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Pitcher of cold brew… an underleafed one though.

I’m still enjoying it, even though it’s clearly more watered down than it should be. It lacks some of that effervescent fruit punch quality; but it does gain an almost ‘vitamin water’ like refreshingness, with soft pineapple undertones.

I’m not the one consuming most of the pitcher though – my roommates have gone and decided that it makes “the best” mix for their spiced rum, so that’s where most of it has gone. I don’t see it though. Dragon fruit spiced rum? And, watery dragon fruit, at that…

But student living right? Gotta make do with what you have.

Friendly reminder that I’m not currently numerically rating DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently seasonally 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

Hard to believe I’d never tried this one before, since I’m typically drawn to teas with interesting quirks to them; and this is definitely visually the most interesting looking tea leaf of anything sold by DAVIDsTEA. In my opinion, at least. I just don’t lean heavily towards green teas though, and as far as jasmine pairings go I definitely prefer white or black over green by so much…

I have to say; this was quite good though. And I mean, you’d certainly hope so given the price tag, wouldn’t you? It was REALLY smooth though and the jasmine was very, very natural tasting. Not harsh AT ALL. In contrast, the Silk Dragon Jasmine just seems all kinds of rough, harsh, and chemical. I’m sure someone has probably done side by sides of the two before – but I can only imagine how rough such a direct comparison would be. I have every bit of confidence that this one would demolish that one. And of course, because my palate is stupid sometimes, I DEFINITELY tasted the grape notes I always do when I taste jasmine teas. Even the green base though was nice; just a little buttery and playfully vegetal. It offered enough contrast that the jasmine didn’t taste flat/monotone but it didn’t compete with it either.

So, I wouldn’t buy a large quantity of this for myself because it’s not something I’d ever regularly drink. However, I’m VERY impressed by how obvious the quality difference was. That was an aspect of the tea I was skeptical of; if we were charging such a significant amount more just because of the ‘gimmick’ of the leaf shape I’d have an issue with that, but it’s obviously better tea as well. Which is reassuring.

Friendly reminder that I’m not currently numerically rating DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently seasonally 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.

Really smooth cold brew with very strong lemony/citrus notes. I enjoyed it, but in the moment it was also just a little light bodied to satisfied the deep citrus cravings I was experiencing. I wanted something more robust, and a bit less floral.

Didn’t stop me from finishing the brew, though.

Friendly reminder that I’m not currently numerically rating DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently seasonally 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.

Gravity Steeper = Lattes that are 100% easier to make = More Lattes!

This one was an almond milk latte enjoyed in the evening after a long shift at Job #1; it felt like such an indulgent treat! And of course, Chai always lattes so well. Even a non-Chai fan like myself is hard pressed to find a Chai latte that I don’t enjoy…

Sweet, lightly spicy, and very creamy – both from the milk and the tea itself. Yum!

Revisited this one on shift the other night ‘cause I realized that I’ve had the old formula of it but not the new one – not counting if for Project Tea Wall though ’cause the only difference is (I believe) the sprinkles that are used now…

Even if it is only the sprinkles that are different – I think I enjoyed this one a lot better than when I’ve tried it previously. Maybe my palate has just changed enough to appreciate it more now? It just seemed a lot smoother overall though; just a better balance of cloves, and less astringency/dryness. Not a TON of lemon? But just a soft sort of presence of it. It’s still not a favourite, but definitely an improvement upon my previous impression of it.

Friendly reminder that I’m not currently numerically rating DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently seasonally 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.

So what do you get when you desperately need the caffeine of a Yerba Mate/Guayusa but have extreme indecision about what you want to drink? A bad idea, that’s what.

The other night I mixed 1g of every single Mate/Guayusa tea on the wall and steeped that up to drink. I definitely do not recommend doing it – but here are the results…

- Strongly fruity; lots of the berry flavours & orange
- From Power Berry and Main Squeeze, respectively
- Sour/sweet finish
- Really earthy
- Coffee notes from Jumpy Monkey were REALLY strong and deeply clashed
- And the nuttyness from several of the teas also popped up throughout

It definitely could have tasted a million times worse – but again, it wasn’t good either. Certainly helped on a caffeine level, though…

Friendly reminder that I’m not currently numerically rating DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently seasonally 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.

Advent Calendar Day Sixteen

Hooray! My (first) White2Tea order showed up today which meant I finally had all the pieces to send off my Secret Santa package for the Tea Chat/Slack exchange! I was beginning to get really worried it wouldn’t arrive by Christmas – and at this point it may not make it there FOR Christmas, but should at least get there for New Years…

I drank this one on the commute in the work today; and like yesterday’s advent tea it was one I drank blindly/without ingredients. It was also one I was sort of disappointed to see because I had a late night yesterday at DAVIDsTEA and only had like four hours of sleep going into the day today – so I was really hoping for something caffeinated from the calendar this morning.

Nonetheless, it was REALLY tasty. I almost immediately was able to identify this as a spiced orange blend, or at the very least spiced citrus. My money was on orange though; especially to tie into the festivity of it all. I for sure picked up on the peppercorn in the finish of the sip; that light tickle is very familiar to me at this point in my tea drinking journey. Maybe a bit of ginger? And I got the sweetness of the clove, but couldn’t completely nail down that flavour on my own without the ingredients list.

The orange was very bright though, and it had an extra supporting sweetness to it that I just couldn’t quite place my finger on. Turns out I had in completely wrong; I think I was picking up on the cherry in the blend although I 100% interpreted it as more of a honey or even caramel note. So, definitely WAY off. But honestly the additional fruit note just merged with the orange so well that all I was getting was extra sweetness. Very nice overall though. Spiced Orange is sort of a played out flavour combo, but with how it’s done here it didn’t feel nearly so overdone. Which is a testament to the quality of the tea.

Though it would be interesting to revisit this one given I now know what the ingredients actually are supposed to be…

Advent Calendar Day Fifteen

Didn’t check the ingredients prior to brewing this; I was relatively rushed on my way out of the house this morning. However, at least I managed to find time to brew this for my commute rather than leaving it for the evening ‘cause I ended up working an unplanned shift at DAVIDsTEA so I wouldn’t have had time to drink it in the evening…

Anyway; it was obvious as soon as I started sipping at this one (and really even as the water first hit the tea leaf) that it was a lychee tea! Damn, that lychee comes through REALLY clearly! However, I also tasted a lot of citrus – I would have said either a semi bitter lemon OR grapefruit, but I suppose the correct note is grapefruit. As for the jasmine? Well, I thought the lychee was definitely a bit more floral than it usually tends to come off in blends, but I’m guessing part of what I was tasting was the jasmine just blending well with the natural floral notes of the fruit.

Didn’t taste any peach…

This was nice! I enjoyed that it was tropical, sweet, fruity and floral and had very strong flavour notes that were still able to retain an air of delicacy to them.

Sipdown (156)!

It took some added honey to make the amount of chamomile in this blend tolerable for me, but this is finally a sipdown. I’m so sad that I actually sort of started to dislike this one even more each time I had it – but that rhubarb just kept slipping even farther away from my grasp/tastebuds each time!

At leas the chamomile is doing it’s thing though and making me super drowsy! I can tell already that I’m going to sleep so soundly tonight! And on that note…

Off to bed I go!

This review is for the Blueberry Muffin infused White Chocolate Mini Bar!

So, I didn’t love this as a tea – I found it way too tart and inaccurate for what it was modeled after. However, my coworkers have insisted that it’s better as a chocolate bar and I do really like white chocolate so I finally caved today and bought the mini bar.

Honestly? It really is a big improvement if you’re looking for that buttery/creamy pastry like element that I felt should have been present in the tea to begin with. Now, mind you, a lot of that does come from the white chocolate itself but there’s blueberry notes too from the infused tea so if you let your mind mash the two flavours together then it works. At least in my opinion, that is. I seem to be relatively in the minority when it comes to people and their opinions of this tea…

Also, no weird and unpleasantly crunchy bits of hibby in the chocolate bar that I noticed! I’ve fallen a little behind when it comes to “trying ALL the chocolate bars” since I haven’t had any of the winter/holiday ones yet; oops! But based on the last round of ones I had I think it’s fair to say that DT has probably taken notes of the fact consumers didn’t like all the hard bits of stuff in large chunks, because things seem much smaller cut in the newer bars to me. It really does make a difference!

Friendly reminder that I’m not currently numerically rating DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently seasonally 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.