DAVIDsTEA

This isn’t one I had set aside for the week, but when I was making my Birthday Cake tea I was just filled with an intense urge to just make this one. My body was just going “Doo ittttt” – so I did. The body wants what the body wants ;)

And it did taste very satisfying. Nothing special or out of the ordinary; just like a nutty apple crisp. You know; a little bit of sweet and tart apples, cinnamon or nutmeg, pastry notes, the whole “shabang”. Typical cup of Forever Nuts, but I guess just what I needed.

Made a small, overleafed mug of this to sip on while watching tonight’s episode of Big Brother! It was so good, and the tea fit my mood really well too!

Basically, it was like liquid apple fritters – and I definitely can’t complain about that!

I’ve been debating whether I’ll restock this once I’m out; some cups are really nice and others come out super weak and flavourless and I don’t like the gamble of getting a good cup or not. Maybe if I like one of the new Carnival blends I’ll replace this one with one of them. Caramel Corn is supposed to be kinda like Forever Nuts right? Maybe it’ll be similar to Teavana’s Caramel Almond Amaretti which I actually really liked (pretty much is was Forever Nuts and Caramel).

Also, DT has a few new Pride items in stock! I really wanna get one, but the tin is filled with Pink Lemonade which doesn’t interest me AT ALL – and I don’t know how on board I am with getting the tumbler because it isn’t leak proof, which is definitely a downside for me. And, I don’t even know if they’re available in store or just online. Bleh. It’s so pretty though!

http://www.davidstea.com/pride-2014-stainless-tumbler?&TF=D36B1B50DFA0&DEID=

Morning/Breakfast tea… Yesterday.

I picked something fun and straight forward to have in my Peekaboo Giraffe Mug yesterday morning while I parceled up a package for 221Tea and got ready for a day out with my brother.

This was nummy. Nutty and appley and sweet and mmm!

I should have this more often; but not too often, I feel like it’s something that if drank really regularly I’d get sick of quickly.

So, this is the last of the backlog and what I decided to make for myself when I got home yesterday from a long day out of the house. I wanted to make a lot more, but it was really late and I was tired.

I was a little disappointed because this tasted rather weak (I think I underleafed because of the sleep deprivation), but the pretty pink colour kept me really amused. My barely awake and all there brain was quite easily entertained by bright pink apple tea, and peekaboo giraffes (I used my giraffe mug). I kept thinking to myself "If I owned a giraffe I’d name it Eleanor because ‘Eleanor Rigby’ ".

Also, it appear’s DT’s March tea is something called “Hibiscus Punch”. Not gonna lie, that’s a little disappointing if it is the March blend. DT doesn’t need more hibiscus heavy blends; and one with ginger? No thanks.

Mmmm, I like all these “Forever Nuts” type of teas with the apple/cinnamon/nut combinations. Though, to be honest the only reason I picked this one out of the other similar ones I have right now is because I’ve reviewed it enough that I didn’t feel like I’d have to write as much as I would if I was trying a new one (like Brioche Free or Toasty Almond). Yup – I’m drinking this out of pure laziness, at the moment.

Made a small cup of this.

I’m quite happy I haven’t gotten sick of it yet.

Steeped up a timolino full of this, which leaves about a cup worth of the leaf I brought on vacation with me.

Parameters were 3 tsp. of leaf in boiling water (12 oz.) for somewhere over six minutes and under ten. I lost track a little bit. Well, maybe a lot bit.

It’s maybe a little weak, but pretty good overall. A good night time/sweet relaxation tea. Delicious! I can really taste the nuttiness tonight.

After supper tea! My Dad wanted something with caffeine, so I made him a cup of Hot Lips and my stepmom and I both wanted something without caffeine so I made up each a cup of this!

1 1/2 tsp. of leaf, 8 oz. each with boiling water for six minutes. The whole kitchen smelled lovely. This is also the first time I’ve had it in a clear glass too, so the first time I’ve gotten to accurately see the steeped colour; and it’s so pretty! Both my stepmom and I were amused by the beautiful colour.

I was a little afraid I’d have the sort of experience that VariaTEA had and love it one time and find it revolting the next, but that thankfully wasn’t the case. This was a very lovely apple cinnamon strudel type tasting tea with a lovely flakey pastry feel and nuttiness to it. I should have tried to drink it a little faster while it was hot though, because it wasn’t nearly so good cold (but still not awful).

I brought up enough with me for at least one more cup, maybe two.

Last time I was at DAVIDsTEA (well, disregarding my trip today) I bought 30g of this tea to play around me. I had been trying to think of why I had never tried this before, despite my love of all the listed ingredients and the fact it’s probably DAVIDsTEA’s most popular (definitely top 3) blends. Ultimately, I think I’ve never tried this prior to now because it’s Robyn’s favourite tealess tea, and I always just considered it so available because of that that I didn’t need to buy some for myself. Except, every time I see Robyn I forget to ask for a sample. So, I took things into my own hands and bought some for myself.

Dry, this tea smells heavenly! It’s strongly nutty but the apple and cinnamon also remind me of apple crumble or apple pie filling! Delicious! I’m confidant this will have to be one of the teas I hide from Tre since he always complains about my not having an apple and cinnamon tea (he grew up on the bagged versions), and now I do…

This came to work with me today, although I only started drinking it a few minutes before I left so I wound up not having time to log it at work. And then, instead of heading straight home I went to the bank and Tea Desire and DAVIDsTEA.

This tea would up being a great turn around point for my day! Taste wise, it was heavenly. There was this great balance between the nuttiness and apple/cinnamon, and it was really comforting. It did remind me of apple pie! Actually, when I got to DAVIDsTEA I was only planning on picking up 50g of Sweet Strawberry and a sample amount of Bollywood Chai but since this was so good I through in a tin of this as well, on a whim. Mmmm…

Tre left today for his Christmas trip with his Dad (although, not before they had both sat down for some tea first) this morning, so I now have the apartment all to myself until about the 30th. That’s kinda exciting!

He also left his bus card for me to use, so that’s almost equally exciting! Now I can take the bus to work and downtown without worrying about using up all my rides

However, as soon as I got to work things turned around really fast, and now I’m having a kinda crummy day. First off, my most incompetent employee (honestly, she’s so nice and hard working, bless her soul, but she just doesn’t understand how to do ANYTHING on the till and has the worst cash handling skills I’ve ever seen) screwed up a whole bunch of refunds and didn’t keep any of the receipts so I have NO CLUE what was and wasn’t supposed to be refunded and I have no way of fixing anything. It
s infuriating, really, because now out till is thirty dollars over which means I not only have to report all the stock/inventory/refund issues to head office (my boss) but have to fill out a giant stack of paperwork because are till is (significantly) off. I’ve explained how to do refunds to her at least six times and each time I tell her that if she doesn’t understand she needs to let me know so I can keep going through things with her, and each time she says she understands but then the very next refund she does she completely fucks up the very next refund she does! Urgggg!!!

And, someone also sprayed a WHOLE BUTT FUCKING TON of cheap, perfume right next to my stand and now I can’t stop sneezing and everything smells absolutely disgusting. Urghhh…

I received this tea in my very first swap with VariaTEA and I’m only just now having it. Ultimately I had wanted my first time drinking this to be as a direct comparison with Della Terra’s Cherry Cola and Cake but I kept putting off brewing them up at the same time and now I’ve swapped away all of the Cherry Cola and Cake so there was nothing preventing me from brewing this up other than my own procrastination.

So, for 8 oz. of boiling water I used 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf steeped for five minutes. That used up about half my sample. Smell wise, there was definitely a cola scent and some mild cherry notes too – but everything was very chemical smelling. Ultimately I’ve heard only bad things about this tea, so I’m only trying it to have tried it – I had low expectations well before brewing it and do not expect to love this.

Taste wise, I am very right to have kept my expectations super low. This tastes God awful. The words that comes to mind are “burnt” and “tobacco” with some very butchered and nasty cherry/cola taste. It’s SO chemical, and just… no.

So, not a great addition to my lousy work day but at least I wasn’t expecting it to be. I’m definitely not finishing off what’s left in my water bottle, and I doubt that I’ll be the one drinking the rest of the sample I have. I guess, when he returns, this was be something I make for Tre and get him to choke down…

After having a lot of black tea yesterday, I need to try this one. It smells really nice. Has a mild, sweet caramel flavour. Not that strong, but still good for what it is. (Might try with my other caramel teas.)

Day #20 of the advent calendar! Finally an oolong for me to try. I’ve had this one before, but it’s been a while. Nice light taste, not a lot of leaves needed for the flavour. And I like anything with vanilla. So, overall, this is another win for me.

Taste is buttery and I do taste the chocolate and I definitely can tell it is roasted and there is just a hint of raspberry. Not a bad tea…would be better with a bit more raspberry flavour; as for energy, I had four cups and no effect…might be that I am just too exhausted or I am a quick metabolizer of caffeine.

TTG from Hillside today…I had it in mind to get some Santa’s Secret, but my friend’s daughter opted for this, and in a split decision, I got this instead.

Do I regret it? No.

Do I like it as much as Santa’s Secret? No.

Is it tasty? Yes.

Would I buy more? Maybe.

I’m very picky with my mint teas in winter. To me, mint is cooling and refreshing, and totally makes me think of summer, not winter when it is cold. The reason I like Santa’s Secret is that the mint is more candy cane mint, and somehow it is different to me than regular mint…don’t ask me why or how, as I don’t fully understand it myself.

Now, when I took the bag out of my mug, I did notice the oily sheen on the top that people talk about, and generally dislike. For me, I’m indifferent to it. My guess is that it comes from the chocolate, and it’s worth it for chocolate for me.

That being said, I find the dominant flavour to be the mint, and not much else. I find mint does this a lot.

So far, I don’t think I’ve reacted to the stevia, but my skin is so bonkers right now, I have no idea what is causing it to go haywire and act up. One hopes that the bloodwork today will give answers when the results come in.

So I think this is alright, better than I expected, but not stellar. I may or may not get more of this…if I do, it is mainly because it is caffeine free and another evening option for me. But this or Champagene Cider, and Champagne Cider wins HANDS DOWN.

An evening cuppa from earlier in the week. It’s nothing incredibly special, but it’s solid and predictable which is maybe more important to me when it comes to a genmaicha. I just want something warm and toasy with that smooth brown rice flavour that feels like a comforting hug. This was that.

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.

Adventaggedon Day Seven – 1/5

We’re officially a week in and I’m already exhausted.

Name of the game tonight, with tasting notes, is keeping them short because it’s already past midnight and I have a 9:30AM conference call. Our office holiday party was tonight and I just got home ten minutes ago so I’m reaaalllyyyyy pushing out these tasting notes last minute.

This is Genmaicha. I don’t really know what else to say about it because DT’s Genmaicha is such a classic interpretation of this traditional style. Like always I brewed my mug with a full rolling boil but for less than a minute – pulls out more of the roasty toasty notes I like and less green tea flavours.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl4gObROvMk/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyjw3lHM2bg

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.

Drank this three times at work today – with the change of season I’ve really, deeply been craving roasty teas and this was the perfect thing for me to just continuously chug back throughout the day. Toasty and cozy, but light enough to not make me feel heavy the end of the third cuppa…

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.

I read someone’s tasting note on Gemaicha yesterday, and it really got me craving a nice mug of it – thankfully I was at work so I was able to make a large mug of DAVIDsTEA’s Genmaicha and I didn’t have to wait until I got home to pick something from my stash. I love this warm, toasted rice notes of this tea. I was just really hit yesterday with how long it had been since I’d last enjoyed a nice up of straight Genmaicha instead of a flavoured variant, and it just brought back this flood of nostalgia.

The cup was made all the more better by the fact it rained REALLY hard all day yesterday. Something toasty/roasty is exactly what you need on a rainy day!

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.

EDIT: Editing this to add that, I think, this tea is only available online and in select retail stores now (there are a few teas with an expanded straight tea selection). I was feeling too lazy to write a new review/drink a new cup of tea for this one…

We messed up a customer order a few nights ago and accidentally started steeping a cup of this tea instead of the Matcha Genmaicha that the customer had requested; easy enough fix since the tea hadn’t even been steeping thirty seconds before we caught the error.

Still, that meant there was an extra cup of Genmaicha kicking around in the store that no one really wanted to toss out – that’s just wasteful. The other two staff members working don’t particularly like green tea, so that meant that the cup went to me. I actually really like Genmaicha, so it was kind of nice having the cup thrust upon me. I feel like it’s probably been a long time since I last had a straight up Genmaicha blend without any sort of twist to it, and I really enjoyed it! Soft, and light bodied overall with a little bit of a grassiness but mostly just toasty brown rice. Hints of cocoa, from the rice, as well. Just really relaxing…

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 regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Boyfriend and I went out to supper a few weeks ago;

I stopped at the mall while I was waiting for him to get off work and I grabbed a tea while I waited. I got this one iced, with a hint of honey in it. I wanted the comforting quality of the toasty brown rice – but didn’t really have time to wait for a hot tea to cool down and it was pretty hot out, so I didn’t want to walk to the restaurant with a hot tea in hand.

The restaurant was REALLY lovely! He picked it; it’s his favourite in the city. It’s this very quiet, out of the way Korean and Japanese fusion restaurant that was a little out of my comfort zone food wise, but the aesthetic? Just gorgeous! We sat in this booth in the corner, and I love it – it was out of the way, and the lighting was really romantic…

I was surprised by the amount of diverse vegetarian options too! I ended up going for a vegetarian roll dish with an alfalfa sprout salad with this weirdly good sauce that was both very creamy and very spicy. Mmm! And we shared fries, because fries. It was kind of weird to be eating fancy sushi and fries though it tasted GREAT.

Also; nothing is both as equally embarrassing and adorable as watching your massive dork of a boyfriend dance to Uptown Funk SUPER poorly in this nice, quiet restaurant just so he can make you laugh…

It was a good time! Tea was a great start to the date. The rest of the evening was equally lovely! I’m super lucky to have this guy in my life right now.

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 regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

This is a queued tasting note.

So, a lot has been going on for me this week and much of that has actually directly correlated to DAVIDsTEA. I’ll be finishing up my Sommelier classes in less than a month now so I’ve been thinking about what I want to do afterwards. A fairly good friend of mine works at DAVIDsTEA and she recommended applying to work there as one of the seasonal tea guides just to get some tea related work experience on my resume and I thought that was an awesome idea. If nothing else, I think it’s a work environment I’d genuinely enjoy and it’ll be nice having that extra cash flow for the Christmas season.

So I actually got my cup of this during my group interview! One of the things they told us to expect for the interview was a free cup of tea and then my friend tipped me off that sometimes in smaller interviews one of the questions is to “sell” the tea you picked to the interviewer. So picking this one was definitely more strategic for me because it’s a tea I have LOTS of familiarity with and I knew there would be tons of different ways I could spin it. I could have talked about the “myth” based origins of the blend that relate to how it got its name because I know I’m always more interested in a tea when there’s a story or its nickname “The People’s Tea” and how that originated. I also know a ton of ways to cook with Genmaicha or pair it with different cheeses and chocolates so I thought that could be a unique approach as well. It’s also a great evening tea because of the lower caffeine amount and the fact the roasty notes are very soothing. Finally, I think it’s a perfect tea to bride the gap between traditional and “pure” teas and more fun, flavored ones. Also, I just really fucking like Genmaicha.

Turns out – that wasn’t even one of the interview questions. Probably because my group interview was gargantuan: roughly twenty people! Everyone wants to work for DAVIDsTEA…

Questions they did ask, for anyone curious, were availability (that was a huge focus) and what ‘defines’ good customer service as well as examples of how you could provide it at their store as well as how its been provided or not provided for you at other stores. Our interviewer (the store manager) also wanted to know our general preexisting knowledge of tea fucking nailed that part and then to finish and to get a sense of our personalities we were asked to either describe the person who has been our biggest influence in life/motivation in life OR an object that we feel close to that directly ties into our identity. I chose to talk about my tattoos – specifically the three I feel hold the most meaning, which would be my memorial tattoo, my Shel Silverstein piece, and my Camellia Sinensis tattoo.

Apart from the sheer size of the group, I’d say it was a pretty straight forward interview that, even if I hadn’t prepped before hand, would have been really easy to navigate. I’m a big fan of group interviews in general and I think finding a balance between having personality and standing out without ‘screaming for attention’ or talking over other applicants is something I’ve always done well with.

Oh, and I got the job! I should start somewhere between a week from now and two weeks. Once I start I think I’m going to continue to rate DAVIDsTEA blends, just without assigning any numerical score to them unless the Steepster community seems to have objections to that approach. I think that’s a good balance between continuing to write about them while still remaining impartial and not skewing the average rating here on the site. In the mean time, I’m going to continue to to review as normal. Also, any numerical ratings I currently have up for existing blends I think I will just leave untouched as they were before I was hired.

Thoughts?

Sipdown (196/198)!

Ok, there was about two cups worth of this but I accidentally dumped a bunch of this onto the floor – so a bit of an unexpected sipdown I suppose. I don’t feel too bad about it though I guess, I have a lot of Genmaicha and this just brings me a little closer to finally feeling like I can open up my Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha.

This is good though; but it’s got lots of little green tea “bits” from the bottom of the bag, which of course escaped the filter. So it is getting bitter a little quickly…

Didn’t travel too well in my timolino, which is a shame. Also, this is almost gone too. But that’s ok, I have loads of other Genmaicha.

Also, Tre just got home. So much for a quiet household…

Stupid tea didn’t want to come up in the search bar, but anyway – just a good afternoon cup of Genmaicha. Side note: When you’re really sleepy/sleep deprived do any of you ever experience that feeling of “falling into yourself” when you zone out?

I’m doing that a lot right now.