So, as I’m sure a lot of people here on Steepster are aware, on the back of every tin at DT there’s an information sheet with stuff like ingredients for Tea Guides to use as a quick reference. Some of the other stuff on there is whether a tea is organic, fair trade or kosher and a general brewing guide as well.
Well, there’s one other important symbol and that’s the “Do Not Latte” symbol which means that if a tea guide prepares that tea as a latte it will curdle. The other night me and another tea guide were looking at this tea and the ingredients and we noticed it had a DNL symbol on it. That kind of through us off a bit because none of the ingredients in the blend are things that will traditionally curdle a latte apart from the apple – and even that was kind of iffy because there are apple heavy teas that don’t curdle such as Forever Nuts. Our assumption was that it’s the citric acid in the apple that would make this curdle, but we kind of wanted to test it because neither of us thought that the acid level would be high enough to have that reaction unless you got some of the really, really big apple pieces that are in this blend in your measured out leaf.
Long story short; it curdled.
Never have I ever seen a tea curdle so fast, either. From the moment we poured in the milk it instantly just started turning into nasty, hard core chunks of milk goo. I was sure the tea was ruined, and so I went to the sink to dump it and just chalk the entire learning experiment up to a learning experience. Well, when I dumped it a good 1/3 of the drink was just curdled milk – but when I got the layer of grossness out of the way…
The rest was fine!
So, I drank the last of the tea because after all that effort I just had to see for myself taste for myself? if it was worth it. It was really good, and I’m a bit heart broken that it was because I would 100% NOT recommend recreating this ‘experiment’ and I definitely wont be trying it again. It was silky, creamy and strongly apple flavoured though with fresh, juicy sweetness and fig undertones and then the most warming cinnamon/spice finish. I sort of felt like I was melting from the inside out.
Wonderful latte. Minus the curdling.
Damn citric acid, always ruining things.
Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
