Chellybean

I am not usually an earl grey fan, and this tea did nothing to change my opinion. Whatever they used to make the creamy flavour tasted very artificial. I finished the cup and will probably drink the rest from my tea tower, but definitely not a go-to and was just alright overall.

So BEST part about this whole Teavana buying Teaopia thing is that everything in store is cheap!!! Got a black tea tower for half price, who’s excited- me!!!
Anyway, this was good. Not fabulous, but a very solid black tea that I quite enjoyed. The black tea itself was mild and I found the spice bend to be subtle and pleasing. The cinnamon was the strongest flavour, so I only recommend this if you like cinnamon! Overall, considering what I paid for it, I was very very pleased!

I have to give this tea a huge ratings boost, since it is my go to tea every morning and every time I have it I smile. This is my favourite black blend, and I can’t believe that I haven’t gotten around to changing its rating yet or reviewing it again. Anyway, the smell is amazing- exactly like cream soda, and the taste is almost as good. You really taste the cranberry when brewed, and the base black is very mild and pleasant. This tea gives me the kick I need to start my day and has captured my heart. My tin is running dangerously empty, looks like a trip to DAVIDs is in order!!!!

I got this as part of my soup combo as a Country Style, figuring it sounded decent. And that remains my assessment after having it, its decent for a bagged tea. It isn’t even in the same league as any of the loose leaf/ fruit blend berry teas that I have tried. It was weak despite brewing for a long time, but I guess that is to be expected when its bagged and mass produced. I didn’t care enough to finish the cup…

This is the last of my teavivre samples, and unfortunately my least favourite. I am a tisane fan most of the time, and I love me some good fruit blends, but there was something in this tea that I did not like at all. I’m guessing it was the roselle. I found this tea to be almost unbearably bitter. I brewed it as per the package instructions for about 10 mins, and am thinking that was probably too long. I found the bitterness really overwhelmed the other fruit flavours, so I can’t comment on the rest of the blend. I will have to try again and brew for less time, but my first impression is not great, as I couldn’t finish it (a first for me…). I will try again before giving it a numbered rating, and I hope that it was just a brewing error. If not, then I guess I shall stick to what teavivre does so well, its greens, whites and oolongs!

My summer just got a whole lot better, I discovered a new tea shop in the mall across the street from my work! Having no steepster reviews for this place to go off of, I ventured in. The sales girl completely ignored me, even though I was the only one in the store, but they had these handy dandy mini jars of all of their teas for me to smell away. I picked this one because I was looking for something outside my normal tastes, and I don’t own any chai teas.
The girl made it for me to go in some sort of tea bag, and so it steeped for quite a while as I wandered around trying to find where to buy bus tickets and then ran back to work to avoid being over my lunch break.
The flavours to this one were well blended, with no one flavour overwhelming the tea. First I got the spice, mainly the peppers and some cinnamon, and then it finished with delicious notes of vanilla. The other ingredients I didn’t especially notice, but I’m sure they made it the well-blended and flavoured tea that it was. Overall, it was a yummy tea outside my usual flavour tastes from a store that i am eager to explore further. It wasn’t amazing, but it was good enough to make me look forward to the rest of the summer.

This was the last of my iced tea pack, and I was consciously saving it for last as I had assumed that it would be my favourite (I seriously love sangria). I am however rather disappointed.
I cold steeped for about 18 hours, probably longer than necessary but that tends to be what I average for cold brewing so nothing out of the ordinary. The colour and smell are gorgeous, a deep ruby red and a wonderfully fruity smell. The hibiscus took over however, and the predominant taste is like sour cherries and makes me pucker a little bit…
I will still drink it and it is still fruity and refreshing, but it has been the worst of my cold brewing experiments, and an overall let down…

Last time that I went to starbucks, I was pleasantly surprised with the Tazo tea that I had (Passion). It was fantastic and gave me a go-to drink when I’m not feeling all of the whip cream and such that I need to add to my coffee to be able to drink it. So I went back last night with some friends, and with high hopes ordered this tea…
It was however a disappointment. The smell was nice, vanilla and mildly spicy almost?, but the taste was not quite what I was expecting. I also didn’t really enjoy it. I did taste the vanilla but it was almost the background flavour to some weird fruity tones. Probably not the best description, but it just wasn’t my cuppa…

I got this iced to keep me company as I sat on the back patio of the DAVIDs store in Kingston a few weekends ago. I just discovered the patio and it is fabulous, shady and cute. It really makes me wish I was spending the summer in Kingston!
Anywho, I asked the girl behind the counter to make me whatever her favourite iced tea was, and this is what I got. I have to say, having sampled it hot, I wasn’t impressed, but iced is a whole different story! Wonderfully fruity and refreshing, it makes an excellent iced tea on a hot summer day!

Cold brewed this one for about 18 hours… The result? Pure pleasure. It tastes like a cross between a pina colada and a pineapple smoothie, and the flavour is the strongest of any of DAVIDS teas that I have cold brewed. It is refreshing and delicious, nothing really more needs to be said! I used about 8 teaspoons for my Takeya pitcher.

Have a jug of this cold brewing away as I write, can barely contain my excitement! I hope it is as good as it smells, because then it will basically be heaven…

I got this iced a while ago while I happened to be around a DAVIDs (an all too rare occurrence these days I’m afraid!) It was super refreshing but I didn’t find it all that flavourful, but considering that it is based off of watermelon, which is also mostly water, I guess that is to be expected. Refreshing and fruity, it makes a great summer tea, but I am a little disappointed by the weakness.

This tea is getting a huge rating boost, I am newly in love!
I was brewing this in my timolino at work with the lid off so that it would cool down faster (those things hold heat!). Anyway, the next five people who walked by my office all popped their heads in to ask about the smell (I have a full office, my door just wasn’t closed, so the smell had to have been pretty powerful). They were all like “what is that heavenly smell, are you melting chocolate in here?”. So I had to explain and then i’m pretty sure I directed about 5 of them to the DAVIDs website to order some for themselves.

Anyway, love this tea more everytime I have it, so sweet, so flavourful, all pleasure and no guilt!

Teavivre just might make a non-flavoured tea person out of me yet! Up until their samples, I had been firmly in the fun flavours camp, without fully appreciating tea for itself! This tea has certainly changed that!
1st Steep: This tea smells rather earthy and bitter, but it is really very sweet (I was quite surprised). It is smooth, mild, still earthy but nice and sweet. It is a pale green colour, with very few stray pieces, indicating the quality of the leaves.
My teapot makes about a cup and a half (Its one of teaopia’s tea for one sets), so I left the half a cup steeping for about 5 minutes, and the result was quite bitter (still decent, but too strong for my taste) so I would advise paying attention to steeping instructions and only steeping for a minute or two.
2nd Steep: And this tea just got a whole lot sweeter! Most of the earthiness is gone, now I just taste yum. This is much better the second time around! I can’t believe how sweet it is (and its still healthy for me to boot). From the tastes of things, these leave would probably hold out for 4 or so steeps, I may just have to try it!
Overall, my favourite pure green that i’ve tried (although its the only), but still, the bar has been set high!

I am going to preface this review with two facts
1) Black tea and I aren’t the best of friends
2) I brewed this with boiling water, for a long time and with an ordinary travel mug and a drawstring tea bag, so not ideal brewing conditions for a high quality tea, and I will try again once I have time to do it properly!

Now to the reviewing… I found it to be too strong for my liking (although it wasn’t bitter, which is my number one put-off for black tea). I may have brewed it for too long, I often get distracted at work and forget about my tea just waiting for me on my desk! Anyways, I didn’t get any of the caramel flavours that others did, it was just strongly vegetal for me, and not my favourite flavour. I am going to hold off on the numerical rating until I have a chance to brew it properly and mindfully and then record right away, as this rating is coming from my morning cup yesterday.

I was desperate for something that I could drink from Starbucks without feeling super guilty about it afterwards, and this is what I came up with, and I am glad that I did! This tastes very similar to KANPE from DAVIDs, very tart and fruity. It comes in a bag but there are some large pieces in the bag so it appears to at least be very high quality bagged tea. All in all, a good tea and it will for sure be my starbucks order from now on (you know, for the three times a year I happen to find myself in Starbucks…)

My first tea and work combined adventure! Armed with a DAVIDs drawstring tea bag (one of my favourite inventions ever), a travel mug that my mentor bought me on the first day of my internship (she’s the best), a Ziploc bag, my crappy office tea kettle, and half a sample package of this tea, I embarked on an all day oolong adventure.

First steep (7:30 am)- This was my caffeine hit for the morning, so my tastebuds were less attuned to the taste as my brain was slowly being shaken awake by the mild caffeine hit. I steeped it for appox. 3 minutes, and I can’t give a more accurate estimate as I was crazily running around trying to get all of my stuff ready. This tea was much lighter than I had been expecting, for some reason I was expecting a darker colour (maybe because the leaves are fairly dark). Anyway the taste was strongly earthy and vegetal, but overall very smooth and pleasant.

Second steep (8:30 am)- This was my “I made it to work but am not mentally prepared to start yet” cup. The second steep was much stronger than the first, and had a surprisingly different flavour. It was very floral and very sweet, almost creamy. By the end of the second steep the leave (which dry were only a quarter of the bag) had unfurled to take up the whole bag. This steep was my favourite, absolutely delicious and so very sweet without any sugar!

Third steep (11:30 am)- Early lunch today, all alone in the lunch room with only my oolong for company. There were less floral notes and sweetness in this cup, the earthy flavour has re-emerged as the dominant flavour. I am assuming this is what oolong is supposed to taste like (and I do quite like it), but since I have only ever had one other, heavily flavoured oolong (happy kombucha) I can’t really compare pure oolongs…

Fourth steep (4 pm)- My afternoon got busy and left me unable to steep more until my hunger pangs distracted me at 4 pm. Despite making a cup of tea, I still caved to the office vending machine’s call and bought a Mars Bar. Anyway, the fourth steep was very similar in flavour to the 3rd, smooth, rich and earthy. I haven’t noticed any decline in flavour at all. The tea appears to be getting darker, but I also left this one to steep for quite a bit longer because I forgot about it (oops).

I probably could have gone on for more steeps but alas my work day was done and I accidentally chucked out the tea bag as I was cleaning my desk for the evening. Thanks again to Angel at teavivre for these very generous samples. I only used half of one for a whole day of enjoyment, and am so excited that at least 5 days of enjoyment are still to come!

Thank you to Angel at teavivre for the samples, of which this was one of many! The day that box arrived I was as happy as Christmas morning! Since then though I have been crazy busy with my internship and weekending with my university friends and have not had a chance to really enjoy tea (or to review it properly). So I finally had a spare minute today and decided to brew a cup of this!
My first thought was that the leaves of this tea are huge. I only used half of my sample package for a mini-tea pot worth (about a cup and a half) and it was probably not the best brewing implement as the basket it a little small to allow tea leaves this large to steep properly. The dry smell was very vegetal, like hay or dry grass. I was intrigued because this is the first non-flavoured white tea that I have tried, so it was the first time that I have actually smelled the leaves themselves.
I brewed it according to package instructions, 90 degree water for only 2 minutes, and overall was very pleased with the results. The flavour is very smooth and pleasant, lightly grassy with a hint of floral notes. I am not sure that straight white tea is my favourite cuppa, I think I am more of a flavoured tea girl along the lines of Strawberry Fields or Gold Rush, but the quality of this white is better than any I have tried and a perfect smooth blend for those days where I have had enough of strong flavours and just want a nice cup of white tea, with all of the benefits that go along with it!
Just a note on brewing, my teapot holds about a cup and a half, and the remaining half of a cup typically keeps brewing after I pour the first cup. Therefore the second cup was steeped for over 5 minutes. The result was a slightly bitter, strongly grassy tea that overwhelmed all of the pleasant floral notes. Therefore I strongly advise paying attention to brewing time- for this tea it makes a big difference!

What is this madness? It tastes exactly like the pina coladas that I had in the Caribbean!

I cold brewed this one, the first tea that I have had a spare second to review since I started work (my internship is killing me a little bit, mornings come much too early).
Anywho, this tea is fantastic! At first its a little bitter (i’m guessing the hibiscus?), but then its amazingly sweet and coconutty. The colour threw me off a little bit, it is bright deep red, but the taste is unmistakably pina colada.
Just got a shipment from teavivre hoping to have a spare second to review some of them soon, but its not looking promising (of course i’d have more time if I stopped going away to visit my university friends on the weekend…)

I have been waiting all month to cold brew this one, and I finally got the opportunity… I am however a little disappointed. The flavour is rather weak, despite the fact that I cold brewed for almost 24 hours… Maybe I did not put enough in (about 6 heaping teaspoons for my takeya pitcher) so it could be user error…
Anyways I get a very different taste coldbrewed then when I drink it hot. Hot, i"d say without question that the overwhelming taste I get is sweet-tart. Cold, I get much less of the goji and much more of the melon… it almost tastes like watermelon. It is still wonderfully fruity and super refreshing, but it was definitely not what I was expecting. I’m going to leave my rating where it is however, because its a true rating of this tea when I brew it hot!

Procrasti-rating! I just moved home for the summer, which is sad because I am no longer a ten minute walk from DAVIDs! (although this is probably a good thing for my wallet…) and need to unpack all of my stuff (…sigh…). Anyways I now have a fridge big enough to accommodate my iced tea pitcher so I decided to give this one a try.
I cold steeped this for probably about 18 hours (kind of forgot about it). It is excellent iced! For me it was just ok hot the last time I had it but iced it is rather fabulous. Looking forward to many midsummer night’s with this one iced!
The mint becomes more pronounced when cold, and the fruit becomes more of a refreshing afterthought. The overall taste is citrusy and minty!

So I bought this tea for my dad because he asked for “chamomile elixir” and I only later found out he meant some sort of chamomile concoction… Anyway it appears that I chose well, he quite enjoyed it and found it very relaxing!
Personally, I found it to be nothing special and didn’t really feel the effects but it was only 7pm and I typically don’t go to bed until midnight or so…
I definitely tasted the peppermint which was pleasant, and the chamomile, which I am not a huge fan of. I’ll boost this ranking based on my dad’s professed love though! I am slowly converting the family… got my sis to like North African Mint!

I would easily have 100 tasting notes on this tea if I logged it every time I drank it. This tea amounts to my “old faithful”, that tea that I just keep going back to, in between my infatuations with the latest blends. It was the first loose leaf tea I ever tried, and it is still one of my favourites, even as my collection has grown exponentially.
This green has the biggest leaves of any that I’ve tried (mind you, I am not extremely well versed in green teas by any means). I re-steep it a solid 4-5 times every time I have it, and the last steep is usually just as good as the first.
The green tea is very mild, and the lemon complements it extremely well. Overall, its a very pleasant green tea blend. It is also very forgiving, I regularly brew it too hot because I don’t have the patience for the water to cool off and regularly forget about it when I am brewing it and it always turns out fine!
I have upgraded this ranking because my first tea is still my go to tea, and that saying something because I’ve now tried lots of yummy teas!

Bought some of this because I needed some more black teas to wake me up my early morning exams. I bought it because I love DAVIDs Chocolate teas on a whole (especially chocolate rocket and love tea #7) so thought why not?
In terms of black tea, I didn’t really taste the black tea (which I prefer). The chocolate flavour was good, tasted like cake actually does! It didn’t really have the richness I was hoping for though, and that made the flavour overall lacking for me.
Still yummy, no magic though!