16025 Tasting Notes
Tea Latte x2!
I enjoyed this one on two separate occasions as a latte this week whilst at work. I’ve decided it’s not worthwhile for me to buy this one given how heavy it is and how fickle it can be on the sweetness level, but I plan on taking full advantage of drinking it in store while we still have it. It’s the perfect thing for when I’m craving something really sweet and just a little fruity!
The first latte was with iced with soy milk and only three perfect scoops instead of the four of tea that we normally use for lattes; I was craving something sweet but not too sweet. It really hit the spot, and I thought that the pineapple, caramel, and cinnamon all came through quite smoothly and distinctly.
The second latte was the one I had tonight which was hot with regular ol’ cow’s milk and the standard four scoops of tea. It was also good, but the combination of the extra leaf and the milk I used this time around made it just the faintest bit cloying – and as a hot tea I didn’t find it nearly as refreshing either. Still solid overall though.
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.
GCTTB Round 6
The Great Canadian Tea Box has landed, and I have to say that I’m very excited to be participating in it again! I had a lot of fun with it last round, and I’m sure that’ll be the case again.
This is my first pull! I’m very, very familiar with the Bananas & Cream matcha from RLT it’s a personal favourite so I was really curious how different the plain banana would taste compared to it. Sadly, I don’t have any B&C at the moment though so I’m just mentally comparing instead of doing a side by side.
Instead of milk, I whisked this one up in straight hot water because it didn’t feel right to do it in coconut or cashew milk (the two kinds of milk I have on hand) because back when I was regularly drinking the B&C I didn’t drink either of those kinds of milk so I wouldn’t be able to factor in the distinctly coconut or nutty notes each milk have respectively when used in matcha milk.
It was hard to remember to drink this one slowly; I was really thirsty and the tea tasted so good that I was slurping it really quickly instead of paying attention to differences. Honestly though? Maybe that’s because it didn’t taste that different to me. The banana was definitely VERY strong and really enjoyable but it tasted exactly like the sweet, creamy banana notes I got from Bananas & Cream. You know, a mix between banana pudding, banana medicine penicillin and those banana marshmallow five cent candies.
So good, but just not as authentic to the fruit as I’d always pictured the straight up banana matcha tasting. I can’t decide whether I’m disappointed by that. I mean, if there’s not a noticeable flavour difference between the two then what’s the point of having two distinct flavours?
Happy to have tried it regardless, though.
I’m glad someone enjoyed it! It wasn’t my cup of tea (hehe) so it’s great you could not only get to try a new flavour (er…same flavour as you’ve already tried?), but also like it. Did you find it bitter at all?
Banana flavour is based on bananas that aren’t grown for commercial eating anymore. They might have actually gone extinct, I can’t remember. There were tree disease problems.
@Arby
No, I didn’t – but I also used a pretty conservative steep temperature. 75C, I believe.
Sipdown (211)!
Thanks for the sample VariaTEA!
So, this pretty well does taste exactly like an Oatmeal Raisin Cookie, complete with light cinnamon pastry notes and vanilla notes. Is it a good thing that it’s so accurate? Eh, debatable. I’d probably enjoy it a lot more of I liked raisins. I’ve come around to them a lot since first joining steepster and even enjoy raisin notes in my black teas (Darjeeling/Keemun specifically) quite a bit now BUT I’m a long, long way from appreciating them in real life and I think the fact this reminded me so strongly of ‘real life’ raisins and not ‘raisin notes’ in tea was what made it somewhat conflicting.
I still enjoyed it a lot overall, especially the soft cinnamon notes and really subtle pithy lemon undertones – but couldn’t completely get into it.
So when I packaged this, I considered the raisins but then decided you should try it anyways
Literally the new definition in the teadictionary – ‘variatea’ – when one drinks a lot of different types of tea, even to the point of drinking tea they might not like.
I think that describes so many of us…
I’m gonna choose to look at it as a way to broaden and refine my palate though. Also, thanks for the reminder that I really should be adding that book to my growing collection! :)
Sipdown (212)!
Iced at work yesterday…
- Astringent
- Stonger on the spices than I remember the hot cup tasting
- More cinnamon/ginger/cardamom and less fennel/clove though
- Too much allspice, imo
- Wanted a touch more sweetness
- Orange notes
- Pleasant overall though
#ProjectTeaWall
So there’s a story to accompany this tea…
So last night at DAVIDsTEA work one of our staff members accidentally locked the stock room/staff room key into the stockroom and because of a long series of unfortunate, overlapping circumstances we had absolutely NO access to a spare key to get back into the stock room…
It was kind of a big deal because it looks like we wouldn’t be able to get into the room until Monday and from a store perspective it’s bad if we run out of tea/merchandise and can’t replenish the stock in the store. From a personal perspective, it was far worse because my house keys were in the now locked stock room and both my roommates were out of town so I had NO WAY into my house.
I was kind of panicking a little bit…
I ended up spending the evening at a friend’s house and this morning/early afternoon the store was able to get a locksmith in the open up the door so we could get the stock room keys and my house keys. Thankfully. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if I couldn’t get into the house for a few days. The poor pets, too.
This morning I made us both my friend and I matcha shots because I felt like we needed to really jump start our day. I was actually really pleasantly surprised to see that she had this tea, because it’s the only matcha I have left to cross off for Project Tea Wall but we never seem to have it in store when I’m working. It’s always back ordered because when we do get shipments in it sells so fast I can’t try it myself…
It was a little hard to get a real taste of it in matcha shot format, but I will say that as far as matcha shots go it was pretty smooth! I got a slight sense of creaminess for it, and a kind of “fresh” vegetal quality? I see someone else here on Steepster has described it as “bamboo” and I think that’s pretty close to accurate to what I picked up.
Anyway; I’m home now! It kind of put a bit of a damper on my day off not being able to spend it at home, vegging out like I’d wanted. It was an adventure, though?
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.
#ProjectTeaWall
Interestingly, there seems to be a trend so far of people who don’t traditionally like chamomile (myself included) liking this blend, so that’s kind of neat. I honestly wasn’t excited for this one at all once I realized it was a chamomile based blend but I ended up greedily drinking a whole pot to myself, so take that as you will.
- Shared w. roommate and he liked it quite a lot
- Though I ended up drinking all the pot except the one shared cup because I am greedy
- Mostly just sweet
- Though I actually didn’t really taste the stevia at all and I was definitely looking for it
- The honey is REALLY well defined/strong
- It definitely soften the chamomile a bit and makes this more smooth and bearable
- I say bearable because the taste of chamomile on its own is… bleck
- Soft floral rose undertones, but not all that strong overall
- Pleasant on the whole
- Not a repurchase tea, personally, but given the level I was dreading it it’s a HUGE win
I liked this one better than Mocha Orange Biscotti, as well.
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.
Cold Brew Sipdown (213)!
- Very, VERY old tea leaf (that I stole from my mom’s stash)
- Tastes a little chalky???
- Strong blackberry notes, and a little tart
- Has a very artificial cream taste
- The contrast between the cream and tart berry is sharp and unpleasant
- Floral undertones
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAsTlnjvetI&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ&index=183&shuffle=25700
Not my favourite tea; though it’s always nice to revisit something you haven’t had in years and had kind of completely forgotten about…
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.
#ProjectTeaWall
Came in bright and early on the day these teas launched so I could try them as soon as possible; of course I didn’t have a laptop at the time so I couldn’t write about them the same day. Suffice to say, I’ve been looking forward to this collection and being able to talk about it for a while…
Wasn’t sure how to feel about this one; I was surprised it was a black tea given the theme of the collection is “Evening Treats”. I expected everything to be caffeine free, honestly. So both the base and coffee beans in the blend took me back a little. I still kind of think rooibos/honeybush would have been a better base, as well.
Oh, I tried this as a latte.
- Not as bad as I’d expected given that the dry smell didn’t appeal to me
- Very soft coffee notes overall
- With a light handed touch of chicory/roastyness
- Sort of a “medium” chocolate/cocoa body note
- Thick/silky (partially from it being a latte though, to be fair)
- Does have a bit of an artificial quality to it that gets under my skin a little
- The orange is nice/complimentary and my favourite part of the profile
- Although it’s not a realistic tasting orange flavour
- It’s a subtle background flavour that creeps in and seems more intense in the finish
- Around average overall; maybe good for an occasional cup on shift
- This isn’t a “stock up” sort of tea for me though
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.
This review is for the Toasted Walnut infused Milk Chocolate.
This is the last of the Mini Chocolate Bars released with the Feel Good Collection that I picked up to try, and so far my success rate is half so I was cautiously optimistic about this one. I haven’t grabbed any of the full size bars because the flavours didn’t jump out at me, but I may end up doing so at some point just to say I’ve tried the full collection…
- One of the few bars I’ve had where “chunks” in this case walnut have been appropriate
- Good balance of walnut pieces
- Milk chocolate is really creamy/silky
- Complimenting notes of vanilla and coconut, from the tea
- As a chocolate is tasty but also a good representation of the tea
Honestly, this tea is kind of light bodied overall so I worried it would feel really dominated by the chocolate but the balance here was striking in a very pleasing way. Definitely no issue with the tea not coming through well.
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.
This is a queued tasting note.
Drank this as a commute tea on one of the really nice days we had this week. Seriously; just gorgeous! Tons of the snow melted away, and it really did start to feel like Spring.
This is the first of the floral/scented oolongs I recently bought; I found myself deeply craving them as the weather started to warm up. Actually, it’s the only one of the scented oolongs I purchased that I hadn’t tried yet either so I was especially excited for it.
- Rose top notes; a little too intense/perfumey
- Buttery/grassy
- Just a slight touch bitter
It wasn’t love at first sight, but I see promise here and I’m willing to put in the effort to experiment with steep time/style and leaf amount in order to get this one just right.
Happy to see this blend back, as I only have one cup left and I like the herbals that aren’t heavy on the hibiscus. I have a free 50g of tea, do you think this is too heavy/bulky to be a good buy as the free tea? I’m torn between buying an expensive matcha, stocking up on a staple (ie this blend), and waiting for the spring releases or valentines day options.
Well, going for something expensive is always nice because you’re getting more “bang for your buck” so to speak, but sometimes I think it is nice to grab something really heavy as well. I know before I was an employee I often switched between going the “grab something expensive” route and grab something heavy route (Banana Nut Bread usually) because I always feel guilty spending money on the heavier blends because I’m getting less cups worth for typically the same price as more normally weighted blends.
I will say, February/Valentine’s Day stuff is coming soon so if you want to hold off until then to know all of your options that’s fair but I wouldn’t wait for the Spring collection; it usually comes out in mid to late March and your free 50g will have expired by then…
Thank you! I’ll wait for the Valentines blends, which should be out any day now.
Ended up getting my 50g free tea of Caramel corn today because I was going right beside the local store anyway. Plus, I picked up some Cardamom French Toast and Spearmint. I actually asked for $4-$5 of spearmint, but a very full bag was barely $3. lol I love how light it is.
It’s crazy light! Chamomile is even worse though; it’s one of my least favourite things to scoop because it’s next to impossible to gauge the weight of it. I’m happy you got your Caramel Corn though!