Pumpkin Chai

Thanks jessiwrites for this one!

This is pretty tasty. I’m definitely getting more black tea than pumpkin or spices. The pumpkin-y spices are there, just not as prominent as the black tea. Given a choice I’d take Pumpkin Creme Brulee or Grandma’s Pumpkin Pie.

I often have trouble with Chai teas. I can never seem to find one that I like. The same thing happens with pumpkin spice teas. HOWEVER, I LOVE this tea! As someone said in a earlier note this TRULY tastes like PUMPKIN. The spices are balanced and it has a very nice flavor. I drank it without any sugar/milk and I thought it tasted like a great pumpkin tea. When I added in a little bit of rock sugar / milk the chai flavors really became apparent. Since I am not a HUGE chai fan I will go back to drinking it straight. THIS IS A REAL winner for me.

P.S. I got this from the tea review blog monthly swap. If you are interested you can look check it out at http://www.teareviewblog.com/?page_id=1706 or on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/teaswap/.http://www.teareviewblog.com/

One of the free samples from my David’s tea order.

After the disappointment of the Salted Caramel tea, I was relieved to open up the package and smell this one. It reminded me of pumpkin pie, which really was because of the strong cinnamon and pumpkin notes. It almost seemed to have a hint of graham crackers in it, which made me think of pie crust I think.

So anyway – wonderful smell. I used the whole sample in my new perfect tea mug and steeped it in around 10 oz. of water at the below parameters. Added only a splash of milk because the initial taste seemed a little thin.

That ‘thin’ texture seems to be my main problem with David’s so far. The tea tastes fine – it just seems so watered down. This chai was definitely on as far as the pumpkin and cinnamon was concerned, but I got no other real ‘chai’ spice, and the milk really had to help to get that creamier, chewy texture.

This was another one that was just okay. I have the Chocolate Chili chai sample to try next so hopefully that one will wow me!

Have you seen Heaven? I think i just did!!!
This tea is the most amazing Tea,I work at an eye drs office and I cant get to my tea very often so when I do The bags have usually sat for like 4hours in the water and its cold, Let me say though that this was the best cup of Pumpkin tea ever!!! THIS IS BETTER THEN STARBUCKS PUMPKIN LATE!!! the pumpkin by the time i got to it was sooo Bright i could have danced! I am not saying to Brew this for 4 hours before enjoying but this is one of thoughts teas that only gets better with more brew time!

Hmmm, not sure about this one.

I think I was spoiled by my first pumpkin tea being Butiki’s Pumpkin Creme Brulee. I might have liked this one a little better if I hadn’t absolutely loved Butiki’s so, so much.

What I do like about this is that despite the ‘chai’ in the name, it’s not overly spiced. It’s like a warm cup of pumpkin pie, which I do appreciate. I’m looking forward to my second steep, which I might drink with some brown sugar and almond milk.

OK, this tea has definitely found a home with me. This is one I could marathon like comfort tea – in fact in the second cup I added brown sugar and milk as recommended and YUMMM. But even without, this is like a beautiful tea version of pumpkin pie. I like it both ways, but it’s really decadent with things added. OM NOM NOM NOM.

It really does taste like pumpkin. You can really smell the squash!

For my birthday, it is safe to say that all of my gifts were tea-related. One of my best friends happened to get me a collectors tin of Pumkin Chai and I am so proud to call her my best friend. I absolutely love this tea! The pumkin flavour is there. Enough said. People rave over starbucks’ pumpkin spice lattes but if those people ever put Pumpkin Chai into their tea latte, DAVIDsTEA would be their new obsession.

What can I say hasn’t been said already? Owning this tea gives you the magical power to make Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes all day every day; if you like that beverage this should be an instant, unquestionable buy.

It also smells like the epitome of Fall: Cloves, Cinnamon, Caramel, and the sweet scent of those little pumpkin candies. It’s definitely one of the highlights of the season for me and it tastes great in all of its forms be it straight, with milk, brown sugar, or even.. well, maybe it isn’t the best cooled but it’s still drinkable. For best results brew it longer to get the full range of the flavours.

This was my very first loose leaf tea and I’ve been hooked ever since.

So I ordered some of this last spring (always 6 months behind/ahead down under…) and waited to really get into it until April when it started cooling down here.

I find its a fine black tea. I don’t really get a strong pumpkin flavour, and despite being an Aussie, I have a good Pumpkin Pie reference – I did fall semester of uni in Ottawa 5 years ago, so got to have a proper Thanksgiving. The chai component is nice, but not as spice-y as I would’ve liked.

So nice, but I won’t re-order this one later in the year. Leave the supplies for everyone who can’t seem to live without it!

The guy at Davids called this “the key to a lady’s heart” when I went there to buy some, and I completely agree! Every woman I know who has tried this tea just loves it. Myself included.

It’s not my favourite, but when it’s cold outside and I want something sweet and comforting, this is what I turn to. I like it with cream and brown sugar to add to the indulgence. I indulge even more when I get nice and lazy and just leave the leaves in there the whole time. I’ve never had it go bitter or weird on me… there’s probably enough other stuff in there to hide my sins.

The only points off are actually for the smell, which I find a bit too strong. The caramel candy smell is delicious, but just a mite overpowering. It totally mellows out when brewed though, so I don’t mind.

Now, I’m off to have a mug for dessert, because it’s -21 out there!

So okay another one of these cult blends from Davids. We can pair this right up with Buttered Rum and the likes. At first, I had tried a small sample in store about two month ago, I wasn’t impressed. It tasted very weak and bland. Now reading the reviews on steepster seem to say otherwise and actually I was ordered by a friend to go buy some (and thus I did -50g worth of it).

The base of the tea seems very similar to the one they use for Glitter and Gold with a fairly crappy quality tea base but the core of the tea, with all that pumpkin themed stuff inside it that smells absolutely wonderful. The little candies and caramel pieces along with the pumpkin really make it look and smell great.

While steeping the tea, I noticed a few developments. The little candies melt and so does the caramel but not fully, this leads the brew to become slightly cloudy as those bits disintegrate into the hot water. David’s says there are no orange peels in there, but I’m pretty certain i saw one inside.. It was advised to make this as a latte with milk and brown sugar. I was too lazy to go steam up some milk, so i just added a small teaspoon of brown sugar inside. Generally I don’t like my teas sweet but I guess with chai’s it normally works out pretty well.

The tea tastes like pumpkin and cinnamon, which is pretty good (It had more taste than my experience in store). The thing about pumpkin, I’ve been having a crazy craving for this stuff especially in the pie format, and when I couldn’t find anywhere that sold pumpkin pie.. I decided to make it myself. MAN DOES IT EVER TAKE LONG. Cutting the pumpkin up, cooking up, separating it from the peel, squeezing the water out… it’s a fairly long process but I got my pie (which was pretty decent for a first shot effort) and roughly… the tea tastes quite similar. Which is good! Not as strong, but it does resemble real pumpkin pie. Awesome!

Now I do have a few issues with it, the unmelting caramel bits and also the rather weak “chai” part of the tea. I guess I was hoping for a stronger spicier tea like the Saigon Chai or something, maybe add some peppercorns in there as well. The cinnamon was sufficient but it lacked that spicy punch i wanted, which if you sweeten up becomes pretty good. I guess that’s a personal preference, so for a tea that tastes like pumpkin pie, I’m still pretty happy with the end product. I have become more and more drawn to the higher quality straight teas that now, most of Davids “new” teas that come out every other week don’t really interest me anymore. I would add though that this one was interesting enough for me to go and try.

I LOVE pumpkin teas and this one is amazing. I did a side by side with della terras pumpkin pie and really couldn’t compare them. Neither deliver on their name – I definitely would never consider this a chai nor would I consider Della Terra’s to relate to the pie.. But I love them both! in different ways. This one tasted less like pumpkin than della terra’s but was.. i don’t know. We all liked it slightly better.

I’ve never met a pumpkin chai that I didn’t like, so this one had it pretty easy coming to my taste buds. There is definitely more actual pumpkin flavor to this than chai spice, but that isn’t a bad thing, in fact it only helps give it a bit of character from any other pumpkin chai.

Over all a good tea, the flavor mix is actually one of my favorites. I can’t rant and rave about how utterly amazing it is though because DavidsTea “Toasted Marshmallow” has similar holiday spice notes and is EONS better. In fact… I need to go brew another cup of that now that I have finished this one…

Yet another sample from Bonnie!

This smells EXQUISITE! Like chai and pumpkin and autumnal goodness! I made this as a latte, and it turned out fairly well. It wasn’t quitte strong enough for the milk, but it did work out okay. It’s pumpkin-y and sweet, and reminds me of autumn. Overall pretty good, I’ll just have to try to make it differently next time!

EDIT: I did a second steep (just to see) for 10 minutes with boiling water and I didn’t try to make a latte and it’s pretty good! It’s pumpkin-y-er than before and slightly sweet, and it tastes all around stronger than before. Upping the rating, and I would like to get a full sized version of this so I can play around with it some more.

This tastes like a wonderful creamy pumpkin pie! More pie than chai.

This tea is friggin perfect. It screams fall like an October ride through Vermont to look at the foliage :) It is the perfect amount of chai and pumpkin, real pumpkin, not fake tasting what-so-ever. I feel like eating pumpkin pie when I drink this. Get it, you won’t regret it!

I had the worst day at work yesterday and I was feeling generally bummed about the fact that I have a degree and make minimum wage. It was just one of those days where you feel like the world is trying to screw you over. After downing a pint of Ben and Jerry’s (yes, seriously) I decided that tea would be perfect. I decided on a warm comforting one, and reached for pumpkin chai. Sweetened it with a little agave, and I’ll be darned if it wasn’t the best cup of tea I’ve had in months. It was SOS perfect

Alright, this HAS to be my last tea of the night. Last night I didn’t fall asleep until three in the morning because I just had to have those late cups (I thought I was playing it safe going with white tea). Anyways, this is a nice cup to finish off the day. Unfortunately, I think I overdid the cream this time so the tea flavor isn’t as strong as I would like it to be, but it’s still very good. To me, this tastes EXACTLY like a pumpkin spice latte, but that’s not a bad thing…I love lattes. And yes, I do drink coffee…I’ve tried to replace it with tea in the mornings but I’ve found that tea doesn’t come close to giving me the energy that coffee does. As you can see I tend to ramble off-topic sometimes. But anyways, I am enjoying this tea. As a side note, I love the little candy pieces and other assorted decorations that DavidsTea puts into their blends, it’s a little cheesy but it makes the experience a little more fun and I imagine buying from one of their stores would be like being in a candy shop of sorts.

Yum. I made this today more like traditional tea as I was not really sure it was spicy enough to stand up to the normal chai in a pan method. I did add a splash of half and half. It was good, but I am thinking it does not need so much added. It works mostly just as a tea. Will give it another go later, but this is really good!

24 oz teapot, 4 tsp tea, freshly boiled water with enough space left for the half and half, 4 minutes. Lightly sweetened and added half and half (definitely go less on the h/h!) Resteeped at 7 minutes and just sweetened..was still pretty good.

Did anyone else notice that there’s two entries for this here on Steepster?

Anyway, I almost don’t want to taste this because I’m enjoying the scent too much. Yes, I’m practically huffing it! It smells like you’re baking a pumpkin pie in the oven whilst steeping chai on the stove all at once.

And that’s what it tastes like, too. The pumpkin is perfect, and the spices are perfectly balanced and warming. It’s absolutely delicious!! In my chai-adventures, there’s only one other I think I’d prefer over this one: LiberTEAS’ Masterpiece Chai.

I know this is a seasonal tea from David’s…someone please, just tell me that it’s a recurring seasonal tea.