Pudtea

Cold Brew!

I’ve had the Eton Mess blend from Bird & Blend before and I like it, so I was excited to see Pudtea’s take on the same profile – it’s one I’ve only experienced in tea form. My first though when I tried the blend was “Oh, VariaTEA is going to hate this” because it’s really rooibos forward. I, however, loved it!

The rooibos blends from Pudtea have, so far, been rooibos dominant but I like whatever grade/region they’ve sourced. It’s quite nutty tasting to me, like a hazelnut brittle, with a lighter woody and mineral element. The hazelnut notes, in this tea, combined with the other elements of the profile made me think of a parfait!

The strawberry is good, though not particularly juicy/sweet. I feel like the best way to describe it is “Strawberry, but shrill”. Like, it was a high note kind of strawberry with an edge and tartness to it, but not under ripe feeling or sour/tangy. It’s compliments by the sweet, earthy taste of beets as well as a creaminess that reminds me of yogurt. Hence the overall comparison to a parfait! It was so different from what I’d expected, but genuinely it was so good. Very natural feeling, and rich without being sweet.

I am actually really interested to see, though, if I’m right about it not being VariaTEA’s kinda blend…

Sipdown (2162)!

Honestly feels like this sipdown has been a long time coming. I’m not even sure if this company is in business anymore! Aside from a slightly oily mouthfeel this last cup was very lovely though. Mostly tasted like a sweet “brown” flavour appropriate for its namesake with hints of raisin frutiness and just a bit of cinnamon. Medium bodied black tea and pretty thick mouthfeel overall.

I liked it better at peak freshness, but it’s a pretty tasty tea even now! I think this was definitely one of Pud’s better blends.

I want to like this one so badly because it’s got the hint of caramel, the raisin notes, and even a sort of baked/bready maltiness. However, it’s so thin in body and also just really oily and I can never quite get over those two things. It still produces a good cup of tea, but not quite what I feel like it could and should be.

Okaaayyy cuppa…

Ultimately a little too thin with too many high “fruity” notes (apple/raisin) and not enough body from the black tea or dense toffee flavour. So, doesn’t nail the naming brief – but enjoyable nonetheless.

From earlier this morning.

I’m not totally sure where I land on this – it was a nice tea but it was definitely a little bit different than I had expected. The dry leaf aroma is more of a sweet cinnamon raisin drenched in a golden syrup – smells nice, but fruitier than I would expect a Sticky Toffee Pudding to be…

The steeped cup is pretty similar to the dry leaf aroma, although I found the cinnamon less strong in taste than it was on smell. I got caramel, lightly, as well as both apple and raisin. It’s enjoyable, though slightly thin in the cup and a bit oily in mouthfeel. This would not scream “sticky toffee pudding” to me if I was trying it blindly (too fruity, not dense/rich enough) but I see the connection. It’s actually a bit more of a Spotted Dick type of flavour to me though – perhaps because I associate that raisin note more with that type of dish?

I think when I revisit, I will try to remember to leaf heavier and steep longer.

Sipdown (1290)!

Saved a cup of this for VariaTEA to try, but a sipdown otherwise. This was nice, but not exception. Sweet baked apple with notes of thin toffee/fudge, raisin, and a bit of cinnamon. I wish there was more body, but not necessarily more flavour. Does that makes sense? The mouthfeel is also slick and oily from the melted fudge pieces, and that was midly off putting. It’s a nice tea overall though, and I’m happy to have tried it.

When VariaTEA placed her order with Pud this was the only tea not available in a sample size, so she asked if I could send her some of my sample (which I am more than happy to do) and because of that, I wanted to prioritize tasting this one…

Unfortunately, I had this during the Steepster Freeze and I misjudged how long it would take for things to get back up and running so I didn’t take notes down for it. I do remember that I enjoyed it a lot though – not as much as the Banoffee Pie but it was pretty darn good IIRC. Thankfully, I have enough to send a cup or two to VariaTEA and still get to revisit it again myself.

From what I recall it was more apple forward, but actually captured that toffee sweetness nicely…

Sipdown (1709)!

Finished this one off during my weekly DnD game! It was nice having something hot to sip on since this week’s session was later in the evening than planned, but in all honesty this final cup mostly just tasted like generic chocolate tea. That’s not to say it was bad because generic and bad are not synonyms – but it wasn’t exactly memorable, and it honestly made me feel better about letting it go and saying goodbye to yet another chocolate tea in my stash that I don’t particularly need.

Y is for… Yule Log!

Pretty general tasting chocolate tea but it added a nice richness/sweetness to my afternoon so even though it was a little plain, all things considered, I appreciated it. What I really liked the most, though, was that despite a milk chocolate flavour caused by plenty of melted chocolate pieces the mouthfeel was not oily!

A Christmas Day cuppa that, because of the name, I couldn’t resist steeping!

The mouthfeel here was rather thin, and a little bit oily from all the melted down chocolate, but the taste was pretty nice – just a slight bit cakey, but a sweet and fruitier chocolate that felt well rounded and not too rich/cloying. Plus, the smell of the steeped tea is honestly just divine – the taste doesn’t match it as well, but the chocolate aroma is one of the nicest smelling chocolate teas that I own.

Sipped on a teacup of this one today!

This might sound weird, but it basically tasted like a slice of chocolate cake without much creamy icing/frosting, with raisins baked into it. I don’t think, in real life, I would much enjoy raisins in my chocolate cake – but in tea form it weirdly worked well for me. I enjoyed this cup a fair bit!

The dry leaf for this tea was my favourite smelling tea of all the Pud samples that I got – which was promising because it was also the only one of the teas that wasn’t available in a smaller size, so I got the next size up because I still wanted to try it…

I tried it last night, and I did actually really enjoy it! The mouthfeel is REALLY oily because of all the melted down chocolate/fudge pieces in the blend but if you set that fact aside the chocolate flavour itself is very smooth and rich. It’s like a moist or more fudgey piece of chocolate cake, which I suppose is what a “Yule Log” is!? I know that a Yule Log is a dessert (I think cake) in the shape of a traditional Yule Log but I don’t think it’s something that’s necessarily very popular in North America? I have seen them before, though! This is like the third UK based company I’ve seen this year with a Yule Log tea though, so maybe it’s a bigger thing ‘across the pond’? I’m not sure, though…

Anyway, this is not my favourite tea that I’ve had from Pud so far but I thought it was nice and I definitely don’t regret going for the larger size.

Latte Sipdown (307)

This was more ginger snap than gingerbread since it was heavier on the ginger than the molasses. I wasn’t mad at it though.

I was watching Sugar Rush and one team made a spiced cake and I starting craving that spice profile. I originally pulled the Sticky Toffee Pudding tea by Pudtea out of the drawer but wanted more spice so this caught my eye.

Hot, it had a lot of ginger but also a lot of apple flavor which I didn’t love. However, as this cooled slightly, that Apple flavor disappeared a bit and it really does have that sharp ginger and sweet molasses thing that gingerbread has. I’m into it.

Sipdown (277)

Following the day of trick blends, #31daysofhallotean called for a treat blend aka a favorite blend. While this certainly isn’t my favorite blend in my stash, it’s the one I wanted all day yesterday so I suppose its up there. I like it because it’s really fudgey which sells “brownie” all the way. I do get caramel but the brownie element is the star.

Cold Brew!

First few sips were like a tart hibiscus assault, but then my palate settled into the flavour a little bit more and it was more just a sweet and pucker inducing kind of strawberry/mixed berry profile that was pretty refreshing. Crisp!

Cold Brew!

…there’s definitely nothing pudding like about this tea, but it’s pretty good. Very bold/intense flavour punch with emphasis on a sour berry/hibiscus type of profile. It definitely makes you do that “sour face” pucker type thing when you take a sip. That said, it’s pretty refreshing and bright. I taste a lot of the strawberry and blackberry leaf (which is adding to the sweetness factor quite a bit – but in a natural way), and the rest of the berries more merge together into one “super berry” type of profile.

Worthy of the name “Summer Berry” for sure… Just need to drop the pudding…

Just finished a mug of this…

I saw the dry leaf and I was initially very worried that it would only taste like hibiscus; there was so much in there (along with some lovely vibrant pieces of strawberry flesh). However, the amount was just right to make for a vibrant, bright cup of tea – a nice mix of tart hibiscus, just ripe strawberry, and I felt like maybe a hint of beet, too? I can’t remember if there’s actually beets in the ingredients list (probably not) but something slightly reminded me of beets…

Now, I don’t know if “Summery Berry Pudding” is really a thing – maybe in the UK where this company is based? Here in Canada, I imagine you probably could conceivably make a berry heavy pudding and call it a Summer Berry Pudding but it’s not, like, a “defined” dish. So, with that understood – I don’t think anything about the flavour reminded me of pudding even in the slightest.

It was still enjoyable though!

Sipdown (1337)!

Y’know, I expected this cup to be bad since my last cup was – not because of anything wrong with the tea, I just split up what probably should have been one cup’s worth of tea leaf into two. So, more user error than anything else. However, it was actually fucking delicious. Like, just as delicious as that magical first cup of it that I had. The only thing I can think of that I did differently was leave the teabag in the mug the entire time – so maybe that was the magic fix? Pretty sure I didn’t steep it with a teabag the first time I made it though, so I don’t know what to tell you about that…

Anyway, tickled pink that the final cup was a lovely send off!

So I had an awkward amount of leaf left – not enough for two cups but too much for one cup. I decided to split the leaf and try to compensate with a longer steep time; I feel like that was a bad call because this cup tasted… flat.

So, guess I have one more disappointing mug of this in my future. Boo.

Ever since my first cup, I’ve been putting off making my second. Not out of fear of sipping the tea down, but more because I was scared my second steeping wouldn’t live up to how delicious the first was…

In a way, that’s true – there wasn’t the same level of “sparkle” to the cup. However, it was still a really delicious buttery banana and graham type of profile with the perfect level of sweetness. A deeply enjoyable cuppa, even without fireworks. I am going to try and sip it down though – sooner rather than later. It’s pretty similar to Arthur Dove’s Banana Fudge blend (but I do think I prefer this slightly) and I just got a pretty big bag of that one. No need to have them both on hand when they fill the same need…

This is, hands down, the best tea I’ve tried from Pud Tea so far!

In fact, when I steeped this up I was so excited by it that I almost burned what I was making for supper messaging VariaTEA to try and get her to also steep it up right away! I don’t think her experience was as magical as mine, but this was the kind of cup of tea for me that was so good I almost teared up…

We all know that I love a good banana tea, and the way the banana come across in this tea is INSANE – in the best way. To be clear, I’ve never had Banoffee Pie and based on my understanding of it I actually don’t think that this is accurate to that – but what it did taste like was the kind of amazing banana pudding that my Grandmother used to make for us! It was the kind made from real bananas and often had big chunks of unmashed bananas in it, and what I loved about it (though I do love the more artificial boxed banana puddings too) was that it was sweet and creamy with this caramelized sugar note but also very authentically banana flavoured, and bananas when they’re perfectly ripe too! It might be tied as my favourite dessert that she made for us on the regular, with the other dessert being her Angel Food Cake.

So when I tried this tea I was immediately taken back to this really nostalgic place of being a small child eating bowls of amazing banana pudding after summer swimming lessons and picking vegetables and raspberries in her garden.

Aside from being the best banana pudding flavour in a tea that I’ve ever experienced, there was also this delicious graham cracker note as well – like the kind of sweetened graham cracker crust that’s the bottom of a very good slice of cheesecake.

It all came together so magically for me that if nothing else from Pud Tea ends up being mind blowing it’ll still have been a worthwhile order for me just to get to experience that pudding again!