When I first discovered DAVIDsTEA (Birthday cake was the first one I ever tried; and I discovered when I was searching for a birthday present for Skylar, my best friend Taylor’s girlfriend. Skylar is a tea enthusiast and I thought Birthday Cake would be the perfect birthday present for her) this is one of the teas where I was like, “Damn! I need to try this!”. I love caramel. LOVE IT. In all varieties. It is my kryptonite, and so I was shocked to see that teas came in flavour other than “fruit” and the sort of tea names I’d just heard growing up like “Chai”, “Earl Grey”, or “Chamomile”. It’s one of my first purchases from DAVIDsTEA and since I’m pretty new to Steepster I haven’t had a chance to log it properly, so I’m gonna do that now…
The dry leaf smells like really rich caramel. It sort of reminds me of Werthers chewy caramels, but with the obvious addition of black tea leaves. It could probably sit on my couch all curled up and just sit and smell the dry leaves for hours, and I’m not gonna rule that out as something I wont do in the future. I remember when I first saw it I was shocked that there were honest to goodness, actual, real bit of caramel in it; it wasn’t just an added flavouring (some days it’s really hard not to just pick the caramel bits out).
With this tea I have a tendency to over steep (if you steep the full 7 min. it says to on the tin it just doesn’t taste right, in my opinion) so I’m just going to steep it for 4, maybe 5 minutes. The liquor is a golden, sort of ambery brown and, because of the steeper I used (I should really invest in a better one) there are lots of little bits floating around. For this one I always steep it and then pour it through a more fine strainer a second time before drinking. It also gets an oily sorta ‘skin’ that forms on the top, though that doesn’t really bother me a whole lot.
Through experimentation I’ve found that this tastes pretty good with just a touch of milk or cream (I never add a lot; I don’t like adding things to my tea). If I had rock sugar (maybe Butiki’s Brown Crystal Sugar) I might add just a touch of that – but I have no qualms drinking it without added sugar.
Crap! I still ended up steeping this one longer than I wanted to – I’m really bad for that. At least it didn’t get the full 7 minutes; more like 6 this time. The smell is still caramel – rich, gooey caramel. My apartment smells lovely too! I swear, unless I’m making tea the place has this sort of permanent smell of “Maple Sugar Oatmeal”, heavy on the oatmeal… It’s not bad smelling exactly, but this smells MUCH better. I don’t really get the “salted” part of the tea, but I’m not going to complain since my only real “caramel turn off” is caramel with large bits of salt… Lightly salted caramel? Sure! Heavy on the salt? NO! I am NOT a salt fan at all (in general, not just in regard to caramel).
The black tea base is really present on the first few sips, but it’s quickly followed by the caramel which just suits it really well. Smelling it now, my roommate asked if there was something chocolatey in it. I don’t really get that from this tea, but it makes me curious what would happen if I added in a little bit of chocolate to it (maybe some of the chocolate chips from my Love Tea #7?). I bet that’d taste really good.
I just can’t get the caramel taste out of my mouth though! After even a small sip it lingers for what feels like forever, which makes this a really good tea to take my time enjoying; no need to gulp it all down at all.
I’m really enjoying this one!
Adding this in because I find it entertaining (and also sort of bothersome): right now my roommate is enjoying a cup of DAVIDsTEA’s Hot Lips that I made for him (which is one of the few green teas I actually like), and he just drowned the cup in about 3 tablespoons of sugar. I have no clue how he can douse a perfectly good cup in so much sugar and think it still tastes good. I’m not sure if there’s a single tea he’ll drink without adding sugar…
