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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.

So… I’ve been pretty MIA for awhile..

Honestly didn’t drink much tea all summer, been having stomach problems and was advised by the docs to stay off tea/caffeine and the whole bunch. Though, I’ll also blame laziness and lack of appeal of hot tea in summer too for not touching it at all! Still having stomach problems, but the weather is getting cold again sooo that means i’ll drink it anyways :)

I actually bought this tea back in spring, didn’t really touch it till now. I’ve read and heard about the raves of Dan Cong oolong tea so I bought this one from DTH, figuring it can’t hurt to give it a try. The tea comes in the regular one and this “Spring” edition promising younger leaves. Apparently this one is supposed to taste like peach, but I can’t taste any of that. It’s just a tad bit bitter and tastes more like an out of place green tea of some sorts. Overall no real complaints, drinkable.. tea..

Thanks to Indigobloom for sending me this! I think I slightly oversteeped it, and there was a hint of bitterness. I added half a teaspoon of sugar into the mix, and bam solution fixed. It’s been awhile since I tried to sweeten any tea at all. The mate looks like it’s just been mixed with orange peels. Smells are that of orange vicks candies and some lemon, and it basically tastes like citrus overall. Some mate undertones but really mostly citrus. I’m glad it doesn’t taste like the funky tangerine flavoring I’ve been experiencing in some teas. Overall its good, not super AMAZING but good. I wouldn’t mind a few more cups of this.

Backlog. The more I have this tea, the more I dislike it. Why did I get a whole tin of this??

Got around to drinking some herbal stuff, this was from the memorial day sale.. $2 of 1oz! And what, do I see there’s saffron inside? STEAL! Anyways, drinking this hot. Plenty of a mix inside as it seems. It smells like stride gum. Literally. Orange colour, slightly tart citrus and minty and maybe a slight floral quality to it. I like it, and at this price was certainly worth throwing in with my order, hell I might even get more next time. I think this might even be good cold. For those of you worrying, the hibiscus doesn’t really overpower here, it’s been awhile since I had the urge to have a herbal tea, this one didn’t disappoint.

Been busy recently, finally managed to make a cup of tea this morning… Well this tea before shipping costs were added on, came out to be about 4USD for 100g. I don’t know but that’s insanely cheap for a first flush darjeeling. Honey brown brew, slightly astringent if oversteeped and more malty than fruity. I would have more to say, but my thoughts are currently eluding me. Overall, great value from Lochan teas.

Another tea from Indigobloom, This one looked rather interesting. Shui Xian oolong with a whole jumble of stuff in it. It reminds me a bit of the Forbidden Fruit from David’s. Overall it is very nutty, with a rather smoky taste. I fully expected this to be a rather sweet tea, seeing the caramel pieces, but really I’m not quite sure what good they did, because clearly it did not melt and looks just a whole as before steep. I can’t really taste the jumble of the other ingredients much at all actually. The quality of the Shui Xian is better than that of David’s, and though there are awfully large pieces of twigs, there are rather bigger pieces of leaf. Instructions say to steep for 1min, but unless you’re using boiling water and packed a gaiwan full.. I don’t really see the point.

Wow a tea from Kenya! I would have never imagined… thanks Indigobloom! Recently with all my exploits with darjeeling teas I think I have understood this word acronym game. GFBOP stands for Golden Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe. So this is neither a first flush, or a tippy grade tea. Doing some research online, I found out that this tea comes from a high altitude plantation of above 1800m.

Colour is a deep golden brown, very similiar to some darjeelings again. There is no astringency at all with this tea, the malt does come through, but stops short of being caramel. Overall, it is very sweet and very easy to drink. The floral tones only came through from the dry leaves and not so much after the brew. What comes out to the end is that it really lacks the character of darjeelings but as it is grown at similar altitudes, it does taste relatively similar. Though it is not at all a bad tea, there’s not too much that stands out beside coming from Kenya, it would make a fine breakfast tea.

Thanks to Indigobloom for sending me this! I needed a black tea this morning to wake me up, and decided on this one. I have found ceylon teas to have a pretty sharp citrus taste that can go astringent really quickly. This tea was very identifiable to be of a ceylon black but the strawberry complimented it quite nicely. The super fruity Earl’s Garden from David’s was one tea that did not do it well, and the result ended up pretty bad. Strawberry flavour was not overpowering, which was great, and a hint of cream followed. I felt this one did not need any sugar or anything, and should work pretty well with milk.

Now let me say, at first I was quite skeptical of ordering tea from ebay but DTH’s rather nice and complete set of teas and decent prices lured me to try some out. I was really after a comparison between this and hand picked oolongs from another vendor. I opted for a Jin Xuan variety because I was hoping to get that nice milky undertone to the tea. DTH also sells its version of a “milk oolong” but I was afraid of it being that of being flavoured instead of natural.

I was also unsure if this was from this year or last year as DTH tends to lie about these things, the product description for all teas were updated to 2011 harvest at the same time. Mostly i was impressed that it actually came in a box and was vacuum packed. Again, my friends at the Canadian Border control had decided to open my tea for inspection. Anyways, I just dumped my 100g out into a freezer proof ziploc bag. For the most part it comes in nice intact pieces, but there are some small fragments and dust (about 10% of it all), I just dumped out the dust in the trash..

Brewing came about in a gaiwan, and it went to 7 infusions before I gave up on it. First 2 were slightly floral but not quite as much as it smelled. Mouthfeel was rather weak, and I didn’t get any milky taste or anything out of these. Light bodied and pretty much consistent brews for the most part. I did note that these come from Ali Shan which depending on what elevation it is grown at could be something of a higher quality. The tea came out rather plain, but decent quality. Nothing comparable to the high mountain stuff, but is alright as an everyday tea. Mostly, the leaves uncurled to full stems and leaf in full portions and produced light and really uninteresting brews. I got really bored by the 7th round, and while I’m sure it could probably go 2-3 more times I stopped and threw it out. Quality-wise though, it’s better than the typical oolong you would find at a mainstream North American tea store.