buttery than “bavarian cream”. Creme Brulee matcha is very smooth and creamy too. Drinking it, I could almost sense the texture of an actual creme brulee custard.

Unfortunately, the only thing I’m missing in this matcha is the blow torched sugar top taste. I’m not sure if it needs more extra sugar, or it’s just a hard flavor to dupe plus its lots of texture.

Overall, pretty good, but I really want that sugar topping! Now I got images in my mind that I can have creme brulee whenever I want that isn’t 500 plus calories. Maybe spear in some caramelized sugar pieces for a nice visual or stir stick for my matcha.

TY out to Rachel Sincere for a sample of this tea!

This tea looks fun – an interesting blend of fruits (apricots, cherries and plums – I don’t see plums often in tea) with a black tea base.

STEEPED: Swirly black tea and fruity smells. Light brown coloured tea.

TASTE: Not too strong earthy black tea base with a moderate level of fruityness – I get the cherry taste and an apricot after taste, which is quite nice. No bitterness, tart or astringency.

Sweetened, wow – much more fruity! It’s like the fruit takes over a bit (maybe 60/40). I get the bite of cherry and maybe plum. I prefer this tea sweetened.

COMMENTS: This is a good tea to show a fruity green/white drinker an interesting fruity black that isn’t a berry black tea. I like the combination of fruits used in this tea. Not up my alley for me to be in love with this tea, but I will enjoy every cup!

I seriously stood in front of my tea stash area for 15 minutes trying to pick out a tea. My steepster cupboard says I have like 150+ teas, so you think I could easily find something to drink. Sigh.

I wanted something spicy, but not too spicy, and something I’ve had before. I was almost going to go with a few other spicey teas, but I feel too lazy to add milk and sugar to my tea, so it had to be sweet on its own.

Found this tea and yum! Very good! I like the cinnamon, sweetness and cookieness of this tea. It’s like snuggling in fall with a blanket and eating warm cookies.
Man… does southern california ever get fall? It was 30c yesterday!

Probably my most crazy post weight lifting smoothie creations:

1/2tsp Red Leaf Tea Cheesecake Matcha + 1 cup of soy milk + 1 scoop of protein powder + 1/3cup of cottage cheese + 2tsp of Dulce de leche. Long time on the blender to make all the chunks disappear.

the result: thick cheesecakey batter with a Dulce de leche caramel taste! I have leftover Dulce de leche from my wedding, pure will powder I haven’t eaten it all straight out of the can! I added cottage cheese as I found the kraft brand I have tastes more cheesey than I’m used to.

Totally a treat, but I figure I’d celebrate since I just hit my personal record on squats! I remember when I was new at lifting weights, I lifted 100lb less and it was hard!

Digging around my “haven’t tried” tin, there’s a buncha Della Terra teas in there. DOH! I feel like fruity this morning, to go with a breakfast of leftover wedding fruit platter (strawberries, melons, dragon fruit, pomegranate, grapes, oranges, blackberries) and cottage cheese.

DRY: Fruity peachy sweet! Nice big hunks of fruit in this tea too!

STEEPED: smells of black tea mixed with peach and mango flavors.

TASTE: Black tea base taste, but mellowed out with the peach and mango flavors. Oddly, this tea is refreshing despite it being hot. I could see this tea being very good iced or cold brewed!
I didn’t feel like trying this tea sweetened this morning.

COMMENTS: Not bad, I enjoyed the peachy mango flavor – which is well done. However, this tea makes me think of Fusion Tea’s “Red Vineyard” which is quite similar, but is over the top peach instead of having mango. I should really try MMP iced next time!

Yes! I’m denting that “haven’t tried” pile! Plus, I thought this tea would be a treat to try after me crocheting for hours today trying to fix some stupid colour work gone bad on one of my patterns. I do love peaches.. homemade canned! Ahh memories of my teenager years in the summer spending all day peeling and slices peaches and canning them!

DRY: Tarty peach! Very tight balls of oolong.

STEEPED: Light gold, smells like oolong tea with a hint of peach.

TASTE: A nice smooth oolong (almost floral) upfront buzzing with white fuzzy peach flavor. I say fuzzy as I could sense that fuzzy peach skin, mmm fuzzy peach skin! I’d say this is totally a white peach as it is more mellow of a taste compared to yellow peaches. I would say this tea is light, but it is also full of flavor.

Sweetened, I might of over sweetened as I was distracted while adding the rock sugar, but I find the peach too sweet here and not as natural tasting. With that said, unsweetened for me!

Second infusion is still peachy, but astringency is starting. I think I might of overcooked the tea a bit as I was distracted again (roommate chatting with me about our new vacuum)

COMMENTS: This is really tasty! I’m glad I bought a bag instead of requesting it as a sample! I do like the strawberry oolong more, but this is still very good!

I was threatening to do this tea concoction for awhile now. I wanted something to wake me up more, but also a treat so I don’t eat the last butter tart in the fridge.

52 Teas Cherry Cheesecake Genmaicha + Red Leaf Teas’ Cheesecake matcha (1/4tsp)

Steeped, it looks like a murky green tea. Smells like the RLT Cheesecake with toasty rice!

Taste… WHOA!!! Cheesecake smoothness, with a bit of cherry sweet above the base of toasty rice taste, green tea and matcha combined. I’m getting a bit of dry throatyness after my sip is complete, so maybe I need to tweak steeping times and temperatures, but overall really good!

My issue with the 52 Teas Cherry Cheesecake genmaicha is it isn’t much cheesecake flavor, but the cheesecake matcha covered it! Yum! Tea peeps, if you have these teas, totally try them together!

What, I never tried this tea? It got buried in my tin of teas I haven’t tried yet. /cry

DRY: Smells like mapley sweet and nutty. Lots of big hunks of nuts in this tea! Yum!

STEEPED: deep gold coloured tea with a maple sweet scent. Annoyingly my kettle doesn’t do 170f. It does 160f or 175f, so I did 175.

TASTE: Nutty and silky with a maple hint weaving through! I can pick out the pecan flavor. Very nice silky finish to this tea. The oolong base is great with this tea! The pecan and maple here is natural tasting, not artificial.

Sweetened, I got more pecan nuttyness and the maple comes out stronger. I let my cup get cold while watching BJJ videos and the tea was still very good. Both unsweetened and sweetened cups were good!

COMMENTS: Really delicious fall tea! I love the nuttyness of this tea – no funky or artificial tastes too! I quite like the base of this tea as well, I’m tempted to try Nilgiri Frost Oolong for my next order.

Ugg, I’m drinking lots of tea today to make up for lost tea times over the week and totally paying for it with many bathroom trips! However, I need to massively damage my “haven’t tried” pile as the tin barely closes! Figure I should drink this one, MTG, first as it is taking the most room!

DRY: sweet, malty and toasty smell. Lots on interesting bits in this tea: brown rice, big popcorn and weird white chunky bits (marshmallow root?). Theres a weird smell that reminds me of Sun Cloud Mist whatever it’s called also from 52 teas.. must be that root.

STEEPED: Toasty rice smell coming from a light green tea.

TASTE: Slightly sweet and malty taste that is like marshmallow. Then, theres a bite of grassy green tea mixed with toasty rice (classic genmaicha taste).

Sweetened, well.. it tastes sweeter lol! It does taste closer to rice crispies squares here, especially in aftertaste! I think I like MTG unsweetened to enjoy the genmaicha but the sweetener did move it closer to the treats.

COMMENTS: Very tasty! I quite enjoyed how this tea came out! Unique flavoring with the marshmallow sweetness!
However, it doesn’t taste like my rice crispy treats since I add vanilla to mine (Shhhhh!!! My secret ingredient!) – but I’ll fix that in a future cup as I have some vanilla beans leftovers hanging around.

I see Teavana has free shipping, so I decided to sit down and give RRLM a shot in hot tea mode before I make an order. I’ve done this tea iced a couple times and it is amazing!

STEEPED: Deep red colour, smells tarty raspberry

TASTE: TARRRTT! WARGGGHH! I get the raspberry and lemon, but it’s really tart and strong! I don’t taste the mate as the tartness is pretty high. Okay, tart o meter is an 8 out of 10.

Sweetened, it’s not as tart (phew) and down to a 6 on the tart o meter and more mellow raspberry and lemon. Very nice raspberry flavor coming out here and natural tasting.

WHO WOULD DIG THIS TEA: someone who is not afraid of tart and likes raspberry.

COMMENTS: Yeah, I’ll order more of this tea – iced, holy cow amazing! Hot? ehhhh never unsweetened. Sweetened, not bad, but I rather drink something not that tart.

Now I’m totally buzzing away after all this caffeine, sweeet!

Woot! all the family is gone! Life is mostly back to normal post wedding, I just have lots of cleaning and laundry to do! Oddly, the wedding gift I’m most excited for is the new vacuum and steam cleaner from my dad – he said for the vacuum the commercials showed it can suck itself onto the roof, Swwweeeet! I can retire the Roomba that gets stupider each time I use it.

Before that, I need to try a new tea to feel like things are normal. .

DRY: melty butter toffee smell, delicious! The toffee chunks are little cubes that seemed to of moved to the bottom of the bag – make sure you mix the bag before making a cup! Beautiful looking tea too! I love the blue flowers!

STEEPED: Slightly buttery sweet smell over gold coloured tea. Annoyingly my 2 toffee bits did not melt that much in my steeper. I cheated and after my steeper strained to my tea pot, I dug out the toffee and tossed it in. Sadly, at the end of my pot, they still aren’t fully dissolved.

TASTE: Nutty, smooth, creamy mouth up front, taste of crisp toffee, then delicious white tea. Slightly sweet as well. The nuttyness is great and natural tasting.. reminds me of walnuts I think. The toffee and nuttyness reminds me of those honeycomb kind of toffee, but very light and less artificial.

WHO SHOULD TRY THIS TEA: someone looking for a nice light dessert tea – especially if you like creamy/ nutty or tired of fruity white dessert teas.

COMMENTS: This is the last of the Zen Tea samples I have at the moment, and I gotta say this one is the best. The combination of flavors is nice, the nuttyness was very good – and I wasn’t excepting nutty as I thought it would just be basic sweet/cream over white tea. Very tasty Zen Tea!

Had my dad sample this tea while he’s visiting from Canada.

During the week he was here, I introduced him to various teas – he occasional hits DavidsTea in the mall for free samples (lol) but doesn’t buy much. He does drink bagged earl greys.

Throughout this week, it was looking like he really likes spicy – which is ultra weird because he has stomach issues with spicy food. Spicy to him is too much oregano in the pasta sauce.

This morning I gave him a cup of this tea (that I have yet to do a official tasting) and he LOVED it! Said it was the best tea he ever had (and we had everything from 52 teas, Fusion Tea, The Persimmon Tree and Butiki) Lucky for him, it’s a DT tea so he can buy it at home.

Looks like he’s gonna buy a Steeper when he gets home now too because he likes mine.

Drinking tea with my Dad before he leaves for Canada. Had this one after dinner made with soymilk.

Dad really liked this one, but back home he only has a DavidsTea and a Tea Desire. He asked if he could buy the matcha there and add pumpkin spice /sigh.

Drinking this amazing tea this morning!

So tired out and my feet hurt. Really, wearing a long wedding dress (mine was teal!) made wearing pretty heeled shoes pointless, but I did anyway and regret it. My husband and I went to grab food near the end as our feet both hurt and didn’t want to fetch food! His feet hurt as his shoes were too small and there was no time to return them to amazon.

Nice and floral tea! Mmm, I should look for a jasmine and rose bath salts to fake bathing in this tea! I usually like a stronger black, mate or guayusa in the morning, but I got a post wedding dim sum lunch. I will drink a pot or two of tea there (and watch the husband eat chicken feet, wahhhhggg!)