softrevolution

Oooh! Yum.

Probably the best way to describe my reaction to this tea. I love (LOVE) desserty teas but I like them much better with a black base than rooibos, or anything else really. Black tea is my go-to.

I love all of the ingredients in this tea, so I was pretty sure it would be fantastic. Especially coconut..I’m not usually a coconut person but it is always so beautiful in tea. I even like the little oil slick it leaves on the top, it makes for creamy deliciousness in the cup. Throw in some caramel and toffee bits and I am swooning.

It smells absolutely divine both dry and steeped, it reminds me a little of honeybee. I loved that it steeped up to be a nice dark cup; it definitely stands up to the milk and brown sugar that I added.

I really like the deep, rich caramel flavour that I’m getting from this. I am so glad it’s a dark caramel flavour rather than the light, sticky, sickly sweet ice cream topping variety, if that makes sense. It’s not overly sweet and it has a toasty quality that I love.

Sigh, looks like I’m going to have to stock up! Does anyone know if this is permanent?

Why, whyyy can’t green tea be more simple to prepare for clumsy, lazy people like myself? I like the flavour of green tea but not so much when it tastes bitter and/or burnt. Yuck.

This one came included with a gorgeous little tea set that my girlfriend got me from Teaopia for our anniversary. She knows me too well! We’ve been enjoying the little ritual of sharing a pot of tea on the weekends and I love it. And somehow delicious tea somehow tastes even better when drinking it from the little matching cups :P

But anyways, this tea. I’ve been hearing a lot about cold steeping, and it seemed pretty foolproof to me. So I got a nice tall glass, filled it with water and added a little t-sac of this to steep overnight. Next morning it looked pretty green, so I gave it a try. Blech!! It was really bitter :( maybe I just left it too long? Who knows..but I couldn’t finish the cup. If it weren’t for the bitterness it would have been really nice. The fruity flavours were prominent and refreshing but I just couldn’t get past the pucker-inducing yuck of the bitterness.

I’m going to try cold steeping again, but probably with an herbal or rooibos. Or maybe if I try it with a green again but just reduce the steep time? I really had high hopes for this method since it seemed like it would take the finicky-ness out of making green iced tea but alas, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

Had my first $1 iced tea of the summer yesterday! I’m so fracking glad this promo is back; I think I may have nearly abused my iced tea privileges last year and I plan on doing the same this summer :D

I chose this over the bear trap they were also offering because I’d never had it and I had always been mildly interested in it since I love all things vanilla. I got it with a touch of agave, which I kind of ended up regretting. It has a natural, almost floral sweetness (I tried a sample straight before having them add the agave to my cup) and the agave just killed that.

I’m not usually one for oolongs, but I really enjoyed this one. It was light and refreshing with tons of delicious vanilla flavour. I liked the toasty taste that the oolong added as well. My only beef is that it was a tad bitter..I think it might have been slightly oversteeped. Thinking about buying some to bring home but darn it, my tea cupboard is probably already hosting a family of gremlins as it is. It is a huge mess of goodness.

I had this again in store but as an iced latte. YUM. I had never thought of icing a latte before the SA at davids suggested it, but I’m so glad I tried. So creamy and cool and tasty! And sweet, considering the 2 pumps of agave I asked her to add :P mmmm I’ll be having more of these this summer.

Just finished the last little half serving left in my baggie. I added some jolly jellybean since the flavours seemed similar, and I didn’t have quite enough green and fruity for a whole cup. They’re really tasty together! I’m kind of sad I didn’t try this earlier. I added a bit of agave and put it in the fridge to cool and the end result was sweet fruity deliciousness. It reminded me of kool aid for some reason! I wasn’t crazy about green and fruity when I first got it, but it has really grown on me. The smell reminds me of something familiar and I think I’ve finally figured it out—Quaker peaches an cream instant oatmeal. Yep.

I went into the store to try an iced cup of tropicalia but they had just sold out earlier in the day. Boooo. My store never seems to sell out of anything, this one must be gooood! Ugh, this is going to kill my willpower to resist buying the summer collection package, I can feel it. Must stay strong and wait!

But I digress. I ended up getting a cup of iced pink flamingo instead since I’ve heard so much about it on here. I’m not usually huge on overly citrussy teas, or on hibiscus, but I figured I’d give it a go. It’s tasty! Tart and refreshing and really cooling, if that makes sense, in the same way that luscious watermelon is. I asked for just a liiiittle bit of agave in it, as I often do, but I think this one would have been better with a bit more sweetness to cut all of the tart that’s going on.

I don’t think I’d buy this to make at home but I’ll probably have it again in store, if the mood hits.

Finally got around to trying this one and..hmm..I’m not sure about it!

The heat is wonderful. Wonderful! This is what I always hope for when I see that there is chili in a tea. It actually gives me that oh-my-god-it’s-burning-my-mouth feeling that I crave from spicy food. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t out of this world spicy, but it has a really nice kick for a tea, especially considering that I’m usually disappointed by teas with chilis or peppercorns because they never quite have the bite that I’m expecting.

My only real gripe with this tea is that I’m not really smitten with the mango flavouring they’ve used. Mango is kind of a hit or miss flavour with me, and in this case I found it a little cloying and artificial tasting. Not enough that I didnt want to finish my cup, but I don’t think I’ll be stocking up. The spice is soo good though!! It’s the kind of heat I wish was in blazing strawberries, or as DaisyChubb said, in chocolate chili chai. Why can’t more spicy teas pack this much of a punch?

I don’t like it!

Too much butteriness, too much like a cup of watery milk, and too vegetal for me. It all combined to taste kind of like spinach with butter, as others have mentioned. I just really found it to be..too much. I’m glad I just got a cup of this to go, rather than buying some to brew myself, because I couldn’t even finish it. I started to get a headache and feel nauseous about half way through.

I can understand why people would love this, but it’s definitely not for me. I’d still like to try other milk oolongs eventually, but this particular one was not for me.

I have mixed feelings about this one. When it’s prepared right, it’s delicious! Like a mixture of creamsicle and bubblegum. But I made it iced with too much leaf once, and it was really, reeaally bad. Really strong rooibos, chemical fakeyness, too much sweet orange flavour to the point that it was all really cloying all together. If you get the ratios right though, it’s pretty magical!

I never would have chosen this one on my own, but my girlfriend smelled the tin in store on a whim and we picked up 25g to try it. I am so surprised that I love it! I am a huge earl grey fan but I didn’t think I’d like it as a fruity tea. It is less overwhelmingly strawberry flavoured than I was expecting..I get a deeper, richer fruit flavour..black currant maybe? I’m not certain but it sure is darn tasty.

So disappointed in this one. Ho hum. I’d been wanting to try it for quite a while and finally got around to picking up a 25g bag last time I was at davids. I was surprised at how heavy it is, the 25g really doesn’t go a long way. But on to the tea itself.

Like a bunch of others, I was surprised at how…powdery..this tea is. Looks almost like the contents of a traditional tea bag. I’m also wondering if mine is from the bottom of the wall tin since it looks like mostly pieces of cinnamon. I was skeptical but I gave it a good long steep and hoped for the best. After a 5-6 min steep it was still looking pretty weak and watery. It smelled delicious, but when I added my usual chai fixings (milk & sugar) it was clear that there was very little actual tea in my cup. With even just a splash of milk, the brew looked like, well, water and milk. Hoping to save my cup, I desperately threw a bag of cheap orange pekoe into the mix. This made it drinkable, but still disappointing. The chai spice blend was really nice and I know I would have enjoyed this a lot if it hadnt been lacking the actual tea element (which is, unsurprisingly, pretty important in a tea :P)

I think I’ll wait a while and try a cup of this in store, hopefully from a different batch. I’m not willing to give up on this just yet, and considering all of the glowing reviews, I’m thinking my experience may have been a fluke.

I love teas that promise an energy boost, so of course I had to try this one. Papaya and peaches didn’t sound too bad either. I picked up a 25g bag a couple of weeks ago and just got around to trying it a few days ago.

I had no prior experience with guayusa so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. In the bag I could smell the fruitiness, but also an herbal, earthy, almost pungent aroma. This made me a little wary, but I shouldn’t have been. I had it iced and it was perfectly fruity and refreshing. Very light and slightly sweet, it was delicious. It does have a somewhat herbal flavour in the background, but I actually enjoyed that and found that it only added to the overall flavour of the tea. I can see myself drinking this quite often this summer.

Words cannot describe how happy I am that this one is back! I tried it in store near the very end of last summer and fell in love. It is so juicy and fruity and refreshing and lovely without being overly sweet at all. I bought up the last of what they had on the wall (about 30-35g) and squirreled it away. I only have about a cups-worth left at this point but now I can officially enjoy it with true fervor because I know I can finally restock.

So I managed to go into davids the other day without buying the entire summer collection. Huzzah! This is definitely an accomplishment for me. Usually I get so excited about the seasonal collections that I go ahead and just buy the sampler and then I only end up truly loving about 2 out of the 5. Then I have three 25g baggies of tea that I’m not likely to ever finish that get added to my (ever-overflowing) tea cabinet to collect dust and make me feel guilty about how much tea I have.

So I resisted, even though the summer collection looks wonderful. I grabbed a cup of this to go with milk and agave and it was perfect. I wasn’t really expecting to love this one, as I was unsure of how the brittle would come across and whether the strawberry flavour would be overwhelmingly artificial. But it is so very good. Sweet and toasty with fresh strawberry goodness. It’s not sickeningly sweet by any means, and tastes surprisingly true to its name. Looks like I’m going to have to grab a bag of this.

I was SO excited about this one before it came out. Whenever I see ginger or chili or peppercorn in a tea I jump at it – I definitely crave some heat (or at least a bite) in my teas. This was tasty, but overall disappointing. There was a tiny hint of heat from the ginger, but the most predominant taste was hibiscus. Sigh. I like hibiscus just fine, but it’s not what I was expecting from this tea. Iced with some agave it is nice and refreshing, but it’s not the favourite I expected it to be.

Sipping this on a lazy Sunday evening. I usually drink this straight, but tonight I felt like something creamy and comforting so I added a little milk and sugar. It is beyond delicious this way! Brings out the sweetness of the coconut and makes the lavender pop. This is one of my favourites from davids.

This is so sweet and floral and lovely! It’s the only mate I can seem to drink of late, I think due to my late night study session mate binges while I was in university. The taste of the leaf itself, naked and without tasty additions to embellish it, just kind of makes me shudder now, even though it was a taste I always enjoyed.

This one, though. This is just pure tasty goodness in a cup. I first tried it iced in store, and I still prefer it this way over hot. once cooled, the mate flavour is less distinguishable, and instead all I taste is a delicious floral honey. The scent is so strong that it refuses to stop lingering in my davids iced tea mug, despite several washings and reuses.

This mate has got me wondering about the other mate blends that davids carries, and whether I’d like them. I think I’ll have to give them a try.

Loving this one! The colour is so gorgeous, a rich, golden, murky cup. Murky in the best way, of course – like unrefined apple juice. I think the 3 minute steep was not quite enough for me..I always worry about oversteeping green and white teas. No bitterness, but it was also a little on the watery side. I added a tiny bit of brown sugar and it was a lovely and comforting drink on a cool evening.

I remember trying this last fall, around the time when I first discovered davids, and being underwhelmed by it. All I got, both from dry sniff and from the sample I had in store, was an artificial caramel-ish note that was cloying and just really overtook any good qualities about the tea itself. After reading soo many positive reviews and fervent wishes that it would return this fall, I decided to give pumpkin chai another shot.

After all, it combines many of my favourite flavours, from pumpkin to cinnamon to that lovely chai spice blend. Is the recipe different this year, or just my tastebuds? Because I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I don’t get that unpleasant caramel top note, but rather a rich, creamy, almost toasty quality that is just so comforting and delicious. I’m a convert. This will be my go to tea for fall, I think.

This is my new favorite chai. Strangely I’ve always preferred the inferior bagged varieties (read:tazo) to loose leaf as I’ve never found the loose leaf brews up strong enough before going bitter. I like my chai to punch me in the face, so to speak, and the only place I could get that from was my box of tazo chai. This one has completely changed my mind. After a 5 minute steep it was perfect. A strong cinnamon base, but not so strong as to overpower the other spices, followed by an intense hit of the black tea flavor and the tingle from the peppercorn. Love.

I should have known on dry sniff that this wouldn’t be quite as delicious as it smells. It’s quite tasty iced, but kind of hits you in the face with it’s fruit flavour. I really prefer the fruitiness in my tea to be more of an afterthought, rather than the main component. I don’t think I’d like it hot, but for what it is it really does make a nice summer drink.

I liked this, but not as much as I thought I would. I’ve only tried it iced, and although it was quite tasty and refreshing, it didn’t quite have the raspberry punch that I was expecting from the dry smell. I tasted mostly rooibos, with a hint of raspberry lemon flavour. I’m not the biggest fan of straight up rooibos, so this probably won’t be a repurchase for me. Still really tasty though, and I’ll finish the bag that I have.

I bought this the other day along with raspberry nectar and green and fruity as part of a promotion that DT had on for iced teas. I actually thought I’d like this the least out of the three, but it has turned out to be my favorite.

I’m sipping it iced right now at work, and it has a lovely bright and fresh lemon scent and flavour that’s not the slightest bit bitter or overly tart. The lemongrass comes out the most for me, and is delicious with the green rooibos. I can’t wait to try this hot with a bit of honey, I’m sure it’ll be fantastic. Iced though, it’s perfectly refreshing for summer. I think I’ll be reaching for this one quite often.

I think I originally bought this because I wanted to try an oolong. I was a little afraid, as I’d heard oolongs taste somewhere between a green and a black tea. Don’t get me wrong, I love both, but I wasn’t sure how I’d like a hybrid of the two. I tried it for the first time today (several months after I’d bought it) and can happily say that this might be one of my new favourites. It’s really well balanced, with a great combination of bright lemon flavour, rich jasmine, and the earthy oolong. I can definitely pick out the oolong flavour, but it’s mild. I had this with breakfast this morning and it was perfect.