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With a hint of agave.

As a hot tea, I definitely liked this one better than I did iced. However, to be totally honest I don’t know how much of the improvement came from the prep style and how much was due to the added agave. It was still wicked full bodied and brisk, with a whole lot of malt. It also still had a ton of overall astringency, which was the most unpleasant part of the cup. However the big change was in the brightness and sweetness of the top notes: very much like an overripe/juicy mango with hints of the lemon in the top note undertones and throughout the body. I don’t know if those notes were made better/more pronounced from the agave, though…

It could be really good, if it just weren’t for that bloody astringency.

Iced tea!

It was crazy busy at work yesterday; there were what felt like a million last minute Christmas shoppers. So, I didn’t really get much tea drinking in at work in between managing the store/customer flow and training on top of that. In fact, this was the only tea I drank all shift. I think caffeine probably would have been a smart choice for me, but at least this was delicious in terms of flavour even if it wasn’t giving me the buzz I honestly needed. Not a ton in the way of passionfruit with this steeping, but lots of delicious and sweet orange notes, and hints of the apple in the undertones too.

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.

Late morning/early afternoon mug of tea while I slowly get ready for work.

I love this one just as much as I liked it the first time; the banana flavour is incredibly rich and satisfying and nothing but smooth. It coats my whole mouth, and lingers well after I’ve actually finished the sip. I am getting a bit of a banana bread sort of thing from it today, but that’s not a bad thing – it just makes me kind of hungry.

Drank this one last night, as a latte with some peppermint agave.

I mostly added things to this one in an attempt to make it more interesting; it’s not a bad tea, but it’s pretty run of the mill and I have a lot of it on hand so I’m gonna have to get creative to sip it all down. This wasn’t a bad latte – but very malty, and even with the milk and agave it was still both so full bodied but also so flat…

I’d have loved a more distinct peppermint flavour to make this feel more festive, or at least some different black tea base notes apart from bread-y and malty. With just the two, it just didn’t feel very lively/nuanced. Bleh.

I spent eight hours training in store yesterday, and like half way through the day my voice was almost already shot. It was so much talking!

I definitely needed something cold and refreshing to soothe my throat and while I was tempted to go for something iced and lemony with a bit of honey I’m actually really happy I went with this one. I don’t really drink it very often; and I don’t know why because I very rarely am disappointed when I DO brew it up. The raspberry was sweet and tasty, and the little soft accents of lime worked well with it – but more importantly the mint was very crisp, and hydrating and it felt SUPER GOOD on my throat! Definitely what I needed in the moment.

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.

Morning pot of tea – couldn’t resist the pun of ‘having flap jacks for breakfast’.

I have mixed feelings about coin teas in general; sometimes they’re really nice because of the convenience but sometimes they’re not the highest quality just because the leaf tends to need to be smaller or more broken up to work for the shape of them. It’s a mixed bag. Ultimately, I don’t think this was bad at all – but I believe it still needs some time to be really enjoyable. The flavour was sweet overall, with a mix of wet wood and dirt kind of notes but there’s still some humidity to this one and I got a bit of an oiliness in taste and mouthfeel that made me a touch uneasy sipping on this one. Like, it totally doable and mostly enjoyable but I just had this sort of underlying feeling the whole pot that something was just a touch off. I’m gonna let these sit for a few months, I think, and then I’ll revisit and reevaluate.

Sipdown (457)!

Finished this free sample hot with milk today. I was initially excited about the idea of a spiced hot chocolate/cinnamon hot chocolate – but that was when I thought the spice was coming from just cinnamon. As soon as I tasted this one, I immediately got the fiery kick of chili pepper in the mix and it was just a little bit too much for my delicate white people taste buds.

Seriously; I got hiccups from the spice…

Also, I didn’t think there was enough chocolate in here to actually make for a convincing cup of ‘hot chocolate’ inspired tea. Ignoring the over bearing spices, it just wasn’t rich enough in the chocolate department to be satisfying. I don’t know; maybe this one would work for some people but for me at least it was a fairly big miss overall. Like, still drinkable and not bad – just not something I’d revisit again/pay money for.

Gong Fu Sipdown (458)!

Well, I got my new phone today – and spent pretty much all evening setting it up. I think I’ve essentially got myself all set up, minus the fact I’m missing essentially ALL of my contacts. That’ll be a slow process rebuilding that, though…

And along with the new phone, I decided it was about time I got in on this whole instagram shenanigans! I’ve loved silently stalking the beautiful tea photos people link to here on Steepster, but I think it’s about time to share my own/be a little less silent with my love of everyone’s photography. So, if people want to add/follow me on Instagram, I went with the user name ros_strange. I did attempt to follow as many people as I could think of here on Steepster that I knew had an account, but I’m sure I likely missed people.

As for the tea; this was sort of a VERY messy/informal Gong Fu session that I enjoyed while I got my phone all set up tonight; and my inaugural instagram post! I only did about five infusions, and I didn’t really time them or anything – I just went with gut feeling, which is sometimes just as good as precision. The dry leaf aroma of this tea was heavinly – it smelled so strongly of condensed milk, raspberries, and orchid! Sweet, and rich/potent! It made me very excited for the session.

Overall notes in the session were a mix of strong, sweet florals such as magnolia, orchid, and jasmine as well as undertones of fresh fruits – the mix of floral and fruit elements such as raspberry and peach notes made me think quite strongly of early spring, and hanging out in my grandma’s garden which was always filled with fresh flowers and overgrown raspberry bushes just waiting to be plucked! The raspberry element and that sort of nostalgic imagery also ties in for me the fact there was an almost heavy cream/condensed milk like sweetness to this oolong. We used to pluck those fresh raspberries and wash them off then eat them in the garden in HUGE bowls topped with big dollops of whipped cream, and that’s greatly what’s springing to mind here. Other things in the session were general grassyness, and a bit of sour chlorine like sharpness – but only the latter in the first infusion, after that it was totally fine.

I easily could steep this even longer but it’s QUITE late right now and I really should be limiting my caffeine intake…

Got a late start to my tea drinking today, but at least I kicked it off with this really pleasant cup of black tea! I think this is the last tea I needed to try from my Silk Road order aside from the straight Dragonwell I got – but I’m not opening the package of that one for a while, likely…

I’ll be honest, I don’t have a TON of familiarity with many of the berries in this blend such as the Salal berry, for example. I am really enjoying it though and I think it’s a very nice, full bodied mixed berry flavour overall. I taste blueberry/raspberry more than anything else but perhaps that’s because those are just the two berries in here that I have the most familiarity with? There’s also cranberry, apparently too – I’m not tasting that so much though.

Good sweetness; like jammy berries or even berry juices from overly ripe berries. This would make a lovely “tea syrup” – either for cocktails, or even just straight up syrup for waffles and such. I get some malt from the base, and floral notes – I like that it’s holding up very well to the many fruit notes. It’s not quite as good as the Black Currant black tea carried by Silk Road in my opinion, but I think I am enjoying it more than Berry Victoria which is another black berry tea from Silk Road.

I’ve been enjoying watching all the reviews of this tea come in; it’s been absolutely hilarious reading all of the wild comparisons and first impressions. That said, I knew that at some point I, too, would have to break into the sample of this that I received and give it a try and I’ve definitely been dreading it…

In fact, the only reason I ended up trying this so soon was because I was talking about the FMA chimera comparison that CrowKettle made in regard to this tea with a whole bunch of coworkers and one of them asked me to bring the sample I had with to our staff party for her to try because she was curious. So, our winter/Christmas staff party was earlier this week and true to my word I brought the sample with for anyone to try who wanted to. Trust me, I did not talk up this tea at all – basically I just warned everyone that I was like 90% sure it was gonna be awful. That said, nine people still decided to try it out so we made up a big pot and just split it up and did a group tasting. I told everyone that I was going to be posting a review of it, so I asked everyone trying it to give it a rating out of ten based on how much they liked it, and any general comments they wanted to make. Keep in mind, this is the feedback/opinions of a panel of ten (including myself) people employed at a tea company who basically spend their whole work days just drinking tea…

Casey: 4/10 – Said it was surprisingly light given the intensity of the aroma
Jules: 3/10 – “Is the Lodge black because it burned down?”
Mackenzy: 7/10 – Would drink this again without any reservations
Seth: 7/10 – Actually offered to finish off the sample cups that people didn’t want
Emily: 5/10 – “If you focus on the banana it’s not so bad”
Luz: 5/10 – Didn’t think it would be so awful overall if you didn’t take price into account
Andy: 3/10 – “I get the FMA thing…”
Stirling: 4/10 – It IS better than straight Lapsang…
Sarah: 2/10 – Spit hers back in the sink…

So, if you average all of their rating you get a rating of 4.4/10 – on Steepster that equates to a score of 44/100, essentially. That seems pretty in line with the reviews already posted…

As for my own thoughts; I do think it was doable but you don’t exactly want that to be the highest form of praise you can offer to a blend, do you? I actually liked the banana in the blend a lot though – it was pretty sweet, and candy like and if the BULK of the profile had been that sort of banana flavour with much softer hints of Lapsang I think this might have actually worked pretty well. Not, like, spectacularly but a lot more than it does currently. The biggest issue for me was that the mix of Lapsang and other things in the blend just painfully reminds me of a mix of beef jerky and tire rubber and I just cannot get into tire rubber tea. Like, that’s the furthest thing from a pleasant flavour. The smoke didn’t bother me though; I like Lapsang. Just, didn’t work in this mix of stuff so much…

Also, I think Casey was right – when you smell the dry leaf this smells vile, but the steeped tea definitely doesn’t have the same intensity even if it’s not good. I think I’m gonna agree with the overall average rating given by our staff…