The Skinny (organic)

My first day back to work is tomorrow and I’ve just had a nice big break full of family, friends and overindulgence in sweets. I need something that isn’t sugary and I need it quick. I’m on my second pot and nowhere near sick of this.

This is one of my favourite teas and was my first introduction to oolong. I’m not a big fan of orange in my teas but I’m crazy for teas that have orange peel, hence my love (and 100 rating) for this.

What can I say about the Skinny? I love this tea. I love that when you open the package, it smells like fresh orange peel with that bright sunshiney smell. I love that when you brew it, it tastes like lovely earthy ginger with a hint of citrus, and I love that it never gets bitter.

The fact that “it just might make you skinny!” hardly factors into this tea for me; it is just plain delicious, and is so nice to drink after a meal with the stomach-settling ginger and palatte-cleansing orange.

My best-tea friend loathes this tea, so I have avoided it for over a year. But, it’s on the wall so try it I am. And E, much as I love you, you’re wrong on this one, it doesn’t suck horridly.

I like orange flavoured teas, and this is definitely a unique flavour. The earthyness of the pu’erh, however, has me unable to decide if I actually like it, or if I just like the notes in it. Even as I write this review and keep sipping trying to figure it out my mind continues to shift. I love the first flirts of orange flavour, and the last, but that middle part I’m still undecided on. This tea is confusing!

A great tea. I was expecting a more explosive and unique taste but… It taste like a lots of citrus tea. Like “La La Lemon”, but with a smoother citrus tone.
The Pu’Erh give a little earthy burst, gentle is the burst.
Finally, the ginger give a fresh wave to the mixture.

Overall, it’s a really well made citrus tea. :)
Enjoy it!

I tried this one this afternoon. I am so glad I had a chance to sample it, because it would have been on my purchase list….. Thank you to ladykittykat for the sample, and saving me from a personal tea purchase blunder.

This one was a dump out for me. It was the ginger. I can handle a little ginger, but this one seemed a little overpowering. The good news for those of you that like ginger in your tea…it was ginger with a very fresh taste, and not like the powdered spice kind.

If you like citrus in your tea you will probably like this tea. When I first opened this tea up it smelled just like a grapefruit. That is all I could smell, which really surprised me because I thought it would be more ginger or ginseng smell.

After the steeping time, it was a beautiful autumn orange color. The tea now smells like a warm more earthy grapefruit. First sip it was pretty sweet and yup citrus all the way, tastes like a grapefruit or mixed with orange. Pretty good.

After it cooled it was really sweet and I could start to taste the pu’erh or the earthiness… not sure if I liked it cool but it is one I will drink again hot.

This full bodied tea has definitely caught my attention! Not only are the health benefits excellent (which makes me feel great), but the earthy, spiced orange flavor is perfectly balanced with a slight bite from the ginger.
A perfect find during the fall season, and I have I strange feeling I’ll be needing a lot of this tea come Christmas time.

[EDIT] Granted, this tea is a bit more expensive than David’s usual teas (I suspect because it’s Organic), this tea can easily be steeped twice! I steep 7 minutes the first time, and 9 minutes the second — it still retains a lot of it’s flavor and depth.

I completely forgot that I had this one laying around! This was another sample I received with my last order. I have to say I’m conflicted with this one. The initial smell is that of ginger and citrus, but when it’s brewed the smell reminds me a lot of the Aveda Men product line. I love the smell in the product, but not so much in tea. The taste is not too bad though; the ginger is not too overpowering and I still get the citrus. It’s a tad woodsy as well. I am glad I got to try The Skinny, but I don’t think I’ll be purchasing it.

So this is one that I forgot to log last week. I had brewed it for christmas eve morning for my work morning. I think I may have steeped it too long, as the taste just was really strong. Maybe I just didn’t enjoy the smell and taste of the ginger. But I ended up dumping it in the sink. So I may try it again and steep it lightly.

I LOVE this tea. I could drink it all day. It’s so clean tasting, and satisfying by itself. I don’t know how to describe it, it just works.

This is another one of those teas that I so dearly wanted to like, but just couldn’t.

It tasted very much like dishwater to me. The citrus quality to it was too overpowering to add anything like milk or cream to it, so that was definitely not an enhancement option.

The orange peel taste made sweetening the drink a task because you’d either oversweeten it or undersweeten it—it was hard to find a good amount of sweetener to balance it out.

Overall, while I didn’t throw up after drinking it, and I’d finish every steep I make, the tea tasted too healthy for my liking. Maybe it’s because I don’t like the taste of orange peel? I really don’t know. I’m pretty sure it is at its best steeped plain already. But its best is just not to my liking.

Like something that tastes healthy and citrusy? You’ll like this.

Like teas that have a nice taste plain or paired with milk and sugar? Walk away. Far, far away.

I always avoid this tea, but I don’t know why. It’s very good!

It’s rich and full and I guess the scent doesn’t really give me that impression. The scent and description also worry me because I HATE ginger in tea. But, I don’t mind it here! It does have a little zing, but I think all the flavours meld together nicely to make it smooth. I even steeped for a good 5 minutes and it doesn’t bother me.

I’m not sure about the “skinny” part of this tea, but I’ll settle for a placebo effect. It’s got to be doing something by having me drink it instead of snack before bed, right? Perhaps the ginger disguised in this will help keep me healthy, too, as I’ve felt like I’m coming down with something.

I dunno about skinny-ness from drinking this or any other tea, but something did counteract my last pigout. Maybe this tea. Maybe not.

It’s sharp with the ginger and ginseng. Quite hot with the ginger if you steep it over 3 minutes. The pu-ehr itself is almost lost until the gentle aftertaste.

Overall, I really like it once I start drinking it, but it’s not a go-to tea. Given my jeans size, perhaps it should be. ;) This one is like Earl Grey for me: I have to be in the mood for it, but when I am, nothing else will do.

you can’t go wrong with this tea…love the flav…love the smell, love what it does for my tummy when it has exceeded its eating capacity :)

So I bought one of the specialty tins of this today, thinking that I really love pu’erh and have a newly discovered appreciation of ooglong teas, but so far I’m not too impressed.

The tea smells really good in the tin (I was able to smell it even through the plastic bag), very orange-y and citrus-y. I don’t see too many of the orange peels that the ingredients promise, though, just the tea leaves, ginger, and what I’m assuming is eleuthero root, so I’m a bit skeptical at how much of the orange is from the flavouring and how much if it is from actual orange peels. I might just be the batch I got, though.

Brewed it has a nice earthy smell from the pu’erh with a hint of citrus, and the liquor is a deep red. I found it rather lacking in taste, though; to me it’s like a less strong version of Blood Orange Pu’erh. I couldn’t taste any ginger in it at all, either. It may be how much tea I used, though, so next time I’ll try using some more and see if I get better results. Until then, I might take this for the supposed health/weight loss benefits when I’m having a bad body-image day, but I much prefer Blood Orange Pu’erh for a orange and citrus pu’erh, and I always have lots of nice oolong teas.

Day 74 of my 101 days of DAVIDsTEA challenge. Catching up on the backlog once again!

Dumped the advent tin into my two-cupper.

So I totally mistook this as an herbal tea when I first brewed it. Which would be why I dumped it all in, and brewed it for quite as long as I did. Which, as it turns out, isn’t far from how it should be steeped. It was quite nice for the first cup, but the second cup was all bitter and… well, I figured out what I did wrong. The resteep agreed with the first cup on the true, nicer flavour of the tea.

It has a nice citrus tang to it from the orange. I could taste the tea in it, which I think confused me because I wasn’t quite sure what it was, having convinced myself it was, in fact, an herbal tea.

I’d like to try this again now that I understand the nature of the tea. I’ll have to get some and try it out again sometime soon.

I will say, though, having been subject to a church potluck and then Sunday dinner, this tea did its job as a good digestive aid! Probably worth it for this benifit alone!

I held off on trying this until I got a sample in an online order, which I gave to my sister-in-law. She really liked it, so I bought a bit to try last time I was in the shop. Surprisingly, I like it – I was afraid it would be too herbal/medicinal, but it’s quite nice and light, with some citrus and ginger tang.

Ick. Not something I’ll be fishing for in my cabinet anytime soon. I’m weird about my ginger. I love gingerbread and I love chai tea with ginger, but I hate ginger itself and I hate candied ginger, etc. It turns out I also reaaaally dislike ginger in this tea.

I’m also not sold on pu’erh tea yet, sooo… that could have something to do with it. But anyways, I didn’t finish my mug. Not “my cup of tea”.

This is my day #7 of the David’s Tea “24 Days of Tea” advent calendar.

I’ve had this sitting in my tea pantry for over 8 months and finally decided to try it today.

As a loose tea this smells like a creamy, orange-y black tea with a tiny bit of ginger spiciness but it brews up very mellow and you don’t taste the pu’erh too much (which is a good thing since I’m not particularly fond of pu’erh). I can’t really describe the flavour since it’s not too distinct but I don’t find it as citrusy as other reviewers have commented. I let this steep for a good 7 minutes to get the full flavour and beautiful colour out and it can easily been steeped a second time. I like this after a heavy, greasy meal – I feel like it helps rinse some of the grease out of my system.

One of my friends and I routinely ask each other – how can a tea that smells this awful taste this good?

Don’t judge this tea by its smell – if you’re worried about trying it, maybe buy a small portion of it, or wait until it makes its way into the rounds of Tea of the Day again; it tastes very woodsy, and then when it’s left your mouth you can taste the orange and ginger lingering behind on your tongue. It’s delicious, though not one of my go-to teas – it’s one of those teas that when I want it, nothing else is a suitable substitute.