DAVIDsTEA

This smells incredible. Steeped for 5 minutes per the instructions. I ended up adding a spoonful of sugar because it was tasteless otherwise. That really brought out the banana chocolate flavor. Yummy.

Last tea from the staff meeting tea tasting.

Another one that I feel like didn’t impact me a whole lot because I’ve not only had this one fairly recently (a few months ago, I suppose) but I had a LOT of exposure to it back when it was originally on the tea wall. And I’ve never really liked this one; you can go back and see my tasting notes from five/six years ago LONG before I worked at DAVIDsTEA and see that my distaste for this tea has been really well documented. So this wasn’t something I was necessarily stoked to revisit. I do see why people enjoy it; and it went over pretty well at the staff meeting with the staff who had never had the chance to experience it before.

It’s just not my cup of tea.

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Another anniversary tea.

This is actually one that I personally didn’t buy at all – in fact, one of only two of the anniversary blends (there’s eight in total) that I decided to skip on. My mom, however, did buy it so I stole a cup worth of it to make into a mini cold brew.

This is one of the original twenty teas I first had – and not just from DT but, like, in general. However unlike the majority of those twenty teas that I hold it really high regard and which have a HUGE nostalgia factor, this is one that I just never really liked. Like, ever. I’ve kind of waffled back and forth between whether or not I find it really bitter and astringent as a cuppa but one thing I’ve sort of always maintained is that it’s very artificial tasting to me.

Revisiting it now cold brewed, I’m really not finding that it tastes bitter or astringent even a little bit – but to be fair, my tastes have changed A LOT in the last four years as, I’m sure, has my tolerance for bitterness and astringency. This is also cold brewed, and I can’t remember if that’s something that I ever tried with this blend and that I can’t be bothered to go look up right now. I do still think it tastes really badly of artificial cake flavouring though, and the chocolate flavour is pretty mediocre quality. It’s also way sweeter than I remember it being.

Bottom line – I don’t HATE it but I don’t enjoy it either. The nicest thing I can probably say is that it tasted like the liquid version of a just slightly better than average quality chocolate bar…

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Revisited this one the other night on shift…

It’s been probably close to three years since I had it. I went through a lot of it back then because I’d blindly purchased 100g before I’d tried it – this was back during that time when I definitely didn’t know any better. Turns out I hated it, so getting through that 100g was a nightmare.

I drank this as an iced latte the other night when I had it which is definitely a totally new style of preparation compared to any other way I had tried it previously. I’m pretty sure, back then, I didn’t even know that “Iced Latte” was a thing you could do with tea.

Let’s be real though, this is chocolate cake flavoured because that’s essentially all that Red Velvet is: chocolate cake dyed red. It’s the most dumb cake flavour there is because people get so incredibly hyped about it when it’s just “cool looking chocolate” that even typically costs more money because it’s cool/trendy or whatever. The only thing that even remotely makes red velvet unique/different in my opinion is the cream cheese frosting it’s often paired with – and this tea doesn’t make much of an effort to replicate that. So that’s part of why I disliked this one so greatly three years back – the other part being that it tasted very artificial/chemical to me.

However, that said, as an iced latte I didn’t mind it that much if I only thought of it as a “chocolate” flavour. I mean, it wasn’t some big moment of “Oh no! What have I been missing!? This tea is changing my life!” but more of a “Well, I guess this isn’t quite as bad as I’ve mentally painted it to be”. Not nearly as artificial, for one thing. Really though, it’s basically just simple, creamy chocolate.

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

This review is for the Red Velvet Cake infused Milk Chocolate Bar sold by DAVIDsTEA.

https://www.davidstea.com/ca_en/chocolate-bar-3

This evening I split one of these chocolate bars with my mother and sister during a Gong Fu session with Camellia Sinensis’ Lu Yu Shan Wu. One of the things I talked about in my Tea Sommelier course for the “Science of Taste” module was tea and chocolate pairings and I was excited to put that knowledge to the test. The one caveat was that I basically hated the actual tea this chocolate bar was based on. However, some Steepster users told me it was essentially just a nice milk chocolate bar so I tried it anyway.

And you know what? It basically was just milk chocolate with some tea leaf in it (I still don’t get why DAVIDsTEA does that – no one wants to bite into some tea leaf). My mother was very impressed with the quality of the milk chocolate, though less so with the price tag associated. If one was so inclined to enjoy DAVIDsTEA’s Red Velvet Cake blend $6 would buy you a lot more loose leaf than you’re getting in the chocolate itself.

However, for what it is I was happy with the experience.

Decided today that I either have to find a way to love this or just get over my reluctance to this tea and finish off what I have left. Which is about 60g. Urgh. Thankfully, Tre drinks this one (he’s actually consumed more than I have) so that helps with getting rid of it.

I’m actually drinking this whilst baking brownies (yum!), playing Pokemon (on my way to the 4th gym), and watching the first episode of season 7 of Supernatural. So much multi tasking! Actually, considering how much I’m multitasking I’m surprised I didn’t over steep this – that’s a problem I usually have even if I’m not multi tasking.

For anyone who plays Pokemon and is currently working their way through X or Y, I found a shiny Carbink last night! Woot! Be jealous of my mad skills at finding shinies. Carbink makes five caught out of a total eight ever found (not counting Red Gyarados, because it’s found in game and basically everyone has one)! I now have a shiny Butterfree, Crobat, Mightyena, Sawk, and Carbink all found without soft resetting or mass breeding eggs. I’ve seen eight though: first one I ever found was a shiny voltorb in Ruby, but I accidentally one hitted it. I’ve also found a shiny Sentret in HeartGold, but I found it at a point in game where I hadn’t even received Pokeballs (it was the first Pokemon I encountered in the wild). And, I soft reset a Togepi egg to find a shiny Togepi, and after about 30 or 40 soft resets I found one – but I’d gotten into the habit of resetting by then and I reset based on muscle memory before I realized what I’d done. Bleck. I also have a shiny Tangela which my brother found in game, but he didn’t like the colours so he gave it to me.

Anyway, back to the tea…

I think this is actually the reddest cup I’ve made of this – and considering it’s supposed to be red I guess that’s a good thing. Taste wise, a little better than usual but nothing really impressing. The chocolate flavour doesn’t taste as artificial as I usually find it, but there’s still a generic sweetness to it that I find off putting. I debated tossing the cup, but I think I’ll finish it just because it’s better than usual. Definitely not a restock though.

I might just end up shooting Tre! He decided to make a cup of one my DAVIDsTEAs for himself and chose Red Velvet Cake. It’s not that I don’t want him using my teas (he has permission to make himself whatever he wants so long as the tea balls aren’t already filled with leaves for things I plan to resteep later), but that he blatantly ignores what the tins say about amounts to use for a cup and what I’ve told him.

So, earlier today he made a cup of DAVIDsTEA’s Hot Lips for himself (the tea I bought specifically with him in mind), but halfway through his cup decided that he didn’t want Hot Lips anymore so he boiled up some more water, filled the mug up to the brim with new hot water (without dumping the old tea) and then, when he thought I wasn’t watching, took out a tablespoon it filled it so it was heaping and then proceeded to try and cram all of the leaves into a tea ball. THEY BARELY FIT. The leaves are gonna have no room to expand :/

If it weren’t one of my least favourite (if not my least favourite) DAVIDsTEAs that I currently have stocked, and if I didn’t have so much of it I would be so much more upset than I am right now!

He also added in about two full tablespoons of sugar to it! So, he has a mug of watered down Hot Lips that was then resteeped with AT LEAST twice the recommended leaf for Red Velvet Cake, and he then added a ton of sugar to it. YUCK.

Anyway, that’s why I’m drinking Red Velvet Cake right now – he was just going to trash the leaves, but it seemed like such a waste especially considering how much extra leaf he used. So, I resteeped the leaves and added a small bit of milk (maybe 1/2 a teaspoon if that). Like I said, Red Velvet is not one of my favourites, but this resteep is actually better than I usually get and almost as good as when I steep this one for the first time. I’m going to attribute that to the fact he used so much leaf for his cup.

I swear though, I better not catch him wasting leaf for any of my favourites! I might have to start hoarding some teas in my closet where he can’t get at them…

Decided to try the Red Velvet Cake I got from DT today. First tea of the day, and I was definitely in a dessert tea sort of mood. Unrelated note, when I bought this one it ended up sitting in Kevin’s car for a couple of hours while we went shopping at Comic Reader’s, Tramps, and then out for Thai food at Tre’s restaurant – basically all of my chocolate chips melted. Hopefully that won’t affect the taste at all.

The dry leaf is really decadent and sweet smelling – perfect for what I’m craving. It reminds me of Birthday Cake, but with the obvious difference in the tea base, and the addition of chocolate. As it’s steeping it still smells really rich. Unfortunately while I was focused on brewing the perfect cup I forgot about the bagel I had in the toaster; by the time I noticed it my poor cheesy bagel had been burnt to a crisp. I slathered it with some strawberry cream cheese, but I think it’s a lost cause at this point.

First sip, and I’m trying it without anything added. The liquor isn’t really red at all, but more of a light/muddy brown. Perhaps it’s the taste of burnt bagel in my mouth, but I don’t really taste the chocolate at all. It’s not nearly as decadent as the dry leaf smells, which is kinda disappointing.

About half the cup has been consumed now, and I’m adding just a bit of milk and sugar; hopefully that’ll bring out the flavour some more. Few more sips; it’s better with the milk and sugar but still just sort of has a generic sweetness to it. Maybe that’s the artificial flavouring in the tea.

Overall, I’m pretty disappointed. Definitely not what I was expecting, and while it certainly wasn’t a bad cup of tea it was nothing phenomenal either. I’ll give it another chance though – I’ll have to remember to fiddle around with the steeping time (maybe it should have been steeped longer), and I’ll make a cup for Tre later tonight with the leaves from my cup – maybe it’ll taste better re-steeped?

I feel like I finally got this tea tonight. I tried it on multiple occasions before and could not get over the bitterness of the green tea base. The apple notes were always there, but it just seemed like a weird apple note. Tonight, I gave it a much lower brewing temperature and good short steep time (only 2 minutes). What this resulted in was a nice, delicate green tea with strong apple and cinnamon notes. The dreaded astringency I had been battling completely disappeared. Now that I understand this tea a little more, I am far more impressed with it and would even go so far as to say I can seem myself drinking this far more often.

Another entry in the me vs green tea saga. I have tried this sweetened and unsweetened, short steeped and long steeped. I like it but I keep thinking it would be better if I had just steeped it differently. Today I tried the long steep and unsweetened plan with great success. The apple was a lot less front and center (though it was definitely present). I like this tea more every time I drink it. I probably just need to stop thinking about it as my apple tea and start to mentally classify it as a green tea with spice and hints of apple.

Retried this with a bit of sugar. Still not perfect, but much better. A lot more buttery, more muted on the apple. More like the taste I was looking for. This is a nice, classic, apple tea. It isn’t my first choice right now, but I think it is a cup I will keep going back to as the weather starts to chill down. (We are going through a late summer heat wave, after a week of freezing weather. This is really screwing up my fall tea tasting, I feel like I need to go back to my summery staples! The trees are turning fast though, promising that this weather reprieve is not going to last long!)

I tried a couple of sips of this from my bf’s cup tonight. We were both blown away by the smell of the dry leaves. The crisp apple notes smelled so promising! Brewed up I am of a mixed opinion on this one. On one hand, the apple taste does really shine through and create a crisp, flavourful green tea. On the other hand, I taste apple, I taste green tea, I don’t necessarily taste pie? I am going to try this again tomorrow, but I am going to add a bit of sugar and see if that brings me some of the sweeter pie notes I was looking for.

I have been neglecting this tea of late, which is ridiculous because it is one of my fall favourites, but maybe, for now, I have finally had my fill? I brewed a cup up last night and it was alright, it always brews into a good tea, but I just didn’t find myself as in awe over it as I usually am. Maybe it and I just need to take a bit of a break for a little while!

I took this to work again with me today. It is one of the few chai teas that I really love. The sweetness from the squash works so well with the spices and subtle heat of the cinnamon. I could have sweetened my cup this morning just a touch more, but, even a little short on sugar, it was still pretty great!

This is one of those nice fool proof teas for a cold day. I drank this when finally got home from work today and it really did the trick! Spicy, sweet, but not too sweet. A little bit of pumpkin peeking through. It really is like fall in a cup!

Woke up with a cup of this today while I continue to watch back seasons of Sons of Anarchy (such a guilty pleasure, but I love that show). I had forgotten how spicy this tea is (chai, I know, but mornings are not my best time of the day). The first few sips were spent with me reflecting on the fact that I was tasting more spice than pumpkin and was this a good thing. Apparently it was, as I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the cup. It is definitely a chai in the sense that the flavour revolves around the spice notes. But, as the temperatures are dropping, I am gravitating more and more to the spice based blends. The cloves are a nice, comforting flavour and they are offset nicely by the squash notes. And pumpkin sprinkles are always a fun touch!

Had this again for my morning tea. Once again, it was a super easy sell with me. Delightfully spicy with a hint of the sugar I added. I don’t really taste pumpkin, but I do taste all the spices that make me think of pumpkin. Given that I am actually not a huge pumpkin fan, I love that I am tasting more spice than squash. This tea is a solid winner in my book!

Dear Pumpkin Chai, I get it, you really are amazing aren’t you! Spicy, hearty, it is like drinking fall in a cup! I did not add milk, just a tiny bit of sugar and a good long steep time. The resulting tea was heavy on the cloves and cinnamon, with just enough sweet to balance out the spice. I raced through my cup and can see myself drinking this often as it gets cooler out!!

Great steep with this tonight! Sweet, but not too sweet. I definitely got a hit of butterscotch flavour, but there base tea note also shone through. I liked the balance of semi sweet, but not candy or chocolate, level of sweetness in the tea. It is a nice staple tea to have in my cupboard.

Tried this again as my to work tea today. With a proper steep and a pinch of sugar, this was amazing! I found myself trying to drink as much of my travel mug as I could before the tea cooled to the point where I was not going to enjoy it anywmore. The flavour was definitely smooth and the coconut lent the whole cup a buttery feel. I did think it needed some sugar to round out the bottom of the flavour profile, but once it had the sugar it was amazing! Really glad I gave this one a shot!

Ummm… well… So this cup was not good, but it is totally not the tea’s fault, not even a little bit! I may have gotten a bit over excited about trying all my new teas tonight and, after the success story that was Chocolate Rocket, I promptly brewed up a cup of this. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked, tried to gauge the steep time on the colour of the brew (mistake, btw), and managed to pull (and trash) the bag way too early!!!! I knew I had made a major error the minute I tasted it, but the tea had promise. I think it and I are going to get along famously, once I let go of my excitement and give it a proper steep.