New Tasting Notes

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – July 2023 Tea #1 – A tea that makes you smile

A Frank blend!  This tea definitely makes me smile.  One whiff of the blend, yet even now, years later, the name is hella accurate.  What a lemon meringue blend!  It smells just like meringue. And I don’t think lemon blends have been appreciated enough from 52Teas — both with Frank’s blends and Anne’s blends. This is a sad sipdown (with a smile) as all these last crumblies in the pouch give a huge deal of flavor.  And a perfect tea for this scorcher of a day. (I think it’s everywhere in the US today.)
2023 sipdowns: 54

TTB
I do like a good licorice tea, but this one is a bit muddled for me. There are other flavors trying to compete with the anise, and it just doesn’t blend well with my palate. Not sure if I used too much leaf, I do need some caffeine this am, so maybe I overleafed it? Thanks for adding it to the box!

TTB
This tea smelled delicious, almond and vanilla. But the first steep was a bit meh tasting, the aromas of the dry leaf and the brewed cup just didn’t translate. So I steeped again and put it in a go cup hoping the aromas would sink back into the tea, and they did. Nutmeg and vanilla blended well and I really enjoyed the cup. Thanks to whoever put this in the box!

My entire family is sleeping in this morning, even the dog and the sun is actually shining, so I get to enjoy my mug with the birds this morning. The tea steeped up to a darker color than I expected from a green tea. The fragrance is powerfully floral. I could actually smell the jasmine from the other side of the room as it steeped. No sweeteners added as usual and I managed to time it right and not steep too long. Unsurprisingly, the jasmine is prominent in each sip. There is a vegetal quality as well. I enjoyed this one but I would like it to be a little less jasmine forward. I’d definitely drink it again but not sure I would restock my cabinet.

Lemon fluff! The combo of sweet, soft lemon and silky marshmallow really is a dream! So glad this one’s a tisane so I don’t have to worry about caffeine content. It reminds me, favorably, of Della Terra’s lemon chiffon. The flavoring there was lemon and cream on a rooibos/honeybush base, but both teas share a certain lemon-on-a-cloud vibe that I really love. Would be cool to see lime and orange variations on this blend! Those were tasty variants of the chiffon formula.

Review from May 2022

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Yep, that’s a chai! It’s got all the typical spices and a good amount of flavour. As always, I drank this with some vanilla soy milk and a tiny bit of sugar (~1/2 tsp). Nice cinnamon and warm peppery spices but balanced out by the clove and cardamom. Nothing particularly exceptional about this blend, but it is an enjoyable cup. Best with milk to round out the CTC black base, which can be a bit overly tannic and tending towards bitter.

May 2022

Trying to use up random teabags and made this hot and then made a second cup iced with lemon and sugar. The hot cup was generic, bitter, vegetal notes of corn husk and matcha powder. I dislike the bitterness in this green tea, which is why I avoid bagged greens whenever possible.

The iced cup was better, but not very flavourful or memorable. If anything, it was mostly lemonade with a touch of green tea. The sugar takes care of the bitterness but it’s just so bland. :( The second cup was too weak to really make out any motes.

Sipdown! (16 | 213)

This one is tasty, but I’m not sure I specifically get elderberry from it. I mostly taste lemon, and there is a vague dark berry sort of note, but I would guess blueberry if anything.

It’s very nice and smooth, good amount of flavor and doesn’t taste artificial. I do wish there was a bit more berry? Because the lemon is definitely the strongest flavor here, with the berry in more of a supporting role.

Sipdown! (15 | 212)

This cup came out deliciously squashy, somewhere between zucchini and kabocha varieties. Also plenty of lovely savory umami of course, but it’s not quite as intense as past steepings. Some gentle nuttiness as well.

Lovely! Giving me autumnal vibes with those squash and nut notes. Happily, as usual with Obubu teas, I have more of this LOL. :P

One of you friends recommended this as a cold latte with vanilla syrup. My initial experiment left room for improvement, as the only dairy product under our roof was skim milk; however, it made me want to haul out the blender and try it as a milkshake: I think it would replicate malted milk very nicely. Unfortunately, the only ice cream under our roof is cherry lemonade. I don’t think that’ll fly! Plenty of summer left to try it.

Sipdown! (14 | 211)

Picked up a bag of this one a couple of orders ago, just because I hadn’t tried it in a long time and I love plums.

It’s a nice enough oolong – silky smooth with a gentle grassiness and sparkling mineral quality. I wish I was tasting more of the plum though (and I remember having similar feelings about their plum mugicha). It’s there but very subtle, almost like a natural note of the tea.

Sadly not a favorite of mine among their oolongs, but it was nice to revisit it and see if my opinion had changed. :)

This is one of the three flavors of Teeccino available in my local grocery store (as grounds). I’ve been putting two scoops of the grounds in a fillable teabag and cold-steeping overnight in a liter jar to make coldbrew.

This is really nice. Definitely has that same roasted coffee flavor of the other Teeccino flavors I’ve tried, but the nutty notes are amplified, and the hazelnut flavor is actually very spot on. I think my brain association with hazelnut and chocolate also brings out a really dark and bittersweet chocolate flavor. It’s a tasty coldbrew but is very thick and mouth-coating, which isn’t always the texture I want for a quick thirst quencher or a cold drink accompanying a meal, but I love the mileage I can get out of a single bag of grounds making coldbrew. I think I’ve been drinking this as my main cold tea for several months now.

I did attempt to try it warm one morning, but I nodded back off into sleep on the couch and when I awoke, it was already cold. Ah well! I’m sure it’s just as tasty warm.

I’ll probably get another bag at some point, but I plan to try the last available-to-me flavor first (Mocha, if memory serves). I did like this one more than the French Vanilla, mostly because it so perfectly nails the flavor on the tin (hazelnut) while the French Vanilla one tastes of coconut to me.

This tastes a lot like S&V’s blueberry cinnamon crumble, just a toned down version. The combination of berry flavoring plus rooibos is somewhat reminiscent of a berry muffin. I’m drinking it slightly warm with sugar. The resteep tastes the same as the first.

Hmm this is a mix between fruit and herbs that feel like they’re supposed to be healthy. I would have preferred the fruit without the herbs since they make it taste a bit murky and too herbaceous.

Can rose overpower the chamomile and make a tasty tea?

Well, it’s actually hard to say. Because it also contains rooibos and orange essential oil. The latter is fairly strong actually. And rose too. In fact, I don’t notice any of the chamomile, but the flavour is strong and actually a bit soapy. It gives me a soap feel. As a aroma of it I can imagine it as a great mix. As a tea… well, not that sure.

It’s fruity. Distinctly orange, or actually rather a tangerine, but that herbal part is somehow weird to be honest. Well, somehow I have to go through remamining 19 tea bags.

PS: It’s one of the three tea bag boxes I bought in the end of last year during my trip to Romania. Rating on hold.

[Spring 2023 harvest]

A superb green tea all around. Its energy brings me very much to the present, the liquor has a good astringency and depth, and the aftertaste is particularly intense.

The aroma is quite pleasant, fruity and grass-like, with notes of fern and green peas. The flavour is more vegetal, floral and nutty with a spicy finish at first. Later infusions get pretty sweet and also a bit sour. The mouthfeel is milky and coating.

[Spring 2023 harvest]

This tea is good, but not close to the best Kabusecha I’ve had. Its taste and body is a bit lighter than I would prefer. It does, however, have a very nice long aftertaste that is nutty and mineral. The aroma is of grass (compost), matcha, and baked apples. Taste is sweet and floral, while the mouthfeel is oily and smooth.

[Spring 2023 harvest]

Dry leaf aroma is crisp and reminds me of apple leafs and custard. During the session, the smell is very pleasant, full bodied, and it has a sort of tropical character. For instance, there are hints of vanilla and longan fruit.

The mouthfeel of the liquor is milky and smooth, but not too thick. Taste is grassy and very floral, with a sweet and nutty finish. It does get a little bitter too, which is very nice. Flavours include lemon balm, almond skin, as well as many other plants. The aftertaste is crisp and numbing, and brings notes of broccoli stalk and orchid.

All in all, a lovely FF experience.

When this landed in my Mom’s Day gift basket, I speculated that it would make great iced tea in the summer. (“You were right, Mom…. " just what every mama longs to hear.)

Requirements for what make a great unflavored summer black tea vary by user, but this meets both of mine: Is it strong enough to wake you up in the morning? and Does the bottom half of the tumbler retain that strength on ice? A firm yes to both.

I’m not sure that I could identify what a black currant tastes like. Fairly certain, I’ve only had currants dried in hot cross buns. This tea is pretty good though. It has a nice medium brown color when steeped. No strong fragrance detected. It is sweet and fruity and smooth. I may have to seek out more teas labeled as Black Currant.

Very strong smoky scent, of course. But, to me, this one is not overwhelming. The underlying tea has a lovely character which shines through – more like a dark oolong than like a black tea. Nice and mellow with a touch of briny saltiness. Leather and wood notes for sure, but with some slight hints of dark fruit as well. A great budget buy. I find that this is a tea I can drink on the regular.

#SVTTB Round Two – Tea 19/???

Very nearly finished sipping through the teas in the box that interested me, so I’ll be ready soon to start figuring out a shipping order for this TTB – let me know if the comments if you might have an interest in joining? Probably going to start with instagram tea friends for the first leg of this boxes’ journey but I’d like to connect it with IG and Steepster people if possible!

This was a pretty tasty cup. It’s definitely a flavoured milk oolong. You can tell from the very intense notes of butter that almost give a movie theater popcorn kind of vibe. Just much too packed in to ever possibly be natural. I have no qualms with a flavoured milk oolong though. It’s smooth and cozy, and who doesn’t like the taste of butter?? This one also has enough of the base that comes through to still have a very nice soft floral finish of lilacs, and it’s that added little push of dimension that really makes or breaks a milk oolong for me. In this case, makes it.

Cold Brew!

Sipped on this one yesterday in between recording Geek Steep episodes with Marika. We turn off the air conditioning during recording for sound, and it gets HOT in the apartment. It’s good to have something cold during podcast set up and in between episodes while we take a short break…

As a cold brew, this is very much a vanilla/cream first drink. Almost like just drinking a vanilla black tea, but with a hint of that floral rose in the finish. I think I prefer it hot as the flavour is a little more balanced, but it still works surprisingly well as a chilled tea too! I think it would actually be really stellar as an iced latte, if you upped the leaf amount a little more than you normally would for that preparation to get a slightly more potent flavour and not lose the rose notes entirely.

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 and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

This is such a damn good rhubarb flavour. Sweet, thick and jammy but also playfully bright and tart. The cooling mint finish just makes those fruit notes practically explode with juiciness on the palate with a clean, crisp finishing note. I’ve been really into this tea lately and it’s taking all my effort to not sip through the entire bag. It’s not that I want to hoard it, but I just don’t think it’s ever returning so I know this is very well the last I’ll ever see of it…

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 and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.