DAVIDsTEA

Sip down day #2/tea #2

This is my second attempt with salted caramel. The first time was a failure.
The dry notes and steeped ones still smell of stinky, gross artificial honey.
I think I may be the only one who doesnt like this tea.

Second go around seems like a bust as well. First time too salty from my added salt… this time no salt. I al getting the slightest hint of caramel. However for the most part it tastes like hot water.
So far sip down is working and I have eliminated a few teas.

So the smell of the dry notes is… well… offputting. It smells like honey, but artificial honey. I am definetly not gettting caramel from it.
Once steeped it smells the same. I added extra salt to it, as there didn’t appear to be any/very little in the leaves I steeped. So I can’t give this an accurate numeral rating right now.
I didn’t get even the slightest hint of caramel. Maybe my extra salt was over powering it, but it definetly wasn’t there.

Sip down day #2/tea #1

The dry notes smell nutty and slightly sweet. Once steeped it smells just like Brazil nuts, I feel like I should be reaching over and popping one of Tue deli opus, crunchy nuts into my mouth.
The tea tastes mainly like a black tea. The Brazil nut flavour lingers at the end of The the sip.
Unfortunately this tea is nothing to write home about. I’ll finish the cup because I need Tue caffeine this morning. I finally fell asleep around 5am and was up at 7:15am to get my girls ready for school. And now I have to work till 8 tonight. Tea is the only thing that will keep me sane.

Let me start by saying that this tea has an extremely strong smoky aroma, reminiscent of bacon and campfires. But don’t be put off by it! Once steeped, the aroma is slightly muted. The taste is smoky and comforting. When drinking, the muted aroma reminds me of the smell of old books, and I feel compelled to curl up in a big comfy chair, with a book, while drinking.

Lapsang Souchong has officially taken place of Hojicha as my favourite smoky/roasted tea. Complex yet simple, strong yet subtle, it’s a paradox of a tea, and is my new go-to for when I’m feeling sad.

I got this from Davids as an “instead of paying shipping I can get one more tea” tea.

Upon opening the bag, wow, there’s a lot of color in there. It smells a lot like caramel.

Knowing it was a dessert tea, I steeped it with a bit of German rock sugar and immediately added a splash of milk.

WOW.

This tastes like I’m drinking creme brulee. It tastes like I’m drinking dessert. I don’t understand it, I really don’t. It was almost off-putting how accurate the flavor was. I found it difficult to finish the cup, not because it was bad, but because it was the wrong time of day for it (if that makes any sense).

Hmm,I don’t think there are hardly any white chocolate chips or even chip pieces in mine. Go figure! Maybe the finished out the bottom of a larger tin when they filled up the 50g to send my way. No issue, I hadn’t noticed they were supposed to be in there!

The flavor really reminds me of Ice Cream Cake, which is one of my favorites. Other than a slightly less prominent icing flavor, this pretty much is Ice Cream Cake. It’s good, though I don’t know if I would order it again, simply because I have a large quantity of Ice Cream Cake on hand already.

I have to admit, this one was love at first sip.

I drank a whole darn pot of it before I even realized it! I loved the hint of rose, the sweetness – the aroma filled me up and took me away! I wish I could think about how it tasted a little more – but I have a group of ten teenagers running around my desk and otherwise being teenagers. But hey, that’s what I get for being on Steepster at work!

Okay it took me a whole pot to realize that this tea tasted like bubblegum to me. I don’t know why! It was just light, not intense. But hey! Also I ate a pistachio. It tasted like rose. I don’t regret it lol.

So let me see how “in a nutshell” I can make this before I wind up rambling on and on in this tasting note.

I bought this really because of my obsession with the “A Song of Ice and Fire” books, and the catch phrase of this tea is “fire and ice” so I decided to give it a shot. And I really love DT’s Bamboozled. I bought it to be an ice tea and really have no plans of trying it hot.

First of all, you get A LOT of tea for 50g. Like, one of DT’s tins was overflowing when I filled it up with this, usually 50g only takes up about a third of the tin. So it is a very spacious tea. I doubled the amount of tea suggested and doubled the steep time as well. Mixed in two teaspoons of rock sugar while it was still hot and let it cool to about room temperature before pouring it over ice. I used ice from my parents ice machine as opposed to ice cubes I made myself, so the flavor was a bit artificial but I really attribute that to a batch of fridge made ice that added that slight chemical note. Blah. Good to know for next time though.

Flavor-wise it was a bit.. strange. A warm feeling for sure, but a somewhat lack of flavor.. mid conversation with my mother about something, I reached into a candy jar on the table and ate a Dove Dark Chocolate, then proceeded to absent-mindedly take another sip of this iced Blazing Strawberry tea. And… BAM absolute total perfection. That is what this tea is lacking… chocolate!!! For some reason, the hint of dark chocolate really brings out the strawberry flavor and melts in nicely with the subtle sweet spice.

So… since then I have blended in a handful of dark chocolate chips to the rest of my 40g or so of tea and ever brew since then has been spectacular! Go figure!!

This is my perfect straight black tea! I’ll write a proper review soon, just had to say I absolutely love this tea!!:)

I noticed that my sample didn’t contain any of the banana chips depicted in the online image, so perhaps that might be why mine lacked the banana taste that I was anticipating? Or is this normal? In any case, my sample is very nut intensive, which isn’t the best fit for my taste. Other not-so-great points about this tisane: I had to use my entire sample in one go and there is a slight oil film on this tea, which I find a little unappetizing. Overall not a bad tea, just not one that best suits my taste.

Well this is the final free sample I got from Davids Tea. I have to say I really love it. You can taste the apples and the pistachio nuts in the brew. I feel like it would be wonderful to eat.

Sip down #1

The dry notes smell like mango candy. Once steeped it smells like mango and peppers. Maybe this will be the first tea to deliver the spice. I love how you can see the chili strings and seeds in the leaves.
The first hit on your tongue is peppers, not spicy, but peppers. As the tea hits the back of your tongue and your throat you get the spice from the peppers. Oh deliciously spicy peppers. The hit of mango is very light and lingers on the tongue.

I am so glad I finally found a tea that promises the heat. This is going back into my cupboard. The only downfall of this tea is that I feel the mango could come out more strongly.

You’d want to avoid this tea if you’re prone to heart burn

EDIT: as this cools to about room temp, the first taste on the tongue is of mango and the spice looses some of its power.

Backlogging from the weekend.

First of all, I have never tried red velvet cake. So I am not too sure what I am supposed to be tasting.

It is sweet and a bit chocolatey. It is nice and smooth. But I am not loving it. It is a little artificial tasting, I guess from all those sprinkles. I enjoyed chocolate cake much better than this one. I certainly wouldn’t turn down a cuppa!

Do you ever find that your senses fight to be right, and you can be led astray by listening to the wrong one? I remember years ago having a dessert that included an orange coloured mousse – we were trying to figure out what was odd about it. It was orange – it should have been orange or peach, right? We couldn’t place it and we were confused. Then my sister said “It’s cantelope!”, and all was right with the world. We were using our eyes, and totally disregarding our tastebuds.
If found the same thing with this tea. I read the description, and throught “Baklava!”. But it isn’t baklava. Then I smelled it and thought “Old Lady Soap and Powder!”, but that isn’t it either (thankfully!). You know when you are trying to remember something all day, and you just can’t get it, then at 2 a.m. you bolt upright and almost shout aloud “Mickey Mantle” (or whatever it is) – you’ve remembered, but usually at this point I forget why I the information is needed. Midway through my cup of this, I had to all of a sudden text my husband “What is the name of that dessert your grandmother makes with Turkish Delight in it? Some sort of cookie…” Turkish delight – THAT is what this tea tastes like.
Not sure that it is a must have, but (now that I have placed the taste!), it is very good.

Yum Yum Yum. This was recommended to me when I was buying Prairie Berry at DAVIDsTEA by the “tea girl”. She said if I like Prairie Berry, I’ll love Blueberry Jam. And she was right. Love it!

The colour is one of the most amazing colours of tea I’ve ever seen. Shouldn’t be all that big of a surprise if you’ve ever eaten blueberry pie or actual blueberry jam, but the tea is almost black. Starts off as a blue-green-purple type colour and just gets darker the longer you steep. The clear double-walled glass mug I have for my tea mornings is the best for watching tea steep!

This literally tastes like you’re biting into a blueberry when you drink it. It’s one of the most “true to smell” teas I’ve ever had; not like some of the pre-packaged berry teas that you smell and it smells delish, but when you taste it all you get is apple, hibiscus and a bit of a twang of some kind of artificial flavour. The stevia adds a nice sweetened kick, too, so the tartness of the dried blueberries isn’t too overpowering.

Definitely will buy again!

Backlog – drank this iced (but without the tea cubes this time) last night. It’s so fun and refreshing and I personally love the color. :) Please see other notes; this is a fave of mine.

I made Swampwater iced cubes…and added them to a glass of plain water, one of Swampwater, and one of my lemonwater (a packet of True Lemon and Splenda) and the results were phenomenal! Each tasted good, although the Double Swampwater blend was best. I ate some of the iced cubes by themselves too. So good – I highly recommend!

Backlogging:

Tried this iced yesterday; the “real” way to make iced tea, no cold brewing. ;) I ended up drinking about a gallon of it! I really do love this tea, from flavor to liquor. Best of all, you don’t need to add sweetener, which I had to do when I brewed up the Strawberry Lemonade/Blueberry Bliss combo earlier yesterday.

Currently I am making Swampwater iced cubes – they are freezing in my fridge while I’m at work. My plan is to make a super concentrated cuppa Swampwater. Will report in tomorrow… :)

(DavidsTea 175)

Hmm, should have tried this as a latte, I guess. But I didn’t. It’s very true to its name – chocolate and cinnamon – so if that’s what you were looking for, it was spot on. I didn’t mind it the other day, but generally not a big chocolate/cinnamon fan. I have a tin of mexican hot chocolate that has been staling for years.

Backlog from Friday night.

I’ve heard pretty good reviews about this one, especially from a coworker, so was pretty excited to try it out! The dry tea is definitely VERY cocoa-y, so much so that the other ingredients are rather difficult to distinguish, coated in a layer of cocoa dust. I brewed it up in a filter with slightly larger holes than usual (i.e. not a Finum brew basket) to allow the cocoa to actually make it into the tea. As I’ve heard from other people, this looked like hot chocolate when brewed up, as it was brown and opaque, and smelled like cocoa and cinnamon. I can’t remember specifics, but it smelled pretty good!

Unfortunately, the taste wasn’t quite what I wanted. I liked the cocoa-y base, and the roasted mate worked well here (as in, it wasn’t overpowering, and surprisingly, also wasn’t banana-flavoured! See my other reviews of roasted mate for an explanation of that…) However, the cinnamon wasn’t quite right for me. Apparently I’m a bit picky on cinnamon in teas – I adore DT’s Glitter & Gold, but disliked Hot Lips, and I found the cinnamon here to be more on the “red hot” side than the warm, soft sort of cinnamon I prefer. I really don’t know what exactly the difference is, perhaps it’s artificial cinnamon flavouring vs. actual cinnamon? Or different types of cinnamon?

Either way, this wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really do it for me. Perhaps it could work quite nicely if sweetened, but I’d rather now. However, this is a great concept, using cocoa in a tea blend (especially with mate), and I hope another tea comes out using this same idea!

Last cup for the night, back home after a good weekend, and have my kitty back :) so off to bed, because a busy Monday is ahead tomorrow, lots to do at work from last week, so it will be a crazy morning. Hopefully this gives me sweet dreams tonight, it’s definitely not my favorite chamomile herbal, but I liked the name tonight haha. See previous notes on this tea!

Backlog from this morning, blahh, this tea is not improving as I drink more of it. I shortened the steeping time to about 3.5 mins as this is near the bottom of the bag and always ends up bitter from bits of something. But today it was still bitter, ick…. I drank half of it and poured the rest. :( this tea used to be so much better! Hoping to eventually sip this down. I won’t change the rating, because I’m pretty sure it’s just the bottom of the bag syndrome that’s ruining it.

Trying to finish up this bag, I have about 3 cups left or so..I’ve been steeping this shorter and it is more enjoyable. Also, I have been eating popcorn tonight and I needed a break from salt, so this is hitting the spot nicely. Still prefer Mother’s Little Helper for a bedtime tea, but I want to finish this off so I can make room for MOAR teas! Haha, see previous notes on this one as well.

Having a cup of this today because I haven’t had it in ages since I had a really blargh bitter cup. It smells quite sweet and licorice today, so I don’t know how it will go. Also lots of bits floating that made it through the steeper lol. Oh well, trying to finish up the bag so I can make room for when my new teas arrive!

ETA: The lower steeping time helped a lot. This is a sweet little cuppa that is warming and not too bad today. Still not my favorite due to all the fennel, but I will be able to finish the cup at least :)