Toasted Walnut

Thanks to Krystalen for sending me this lovely tea!

So it’s the afternoon here, and I’m about to embark on a 3 day weekend. I should be feeling a bit happier, but instead am kinda glum. Perhaps the clouds outside have something to do with it. And I have definitely not had enough tea for one day. :)

So I am finding this to be an interesting one. When I smelled it in the bag I thought it would be really sweet, but it isn’t… kinda glad! I’m definitely getting a nutty aroma here and the pineapple and coconut was kind of a surprise as well. I do think the flavor is subtle but that isn’t really a bad thing because I’m not a huge fan of sickeningly sweet, for the most part. I wonder how this would be a with teeeeeny bit of sugar, might need to try that with the rest of my sample. It smells a little bit better than it tastes but overall I liked it.

Thanks for the sample Krystalen!

Our first sample from the wonderful Krystaleyn. Thank you!

First off, I just have to point out that in our sample there was a big, fat half-walnut. I’m not sure if Krystaleyn did that intentionally, or there are just that many walnut pieces, but it was kind of awesome. Just sitting there, all non-chalant, giant walnut smothering some tea leaves, nothing to see here. It amused me.

This tea has a light fruit smell to it, but not overpoweringly fruity like many other flavored teas. It’s actually very pleasant.

(side note: Missy and I are passing this back and forth like a peace pipe as we discuss our reviews. It’s hilarious)

The most noticeable flavor to me is the pineapple, though it took most of the cup for it to start tasting like ‘pineapple’ and not ‘nondescript fruit essence’. The walnut pulls up in the flavoring after that and leaves a lasting, dark roasty, almost buttery flavor to the sip, eventually tapering off to a very, very light vegetal green tea flavor.

I’m thinking of this tea in my head as like a starter gen mai cha. A little more interesting, not as upfront with either the toastyness, and lacking the seaweed-y flavor of Japanese greens. Plus a little fruitiness to tie it all together.

Overall, a very pleasant tea. At the moment, I don’t think it’s a tea I want to stock up on… but we’ll see. I think if i put in an order when it starts getting cold again, I may have to think about picking some of this up. Maybe ;)

Thanks again Krystaleyn!

Thank you TeaFairy dahling for this tea sample!

Appropriate tea for this early evening would be…NUTS! Because I’ve been wacky NUTS! today (if you read the Kombucha review you know this already). Therefore, I picked the Toasted Walnut as a perfect follow-up tea for me to taste.

Now TeaFairy is funny girl. She sent me sample packets in French so that I had no idea what ingredients were in the tea. She labeled the name and brewing instructions though. (Good girl for that!) So for me this is Noix grillees. Cool!

The 4 minute steep time produced a deep gold greenish liquor that smelled like pastry all buttered and warm. My first sip was light but not very nutty (I discovered later that there were other ingredients that tempered the nuttiness) and sweet enough to drink without having to add sugar. For me though, I wanted some sweet tea at that time of day. Um, worth it too! Nice, creamy tea smooth and fruity. I could smell the walnut scent but the flavor was more like coconut cream. Later I read the ingredients, English Version, and voila’ coconut is in the mix along with some fruit.

This is tasty tea and a nice treat but I think it’s almost false advertising on the name. There is no toasted walnut flavor. The other flavors completely overpower what could have been a unique tea. Try this again DavidsTea. It should have been called Nutty Coconut Fruit Tea to be more accurate. But, the tea did taste good!

I’m a fan of this tea, but not in the “buy now” kind of way. Also, I thought I rated it before but .. maybe I didn’t?
I had it a few times iced with the old $1 promotion (how I miss thee), oh I just looked out the window and it’s snowing like crazy. Okay I can wait for the next iced tea promotion.

Anyways! I think I prefer this one iced. I tried it hot from my advent sample, and it was alright, but as it cooled the walnut, almond and even pineapple flavours popped and made me super happy. Pop! Now I want a chestnut tea.

Anyways, I have to share, when I tried to get the tea out of the little container, my spoon hit something hard. I then pulled out a giant walnut, bigger than my thumbnail, a tiny brain! It was funny to me, even if I did get less tea because of it haha.

In the mood for one of my old school Davidstea favorites. I was going to have Buttered Rum but it’s seriously putrid. Completely rotten. I’m actually going to bring what’s left of my bag to the store to make them smell it. Haha. I need more. But clearly coconut tea doesn’t last that long.

Had this instead, I used to like it even when I didn’t know to not make it with boiling water. So now it’s extra good. Reminds me a bit of the plain Genmaicha I have (not from Davidstea).

I don’t notice much besides the nuts and sencha though. No coconut and no pineapple taste, but I’m sure it’s helping to sweeten it, I guess I can taste the pineapple if I try really hard.

Weird that the coconut in this tea didn’t turn weird…. I’m sure I got them around the same time. Hm.

Anyway it’s an old favourite for a reason! I like that it’s not too sweet. Takes the edge off the green tea. Brewed as per their directions.

I’m listening to Silverchair. Another old favourite, older than the tea, way back to jr high/ high school! I think just dated myself :)

ETA
I’ve been drinking so many new teas lately it’s hard to force myself to drink more than one steep (though I do), so sometimes they sit in my little tea basket on the counter until the next day waiting for their resteep which may never come. I was just making some tea, and I needed an empty steeping basket to use, I could not remember what was in one of them, so I was trying to think back to what I drank last night…. It was this. The already steeped still wet leaves have no real smell, and I tried a resteep so I can confirm they also have no real taste. Which works great for me because now I can throw them away after one shot totally guilt free :)

Finally getting around to this sample from Kittenna! I know, I am a slow tea drinker. ;~; I have SO many samples that even with 3-5 cups a day I’m mightily behind. Yet I keep swapping! It’s an addiction, I tell you.

Given how similar the ingredients here are to Della Terra’s Walnut Brittle, I expected them to taste very similar. Somehow, they don’t! DT’s blend is like candy, and this is more toasty, nutty and down to earth. It’s not that sweet and I only get the smallest hint of fruitiness from the pineapple and coconut. It’s definitely toasted walnut that comes through the most!

Finally remembered to pick this one up. I’ve been craving the nutty teas as of late.

The dry leaf smells like a bakery. Actually, it reminds me of Red Leaf’s flavoured matcha, like the caramel-esque, chocolatey ones.

First steep is pleasantly coconutty with a hint of walnut. It’s even a little creamy. Great flavours to match up with a green. The base is a little vegetal but not overwhelmingly so.

Second steep was still creamy, slightly nutty, and the vegetal undertones aren’t there.

Third steep got kind of wonky. Slight bitterness paired with a bizarre chlorine/bleach nuance. Where did THAT come from?

Overall, still good stuff.

This is a sample from Krystaleyn. Thanks for the generous samples!!! So on to the tea. We are sitting here talking about the tea and Dylan said, " It’s almost like a starter gen mai cha." Which was amusing to me because that’s the association I made with my first sip. Before you know it we will be finishing each other’s sentences all day long. ;)

This is a very interesting green tea. I was a bit surprised by the ingredients. I do think it was done really well though. I like the roasty walnut taste. I think I’m missing out on the almond in here. I just get walnut all the way. It’s a buttery, creamy tea so that may be what the almond contributes. I pick up on the pineapple and coconut together, an excellent pairing. The green tea pops out in the end. This feels like a tea I should drink after snowboarding for some reason. I haven’t done that in years. I’d probably break my neck if I tried to do it now.

The tea smells great in the bag; it’s heavy of pineapple and coconut and there’s a subtle quality of baked goods. None of the green tea is discernible. It’s an attractive tea. The leaves are bright green and uniform, there are whole pieces of walnuts and flecks of coconut and pineapple uniformly distributed throughout.

When prepared, it looks similar to chicken broth both in color and density. There’s even a faint oil slick from the coconut and walnut oils. The brewed tea really didn’t have much fragrance to note.

I haven’t been having great success with DavidsTeas in regards to flavor recently. This one turned out tart and grassy. The lingering coconut aftertaste is nice, but this wasn’t the easiest cup to make my way through.

i just remembered that i made tea in my dream last night
i remember scooping out a teaspoon worth, inspecting it, and then putting it back in the canister repeatedly trying to get the right balance of tea elements on the spoon.
i know you know what i mean.

I thought I would like this one but I don’t really. It’s probably because this tastes similar to a couple of other David’s Teas I tried and the other ones were better. This has the same bakery yellow cake flavor in Forever Nuts and Mulberry Magic, leaving me to feel like David isn’t being very original. The nuttiness is minimal and green tea tastes funky. Funky like wet tea leaves left over night and then brewed too hot. Except that I actually brewed at a lower temp with fresh dried leaves.

Husband liked it though so it’s alright. “mmm vanilla,” said he.

I’m glad I tried it! Only 3 more samples to go before I need to go back for more sample sizes! Research is hard work!

I got this as an extra from David’s Tea when they mixed up something in my order. I probably wouldn’t have chosen this particular tea as I’m not hugely fond of walnuts – they irritate my mouth. But it turns out I didn’t have anything to worry about with this tea.

First of all the smell – oh the smell! – like sugar cookies that were straight out of the oven. Adding the water made the tea smell distinctly more nutty, more like a even combination of sugar cookies and toasted nuts.

The walnut flavour wasn’t nearly as strong as it could have been, which I’m perfect fine with, BTW. To be honest it’s more of a general nutty flavour that doesn’t really fit any particular type of nut. I can taste notes of coconut and almond in there as well as the walnut and there’s also a bit of sweet fruitness that comes from the pineapple.

The walnuts are the main player in this tea. I almost forgot that this was a green tea underneath. It’s pretty tasty though.

…I’ll finish my review tomorrow.

Update: Ok so I resteeped it and am drinking this again. The nuts are really tasty and it’s lightly fruity. I’m looking forward to finishing my mini-tin of this, but when it comes to restocking it, I might prefer Mulberry Magic as my nutty tea, especially as that one is caffeine free.

Ah summertime. Despite the walnut, which is the only not-so-summer ingredient, I still smell summer. Thank you coconut and pineapple. And on a sidenote I redid the colours on my blog to also reflect the summer sunshine. Yes! And also did a blog post on the awesome Guayusa :)

Ooh this is nutty and I’m enjoying it. Excellent. This may be an upgrade as well. These nut teas keep blowing me away. Never did I think I’d enjoy a nut tea. Yet each and every one I’m loving.

Update: The fiance is on his 3rd cup. I have a feeling this one may be kept around.

Green tea + coconut + pineapple = three of my favourite things. I also looove walnuts as well. It is safe to say I enjoyed this tea. I actually really really enjoyed this tea. I usually prefer my green teas plain without any other ingrediants but this is such a lovely blend. I would love to buy some for my shelf at home but my sister has deadly nut allergies and I do not want to risk it. Unfortunately I am too scared to bring home a lot of amazing nutty teas because of her allergies. I will just have to enjoy this one in store (:

Very odd, I never rated this tea? Well that sucks!

I had made this tea cold-steeped – 4 hours.

TASTE: Slightly creamy walnut juice – DONE! Okay okay, also has a hint of sweetness with a background of green tea. No bitterness or tart. Very walnutty and the coconut creamyness go together nicely. I can almost taste the walnut skin. I love walnuts, they look like brains.

COMMENTS: Okay, I don’t like sencha because for awhile people kept giving me sencha fruity teas and I just got sick how they all tasted the same and the tea just came out too strong. Toasted Walnut isn’t like that – the green tea came out wonderful in the cold steep.
Come on, coconut water being really popular? How about walnut juice, yeh!

From what I can recall, hot this tea is more sweet but not as nutty, but I think cold is more interesting with that strong walnut flavor. I could see myself buying more, that or go on a hunt for more walnut teas.

I just wrote a long review and it disappeared and it was pretty brilliant isn’t that INFURIATING? EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE etc..

Short version..which goes against every fibre in my being..

Smells: nutty,slightly fruity,warming,green tea
Taste:Deep,woody,warming,slight bitterness,very nutty..needs a straightjacket
Do I like it:I want to but I think I steeped it a tad too long ..the potential is there and there will be more experimentation!
Who would like it:once bitterness is no longer a factor anyone wanting to expand their tea horizons and start the lovely foray into Green tea this is a great start..this would also be perfect on the ski slope in a Thermos ..and on any cold cold day.
After thoughts:
I will rate this on potential and go cry about my lovely verbose and sexy review getting vaporized.

Hmmmm, I think I like it! alot!!!
this one reminds me of the coconut oolong I bought over Christmas, but more “green” (obviously) than oolong. There is a definite essence of walnut, with that same walnut taste in the back of the throat. Then there’s the coconut, which lends the sweetness to this brew. No sugar needed here! :-)
There is something else there, but I’m not sure if it’s the pineapple- most likely. It doesn’t taste unlike pineapple, but not especially so either.
If it wasn’t for the coconut oolong, this would get a 95 but because that other tea is SO similar, and I love that one, well I give this one a slightly lower score.
EDIT: The walnut, while good, has gotten a bit tiresome now that I am at the bottom of the cup. Down another few notches…
Second EDIT: The second cup is realllllllly smooth, as usual with a green or oolong, but it still takes me by surprise every time! It’s significantly more mellow now, but some of the walnut is lost. Hiking the rating back up! Like a rollercoaster this one…

If your looking for a very nutty tea, this isn’t the one you should be looking at. Try forever nuts. This one is mildly nutty but not super nutty. The walnut flavor is present but still a bit empty of yo ask me. The tartiness of the pineapple over rides the nuttiness along side the coconut smell and taste. I liked it. But I was quite disapointed with the lack of nuttiness, that is all. Coconut and pineapple combine very smoothly in this one as oppsed to piña colada ( another davids tea) .

Dry Leaf Nose: Sweet green tea with hints of coconut and toasted walnut.

Liquor: Clean green/gold.

Flavour: A nice sencha green tea is primary and sweet, with walnut and coconut adding interest and fullness to the liquor.