Bamboozled

It is miserably hot (not as hot as last summer, just frustrating since I thought I escaped to Pennsylvania to miss the terrible heat, 101 is still too hot!!) blazing sunshine, and the air quality is like breathing in a cloud of funk. When I saw the description of DAVIDsTea Bamboozled as ‘a light and refreshing drink for summer’ you can guess that I was all over it. I need something to revitalize my spirit after making the mistake of going outside for more than five minutes. I got a sample of this tea (my first experience with the very popular in tea circles, DAVIDsTEA) from a friend on Steepster so I went into this a little blind. Here was my thought process: ‘ooh a tea called Bamboozled, I bet that is going to be exciting, and probably loaded with caffeine!’ Looks at the leaves ‘ok, so it is an herbal tea, but what is that…wait, I know those leaves, this is bamboo!! AWESOME!!!’ What can I say, Amanda Panda loves Bamboo.

With a blend of Bamboo leaves, Pineapple, Peach, Apple, Rose Buds, and Peony Petals, the best way to describe the dry leaves is beautiful. This is one of the prettiest herbal teas I have seen in a while. The aroma is heady and tropical, very sweet, and just a touch green from the bamboo. The green of the bamboo is not vegetal but more grass like with just a hint of (and I mean a tiny, tiny hint) of citrus. The aroma is very refreshing!

Once brewed the aroma is still very sweet and tropical, but loses some of the headiness and gains a bit of a tangy quality. At this point you can smell more of the fruits, especially the peach, and even a hint of the floral. The scent is now more of a refreshing garden than a tropical paradise, which is a delightful transition. The bamboo leaves, once brewed, gain a slightly spicy aroma which is wonderful, it is very evocative of spice bush.

And now on to the drinking! The liquid is beautiful, a pale amber, honestly I was expecting a bit of green from the leaves, but this late summer sunshine color is fine too. Also because it means summer is almost over!!! Anyway, the first thing I notice is the citrus taste, not what I was expecting because it is not the acidic taste of pineapple, but actual lemon (but without the acid burn.) Have you ever been really thirsty and drank water with lemon in it expecting it to be sour but instead found it to be pleasantly sweet? That is what this tea is like, unexpected sweetness. I feel I am not explaining this correctly, it is not sweet from the fruit or from sugar, but almost like my taste buds are confused. I know that sounds kinda odd, but it is delicious! After the initial citrus sweetness you can taste the tropical loveliness of the pineapples and the sunshine flavor of the peaches. There are slight notes of floral as well which add to the tangy quality of the tea.

This tea is delicious and really does refresh my slightly melted spirit. It is like drinking a little bit of summer with out the bad qualities of the season.

After tragedy(tea disappointment)I need a win.

So I went with this peachy pineapple lovely smelling brew with an awesome name and the mention of PANDAS. what’s not to love..

put huge amount in and steeped full time recommended.

Smells like awesome hot juice..apple juice..pineapple and peach juice…every smell of it makes another note more and more apparent..the cruise of smells.I actually want to eat the steeped leaves…I just might…………..

waiting for tea to cool is hellish sometimes…COOL DOWN DAMMIT!!

My reviewing gets a little hyper at night..I see this now.

Finally ready to drink..so excited..

So,first taste judgment:
Oh my…best juice ever..rich with so many awesome flavors dancing on my tongue..yummy yummy yummy…NEEDS to be tried iced.
THIS is what I wanted Swampwater to taste like..

YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

another tea run! picked up 12 new ones, so after a marathon steeping i’ve got six of the lower caffeine teas ready to go, so i’ll be keeping them short and sweet. GET SET…!

mmm, bambooo
this one is definitely fruity. very sweet also. the pineapple is prominent with a peachy undertone to balance it out. will have to try it iced!
it’s good but i don’t love it.

how have i not fallen in love with this tea already?!?!?! i was really really hot at work yesterday so i made an iced bamboozled. (bamboo is cooling, and pineapple reduces inflamation) perfect. i’ve drank a litre and a half of this over the last two days.

This was another tiny packet of tea I recieved with a bunch of teawares I had bought. I was really apprehensive on it since I am very much not a fan of pineapples and such but I gave it a try to mark down another tea sipped.

I found it to be very tasty! The aroma was alluring to say the least and I had fun enjoying it, not finding a harsh amount of pineapple to the tea at all! Although I did enjoy it, I wouldn’t buy an entire tin of it. It is lovely and was fun to have but I may leave it at that unless a friend wanted to split a tin buy on it.

Backlog review.

Love this. I’ve been waiting for another bamboo tea since blazing strawberries, and was so excited when this was released. Fantastic in a glass! Or a mug. Perfect iced, and also really good hot. I drank a lot of this over the summer – generally cold steeped. I find that you can’t really oversteep this at all – I’d keep a juice pitcher of this with the tea filter in, for a day or two and it was always super tasty. The fruity notes are balanced and don’t overpower the bamboo, the bamboo is wonderfully fresh. Just fantastic.

I like this one! I wasn’t sure how I’d feel given that my luck with bamboo teas (aside from the Bamboo Lychee Sencha I had found locally). This one is nice. There’s more fruitiness than bamboo, which I prefer.

An interesting cup so far. I am not terribly impressed with it, yet. I do taste the pineapple and peach, a sweet with just an edge of peachy tartness. I don’t really taste the odd after taste that some people have mentioned, maybe it’ll show up when it cools down.
Despite my not being impressed with this tea, I am not opposed to getting more. As I need more teas that strictly herbal/non rooibos blends for times when rooibos doesn’t appeal to me.
With the change of the website, I’ve decided to go back to rating my teas, I stopped before because it was set up kind of weird and was hard to adjust.

The temp I used was 190, though the average temp used by users on this site was 195, that is not a option on my kettle and I hate trying to guess when the best time is to pour, so I went with 190. My tea thermometer/timer is broke…(The day I got it, it accidently landed in a pan full of water. It worked…more or less after that quite a few times, but then I got out of the habit of using it. So I guess it just fizzled. Ahh well. Not sure if I’ll get another one, if I do it won’t be from Teavana.

Update:I just took a huge swallow of this tea, there was a distinctly metallic taste…so lowered the score even lower. (Was an 80, which is the ‘Interesting’ catergory. Now it’s 70 which is the ‘Not cupboard worthy’

While I might change my mind…I highly doubt it. Bah!

I’m having this one iced RIGHTTHISSECOND for the first time. And oh, boy. I don’t know how I like it better, now. Warm it was…weird. Not an unpleasant weird, at least not for me. I like all of the subtleness of all of the “other” stuff in it, with the KA-POW of peach and pineapple. Iced, it’s different. Still has the KA-POW of peach and pineapple, but some of the subtleties were lost. I don’t get weird after-tastes anymore, and a lot of the near-sourness that some cups have (the ones with the entire flower buds in them, maybe? I’m not sure…) this one doesn’t as an iced tea.

I’m glad I just bought more of this; it’s going to end up being one of my favourite iced summer teas. I can tell already.

Verdict: they’re discontinuing this tea, so I’m going to have to go buy a couple more tins of it soon. I’ll go through it quickly and likely be wallowing in the sorrow of empty tins before the end of the summer.

I wanted this iced as well, but considering a regular cup called for 2 teaspoons I decided to make it with 4 teaspoons to 500 ml water, and let it cool down for a while before pouring it over ice to prevent dilution. There are lots of big flower petals and things like that, so it ends up being pretty loosely packed in the teaspoon when you measure it out.

Anyway, I wasn’t so sure about this one. It smelled very, very peachy, slightly artificially so, when I brewed it — one of the maintenance guys working near my desk asked his friend, “Do you have peach gum?”

But that overwhelming peachiness in the odor doesn’t carry over into the flavor. It’s peachy, but not too peachy. The other fruits definitely chime in wonderfully for a great fruit salad sort of feel. I don’t get too much of the floral taste, which I was looking forward to. I don’t really know what bamboo tea would taste like plain without the fruit, but there’s no off flavor. Overall, great for an iced tea, but I’m not sure how much I’d like it hot. It is very summery to me.

I do wonder how many calories this packs, considering that there is a lot of fruit as well as added sugar to the pineapple. I’m sure it would be very tart without it, but it’d be nice to be able to decide whether to add sugar or not.

Still, overall I’m very satisfied for a tasty caffeine-free option. I’d probably buy this again.