Today my Dad and brother came into town for a visit, and to bring me up a new bed. I swear, my bed is FINE and perfectly comfortable, but my Dad insists on buying me new, well, everything. Sometimes I really appreciate it – and other times it’s frustrating because he tries to replace things that don’t need replacing at all.
We went out for lunch at Fuddruckers with my roommate Tre, and then as a sort of ‘house warming’ present we stopped in at DAVIDsTEA so he could buy me a couple new teaballs (I always seem to be short on tea balls). Initially he had expressly forbidden me from buying anymore new teas, but at the last minute as we were leaving he caved! Yes!
I ended up walking away with three new teas that had been on my “to try” list: The Earl of Lemon (which I served to my Dad later in the day – he has a thing for white teas), Cranberry Apple, and Blueberry Jam which is what I’m having now.
Normally, I hate blueberries! When it comes to the fresh fruit there’s something that I just find totally repulsive about the texture (it’s the same idea for me when it comes to tomatoes – NASTY texture), and artificial blueberry just tastes funny to me. So hopefully this will work out for me – real blueberry taste without that nasty blueberry texture.
The dry leaf smells very much like blueberries. Nothing artificial – just sweet blueberries.
For my first cup, I steeped for between four and five minutes and let me just say that this tea changes colour really quickly. I think my tea ball had been in the cup maybe 10 seconds and already the liquor was black. Not just like darkly coloured, but a solid black where I couldn’t see the bottom of the cup.
Steeped, it smells like blueberry pancake syrup! Mmm! My brother made the same observation, and this enabled me to convince him to actually try some. For whatever reason, he claims he can’t taste tea – every tea he’s ever tried tastes like water to him. He loves the smell of tea, but he can’t taste it. I’ve given him herbal teas in the past in the hope that he’d taste the fruit but the only luck I’ve had is him tasting hibiscus and hating it.
But after trying this one I think I’ve opened him up to giving tea more of a chance – he could taste the blueberries!
That made me really excited to try it – if he could taste blueberries when he usually tastes nothing then I bet I sure could! Sure enough, this tea tastes like real blueberries without any artificial aspect to it at all. It really does taste like blueberry pancake syrup, and that’s a very pleasant taste to (and kind of nostalgic, which maybe makes this tea better).
The black tea base is good too, and still present even though blueberry is by far the most dominating taste. Overall, I really enjoyed this tea but I did find that by the bottom of the cup it was starting to taste kind of… soapy? I think that’s the best word for it.
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Hmmm, how do you like DT’s teaballs? Do you use them at home a lot? or for work/school/travel? I’m trying to decide between tea bags (the filters that dt sells) and a teaball to take to work to use inside my timolino.
I’ve never tried DT’s teabags, so I guess I can’t give a fair comparison of the two tea products. I really like the tea balls though! I use them at home daily since I prefer to brew a mug at a time and drink many different types of tea all day instead of one or two types resteeped throughout the day. I have another tea ball that was a gift from someone (I can’t remember where they bought it, but it wasn’t a DT product) and it’s nowhere near as nice – the clasp comes undone quite easily and there are small gaps in the edge that let finer bits of tea out. I guess my recommendation would be to just pick up one from your local DT or add one into your next online order to try out (they’re pretty cheap), and then buy more if you like them. I have five.
Yeah, I should probably get a few of those. I have a few of dt’s perfect infusers, and they’re absolutely wonderful, but I always feel as htough I need more immediate tea-brewing options, because I don’t want to spend forever at the sink washing my teaware.
Hmmm, how do you like DT’s teaballs? Do you use them at home a lot? or for work/school/travel? I’m trying to decide between tea bags (the filters that dt sells) and a teaball to take to work to use inside my timolino.
I’ve never tried DT’s teabags, so I guess I can’t give a fair comparison of the two tea products. I really like the tea balls though! I use them at home daily since I prefer to brew a mug at a time and drink many different types of tea all day instead of one or two types resteeped throughout the day. I have another tea ball that was a gift from someone (I can’t remember where they bought it, but it wasn’t a DT product) and it’s nowhere near as nice – the clasp comes undone quite easily and there are small gaps in the edge that let finer bits of tea out. I guess my recommendation would be to just pick up one from your local DT or add one into your next online order to try out (they’re pretty cheap), and then buy more if you like them. I have five.
Yeah, I should probably get a few of those. I have a few of dt’s perfect infusers, and they’re absolutely wonderful, but I always feel as htough I need more immediate tea-brewing options, because I don’t want to spend forever at the sink washing my teaware.