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Yay, sipdown. This is great Assam but it’s still nice to make some room in the cupboard. I made the last of this with boba! My mom gave me some leftover boba she found from a nuts.com order we made a few years ago, and understandably, in spite of storing it in a cool, dark place in its ziplock bag, the boba didn’t taste as good.

I also steeped this a little stronger than necessary and didn’t add sugar the result of the ultra strong tea, some 2% milk, and older boba didn’t make the best drink.

I decided to experiment further and did a second steep, mixed it with honeydew bubble tea powder, top with milk, and add some more boba. Better, actually! But I’m just not liking the boba so I drank the liquid, leaving the boba because it just isn’t worth the calories, ugh.

First impressions of this when I tried this in the store was Tastier, Juicier Red Kool-Aid. I automatically wanted to pick some up, and it’s an even better feeling knowing that proceeds go to charity.

I’ve had this a few times iced at home now and my initial major delight is waning. It does taste like cherries and cranberries mostly, then raspberry in the background. Like I’ve been finding with a few of their fruit blends lately, the flavouring they add to it usually ends up overpowering the actual fruit in here. The first couple times I had this, I couldn’t detect any stevia, but it seems like as I get closer to the bottom of my time, my glasses are getting sweeter and sweater, although it doesn’t have that overpowering, obvious stevia note that other blends have. Not yet, at least.

This strongly reminds me of another fruit blend I had from Bayswater. Maybe their Juicy Cherry? That reminds me of how I’d love to make an order but they make the process so annoying.

And that’s a sample sipdown! Glad I didn’t get more because its notes were a little disconnected. Interesting but nothing I’d want to experience again.

Ok, I’m totally not getting the desserty (by way of cinnamon bun, chocolate mousse, etc) that others are mentioning. Impressive that the rooibos base is nearly undetectable, but it smells more like chocolate than it tastes. Cacao shows up later as a lingering note but it isn’t prominent. I am also disappointed to not get any nutmeg.

Rather, I get black pepper. That’s right. Yet it’s not listed in the ingredients? Maybe it’s part of the rooibos base, who knows, but there is a distinctive bite of black pepper. It’s like it’s trying to be like a black pepper-infused chocolate chai, but it’s weak.

There is a creaminess to this, I will give it that. To be fair, the chocolate comes out a little more as this cool, too. In spite of my slightly disappointing observations, I still enjoy this, particularly as a latte.

Strange tea. At first, I was stoked by the chunks of fruit, lemongrass, and sweet vanilla scent of the dry leaf. Steeped, it smells just as intriguing.

The initial sip, I was like, “Score!” because it was a blast of caramel. Then the sweet pineapple follows, but this is where things get strange. The caramel fades and the sweetness from the pineapple strengthens, only the sugariness, not the pineapple itself. But then the sweetness, which is artificial as it is at this stage, morphs into a plasticky note. As this cools, I am getting a little roastiness from the barley, which is helping to cover up some of those plasticky undertones but it just isn’t enough to truly enjoy this.

Upside is the sencha base didn’t go bitter and it isn’t too grassy or vegetal either.

Hmm, it’s like drinking a plasticky pineapple caramel genmaicha.

Sip down! A little on the strange side with the cantaloupe and carrot mix but still drinkable when it’s 24°C outside.

Sort of sipdown? I got 20g, had nearly half, then passed the rest off to my mom. Glad I didn’t get a tin of this one with that promotion, as this batch was quite heavy on the stevia. One of the sales associates was like, “LULZ, I don’t like stevia but I don’t taste it in here.” Sorry, different story for me!

Oh wow, I haven’t had this in years, apparently, nearly four now according to my tasting notes. Seriously? Time flies. DAVIDsTEA just had to come out with those damn adorable printed tins and have a free tin promotion with them, didn’t they? I went in not sure what I wanted 100g of yet, going between this, Blueberry Jam, and Strawberry Rhubarb Parfait. Well, I initially opted for SRP since I know I would easily rip through it and was still giving Blueberry Jam the stink eye for having that fleeting stevia note in it, being wary of getting so much of it at once, so I got 20g of that anyway. I was going to get 20g of this after deciding on doing 100g of SRP, but then at the last minute, opted to also get 100g of this for two of those tins. Sigh. So yeah. More tea.

I’ve been randomly craving this lately? I was thinking about ATR’s Brioche the other day, wishing I had more of that and then remembered that this tastes very similar. We also had an abnormally windier, cooler day the other day which felt very autumn-esque, and naturally, that makes me want autumn things. This is like an autumn thing, right?

First cup in four-ish years and I am definitely happy with my decision. I love the warm, well-rounded cinnamon in here, the toasty nuts, and I swear there is like a bready note in this too, hence the Brioche association. Maybe I can hypnotize myself and convince myself that this is a freshly baked cinnamon bun topped with chopped nuts and gooey baked apples, and then my brain will think I just had dessert.

Not my favourite pear offering from DAVIDsTEA. After two rounds of iced Pear Blossom, I don’t think I’ll be picking up more. The dry leaf smells more like pear than it tastes. In flavour, I get a mix of pear, pineapple, and artificial peach. I think it’s that artificial peach flavouring that has been added that especially screws with the overall pear-ness of this blend. Then there’s the stevia, which while isn’t nearly as bad here as in other blends, the blend could have easily done without it.

Speaking of, I found a massive Bosc pear at Safeway the other day. Those are my favourite, but I’m curious how this one will taste because it’s quite literally the size and shape of a grapefruit, so way larger than an Asian pear too, which is something else. Looks nothing like a pear but still has that classic Bosc pear skin on it.

This blend makes me miss the Poached Pear blend from last year, which had cinnamon sugar doughy notes alongside a green rooibos base, and of course, I’m also a fan of Ginger Pear. This one is so flat in comparison. There’s worse, for sure, but there are better pear teas out there, in my opinion.

Sipdown! For a change, I actually liked the last glass better than the others because of the extra sugar and fruit pieces on the bottom of the bag. Normally, that sends the tea way overboard in the sweetness category but here it balanced out the Hibiscus Hurricane.